Crossing the Line

It is entirely appropriate for BP to be held responsible for the damages it has caused in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon accident and to ask that they pay for those damages. Covering the cost of the cleanup effort along with compensating those who have directly lost their livelihoods is to be expected. However, there are plenty of things that BP is not responsible for and should not be held accountable for: and when they are in fact called on to pay for something that they did not cause, a line has been crossed.

The Obama administration has just claimed that BP will have to pay the salaries of all oil-industry workers laid off because of the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling. That's right, because the government has decided to prevent oil companies from operating as they wish, BP must pay the resulting damages. "Several legal experts said they couldn't think of any law or precedent that would allow the U.S. to try to recover damages from BP on behalf of rig workers thrown out of work by a government moratorium on deep offshore drilling," (from above article) and that's no small wonder: most laws are designed to hold the guilty accountable for their actions, not to hold the innocent accountable for the actions of the guilty. That is the essence of law, and that is precisely what is now being openly discarded by the current administration, which chooses to make others responsible for their damaging decisions.