Getting Paid The BP Way

BP has a great plan to come up with the rest of the money to handle the oil spill costs:  Shorting the American taxpayer and making us pick up the tab.

Oil giant BP said it plans to offset the entire cost of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill against its tax bill, reducing future contributions to U.S. tax coffers by almost $10 billion.

BP took a pretax provision of $32.2 billion in its accounts for the period, for the cost of capping the well, cleaning up the spill, compensating victims and paying government fines.

However, the net impact on BP's bottom line will only be $22 billion, with the company recording a $10 billion tax credit, most of which will be borne by the U.S. taxpayer, a spokesman said.

There's a shocker.  BP's writing the whole thing off and daring Obama to do anything about it.  After all, this is what the business community expected all along:  that and a sincere apology for Obama even thinking that BP was going to be responsible in any way for this disaster.

If you actually believed the President's claims that BP was going to "pay every dime" for the cleanup, please log off your web browser now.  You are below the designated naivete level for safe operation of consumption of information in the internet age.

This has been a public service announcement.