By Jacob G. Hornberger
In my June 21 blog post, “Barack Obama, Dictator,”
I pointed out that President Obama exercised brute
dictatorial powers in dictating to BP to hand over $20
billion of corporate money to federal officials, who
plan on distributing the loot to victims of the BP oil
spill.
Most everyone is familiar with the term “the rule
of law.” Many people, however, don’t understand what
it really means. They think that it means that people
should obey the law.
But that’s not what the rule of law means. What it
means is this: In a free society, people should never
have to answer to the arbitrary dictates of government
officials. That type of society is described as one
based on the “rule of men.” It is what dictatorship is
all about. In a society based on the rule of law,
people have to answer only to well-defined and
pre-existing laws that have been duly enacted by the
legislature.
As the Nobel Prize winning libertarian economist
Friedrich Hayek pointed out in his book The
Constitution of Liberty, the rule of law is a
necessary prerequisite for a free society.
At the time of the BP oil spill, the law provided
that BP would be required to pay for all clean-up
costs but was liable for a maximum of $75 million to
private parties who suffered losses because of an oil
spill.
Now, obviously that liability cap violated
fundamental principles of responsibility. People
should be fully responsible for all the damages they
cause. The $75 million cap was likely enacted as part
of the cozy corporatist relationship that has long
existed between big corporations and federal
politicians.
One thing is for sure: The liability cap almost
certainly played an important role in BP’s safety
precautions. After all, when a company thinks that its
maximum liability for an oil spill will be only $75
million, as compared to the possibility of facing
unlimited liability for an oil spill, that is going to
cause the company to act differently when it comes to
deciding how many precautions to take and how much
money to spend on safety precautions.
In any event, the reasons the $75 million cap were
enacted are irrelevant when it comes to BP’s
liability. The rule of law entitles BP to the full
protection of the law, no matter how distasteful the
results.
The $75 liability cap did provide exceptions to the
cap in cases where the company could be shown to be
guilty of gross negligence or willful misconduct.
But a system based on the rule of law requires such
issues to be litigated in a court of law. Victims of
the disaster must go into court and convince a jury
(or judge) by a preponderance of the evidence that BP
was guilty of gross negligence or willful misconduct.
They must also document with sworn testimony their
financial losses.
That’s what the rule of law requires.
Instead, what Obama did was effectively declare:
“Well, I don’t like the law and I wish it had never
been enacted because it is a bad law. I’m going to
decree that the law will not apply in this case. I am
summoning BP executives to my office and dictating
what BP must do, beginning with the delivery of a down
payment of $20 billion dollars in corporate money to a
political commission that I am appointing. That
commission will dole out money to victims of the oil
spill based on criteria that I deem appropriate.”
Notice that there is no judicial process concerning
how the loot is going to be distributed. That is how
things are handled in a society based on the rule of
men, a society based on dictatorship. The dictator
simply dictates and the person being dictated to is
expected to submit and obey.
Obama’s dictate to BP is dictatorship in its purest
and rawest form and constitutes an ominous destruction
of the rule of law. It’s no different, in fact, from
how Venezuela’s democratically elected socialist
strongman, Hugo Chavez, is running his country.
I suppose Obama’s shakedown of BP shouldn’t
surprise anyone. When a ruler wields the dictatorial
power to torture, jail, and assassinate his own
people, it only stands to reason that he’ll also claim
the power to shake them down for money.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The
Future of Freedom Foundation.