No offense Tom and your profession, but part of me has three very deep internal desires

1) Kill the lawyers
2) Kill the bankers
3) Kill the politicans

If only I can become death, and have the power to smite these three group of people on a selective basis, then my life would be so much more joyful.

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That said, BP better be spending shitload of cash to clean up the gulf. One of the few reasons lawyers as a class exist, is to make sure that it is too costly not to add safety and redundancy to the economic system. To force the bookkeepers to listen to the engineers and make the system safe.

As the evidence shows Deepwater Horizon was not safe, and now it is screwing up the neighborhood, and thus BP should pay. In my mind an incident like this should force a company at bankruptcy or near it, to force the bookkeepers to pay for safety in the system. BP made over 16 billion dollars last year (09), has a 100 billion in equity and 200 billion and assets, so 1 billion is very small figure to them.

So cry me a river about the 1 billion BP is paying to clean up the gulf. Let them pay. If they do not fix the pottery they broke immediately, then it is time to call security, followed if necessary via collections.

If they do not pay for it, well to borrow some more Shakespeare (this time julius caesar) Cry Havoc! and let slip the lawyers!