I think a lot of it as well is the desire to have this situation be a positive precedent in terms of taking corporate liability and punishment seriously.

I love you Jesse.

This is one more example of blaming the government because of corporate malfeasance.  Yes, MMS was complicit and everyone involved should be fired, but this didn’t just happen in the last year; it was a systemic problem that’s lasted for years (including all 8 years of the Bush era).  BP’s going to walk away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a bad PR problem, but the Gulf Coast will be cleaning up oil for years, and if Republicans get back into office any time soon, they’ll be doing it totally alone because R’s would defund the cleanup crews in a heartbeat.

This should be exhibit A every time Grover Norquist and Rand Paul start spouting bullshit about “small government”.

Once you set out, as a president or a party, to propagate a message that the government has (or is) the panacea for all ills,

Which president or party has ever made this claim?  I think the author is describing fictional characters on an alien planet, because our current president has never made this claim, nor has anyone else that I know of.

“Which president or party has ever made this claim?  I think the author is describing fictional characters on an alien planet, because our current president has never made this claim, nor has anyone else that I know of.”

...but, but, but Rush and Hannity and Glenn and all the people the Reichwing loves and admires have said it, and it certainly must be true if they’re saying it, so you must be wrong…

Besides, shuttup…

(Every day Obama continues to prove he’s the best Republican president since Clinton, maybe even since Eisenhower…)

@1: so long as BP remains in charge of the spill site, all of the liability is theirs.  So yes, what you said.

Yes, there are some people who think Obama should rush in and…do…something?

1. End preferential treatment of BP, stop deregulation, examine every other well for places they’ve cut corners.
2. Stop letting the people who created the problem futz around pretending to fix the problem. Push BP aside, blow up the well to collapse the shaft.
3. Hold BP criminally and financially accountable.

themann1086, the part of the liability that’s BP’s cannot be determined until we see what part of it they end up paying. We know what should be theirs; what we don’t know is how much they’ll wiggle out of, and how easily they’ll be permitted to do so.

“We know what should be theirs; what we don’t know is how much they’ll wiggle out of, and how easily they’ll be permitted to do so.”

...there’s very little doubt in my mind that BP will get out of just about all of the liability.

Let’s face it: America has become an Accountability-Free Zone.

When I see Dick Cheney and his crew of ne’er-do-wells being hauled off to do hard time, then I’ll believe we’re serious about holding people accountable.  When the Wall Street Looters are in jail and have forfeited their assets to pay for the Wall Street bailout, then I’ll believe.  When the Vatican turns in every American priest who diddled a kid, and the pope steps down in shame, then I’ll believe.  Etc.

‘Til then, it’s just another day of corporate rule in the land of Freedom and Liberty…

Catgirl, don’t you know that only Deeply Serious People can define what all those Dirty F’ing Hippies REALLY mean when they say what they say.

Egnu, I’ll agree with points 1 and 3, but #2 is just plane wrong
Maybe I’m defensive because I work in a similar field, but reading about it from people who know makes me think no one is futzing.

I think some of the “do something” also has to do with the sense - as Egnu pointed out - that they’ve left BP in charge and BP is futzing around not doing anything except ordering reporters away from beaches and such.  That sense of “we’ll just let BP handle it” isn’t helping with the gnawing feeling BP will be let off the hook.

Last night I was contemplating the difference between the BP disaster and what happened at Chernobyl. In both instances, an explosion was just the tip of the iceberg, and the crisis that followed spelled environmental catastrophe.

The Soviets sent in teams of engineers to construct a concrete tomb around the leak to contain it and prevent a a disaster from becoming a catastrophe. It was a tragedy because those men died shortly thereafter from radiation poisoning, and many of the early responders did not know of the danger. But had they not done that, what happened at Chernobyl would have been even worse when the core reached the water table below the plant.

Compare with what’s happening with BP, and I’m not sure what conclusions to draw. Certainly we aren’t sending in suicide squads to close the leak by any means necessary (and not knowing enough of the engineering I’m not sure if that’s necessary in this case), but when you look at the environmental devastation of this spill, I’m not sure that this spill won’t cost lives in the end. But we’ve left it in the hands of BP who’ve deliberately NOT done the necessary thing to halt this growing catastrophy in its tracks (because they’re too busy trying to cover their ass and possibly reclaim the well) and that’s just a fucking nightmare.

Not trying to make a particular point, just thinking out loud.

@cynical - thanks for the link.  It certainly is true that nationally, it looks like BP is working this alone and everyone else is sitting by. I’m happy if it truly is not the case. But Egnu’s #2 is still a serious perception problem.

Which president or party has ever made this claim?  I think the author is describing fictional characters on an alien planet, because our current president has never made this claim, nor has anyone else that I know of.

Silly Catgirl, you’re just one of those deluded libruls who think words mean something, like they can be looked up in a dictionary or sumthin.

The conservatives are the ones who can truly know what Obama means, even when he’s not actually saying it or doing it or even moving slightly in that general direction. It’s just like when Bush looked into Putin’s soul. Conservatives just know.

LC, I agree that the national perception is that the CEO is just collecting his government bailout and lawyering up to… well… shit on the Gulf Coast and walk away.  And honestly, I think the board at BP wants to do exactly that.  As a country we’re dependent on oil for commerce and they have us by the short hairs.
This is an opportunity to get the message out we need to move NOW to renewable energy.  And weekly radio addresses aren’t enough. 
I’d like to see a “W” moment where Pesident Obama stands on the deck of a coastguard ship with the flaming wreckage of the oil platform in the background and calls for a rebuilding of our infrastructure around renewable energy.

BP is doing their best. Closing a well like this is hard. They don’t deserve criticism for not being able to shut it down immediately.

They DO deserve criticism, and a lot of it, for taking shortcuts and unsafe steps. This blowout is entirely their fault, not an ‘accident’. “I was drinking and smoking and getting a blowjob while driving, and then I had an accident!” No. You fucked up and wrecked your car. BP fucked up and wrecked the drill/well.  They should pay billions for the cleanup and billions more for the thousands of people whose (tourism, aquaculture) jobs are going to be lost because of this disaster.

Where Obama comes into it is that, sadly, he is a huge recipient of BP funds, and his administration (just like the one before it) has been signing environmental waivers left and right for oil companies. Obama’s “main problem” is that he’s (one of several) owners of this catastrophe, but lacks the stones to stand up and admit it. Granted, he’d be crucified by the right if he did - but they hate him anyway.

BP is doing their best.

No, they actually used a less effective dispersant because they favored a specific company.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/business/energy-environment/13greenwire-less-toxic-dispersants-lose-out-in-bp-oil-spil-81183.html

The first paragraph:

BP PLC continues to stockpile and deploy oil-dispersing chemicals manufactured by a company with which it shares close ties, even though other U.S. EPA-approved alternatives have been shown to be far less toxic and, in some cases, nearly twice as effective.

@Catgirl - I’m willing to accept that the actual mechanical blocking of the well is really hard and they’re doing their best and that it *isn’t* the case that they are just futzing around and bailing on the situation, etc.  But the dispersant use, the way they seem to be handling/PR managing the clean up, etc? I’m with you on that - it’s seemed pretty damn disastrous and screwed up. (And, unlike plugging the well, I can’t see why the government should in anyway defer to them on that part.)

These people are just pissy because Obama isn’t getting roasted for this like Bush was for Katrina.

Of course, there are huge differences between the two, the largest being that the oil leak was a man-made catastrophe, meaning there’s someone around (besides God/Mother Nature/who or whatever) to take the blame.

I’m willing to accept that the actual mechanical blocking of the well is really hard and they’re doing their best

I see no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, considering how poorly they’ve handled the clean-up.

My biggest criticism of the federal government is against the Mineral Management Service, an agency that has ben revealed to be absolutely corrupt and filled with incompetent fools who are really good at getting sports tickets and expensive dinners from oil lobbyists, but not so good at, uh… doing their fucking jobs?

I think we’re going to find out just how very much in bed with the government BP and the rest of the oil barons have been when the courtroom battles begin.

The federal government did not cause this disaster.  But in letting BP, Transocean, and Halliburton fill out their own regulatory compliance forms, they have been the chief enabler of this disaster.  I suppose it’s a good that MMS director Liz Birnbaum was fired this morning, but given all that is coming out, she probably should have been canned a long time ago.

The issues with Interior and MMS long precede Obama taking office… but where he has failed is in the fact that the massive problems in those departments seem to have never been seriously addressed until after this accident occurred.

I suppose it’s a good that MMS director Liz Birnbaum was fired this morning, but given all that is coming out, she probably should have been canned a long time ago.

At least Obama didn’t say she was doing a heck of a job.

I know it’s not enough just to have a president who isn’t a complete fool. But it sure feels good anyway.

@19: There was somebody to blame for Katrina, too, don’t you remember?  Liberals.  The ACLU.  Anybody who isn’t part of the Cult of the Holy Zygote.  It was Dog punishing us for being liberals.

The problem isn’t a belief that the regulatory state can solve all ills and it hasn’t; the problem is that the actual role the regulatory state has is being approached in a half-hearted manner.

Amen.  A thousand times.  Except half-hearted gives them too much credit.

These people are just pissy because Obama isn’t getting roasted for this like Bush was for Katrina.

Of course, there are huge differences between the two, the largest being that the oil leak was a man-made catastrophe, meaning there’s someone around (besides God/Mother Nature/who or whatever) to take the blame.

...sigh….  we will keep saying it and keep saying it and maybe someday it will actually make it into the national understanding of what happened to us: while Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, the flooding of New Orleans was an ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE MAN-MADE CATASTROPHE:
Corps of Engineers Admits Design Failure
Officials Knew About Weak Soil Under Levee
US Army Corps at fault for New Orleans levee failures

And just when we were getting back on our feet, now this.  I just want to cry.

@catgirl - I think not giving them the benefit of the doubt is reasonable, but I am willing to give it to them on the part I’m less confident judging myself.  That’s probably naive of me.

None of that gets BP off the hook for all the demonstrably screwed up stuff they have been undeniably doing. (I still don’t understand how the “we spilled oil all over your coast, so now it belongs to us” became the rule.)

I suppose it’s a good that MMS director Liz Birnbaum was fired this morning, but given all that is coming out, she probably should have been canned a long time ago.

At least Obama didn’t say she was doing a heck of a job.

I know it’s not enough just to have a president who isn’t a complete fool. But it sure feels good anyway.

Oh, I agree, and I think it’s silly for some in the media to make an equivalency between President Obama’s missteps here with Bush’s missteps following Katrina.

That said, mistakes have been made by the Administration.  Politically, it was probably not a good idea for Obama to go to a fundraiser in San Francisco last night at the home of Ann and Gordon Getty.  The reason why the Gettys were able to hold the fundraiser is because they are worth several billion dollars - money that was inherited from the fortune made by Gordon’s father Jean Paul Getty, the founder of Getty Oil.  The optics are terrible.  And let’s not kid ourselves, had this oil spill occurred on Bush’s watch and he flew off in the middle of it to participate in a fundraiser being held at the home of an oil trustfund baby, we would be skewering him, and rightly so.

I suppose it’s a good that MMS director Liz Birnbaum was fired this morning, but given all that is coming out, she probably should have been canned a long time ago.

The issues with Interior and MMS long precede Obama taking office… but where he has failed is in the fact that the massive problems in those departments seem to have never been seriously addressed until after this accident occurred.

She seems like a scapegoat. She’s only been there since July - what exactly is she supposed to have done? The waivers were given to BP before. Isn’t everyone always exonerating Obama because he hasn’t been in office long enough? Salazar is the real dirty one, anyway.

Think BP was represented in that secret meeting Cheney had before the Iraq war?  You know, the super secret meeting where we’re not even entitled to know who attended b/c we’re just little people and not multigazillionaires?

She seems like a scapegoat. She’s only been there since July - what exactly is she supposed to have done?

Possible.  And though she had only been in that position since last July, the Inspector General’s report on the agency reveale that these industry lobbiest bribes were still going on even after she took over.

President Obama just had a Bush moment an hour ago in a preess conference because he revealed that he wasn’t aware the circumstances of Birnbaum’s departure from MMS… he didn’t know whether she was fired or if she submitted her resignation, which came off making him look a little clueless.

Fuck the Right.

Bush got rightly grilled about Katrina because the levy broke because of poor maintenance. Maintenance that was denied because of government cutbacks that were directly caused by that administration.

At worst Obama is indirectly responsible for the BP catastrophe, and that would be only because he didn’t do enough to reverse the damage done to the EPA and other governmental watchdog agencies that were done by his predecessors.

Bush actively made things worse. Obama at worst didn’t do enough to make them better. There’s a world of difference, but the right wing only care about pinning it on the political tribal enemy.

Bush actively made things worse. Obama at worst didn’t do enough to make them better. There’s a world of difference, but the right wing only care about pinning it on the political tribal enemy.

That’s roughly where I’m at… I don’t fault Obama for enacting policies that helped lead to this disaster, I just fault him for not doing more to undo the rank corruption in the agencies that should have been watching over BP’s shoulders.  The problems at Interior were starting to be exposed before Obama even won the presidency, namely that some Interior employees were fucking oil lobbyists, and I don’t mean that metaphorically - there were federal regulators who were literally having sex with the oil industry folks who they were supposed to be regulating…

Catgirl, a couple points of your valid doubts.

The more effective dispersal agents, are they in sufficient quantities?

Mechanically sealing the well.  I heard the figure 450+ pounds per square inch pressure of the escaping oil.  They say it’s a 21” pipe.  That’s 1385 square inches.  That adds up to 623,430 pounds of pressure pusing against any plug.

Per the cleanwater act I believe BP is culpable for $430 per gallon spilled.
No one argue that they hid the amount pouring out.  Initial reports said a 9 inch pipe!  I’ll shed no tears if this bankrupts them.  I just don’t see the America courts doing the right thing in this case either.

I don’t think any of us believe Obama is invested with magic powers when we expect him to “do something”. What we would like to see is some leadership, instead of what we’ve seen him do consistently since he was elected, which is to sit back and let events unfold until it’s too late, and then he makes a nice speech, usually while exclaiming that he can’t really do anything about it. It’s like he’s a nonentity in his own government.

obama doesn’t have magic powers? that can’t be right, they were on display all during the primaries!

cynickal, BP can’t be bankrupted, they are actually too big for that.

“obama doesn’t have magic powers? that can’t be right, they were on display all during the primaries!”

I always understood that The Antichrist had all sorts of mystical powers.  At least that’s what I read in Left Behind...