BP Shakedown

The irony in the BP $20 billion shakedown is stunning.  If CEO Tony Hayward had snuck into our country illegally and killed someone at high-noon in Times Square with one thousand witnesses he would be better off now than as the CEO of an International corporation.  In the murder scenario were someone to call him a “murderer” instead of an “alleged murderer” liberal groups and the press would rise up in his defense.  The point is that BP isn’t guilty of anything – yet.  However they have been tried and convicted by the current thugocracy and extorted for $20 Billion.  This happened even as BP has flooded the South with claims processors and has been paying claims.  The ultimate irony is that BP was also shook-down to cover claims of oil workers put out of work by the wholly unnecessary and ill advised decision by the President to halt further drilling.  That decision may ultimately be more ruinous to the Gulf economy than the spill.

No doubt BP is guilty of something, but they might only be guilty of cutting corners or looking to achieve efficiencies to speed the drilling process.  It might rise to the level of a crime and then again it might not.  Certainly in the poisonous atmosphere being created by the left and the media it is inconceivable that BP will get a fair trial.  Someone will hold up an oil-soaked pelican and reason will go right out the window.  Certainly governmental action would have been necessary had BP refused to step up to the plate and assume responsibility for both the spill and the recovery, but that hasn’t happened.  Regardless of how reckless they might have been in drilling, they have been pretty good corporate citizens in the response to the disaster.  It might be fun to hate or taunt successful people like Tony Hayward in a Stalinesque show trial or in press conferences, but it has done nothing to stem the flow of oil.  It no doubt alienates the people best positioned to solve the problem right now.  What a difference it would have made to have approached this as a team effort from “day one” rather than the petulant and ineffective way our President chose to approach the problem. 

What is truly chilling is that we now live in a country where the rule of law has no effect on the people charged to defend and enact the law.  The government engineered a bankruptcy settlement without regard to the legal rights of GM and Chrysler bond holders.  Now the government is taking advantage of yet another emergency to create a massive slush fund.  No doubt some of this money will go to victims of the oil spill but this government hasn’t been a good steward of any of the other money they have begged, borrowed, or stolen – what makes you think their administration of this $20 Billion will be any different?

Conservative Resistance – Day 592