The Redhunter

President Obama's response has been all politics and no management. He and his followers seem content to blame Bush and use the incident to attack BP, who we are now to believe is the worst company in the world, apparently surpassing Halliburton. Those with long memories, and these days that means over a few weeks, will recall that it wasn't too many years ago that the pharmaceutical industry was public enemy number one. But their usefulness as whipping boys diminished when the Democrats passed ObamaCare, starting us on the road to socialized medicine.

It's not that I think Obama should dive down 5,000 feet and cap the thing himself. Or that he has the technical expertise to figure out how to do it. It's more that the man has shown no real concern for anything other than using the crisis to get in a few good photo ops for himself and bashing the GOP. He's adept at holding White House parties and being serenaded by washed up rock stars but not at taking care of a serious crisis.

Instead of fixing the problem first and afixing blame later, the Obama Administration has proceeded in typical leftist fashion, taking Rahm Emanuel's advice of "never let a serious crisis go to waste." Robert Alt & Brian Walsh have the story:

As oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, what the region needs most is the nation's best experts to plug the well and clean up the mess. It doesn't need Justice Department prosecutors threatening criminal charges. Yet that's exactly what it's getting.

The Obama administration has launched a criminal investigation and may prosecute BP and others for their roles in the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig disaster. At best, this is premature. It is also predictable and disturbing.

Buffeted by accusations that President Obama has failed to take decisive action, his administration is seeking shelter from the real issues raised by the oil spill by playing up to the call to "do something." After all, there's nothing like prosecuting someone to show that you are "doing something."

The catastrophe in the Gulf must be taken seriously, which is why the Justice Department shouldn't float the idea of criminal punishment unless and until there's good evidence of actual criminal wrongdoing. The potential civil fines and liability for financial damages alone could be crippling for BP. Dangling the Damocles sword of criminal liability over the heads of those who are now trying to contain the spill only multiplies the difficulties of the tasks they face. It puts the fear of incarceration and personal destruction upon people who, so far as anyone knows, have tried hard to comply with the (often conflicting) requirements of the thousands of federal laws, rules, and regulations that govern oil exploration.

As the Wall Street Journal reported recently, Attorney General Eric Holder "declined to specify the target of the investigation because he said authorities aren't 'clear on who should ultimately be held liable.'"

This is criminal prosecution as fishing expedition -- scouring the federal code to find anything that might possibly work to provide criminal penalties. That's counterproductive to the number-one priority, which must be stopping and containing the oil spill. Announcing criminal investigations to score political points or stave off political damage is an abuse of one of the most awesome powers of the state, the power to deprive an individual of his or her personal liberty."

The purpose of the Obama-Holder investigation is not to find fault as traditionally defined. It is to 1) divert attention from Obama's own incompetence, and 2) use this crisis as an excuse to over-regulate the hated oil industry. Of course Obama and Holder are abusing the Department of Justice to achieve a political goal; it's who they are.

And let's be clear by what I mean "over-regulation." We're not talking safety, folks. That's not what the Obama Administration has in mind. We're talking de facto control of private enterprise, government ownership in everything but name. Obama has made clear his utter contempt for the private sector, and his desire for redistribution of wealth to anyone who bothers to listen to him. This is just one more step towards his goal.