Whose fault is the Deepwater Disaster?

I hear an awful lot about how BP is completely mishandling the spill, how they are lying and how they are covering up their own incompetence, and how they should suffer for it. I hear a lot about how bad the disaster is and how it is all their fault, about how they need to pay for the entire disaster and the cleanup afterward and frankly I'm getting tired of all the self-righteous indignation and finger-pointing. The number of people who want to crucify BP is staggering, conservatives and liberals alike. Let's put them on trial, let's boycott BP oil. It's messed up. It needs to stop.

The reason I don't believe in the BP boycott is that while I don't particularly like how BP is handling this mess, the truth is, we don't know how other oil companies would be doing if they were in BP's place. I'd like to think that they would be behaving better, but they are corporations. Never mind that they are oil corporations, they have a legitimate interest in the bottom line. They don't place the welfare of the public above that, and thanks to decades of legislative cowardice from both the Democrats and Republicans, they don't have to.

So I can't really blame BP for lying about oil plumes, not having decent procedures in place for dealing with this kind of disaster, for their worst-case projections falling abysmally short of reality, or even for having a spin machine that tells us they are doing their very best when they are actually doing as little as they can get away with and hindering press coverage every chance they get. They aren't doing anything that they haven't been encouraged to by the United States government, and even if I could blame BP, I still don't believe they are doing anything that any of the other oil companies wouldn't be doing if they were in the same predicament.

So if I jumped on the bandwagon and started shouting for a BP boycott, I would also have to be encouraging a general boycott of oil, and how likely is that to be successful? If BP is forced to finally begin to do the right thing, it won't be because they are concerned that people may stop buying their oil, because let's face it, we're no more going to stop buying oil because of this than a junkie will stop using crack because he was arrested once... or twice... or a half dozen times. If BP shapes up it will be because if they don't, they will be fined possibly their executives (including the CEO) would be jailed, just like any other company that betrays the public trust and doesn't follow practical safety regulations.

But first, we have to put those regulations in effect and when they are violated, we have to prosecute. Neither was done before this disaster occurred, and BP unsurprisingly didn't think they would be held accountable. They told us that deep water drilling was safe, that their rig was safe. "Accidents happen" they said, and we bought it. In addition, after the disaster, nothing is being done to correct the problem, or keep the same thing from happening again, so however bad BP has it now being in the spotlight during this debacle, they have no reason to do anything other than what they are doing. Yes, I know that Obama has called for an investigation into deepwater drilling and a moratorium on further operations, but does anyone seriously believe that will be maintained after this crisis is over, and does anyone doubt that deep water drilling will be resumed no matter what corruption they end up revealing?  BP might be fined or the government might decide that paying for cleaning up their mess was enough, but I doubt anyone will face jail time for this.  I doubt the company will drop off the list of richest oil companies in the world, and I seriously doubt anyone will stop buying their oil.

BP is a symptom not a cause and that, my friends, is OUR fault. We elected the people who failed to act, the one's who continue to fail to act, from Obama's walking the line between his liberal sensibilities and conservative oil money, to the outright denial by many conservatives that there is even a crisis or anything to worry about. These people are OUR responsibility. As long as they stay in office, expect more of this, and expect it to be worse next time.  Nothing that has happened so far has convinced me anything has fundamentally changed in how the government handles companies who do wrong.  They, like BP will do the absolute minimum necessary to satisfy public blood lust because they are part of the corporate world and the last thing the government wants to do is hold the corporate world responsible for their actions.