Corporations are creatures of stature, not, despite the best efforts of the Supreme Court in cases like Citizens United, human beings. Corporations don’t have consciences, or any other human attributes. We hope that the people running corporations have human attributes, like consciences, but it appears that is not always the case. The only goal of a corporation is to make money while limiting liability for the owners. This fixation frequently leads to massive disasters, like the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico.

“I pwomise you, we’ll make that big ole BP pay a lot of money, OK? Billions of dollars, I pwomise you. We’re going to have a big cleanup job and it’s going to get cleaned up, all right?” said Landrieu.

As you’ve no doubt heard, BP’s own liability for the damages the Deepwater Horizon spill will cause may be limited to $75 million (though it will have to pay for cleanup). Next time some DC politico gets $5000 from BP, I hope they reflect on the fact that that’s all BP wants to pay for putting a family’s entire livelihood on the line.