On May 21, Rand Paul said that the White House was putting unnecessary blame on BP for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. “It’s part of this sort of blame game society,” Paul says. “It’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen.” On GritTV, Washington Editor of The Nation Christopher Hayes explains why he loves this quote.

“He’s defending BP, which is the worst kind of crony-capitalist enterprise,” Hayes says. “He articulates incredibly succinctly what has been the dominant ethos of the elite’s lack of accountability of the whole past decade.” Hayes gives the examples of Iraq, the inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis and now the BP oil spill and the Massey mining tragedy. “The elites keep telling us that it’s just kind of a big bummer, it’s just an accident,” Hayes says.

—Morgan Ashenfelter