This should NOT be tolerated by any governmental body.

Death penalty for Corporate People...this would make a good test case.

Would solve the problem, I think. If only fines or slaps on the wrist are used, I predict that more explosions will happen.

When Big Oil/Energy/Fracking pays off/bribes/"makes campaign contributions" to US politicians, from the Oval Office down to state capitols and local government levels, the "safety regulations" are toothless (pissant fines) and the EPA and state enforcement agencies are gutted. More from the link:

Also last year, a leak of 241 barrels of fluid from a Williams natural gas processing plant in Colorado contaminated a creek with carcinogenic benzene. At least nothing blew up that time.

“Williams is committed to maintaining the highest standards of safety,” the company claims on its website. We’d hate to see what lower standards looked like.

One can only infer that you are one of those political geniuses who believes that sabotaging elections and throwing Republicans into control of the government will (somehow) magically cause all these problems to fix themselves. Good luck with that: I have two land wars in Asia and a three trillion dollar tax give away debt bomb that say putting any Republican in charge of anything is way worse than putting any Democrat in charge.

Last edited Sat Apr 26, 2014, 03:41 PM - Edit history (1)

"sabotaging elections"? "throwing Republicans into control of government"? My, how you do go on! And with such an insulting tone! I happen to be a lifelong Democrat who holds elected office for my county and appointed office for my township. My point is that Big Oil/Energy is buying off every politician they can bribe, regardless of party. Here in PA, people who have leased land to frackers are being encouraged ($$$$) by said frackers to run for and have indeed been elected to local county governing bodies.

Is your position that if a politician sells out to Big Oil, it's OK as long as they're democrat? Recent USSC decisions on campaign financing have guaranteed that politicians of all political persuasions are rendered impotent without corporate campaign support and this puts tremendous pressure on all politicians to place the demands of their big donors ahead of their constituents - that is, if they want to serve more than one term.

On edit: And my reference to the Democrats being in charge, was to the situation in Allegheny County, which is and has always been overwhelmingly Democrat. So when it comes to throwing out corrupted elected officials, it takes place in the closed primaries, and doesn't put Republicans in charge.

it was just assumed the WH would just sell us all down the river

now Obama can mention HSR once every other year and enough people will assume he's honestly fighting for the environment that it keeps the protest down--it's like mining: the water spray doesn't abolish the dust, they just keep it from exploding

Only the free market can save us!

Articles like this show how silly it is to make antinuclear extremism a badge of leftie tribal identity, when the imagined dangers of nuclear power are trivial in comparison to the very real deaths and environmental damage inflicted every day by the fossil fuels industry.

And the alleged economic unsustainability of nuclear power simply reflects the fact that nukes include up front the price of safety and waste disposal while coal and oil and gas are given free rein to kill and pollute without paying the cost. Institute an environmentally sound and economically efficient carbon tax and people will fall over themselves in the rush to abandon coal and natural gas: problem solved.

And before some mewling punk starts to squeal about Fukushima, just remember that in a natural disaster that killed 19000 people and precipitated the worst imaginable nuclear catastrophe not one person has died from the radiation release. When the full story is told, it will include the fact that more people died from anxiety - egged on by the fearmongers and the hysterics - than from the supposed dangers of nuclear power.