Jackson Jambalaya

Yeah...those in power arrogantly believe they are smarter,and don't want relinquish ANY of their power and control.
BP is,as from the outset, only looking at their bottom line as are many of their sub-contractors.
Whether it's the President of our Nation or the president of a corporation, they are somewhat justified as we, instead of holding " our political party" or corporate executives accountable,buy into the whatever propaganda we're handed and allow them to defer blame.
One group thinks government is always bad and the other thinks captialism is always corrupt and neither realizes you need checks on both and each has an important role to play.
And, by the way, how come our vital national resources are a source of profit for OTHER countries rather than something we sell to them? Oh yeah...global economic theoretical nonsense strikes again. You know, where everyone gets along and is no longer interested in profit or power or nationalism if we are economically interdependent cause after all, MONEY IS EVERYTHING.

My blood is boiling!!! This is criminal!! They ought to face criminal charges as well as civil penalties!!! However, I read that BP folks have been big contributors to Obama's campaign.

As everyone on here (and kudos to Kingfish) has been watching the Gulf oil spill, two things have occurred to me and I should state first off that I don't believe in coincidences. So I'd like to get opinions on them:

1) The only people an oil spill in the Gulf helps is OPEC (Saudi Arabia being a controlling member) and any country selling the U.S. seafood (any countries come to mind); and

2) Ray Mabus was the Ambassador to Saudi Arabia for 2 years.

I never understood the rationale for opposing the berm construction - and for only approving the six, as reported in this post. Does anyone know?

9:49 This is BRITISH Petroleum...that's what BP stands for...they were PROFIT driven to cut corners . They were NOT motivated to aid OPEC.
The REASON Ray Mabus wasn't the ambassador for long is he advocated standing up to the Saudis specifically on child custody conflicts ( Saudi men kidnapping their children who were American citizens.The Saudis did NOT love him, but WASHINGTON loves the Saudis and do you REALLY believe that the Saudis didn't give MORE money to the RNC? Are you NUTS? Chaney and Bush were petroleums BESTEST friends.

Maybe the lawyers should weigh in...there are more than a few liability issues involved here that the media assumes we are too stupid to understand.

i can't even begin to think of how impossible it would be to sue a government official for acts of negligence / gross negligence for this type of decision making. a federal court recently said oliver diaz could sue dunn lampton for overstepping his bounds and therefore stepping outside of his immunity, but we'll see what the fifth circuit has to say about it. with few exceptions, you can't sue the sovereign. goes back to mother country when the king declared you couldn't sue him. these guys are untouchable. we are at their mercy.

Olifer...go to bed.

I remember as a kid sitting in court in the great state of PA, a guy walks in claiming the Magna Carta should be the rule of law to judge his DUI. Guess what? He didn't win.

??? sovereign immunity was a given in my question...liability for BP, not the government...
IF the government had taken over on day one, couldn't BP then have argued that they were not allowed to properly correct the problem or mitigate the damages? Couldn't they have argued that damages would have been less if they had been allowed to act?
Wouldn't the burden of responsibility have shifted legally?
Of course those damaged cannot sue the government. The question is " Wasn't the government's hands tied if they were to protect the ability of those damaged to sue BP?" This is not like Katrina where nature and a government entity prevented those damaged to sue for recovery. In this case, BP's actions or lack thereof, appear to have contributed and therefore BP has liability UNLESS that liability has been limited by government action...both legislatively and by usurping BP's ability to act on its own behalf.
I was hoping to learn if there are laws peculiar to the oil and gas industry that would differ from general liability .

Isn't there also a risk that BP can try to argue that independent actions to correct the damages made the problems worse,not better and therefore their liability should be shared or reduced?