Let the games begin: BP failed to implement a new safety plan on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, even though the company realized a blowout in the Gulf of Mexico was its greatest danger, an expert witness for people and businesses suing the company testified today. University of California–Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea was the first witness at a civil trial to determine how much more BP and other companies should pay for the spill. Bea said BP didn’t implement a two-year-old safety management program on the rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. “It’s a classic failure of management and leadership in BP,” says Bea, a former BP consultant who also investigated the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and New Orleans levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Associated Press has the full story here.
A surefire cure for the blues: In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, The Wall Street Journal reports some political commentators have written political obituaries of the “red” or conservative-leaning states, envisioning a brave new world dominated by fashionably blue bastions in the Northeast or California. But political fortunes are notoriously fickle, while economic trends tend to be more enduring. These trends point to a U.S. economic future dominated by four growth corridors that are generally less dense, more affordable, and markedly more conservative and pro-business: the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, the Third Coast (spanning the Gulf states from Texas to Florida), and the Southeastern industrial belt. Read the full story here.
War of words: There’s no progress to report in efforts to stave off looming federal government spending cuts, but President Barack Obama today singled out for praise the few Republicans who say they’re open to aspects of his approach, seeking to turn up the heat on GOP leaders ahead of Friday’s deadline. Obama also rejected a proposal floated by Senate Republicans to give the president more flexibility to pick and choose which programs should be cut to reach the $85 billion over seven months mandated by the so-called sequester. “There’s no smart way to do that,” he says. “These cuts are wrong. They’re not smart, they’re not fair. They’re a self-inflicted wound that doesn’t have to happen.” The full story can be found here.
