It's contagious! CNN apologizing to BP by telling viewers not to boycott.

[proud2BlibKansan]

Because if we don't buy BP gas we only hurt the small business owner who has no control over corporate decisions and is not responsible for the spill. And then there are tens of thousands of BP employees in the US who would be hurt by a boycott.

What CNN failed to tell its viewers is that the BP brand is on far more products than just their gas stations owned by those poor cash starved small business owners. And they forgot to mention the tens of thousands of small business owners on the Gulf Coast who are affected by this spill.

So I am pledging to wave at those BP station owners as I drive past their stations. I might even roll down my window and shout "HAVE A NICE DAY!"






BP Products

[SpiralHawk]

1. "We RepubliCorps are so sorry BP is being held responsible" - CNN (R - Brown Noser)

"We stand with Joe the Barton (R) against America and for the Corporate Homeland. Payola Uber Alles. We are sooooo sorry that honorable American people and corporations of the Gulf Coast will be compensated for the losses BP (R) has inflicted upon them."

- CNN (R - Brown Nosers)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Se19XAPwVi8/SKPYuICPIoI/AAAAAAAAC4w/cutxmw31fto/s400/brown+nose.jpg

[stray cat]

2. I'm really trying to put the elderly immigrant who pumps gas at the local station

out of business. He is a nice, friendly guy who seems to be barely getting by and it would be great to see him unemployed! :sarcasm:

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Don't forget there are also poor elderly immigrants who are fishermen in the Gulf

[WillowTree]

18. Please remind me again.

Starving the local small business that bears no blame for the spill helps the guy down on the Gulf coast how??

[rurallib]

6. This is one of the sad aspects - most BP stations are franchisees

or so I would assume since that is the way the oil business has always been run.
And boycotting a BP station mostly only hurts that station, because, at least many moons ago, each station in an area got gas from whoever was supplying that day.
Put another way, when I order gas for my BP station, the gas itself might be Exxon with BPs special additives.
So whether you buy it from a BP or not, if you drive more than likely you will buy some BP. Especially if you buy at the convenience stores.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. While the fishermen on the Gulf Coast really are suffering

Their livelihood is gone. But those poor BP station owners are still making a living.

[rurallib]

13. yes - I think you missed my point. BP still sells gas

whether you boycott their franchisees or not. The damage of the boycott is mostly borne by a small business man.
I myself have not traded at a BP for decades, nor will I. My nephew even works for them.
The other point is that the gas sold by most stations is kind of generic. Today it might be Exxon, tomorrow BP, Thursday Chevron.
But whatever.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. And my point is also missed

I want to know why CNN feels sorry for BP station owners while ignoring the real damage done to small business owners along the Gulf.

At least the BP station owners are still in business.

[1Hippiechick]

32. You are overlooking a critical point: Damage to the BRAND - who will want to buy a BP franchise in

the future?


http://consumerist.com/2010/06/when-you-boycott-bp-gas-stations-bp-profits.html

[Ozymanithrax]

4. What is funny about the boycott, is that BP oil is also used...

in every other gas station, because refineries take oil form all sellers, then pump the stuff in trucks marked with logos of what ever company is delivering gas to stations. Additives to gasoline are added either in the trucks or at the very end of the process.

If you want to actually boycott BP you have to stop using oil, not buy at any station.

I don't buy form BP, because they are more expensive than other close brands (AM/PM, Costco, Navy Exchange). Stations are a franchise, like McDonalds or Burger King. (I don't buy there because the food is lousy) But if it makes people feel better, by all means, boycott BP. The people most directly harmed by the boycott are small business owners who bought that franchise. BP would hardly notice that gnat sting. That was what CNN in it's stupid and ineffective way was saying.

I don' watch CNN because their news service is stuipid and ineffective.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. And the small business owners who have been put out of business by the spill are just out of luck

Sorry. That shit ain't flying for me.

[Ozymanithrax]

15. Way to read what I didn't write.

To paraphrase what I said, boycotting BP will not hurt the company, it will hurt business who are not BP, but if it makes people feel good, like they are doing something, go for it. CNN was not apologizing, they were pointing out a fact.

Personally, I don't tilt at windmills.

The remedies that will hurt BP will be done by the U.S. government. Obama forcing them to put up 20 billion was a good start. Charging them with civil and criminal penalties is a good effort to hurt them. Pushing Congressmen and Senators to pass meaningful regulation and require that all oil companies follow the best safety standards, and banning drilling if there is no known and tested method to control the oil taken out of the ground, should it get out of control. Working with other nations to make sure that every nation where there is a drop oil in the ground or under a nearby ocean follows the same damned rules. Those are meaningful steps.

[William Z. Foster]

44. question

Why has BP spent a small fortune enhancing their brand, if their brand is meaningless?

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TexasObserver]

14. More BP propaganda. Every $ you don't spend with BP hurts BP.

You make the same mistake many make who believe that mantra "if you don't stop using oil you aren't hurting BP." It's not true.

Your "logic" fails, because the objects of a boycott are multitude. Denying one's business to any BP facility, thereby denying BP sales and profits, is one. Making consumers aware of the products BP makes, so those consumers can boycott, is another. Keeping the issue of BP's responsibility and need for punishment in the news is another.

You make a serious logical error. Your logic says "if I can't boycott crude oil produced by BP, I can't boycott BP." That's an absurd point of view, and yet, it's the one made repeatedly by the ignorant.

[Ozymanithrax]

21. No, that wasn't my mantra. The way to hurt BP is through governments..

ours and others, limiting what BP and any oil company can do, forcing them to use the best and safest possible methods to extract oil. BP is already following an agressive policy of cleaning their image. It will take years, but be successful long before the gulf recovers in any significant way. Exon did it after the the Exon Valdez.

Want to hurt BP, you have to force governments to act.

[TexasObserver]

24. If you want to hurt BP, it starts with a boycott.

BP has been a bad actor for decades. If they are ultimately liquidated and their assets sold, the world will be a better place. The assets are less dangerous in the hands of any other company, with the possible exception of Halliburton.

Government pressure is merely evidence of public pressure. Let a nationwide boycott get serious and the pressure on politicians to regulate better increases.

Governments in the USA at all levels refusing to buy anything from BP would be another step.

A boycott isn't a bee sting. It's many, many bee stings, which in the cumulative inflict harm.

[Ozymanithrax]

29. A boycott is a marketing problem with a marketing solution.

The only substantive thing that came out of the California Grape boycott were laws passed by the government that forced all growers to act in certain ways. Those chagnes were miniscule. The companies, all of them much smaller than BP, against whom we boycotted are still there. The people are still working in abysmal conditions.

Boycott 0
Legal changes .2

Six months after that boycott ended, about 80% of the people passionate about it forgot it. Marketing changed the image of slave owners and opereators.

Only changes at a government level will work. Only changes that force all oil compaines to do something will work. The biggest lie this week was an oil executive saying his company would have done things differently.

Change the law and you have an affect. Boycott, and marketing will erase everything you do in six month to a year.

[TexasObserver]

31. There is absolutely no rational reason NOT to boycott BP.

Your lack of understanding of that simple fact betrays your point of view as asinine.

[TreasonousBastard]

22. Don't buy any gas, diesel heating oil, or anything made of plastic. And don't...

fly, buy medicines, or use anything in plastic packaging.

Never, ever, use a plastic bag in a store, even the ones you stick lettuce in.

Now, if you get everyone you know to stop using everything that could possibly be made from BP oil, including stuff made from the chemical feedstocks, you might, just possibly reduce their income just a little bit.

Meanwhile, keep calling for a boycott, because calling for useless symbolic gestures are much more fun than the hard work to actually change things.

[TexasObserver]

25. More BP propaganda and nonsense.

ANY sale you deny BP matters. You don't have to boycott everything they produce to effectively boycott BP. You only have to stop buying from them when you have the option of doing so.

Your point is uninformed.

[Ozymanithrax]

30. A bocyott is a marketing problem for BP. Legal changes are the real answer. n/t

[WeDidIt]

40. AM/PM is one of the brands that BP actually owns and operates

It's so pervasive and invasive, even if you bought gas at an Arco, you're buying gas from Citgo and Exxon, too.

[spanone]

5. corporate owned media doing their job

[KharmaTrain]

9. Remember That $50 Million BP Just Dropped On The Tiny Tony Ads???

My bets are Chicken Noodle Nuze got a nice chunk of that change...as well as money from other oil companies and their lobbyists. They gotta keep their clients happy...and those clients aren't the viewers but the ones who throw money.

[Nay]

10. First, if we can't ever boycott a brand like BP because it hurts some

small businesses, then we've lost the fight already. OF COURSE a boycott will hurt small businesses. We'd like to hurt the LARGE business that has destroyed the whole Gulf of Mexico, but being a LARGE business, it has been able to insulate itself from retribution quite well. So, what are we to do? Boycott all oil because some of it is undoubtedly from BP? Can't do that. Most ppl have to go to work Monday, BP or no BP, Gulf or no Gulf.

The symbolism of boycotting BP stations is the only thing we've got left, especially since the drill-baby-drill idiots, astoundingly, aren't being dragged into the streets and set on fire.

[TreasonousBastard]

23. After the Valdez spill there were calls to boycott Exxon. Where are they now?

So, even if a boycott is possible, and it's not (where is the list of successful boycotts?) BP still sells as much gas as it did through other stations because you DIDN"T REDUCE YOUR GASOLINE CONSUMPTION.

But, don't dare give a shit about those small businesses you put into bankruptcy because you don't know those people and you made your statement.

Collateral damage, eh? Even if putting them out of business didn't cost BP a penny?

(I swear some of you people work for the Pentagon the way you think.)

[fishwax]

34. but by buying at BP, you're putting some other small business into bankruptcy

"But, don't dare give a shit about those small businesses you put into bankruptcy because you don't know those people and you made your statement."

[Obamanaut]

36. Boycott whomever and whenever one pleases, but one should recognize

who will feel the pinch. In the case of all these BP convenience type stores, it certainly won't be BP, but rather some minimum wage clerk whose hours will be cut due to lower sales volume in that store. The gas will still be sold, even if it has to be removed from that store and put into another one owned by the same local guy (generally NOT BP.)

If one causes the hours of a minimum wage clerk to be cut, wouldn't that be similar to a regressive tax on the cigarettes poor people buy, a regressive tax so many love to decry?

[fishwax]

37. but more clerks will be hired elsewhere

"The gas will still be sold, even if it has to be removed from that store and put into another one owned by the same local guy (generally NOT BP.)"

And that second store has minimum wage clerks too.

[Obamanaut]

42. I guess it boils down to a feel good thing. If it makes you feel good, fine. nt

[Catherina]

11. Thanks. Just grabbed your pic for my sigline. Boycott. Expropriate. n/t

[noamnety]

12. Next week on CNN:

Americans are encouraged to avoid public transit, drive extra miles, and burn more gas to help protect the jobs of people at independently owned gas franchises.

[AnArmyVeteran]

19. How much BP money has CNN received to sell their souls?

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. Exactly

while we pretend we don't miss the fish we used to be able to eat.

[Obamanaut]

26. When you go by the BP station and wave, you are not waving at an owner.

The convenience store where I go regularly for coffee is not BP, but it does have the name of the chain it belongs to, as well as all the logos and signage of another oil company.

The owner of that chain has a whole lot of convenience stores, all with same chain name, but with a variety (three different) of oil company signage. In one spot, he has two stores less than a mile apart, sporting different oil company signage.

I have observed fuel being delivered to the one I frequent in trucks bearing the chain company logo only, in other trucks bearing the same logo as that on the station itself, and other trucks with neither. This third variety of truck wears a name simply stating it is carrying petroleum.

One does not know where the fuel being pumped into ones car comes from. If no one goes to this guy's store that has BP signage (he has several of them), any gas he doesn't sell will simply go to another store. The chain owner is not being hurt, only the minimum wage clerks who will have their hours cut due to a slight reduction in store sales volume.

So, if I wave at the store, it isn't the owner. I had coffee this morning, and the owner wasn't there.

[proud2BlibKansan]

27. Okay, I'll just drive on by and not wave at all.

Thanks.

[Obamanaut]

35. It will be a regressive wave, adversely affecting someone who can

least afford it. But hey, if it keeps your knickers from knotting, good for you.

[fishwax]

38. that may or may not be true

It's not as though all BP franchises are mom and pop operations or even owned by locals. There are plenty of corporations franchising as well.

But even if it's the case that the BP someone is passing by is locally-owned by someone who can least afford to lose customers, passing it by doesn't hurt the owner anymore than stopping there hurts some other local owner down the road who can least afford to lose customers.

[Honeycombe8]

28. Since CNN doesn't have a mouth, who exactly said that? nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

41. It was on their business show

[Overseas]

33. The only thing is, I'm already kind of boycotting CNN for being too pro-corporate. //nt

[WeDidIt]

39. And you will accomplish precisely nothing other than make yourself feel good.

If that's your objective, then fine, but you going down the road to another gas station than the ones you listed means you will still buy BP products.

[William Z. Foster]

45. not true

Talking about the boycott sure got some interesting conversations going. That is extremely valuable - and has been very revealing, as well.

If BP's brand name is of no value to BP, why do they spend so much money to polish it? If it is of value, boycotting it will hurt them.

Some are arguing from a trickle down perspective, saying that if we hurt BP we are hurting "little people" - gas station owners, pensioners, etc. That is like saying that the Abolitionists should not have interfered with the slave owners, because then who would feed the slaves? And what about the textile workers? And the jobs of those overseers? And the businesses of the slave traders and slave hunters?

Many people opposed to slavery did boycott sugar and cotton. Now there we have some fungible commodities. I guess the Abolitionists were idiots who didn't understand how the cotton and sugar markets functioned.

Now, are you telling us that if there were a big slave plantation - we will call it BP for "Big Plantation" - who spent a fortune on the image of that brand, and who ran ads telling us how much "Big Plantation" was contributing to our lives, how much they cared, and how dependent our lives were on cotton and on them - and that they were selling cotton under the BP label, that people should not have boycotted that brand of cotton because not all of their cotton went to that brand, and other cotton was sold under that brand, or because that would hurt the little shops that were selling "Big Plantation" brand cotton?

[rucky]

43. "And now a word from our sponsor..." nt