I don't know if it was mentioned here yet or not but there was some sort of safety design that was mandatory years back that was lobbied against by the oil companies as it added half a million dollars in cost to implement. During the Bush years, it was repealed and the oil companies were given a lot more leeway to "self monitor" which seems to be a pretty interesting and often used tactic nowadays. Half a million is probably what BP makes in a minute.
I know I am going to sound real lefty here, but to me the biggest danger to Capitalism itself is this lack of oversight and control. While a capitalistic system has great benefits in that in tends to eliminate some amount of waste (although not nearly as much as corporations want to have you believe), it is essentially also a system where money is king, and greed matters the most. A lack of oversight to reign in big business leads to things like lobbying against safety regulations with oil drilling as well as banking.
I'm not a "socialist", I believe in capitalism but without control it is a run away freight train. Eventually, it will just destroy itself. Now we just had the supreme court open the door to endless spending for corporations on helping elect the officials they want to see in power. That means even foreign corporations. This was a HUGE event and it went almost wholy unnoticed.
To get back on track, clearly "drill baby drill" is a stupid slogan without some serious changes in the way we do things. That includes silverstone05's suggestion that some amount of responisbility also lies with the end user.
Ko those are awesome pictures!
