SALON - "BP surrenders to Obama" (how's that for a headline?)

[kpete]

BP surrenders to Obama
The oil company cancels its dividend and agrees to set aside $20 billion.
Conservatives call the president a bully
By Andrew Leonard


Even as the news was breaking that BP had not only agreed to President Obama's call for a $20 billion escrow fund to pay for damages related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but had also decided not to pay any dividends to shareholders for the rest of the year, the third most popular story on the Wall Street Journal's website was an attack on the president's treatment of BP by columnist Holman Jenkins.

As might be expected from the source, the complaint is not that the president was too mealy-mouthed in his support of new energy legislation in his speech Tuesday night, nor is it that he doesn't have the cojones to put BP into receivership. No, according to Jenkins, by declaring a moratorium on offshore drilling and then asking BP to compensate unemployed oil workers Obama is like "a policeman kicks out your taillight and then writes you a ticket for a faulty taillight."

(The White House fact sheet on the escrow fund indicates that BP agreed to pay $100 million directly to a fund for unemployed oil industry workers.)
http://imarketnews.com/node/15096

Jenkins' analogy, while presumably popular with Wall Street Journal readers, is astonishing (a word he uses to describe the size of the escrow fund) in its willful inability to grasp what's actually going on. Before anyone had the chance to kick any tail-lights, BP drove the entire Gulf of Mexico into a ditch. We've all seen how the passage of time, a phalanx of lawyers, and friendly courts (all the way up to the Supremes) allowed Exxon to escape paying financial penalties commensurate to the damage that the Exxon Valdez spill caused. By getting BP to agree to the $20 billion escrow fund (which, the president has emphasized, is not a "cap), the White House has proactively set up a mechanism to ensure BP pays up, at exactly the moment when BP has no wriggle room to escape responsibility for what t has wrought.

more:
http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/06/16/bp_buckles_to_obama/index.html

[woodsprite]

1. They're probably glad it was only $20B. n/t

[Number23]

2. Love that headline. And love that cretins who put companies before citizens are crying foul

That Jenkins guy sounds like a raving loon. Glad to see him suffering so profoundly. :)