BP to take almost $10 billion in US tax cuts

Can BP head Tony Hayward leave any sooner than October 1, 2010?

Too late, for BP has decided to take nearly $10 billion in US tax credits to offset the costs of cleaning up and compensating the Gulf Coast due to the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout and its subsequent environmental disaster extraordinaire.

Besides the raw audacity of this tax credit move, its brazenness points out to me how big corporations hold all the cards on their side (with the US government's collusion) for even when industrial titans seem poised on the verge of paying up fairly for their wrongs, transgressions, and cost-saving neglect they can always pull a legal rabbit out of a privileged and silken top hat...perhaps the one they wore last to the yacht races.

Why, it's almost another form of corporate welfare, isn't it? What a sneaky way of transferring corporate costs incurred by their own hand onto the backs of US taxpayers!

And it will be interesting to see if our hallowed US Congress can - or will - move an exalted muscle (so weakened is Congress by executive privilege encroachments these last few years) to do a single, practical thing about BP's tax dodge.

But that's with camera ops and long-winded grandstanding notwithstanding, of course.