What Price Should BP, Haliburton & Transocean Pay?

Take a few minutes and look at these photos from the Boston Globe of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As you look at these photos (go to the Globe’s website for even more photos), stop and think to yourself what you think should be the appropriate cost to and punishment against BP, Haliburton, and Transocean. Don’t forget: This was preventable.

Can any punishment adequately address this degree of damage? At bare minimum, any executive of the companies that caused this should spend a very, very long time in a very, very dirty prison cell, writing handwritten letters of apology to every fisherman, coastal resident, and anyone else adversely affected by this environmental disaster.

Oh, one more thing. Every single person who stood at a protest or a political rally and chanted “Drill, Baby, Drill” should be on their hands and knees on the Gulf Coast cleaning the feathers of sea birds or scrubbing the skin of dolphins with their own toothbrush. And Sarah Palin should be at the front of their line. Gee, I wonder if her “Ain’t Alaska Pretty” reality show will talk about the fact that more than 20 years later, Prince William Sound has still not fully recovered from the Exxon Valdez spill?