Boehner Has the Right Idea

"I think the people responsible in the oil spill -- BP and the federal government -- should take full responsibility for what's happening there." -- John Boehner

I agree. Wait! Hear me out.

The federal government is not a people. (Neither is BP, of course, so the same following argument applies.) If Boner is really looking for the "federal government" people responsible, he can start with these two names:

George W. Bush and Richard Cheney.

From The Nation:

Bush was never able to persuade Congress to approve drilling in ANWR. But he did succeed in expanding drilling in other areas, including the deepwater gulf. Bush's principal instrument in these endeavors was the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the branch of the Interior Department responsible for providing leases for offshore drilling as well as collecting the fees and royalties the companies paid for operating in federal waters.

Intended largely to promote offshore drilling, the MMS was also responsible for ensuring that all such operations complied with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws. Full adherence to these laws could have slowed the expansion of drilling or blocked it altogether—but the MMS provided the leases without making the companies, including BP, obtain required environmental permits. MMS officials routinely ignored warnings from the agency's own scientists and from those at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that this sort of deepwater drilling posed a risk of massive oil spills with devastating consequences for protected marine species. Such preferential treatment for industry is hardly surprising, given the cozy—in some cases criminal—relationships that developed between senior MMS officials and their corporate counterparts.

BP purchased the mineral rights to drill where the Deepwater Horizon exploded in March 2008, at the Minerals Management Service's lease sale. That's 10 months before Barack Obama took office, a year before Ken Salazar became Interior Secretary. Yes, Obama failed to uncover the offshore drilling booby trap Dick Cheney's oil industry buddies had set, and Ken Salazar failed to clean house at the MMS.

From now on, the damage caused by offshore oil drilling is on Obama's head. But the people responsible for the current Gulf oil catastrophe are at BP and in the spider holes hiding Bush and Cheney.

I am perfectly fine with the actual "people responsible in the oil spill" taking responsibility for once in their miserable fucking lives and paying for every penny of the trillions it's going to cost to put the Gulf Coast right.

Just make sure you're targeting the actual perpetrators, Boner.