Ogre-oid: Fred H. Bartlit, Jr.

The prominent trial lawyer appointed as lead investigator of a presidential panel examining the BP Gulf oil disaster issued a statement this week saying, "to date we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety," the NY Times quotes Bartlit, Jr.  He continues, "They want to be efficient, they don't want to waste money, but they also don't want to see their buddies killed."  Apparently, testimony after testimony that establishes that BP used only six centralizers instead of the recommended 21 to stabilize the well casing that gave way to gushing gas and oil does not have any relevance to "conscious decisions," just bad ones, I guess.

The fact that Bartlit, Jr. treats these two priorities as equals betrays his callous bias toward the inverted value system of industry.  What I can't figure is why "55 days" Obama would appoint a lead investigator so ostensibly sympathetic to industry to make an assessment of BP's liability.  It's almost like Obama is just another big-money, big-oil conservative, with Bartlit, Jr. as the point man for a Harvard law hair-splitting legal discourse where everything BP did wrong still doesn't amount to the evidence necessary to point to liability.  In other words, the investigation is likely to criticize BP for lots of things, up until the point such criticisms could amount to grounds for liability.  As Americans, we can use our freedom of speech to blame BP all we want--we just can't make them pay for the immeasurable damage they've caused.  I don't suppose the idea of negligence--where there is no "conscious" sinister decision to harm but absence of sensible decisions that should have been made--would apply here.  And I certainly don't think that an explosion, eleven dead bodies, or a dead ocean floor qualify as evidence that anyone did anything wrong.  Only a hot-headed liberal would get worked up over that.