Well, Santa Claus came early this year. In what may be the biggest Stephen Baldwin news since his appearence in Slap Shot 2: Breaking The Ice, the brother of truly famous Alec is taking other more-famous person Kevin Costner to court over a oil cleanup machine they both invested in, The Telegraph reports.

The suit is asking Costner for $3.3 million to make up for the presumed value of the shares Baldwin sold for just $500,000 before BP purchased the equiptment for the oil spill relief. That deal made $38 million in profit, and Stephen Baldwin belives he is owed a larger cut.

This bromance between the two middle-aged silver screen figures, once partners in this investment, seems to have profoundly soured. But who would have thought that Stephen Baldwin could prove so thoughtless when it came to science and technology? He did, after all, star in Bio-Dome.

Click for What Twitter Taught Us: A Social Network Cannot Kill Morgan Freeman

nfreeman at observer.com |@nfreeman1234

• President Obama and his administration puckered up to give corporate America a big wet kiss yesterday, but corporate America turned away at the last second and said, "I'm not that kind of girl. Plus, I heard what you've been saying about me behind my back." [WSJ]
• A settlement is in the works between major banks and state attorneys general over the matter of shoddy foreclosure paperwork. [CNBC]
• General Motors' initial public offering, expected to be priced today, will be one of the largest in American history. It will also look like a major breakthrough for bailed-out corporate America, but looks can be deceiving. [NYT]
• The National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council has found that BP ignored some risks and was not very disciplined when it came to keeping the Gulf of Mexico from becoming an ecological disaster zone. [Bloomberg]
• Republicans, irritated by the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing regime, would prefer that the central bank concern itself only with controlling inflation and let other people handle the whole unemployment thing. [FT]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

Reports of Halliburton's ethically sketchy conduct is nothing new. Over the years, Halliburton's found itself surrounded by unsettling reports, allegations, rumors, settlements and the like. And the latest flap over Halliburton's apparent misdeeds marks excellent occasion to take readers through ... Halliburton's Greatest Hits.

But one always has to watch out for what one wishes for, doesn't one?

Today, the presidential commission investigating the explosion that killed 11 workers, causing the worst offshore oil spill ever in this country's history, released its first official finding. According to internal memos, Halliburton, the giant formerly run by Dick Cheney, and the cementing contractor on the fated well, knew of dangerous flaws in their cement before the explosion. Halliburton shared test results with BP, but the companies did nothing. "Halliburton and BP both had results in March showing that a very similar foam slurry design to the one actually pumped at the Macondo well would be unstable," a letter from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill says, "but neither acted upon that data."  

The Journal has excellent coverage, including a gaggle of troubling graphics on the spill.

Related: Halliburton's Greatest Hits

• Companies that make ATMs and otherwise provide financial infrastructure to banks (and bodegas) could be attractive targets for private equity buyouts. [Reuters]

• Harrisburg, Penn., edged closer to bankruptcy Thursday by warning that, even after looking under the sofa cushions, it couldn't find the money to pay back $3.3 million in general obligation bonds. [DealBook]

• BP is saying that the Gulf oil spill has so far cost it $8 billion, and that oil hasn't leaked out of the offending Macondo well since July 15. [WSJ]

• In an economy that simply refuses to grow fast enough, employers are reducing the range of benefits they offer and transferring more costs onto employees. That's too bad for employees, because health care costs keep rising. [Washington Post]

BP spent $93 million on ads from April to July, more than triple its ad budget over the same three months in 2009. Most of that money apparently went into those irksome ads featuring BP workers who are from Louisiana, promising to work tirelessly until the company's environmental disaster is fixed.

Wrote Committee Chairman Henry Waxman with Bart Stupak, head of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in a letter to Representative Kathy Castor:

With respect to television and radio spots, BP indicated that it aired fewer spots during the April-July 20 10 time period than during the April-July 2009 time period, but a higher percentage were national and longer, 60-second spots.

So viewers with the misfortune of catching a BP commercial while watching "Scrubs" reruns were subjected to longer outbursts of treacly sentiment cynically spun out of environmental catastrophe. Thanks for putting in the extra effort to let us know how hard you're working, BP.

(h/t Wall Street Journal)

For one thing, Mr. Hayward isn't just unrepentant, he is resentful. "I became a villain for doing the right thing," he says, villainously. 

There are two other great lessons from the interview. The first is that he is speaking in the third person. "BP can rebuild faster in America without Tony Hayward as its CEO," he explains. "I didn't want to leave BP, because I love the company. Because I love the company, I must leave BP." Asked about the Obama administration, he says he disliked its daily criticism.

The other lesson is that his life in Britain, where his office is lined with photos of sailboats, seems to be excellent. On Wednesday he held the first in a series of BP "employee town halls," where the standing ovation was so long and passionate that Mr. Hayward's voice cracked as he had to say to his crowd, "If you keep clapping, I will cry."

And whereas in Houston he sits in corner tables with his back to the other diners, he was recently at a London club where "a stranger at a neighboring table sent over two large glasses of brandy."

So Mr. Hayward's life treks on! After leaving his CEO job, he'll join a BP board that works on one of the company's Russian ventures.

Who's the bigger scofflaw-BP or Yassir Raouli?

You've heard of BP, but perhaps not of Mr. Raouli or his Bistro food truck, which operates daily from 11 in the morning until 7 at night at 15th Street and Fifth Avenue, northwest corner.

The city has always had a hard time figuring out how to license and track food vendors. Lots of people, lots of vehicles, little space. So the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs issues permits for food trucks and the Department of Health then separately issues licenses-to 3,000 people-to sell food on our public streets; about 300 are food trucks, both gourmet and low-end.

Now comes Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, representing the Upper East Side, introducing a bill that would de-license all food trucks that rack up three or more parking violations a year, which nearly all of them do. "It's ridiculous for one person to own a parking spot for $200 a year and $3 in parking fees," said Lappin. "This is about breaking the law."

Switch gears now to BP. The federal government has similarly had a hard time figuring out how to regulate big oil companies-and how to punish recidivist firms. If a company has frequently violated regulations or laws, how do you punish or deter them since, unlike real people such as Mr. Raouli, these firms can't be thrown in jail? In a Supreme Court decision earlier this year, corporations were given a similar right of free speech as you and me, but not the same obligations under criminal law. Indeed, Washington can't de-license any national or multinational firms since they are chartered by individual states, which often rely on the substantial chartering fees that result (with Delaware being the worst example).

BP is theoretically regulated by the (now renamed) Minerals Management Service in Washington, the agency, according to its inspector general, that was literally in bed with the industry it was supposed to be regulating. But favors sought and given too often took the form of deep drilling permits written by the firms without any serious review. Think foxes and chicken coops, or, as political scientists call it, "regulatory capture."

Specifically, BP assured the MMS that the risk of an oil spill in the gulf was near zero, but in any event, the firm had blow-out preventers that could capture any oil. We now know that blow-out preventers have only a 48 percent success rate (alas, the Deepwater Horizon Platform's blow-out preventer not being among the successes). Then the company was shown to have engaged in serial law-breaking and lying, from its deadly Texas City explosion in 2005 and the 2006 Prudhoe Bay pipeline spill to the underestimation the volume of the Gulf spill by 95 percent.

While the company has now been forced to pay $20 billion into a restitution fund-with tort cases, regulatory fines, civil RICO cases and perhaps indictments to come-no one's talking about de-licensing them or replacing most of the executives with new ones. Where is the individual accountability for destroying an ecosystem and thousands of jobs, as well as the deaths of 11 rig workers? Or as law professor Christopher Stone once wrote of corporate law enforcement generally, "Those who call the shots don't bear the risks."

Which brings us back to Ms. Lappin and Mr. Raouli. She's 36, smart, ambitious, well schooled and the daughter of a prominent family. He's 27, Moroccan and came to the U.S. in 2002 with $1,200 in this pocket, knowing no one. He now owns a food truck making and selling sandwiches, has six employees and is precisely the kind of new arrival our city and country want to attract and help succeed.

She says her constituents are upset with pollution, congestion and idling vehicles. Except that food trucks don't idle, they feed the meter as the price of existence. A three-strikes-and-you're-out rule would effectively put them out of business.

So what did Mr. Raouli think when he first heard about Ms. Lappin's bill? "I was angry, shocked and scared because this is my livelihood." So he did the American thing: He contacted other owners and organized. Dozens of people turned up for a June 16 council hearing across the street from City Hall. It was a richly diverse group, with food-truck owners from Japan, China, Australia. They were Christian and Jewish, white, black and Latino. And their street names were just as diverse: Schnitzel & Things, Waffles & Dinges, Frites & Meats, and The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. They each testified for three minutes, delivered a petition with 5,000 signatures, issued pink "citizens parking tickets" to Ms. Lappin and launched a Facebook page called "Jessica Lappin, why are you singling out food trucks?"

If the issue is idling, why not a bill outlawing FedEx and UPS, which in the last fiscal year together received 200,000 tickets and paid $27 million in fines to the city.

Mayor Bloomberg has come out against the bill, an aide saying that it was "too punitive." Ms. Lappin and her co-sponsor, Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz, haven't said if they're going to push for it after the summer. And most critically, Speaker Christine Quinn-who could likely gather the votes from her Democratic caucus to override any veto if she decided to help her colleagues-has not yet taken a position on the proposal.

I take away two conclusions from all of this. Ideally, the federal government, under the Interstate Commerce Clause, should remove from state governments the power to license national and multinational companies and provide instead for a system to revoke the charters of firms that have violated the law as often as BP. Let's call it the "regulatory bankruptcy," equivalent of Chapter 11. Just as Washington seizes bad banks and the city seizes bad schools and then restructures them to get rid of the poor performing personnel.

More immediately (and realistically), Speaker Quinn could recall the title of her talk last month at the Crowne Plaza, "Free Money: How to Win Contests, Grants and Incentives for Small Business." May I suggest at least one way that she could help small businesses in the city ...

Mark Green, the former NYC Public Advocate, is the creator and host of a new nationally syndicated radio show, Both Sides Now with Huffington & Matalin.

1. Ukranian Billionaire Selects Art-Prize Nominees
Victor Punchuk's PinchukArtCentre announced the nominees for his $100,000 Generation Art Prize. He funds the award, which goes to an emerging artist up to age 35. Whitney Biennial exhibitor (2008) Ruben Ochoa is the only American on the short list.

Our take: We're so glad the oligarchs are back. And points for a diverse group—the 21 finalists hail from 18 different countries and include 13 men and 8 women.

2. BP Corporate Art Sponsorship Backlash
In the UK, debate rages over BP's sponsorship of British cultural institutions. Vigilante groups have staged protests at partner museums-one group filled the Tate's grand hall with dead fish hanging from black balloons. Bloggers take their corners: Culturegrrl argues that museums shouldn't reject the money, while Edward Winkelman feels the BP backlash is too little, too late.

Our take: Why get angry at cultural institutions supported by BP when you could get angry at BP itself?
[The Guardian, Artnet, Culturegrrl, Edward Winkelman]

3. Louis Vuitton Demands Removal of Copycat Sculptures
Louis Vuitton demanded the removal of nine sculptures of locusts made out of fake designer purses that were on view at the Kobe Fashion Museum in Japan. The fashion house argued that the sculptures endorsed the illegal trade of counterfeit goods.

Our take: Murakami can install an entire LV boutique in the Brooklyn Museum, but artist Mitsuhiro Okamoto can't even use the designer's logo. Who's really getting ripped off here?
[Pinktentakle]

4. Yale Finds Velazquez Painting in Basement
In what may be Yale's most exciting basement cleaning session ever, University art gallery employees happened upon a painting of the Virgin Mary that they have officially attributed to Velazquez after years of research.

Our take: We were cynical, but it looks like the real deal. All we find when we clean out our basements are yellowed family photos and old boxes of Pringles.
[Bloomberg]

5. Charles Saatchi to Donate Collection and Gallery to Britain
Gallery impresario Charles Saatchi announced over the weekend that he would donate his collection, valued (very conservatively) at more than $37.5 million, and his London gallery to the nation of Britain upon his retirement. The Guardian isn't too impressed.

Our take: Looks like the Tate didn't schmooze over its contentious relationship with Saatchi in time to cash in.
[The Guardian]

6. Marilyn Manson and David Lynch Exhibition Opens
What do you get when you combine Marilyn Manson, David Lynch, watercolors, and a short film titled "The Amputee"? The Manson/Lynch exhibition "Geneaologies of Pain," which opened in Vienna on June 30. According to a press release, "Marilyn Manson's career as an artist started in 1999 when he produced conceptual five-minute watercolors which he sold to drug dealers."

Our take: "Pain" gives a new and unwelcome meaning to "cutting-edge art."

7. Guggenheim Expansion Provokes Protest
The Guggenheim Foundation announced interest in building a museum in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, 25 miles from Frank Gehry's iconic Guggenheim Bilbao. The regional Basque government and many local people fiercely oppose the expansion, arguing it will irreparably damage the nature reserve.  

Our take: If authorities in the Basque regional government were given more of a voice in the proceedings, the two parties might be able to make this happen.
[The Guardian]

8. Artist Gao Yu to Design Bottle for Absolut Vodka  
This week in corporate artist partnerships: Absolut Vodka has commissioned Chinese Pop artist Gao Yu to design a limited-edition bottle in honor of this year's Shanghai Expo.

Our take: Andy Warhol designed a bottle for Absolut 25 years ago. Is there any corporate collaboration that man didn't do first?

9. Sarah Palin is Rendered in Porn
British artist Jonathan Yeo's latest exhibition includes a portrait of Sarah Palin made entirely from clippings from pornography magazines. (All the better, the image has been placed in a furry moose head frame.) Other celebrities given Yeo's pornographic treatment include Tiger Woods, Sigmund Freud, and Paris Hilton, whose portrait-in-porn was bought by Damien Hirst.

Our take: When a politician headlines a controversy dubbed "Boobgate," isn't it only a matter of time until Playboy gets involved?
[Artinfo]
 
10. Art Market Heats Up for Summer
Artnet rounds up results from the summer's hottest sales, which include the highly anticipated Impressionist and modern auctions as well as contemporary art sales at Sotheby's and Christie's. In June, about 230 artists achieved record sale prices above $100,000 (up from 120 for the same price bracket in May).

Our take: We'll take any signs of recovery we can get, but we know deep down it's not all coming up records and roses.
[Artnet, Transom, ArtObserved]

Then there are accusations of sexual misconduct, which have the power to destroy candidates (think Mark Souder) and help them (Nikki Haley of South Carolina).

In a world of YouTube, where everyone's a video camera, publicized moments of misstatement and accusation presumably will only increase. But why do some public people in these cross hairs self-immolate while others endure and prevail? Maybe it's because they ignore a few simple rules.

Rule No. 1: Does the gaffe fit into a prior negative narrative? When Jimmy Carter chatted about "ethnic purity" in the white suburbs in his 1976 presidential campaign, and Senator Harry Reid opined on President Obama's "lack of a negro dialect," each statement seemed to be an out-of-character brain burp. It also helped that, respectively, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and Mr. Obama exonerated the gaffer.

But when a comment seems to reinforce an ingrained perception, then a public weary of rehearsed lines and carefully crafted ads may seize on it as a betrayal of true character. When President Ford announced in his presidential debate that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" in 1976, it was damaging since he hadn't been regarded previously as an Einstein. When Senator George Allen of Virginia mocked a student of Indian descent as "Macaca" in 2006-and Senator Trent Lott  previously had lionized Strom Thurmond's segregationist campaign of 1948-both sounded racist. That Mr. Allen had Confederate flags and an actual noose on his office walls-and that Mr. Lott's history included too many links to white supremacist groups-meant that their political lives were ruined.

I have personal experience with gaffe-dom. During my 2001 race for City Hall after 9/11, I was asked by a radio interviewer how I would have responded to the calamity if I had been mayor rather than Rudy Giuliani. The right answer was either "I don't answer hypotheticals" or "He did great." Period. But when I engaged the question and replied that ideally I could have done as well, "perhaps even better," it was a dopey answer that played into the narrative that I was "arrogant." (Moi? I'm better than that!)

Rule No. 2: Does your base stick with you? When Bill Clinton was caught "having sex" with Monica Lewinsky, he was so popular with the Democratic base-especially elected black Democrats-that they stuck by him when the G.O.P. overplayed its hand with impeachment. Today, he's one of the most respected men in the world. But when my friends Gary Hart in 1984 and Eliot Spitzer in 2006 were publicly exposed, they lacked Mr. Clinton's deep base of party affection and public support.

Rule No. 3: Can you do a convincing mea culpa? Think Barney Frank 15 years ago when a male prostitute was selling his wares from the basement of Mr. Franks' basement-or Richard Blumenthal in his Connecticut Senate race this year saying he had served "in" Vietnam, not "during" Vietnam. Each apologized and each had such deep support among liberals and veterans (see Rule No. 2), respectively, that they moved on and up. (Nor did it hurt that Barney was so brainy and funny.)

Rule No. 4: Are you a hypocrite? While no one exactly runs on an anti-family platform, it's especially damaging when, as with Representative Mark Souder two months back, you've been a big family-values Republican preaching morality to others. Forced to admit to an affair with a female staffer-and with whom he had made an abstinence-only TV tape -he didn't just decline to run but immediately resigned from the House.

In my view, it's fundamentally stupid to judge a person's entire public life by a private indiscretion-or a slip of the tongue that doesn't reflect a character flaw. But tell that to the tabloid media or cable talk shows that need to fill space and airtime. It's no doubt unfair to punish tired candidates for a single mistake. But those are also the rules when driving on a highway-or being England's goalie in the World Cup.

So let's focus more on Fiorina's bad views on immigration than her bad hair day. Does anyone really prefer faithful presidents like Nixon and Bush over F.D.R., Ike, J.F.K. and Clinton? As Lincoln said of Grant when the general was accused of drinking too much, "all our generals should have a bottle of whatever he's drinking."

Those who are unforgiving about innocent mistakes or private misconduct should recall a story attributed to the late congressman Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn. A constituent inspected a chicken at her butcher shop. She picked up one wing, and groaned ... then a leg and said, "Feh!" Behind the counter, an exasperated butcher said, "Ma'am, may I ask you a question?" "Yes," she said. "Could you pass such an inspection?"

Mark Green, the former NYC Public Advocate, is the creator and host of a new nationally syndicated radio show, Both Sides Now with Huffington & Matalin.