Not Enough has been Done to Prevent a Blowout at another Offshore Oil Rig

Elizabeth Birnbaum, ex Director of the Minerals Management Service at the time of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, co-wrote "The Deepwater Horizon Threat" editorial in today's New York Times.  Naturally it is a call for caution and more regulation, but  nowhere in the piece was there a mention of repealing the $75 Million liability cap that Congress allows offshore drillers.  It was very lucky for the Administration that BP is too big an entity with too many assets in the U.S. that they could not just walk away from from their liability for environmental carelessness. But a small LLC with unknown backers could have just as easily ignored the MMS as BP did but leave the Gulf Coast spoiled with an unpaid  $20 Billion of clean up costs.

North Carolina Regulators Join Duke Energy's Appeal of Judges ruling Ordering Clean Up

That Governor McCrory is a former employee of Duke Energy and that he has ordered his state regulators to fight on the side of not requiring Duke to clean up it's ash spill stinks to high heaven.  This receives The Crony Capitalism at its Most Brazen Award for 2014.