More questions being raised about BP

British Petroleum apparently took risks with the oil well that eventually exploded and has been leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico for over a month. This shouldn't surprise anyone. This is what big businesses do. They push deadlines and search for materials and shortcuts that will save money. They take calculated risks in the quest for bigger profits and maneuver around weak government regulations while hoping for the best. When it doesn't work out, consumers die in runaway Toyotas and fall to their deaths from exploding oil rigs.

It appears that BP, like Toyota, gambled and lost. Unfortunately, their loss cost lives and has destroyed unprecedented amounts of natural habitat, which in turn will ripple through our already ailing economy and create further mistrust of big oil.

What is adding insult to injury is BP's continuing inability to stop the oil and to safeguard sensitive areas along the Louisiana coast. (See the above video.) The company suits talk a lot about the thousands of workers employed to handle the emergency, but it's clearly not enough.

As a report on 60 Minutes recently documented, and this New York Times article details, this wasn't just one of those unavoidable accidents. There will be plenty of blame to go around and hopefully some criminal charges. But in the meantime, BP has to stop this leak and contain what oil is already in the gulf.

It's becoming more difficult to believe that BP is doing everything it can to solve this crisis. Is BP following the same playbook that caused this catastrophe -- cutting corners, trying to find the most cost-effective way out of this mess? Sure, the millions of dollars BP is spending sounds like a lot of money, but to a giant oil company, it's a drop in the bucket. It seems they want us to believe that they are sparing no expense, but common sense tells me that really smart people should have been able to plug this leak by now.

BP has wanted us to believe a lot of things, including that drilling is safe, that backup systems would prevent this sort of disaster and that the rate of the leak was far less than what it now appears to be. I think the company's credibility is shot.

The federal government claims to have a boot on the neck of BP, but that boot appears to be a fuzzy slipper at best. The feds probably can't fix the well, but they can determine whether BP is doing all it can. So far, the Obama administration has failed to apply an effective amount of pressure on the oil company. Again, this should be no surprise. Large corporations run America. It was one of the fears of our founding fathers. In the last few decades we have been watching those fears play out, taking down our economy and destroying our environment.

One has to wonder whether BP is searching for a financially feasible way of conducting operations and exaggerating their efforts to contain the oil for public relations purposes. Do they want the oil leak fixed? Absolutely. Do they want to bankrupt the company to do so? Probably not. So the trick for the BP brain trust is to find a way to deal with the leak and cleanup without going broke. I suspect that is what is causing the delay and why folks, like those in the above video, aren't seeing enough BP workers in the waters and marshes.

When the leak is finally fixed, BP will have an opportunity to clean up. It might take many years. Whether or not the company finds it financially feasible to stick around long enough to do the job properly remains to be seen.

Read why this is the worst oil spill in U.S. history.