Exxon-Mobil

A lot of people in the blogosphere, and the MSM for that matter, have wrapped themselves around a cause. She-witch has the anti-war movement, O'Reilly had his "War on Christmas" thing--I think today I found mine:

I was already pretty irritated with the company when they announced that they had a $10.7 BILLION profit for ONE QUARTER after the nightmares the American public have gone through due to our "oil addiction." But--I just chalked it up to the capitalist system.

Lately, however, I have been reading more about the screw-job that the company is imposing on the fishing communities of the Alaskan coastline. It has made me, for the first time ever, seriously consider boycotting a particular company's product.

Essentially, the Exxon Valdez tanker accident of 1989 wiped out the livelihood of Alaskan fishermen. Exxon was found liable for the accident because they put a drunk in charge of the tanker, who ran it aground after one too many magaritas. It destroyed the habitat of the coastline in many places, and either killed or forced entire species to migrate. 34,000 fishermen and their families were left out to dry.

In the inital class-action lawsuit, Exxon was ordered to pay $5 billion (less than half of a quarter, for them) in punitive damages to the families. Exxon appealed, and the judge was told to reconsider his judgement. The judge lowered the cost to $4 billion. Exxon countered that they had to pay cleanup costs and that the familes whose lives were destroyed deserved to be paid only $25 million. They have repeatedly appealed over and over again--to the point that now, 17 years later, the families have not received one dime from a company bragging about it's $10+ billion quarter.

The latest round of hearings is underway in San Francisco. It will likely be a long time before another decision is made, and little to no progress is expected from me, anyway.

If Congress was ever considering whether or not to step in, now may be a good time.