Government Sues BP, Others Over Gulf Oil Spill

I'll bet next time, companies will think twice about blatantly cutting corners in basic safety in pursuit of an ever-larger profit margin. Which, by the way, is the ENTIRE point of our "market-based" regulatory regime--instead of making these actions outright illegal (as in most countries), we are supposed to have made them cost-prohibitive. If neglecting basic industry standards isn't criminal, and it isn't cost-prohibitive, what on earth will deter such behavior?

BP gave billions? Am I missing something here? Wasn't it thier neglect and them cutting corners that created the catastrophy in the first place? How is it then that they have "given" anything? If someone destroys something are they not supposed to be held financially responsible? Attacking the president is really backwards on this one. BP is not footing the whole bill for this clean up and they certainly are not compensating those who make thier living in this region due to the fishing or tourist industries. The economy in that area has taken a devastating blow as a result of BP's actions and negligence. How do you figure they were helping? Since when do you destroy an economy and then "help" fix it. NO! "You" destroyed it, "you" fix it! Or you get sued! Either way you're going to fix it and that is as it should be!
Just My Humble Opinion,
JAZZEE

Well joe I guess that means you and I and our kids will have to pay for the cleanup.

Mac, BP has already said they will pay for the clean up. They have already set aside funds, this is a power and money grab from the Obama group.

The biggest mistake they made was trying to cheap out, if it was a realtive of yours that dies that day whats their life worth to you. Second mistake was the laxed regulations and procedures they did this well under thanks to the Bush period with a big helping hand from Chenney. People all got mad because Obama stopped the drilling but to allow this to go on with a high risk of this happening over and over again will hurt this Country in a lot of worse ways than higher pricies on fuel and even if you had the crude we don't have enough refinieries and they don't won't more because they use that to jump the price up and down all the time and we all know they have made record profitsfor several years now at the cost of driving our economy out the roof from the increase of all the products we ship which is pretty much everything we buy

Actually, the government hasn't gotten anything from BP; the individuals and businesses affected have. This isn't harassment, it is defense of the law. Why does that become harassing when the criminals involved are corporations?