Making BP pay

Never one to let a crisis go to waste, The Big O and is O-bots would appear to be plotting how to extract every last dollar from BP that they possibly can.

President Obama, in the first televised Oval Office message of his presidency, sought to quell rising anger over his response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by saying he will demand that BP’s chairman set aside whatever money is needed to compensate those who have been harmed by the company’s “recklessness.”

Any guesses who will make the determination about how much money is needed?

Obama announced that he had asked former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus to develop a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan — to be funded by BP — in concert with local states, communities, fishermen, conservationists and residents “as soon as possible.”

That’s a nice way to provide a sinecure to some of your friends. In the best Chicago tradition, of course.

And if you don’t believe that the statist bastards currently in power aren’t going to milk this for all it’s worth, one of them just dropped trou:

“It’s time to take this tragedy and turn it into an opportunity,” Sen. Bill Neslon, D-Fla., said in a written statement. “I congratulate the president on saying we are now going to declare that this nation is getting on the road rapidly to breaking our dependence on oil. We are at a point now, through research and development, that we are going to wean ourselves from petroleum addiction.”

BP is far from guiltless as far as I can find out, but the current statist bastards are going to do their best to maximize their take from it, rather than dealing equitably. If anyone in the Gulf gets helped, that’s probably just an unavoidable side effect.

Prepare for Cap and Trade, rising energy prices, shortages, higher taxes, higher unemployment, more restrictions on your freedom of movement and Lord knows what else.