Obama Makes BP Pay

I can go on lamenting President Obama's speech last night, and I can even wonder aloud if he should have even bothered with it, but I can't argue with success, which is exactly what the President had when he made BP cough up $20 billion to compensate fishermen, shrimpers, restaurant owners and others for their nasty mishap. BP also added that it would not pay dividends to shareholders for the remainder of the year to allow BP to pay damages and keep the company from going broke. Kenneth Feinberg - the Boston-bred bureaucrat who oversaw 6/11 victims' compensation and oversees executive pay for firms bailed out by the government - will administer the new fund.

You'd think the Republicans would be humbled by this deal, but sure enough, many of them - Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, the other usual suspects - are complaining about BP going through a government shakedown and the increasingly long arm of Washington. I don't think Gulf Coast residents care how they get help - from the government, from BP, from the Tooth Fairy - so long as they get it. And this fund will allow them to get it. Nor will it come from the taxpayers, which was a ludicrous suggestion offered by House Republican leader John Boehner.

Obama won't get much relief from his coup, though. Not as long as the oil keeps gushing out. But it's a start.

Now about that energy policy. . . .