Earlier this month, I raised questions whether BP was getting off too lightly with the proposed $50 million penalty for BP for its negligence that led to the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 workers.

Bloomberg columnist Ann Woolner has expanded on this point in her piece BP, Chronic Offender, Should Lose Its Sweet Deal. Lots of good research here showing that BP has a long list of priors, whether it's trying to corner the propane market, or dumping diesel fuel in streams, sending pollutants into Lake Michigan, and ditching hazardous waste on Alaska's North Slope. Woolner points out that BP and the government told the judge there were only two prior incidents, so it didn't have that bad a rap sheet. But the victims' lawyers found more than 30 cases since 1985 in which BP was fined. And most of these have occurred within the past decade.

"Not only is the fine shamefully light, the plea agreement waives the usual, indeed, the mandatory, pre-sentence investigation," Woolner writes. "Such an investigation would have uncovered BP's law-breaking and its broken promises to go straight ... BP's prosecutors either failed to learn or neglected to disclose this company's extensive history of law-breaking and failed to use this catastrophe to force change in a corporate culture that has led to so many deaths, pollution and disregard for the law. Instead of bragging about the plea deal, the Justice Department should be ashamed of it."

This is not just an indictment of BP. It condemns the government for its collusion with a serial offender.