[quote=greekfire]
You can’t imply that there should be more government intervention in private business and at the same time defend the government for incompetence when they say they are on top of things. You can’t have it both ways.
[/quote]

I’m reasonably sure no one has attempted to have it both ways. This disaster is the perfect example of the shortcomings of libertarian free market captialism. (As if the near collapse of the credit/financial markets 20 months ago wasn’t sufficient evidence.) The market does not take care of itself. The market will neither protect irreplaceable resources, nor repair them when damage is done. It has nothing to do with post-crisis managment or mismanagement.

If there had been no government involvement with this oil spill, would BP have acted any differently? I suspect so. It still would not have been fixed, but don’t suspect they would have spent the 10’s of millions on their attempts to mitigate the damage. There is no free market incentive for them to do that.

The government didn’t cause this disaster. The argument can be made that more government involvement possibly could have prevented it. Government involvement hasn’t delayed the end of the crisis. I suspect that both BP and the federal government are doing all they can to fix it. You argue that the government is incompetent, yet they neither caused the crisis nor are they in charge of fixing it, only pressuring BP to continue to seek a solution. The “incompetent” label is surely misdirected.