BP is gonna pay, and it's gonna cost you!

Obama has finally said we’ll make BP Pay! He got mad! The media, and the public, and Congress believe this has major importance in dealing with the crisis. Wow, he might grow up to be President someday!

Making “BP” pay summons up images of fat cat company executives who wear tuxes to work, have multi-million dollar flats in Manhattan, are driven to work in limos, and skin out of paying any taxes. You think THOSE guys are going to pay? If so, then you probably thought Goldman Sachs wouldn’t get their bonuses last year. The payers will be the "stock holders and lenders" who funded all this evil. (Image; fat cat Wall Street executives who wear tuxes to work, have multi-million dollar flats in Manhattan, are driven to work in limos, and skin out of paying any taxes.)

You’re right -- these guys will pay, but wrong image. Actually, the Funders of Evil include your Sunday School teacher who worked at the BP refinery for 30 years, your grandmother whose advisor bought BP stock when energy looked good, and the Neighborhood Watch organizer who invested in an energy bond mutual fund. Also, of course, you if you are connected to BP in any one of a thousand ways, few of which you know about.

So if you support making BP pay just look in the mirror. Then reach right in, grab yourself by the throat, and choke the LIFE out of that greedy, risk-taking, irresponsible bastard. Get it over with now, or you will pay in ways that will hurt longer and worse!

BP will punish a few guys internally. Most of them had little to do with causing the incident. The guys who designed the rig and its blowout preventer mechanism are long gone; they probably worked for an engineering and construction company instead of BP. The BP guys who signed off on the design have since been promoted and are looking down the throats of their replacements, saying “How could you let this happen?” The guys who made risky decisions on the spot will get rated primarily on how good a job they do reacting to the crisis, not their role in creating it. Least hurt of all will be the executives who set the standards for cost-risk decisions, who allowed people to believe it was OK to cut costs as long as there “probably” wouldn’t be disastrous consequences.

The one thing sure about the outcome is that the poor, persecuted CEO of BP will, as he wished, “Get his life back.” A lot of others who did nothing wrong, will not be as lucky.