Louisiana officials threaten action if spill response proves inadequate
Florida Gov. prepares legal action against Gulf oil spill
US threatens BP with legal action
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said, “We are 33 days into this effort, and deadline after deadline has been missed. If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to, we’ll push them out of the way. This is an existential crisis for one of the world’s largest companies.”
Well, how long does the Obama Administration plan to wait before doing something? Or is this just more of the same faux outrage we heard them mouth against the banksters – which was followed up by little or no actual action? And does anyone actually care if this is a crisis for BP or if it destroys them? The focus should be on ending the leak, not opining about the future of BP. But Interior seems more concerned with backstopping corporate America than ending the leak.
Something is very wrong at the Interior Department.
Actually, that’s not news. No part of the government was as thoroughly corrupted during the Bush years; Interior became a case of government of the extractive industries, by the extractive industries, and very much for the extractive industries. And it was going to take time to clean up the mess.
But has the cleanup even started? Every day there’s another news story with Ken Salazar firmly declaring that he’s losing patience with BP, and that if the company doesn’t get with it ”¦ he’ll make another firm declaration tomorrow.
Offshore drilling shoudl be phased out completely. It’s just too dangerous.