OK, I've been on my back for a few weeks, but I'm a little surprised that I'm back and no one is talking about this. I guess we, here at S2, are like the nation's other celebrities, only find massive problems in the Gulf Coast and oil spills to be cause for outcry when it's the other guys in charge. Anyway, Rolling Stone has a truly great expose on the spill and how it happened:
How is Rolling Stone the first one to have an "expose" on this? Or has NYT or the WP and I just didn't see it?
Clearly, this was Bush's fault. That said, if BP is truly at fault here, I hope Obama throws the book at them. And then some. I can understand the accident and the initial spill. But to not have the immediate capability to cap the well is not right. It's a sickening incident.
I'm getting more and more frustrated that BP was cleared by the government bureaucracy on all of the plans, etc....that (if you believe Rolling Stone) wasn't even looked at by the people supposed to be the "watchdogs". Want to kick someone's ass? How about the guy who approved the "safety plan" that BP tossed together. The whole systems engineering/verification part of this sickens me.
I asked in another thread, but I haven't gotten an answer...what charges (if any) are being drawn up? Are they going to be cited for polluting, etc? I haven't heard anything except "claims" and "cleanup costs". And I don't mean to sound crass, but there will be a large number more people laid off from petroleum industry in LA being shut down than shrimp farmers losing their livelihood.
As to you first paragraph, so long as the feds approved of the plans, I doubt criminal action can commense. The best we can hope for are tortfecious monies. As to the second paragraph, this will devestate the environment and otherwise damage the economy of that region- but to what extent I really can't guess. .
I don't really see any obvious criminal charges against BP, nor do I think there should be. The damage is to other folks' property, so the proper remedy is to hold them liable for that. Of course, governments generally have immunity from tort claims, but if the dereliction of duty (and their own laws) were as obvious as has been made out, it might be fun to see if defendants could sue the Federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Perhaps we should have must stronger regulations http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/06/15/15greenwire-lawmakers-criticize-oil-companies-spill-respon-62998.html
The problem seems to be one of getting the government to enforce the regulations already in place, not a lack of laws in the first place. The "strength" of a rule is in its enforcement. Suppose a guy is speeding down the highway at 100mph. Speed limit is 60. He passes a cop, who notes the speeding car is being driven by a friend of the police chief and lets it go. The car then crashes into local orphanage. In common talk, "strengthening" the regulation means lowering the speed limit to 50. Which will do absolutely nothing to stop friends of the mayor from driving too fast, but it will make life miserable for everyone else.
That's my take on this. If "regulations" need to be enforced more, I'm all for it. Whoever approved the plan should be held accountable. What I DON'T agree with is the ability of the president/congress to utilize this to ban offshore drilling.
