Win, win for Obama. He gets deep sea drilling and looks like he fought to stop it.

Amnesty International has a letter writing campaign to Board of Directors of Chevron to clean upo the mess in Ecuador

Every voice counts - never give up

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=4102

Law is always reactive, never proactive. In other words courts can only respond to an action after damage has been done. An example is the possible invasion of Asian carp through a canal in Illinois. So far the court has rejected all efforts to close the canal, citing economic damage to those who use it. Of course, if the carp get into Lake Michigan, there will be enormous damage to the Lake, but that damage cannot be estimated. The same goes with deepwater drilling. Courts are all about protecting property, but only the immediate damage to property is considered. Possible bad outcomes are not a basis for challenging any sort of action.

I have spent a "few" years in the renewables sector and can criticize both. This ruling is essential to wean us off of foreign oil and (hopefully) move ahead. There is a lot of work to be done in the energy sector and I suggest getting the opportunists/traders out. Lets not screw this one up.

The logic escapes me. The oil industry says that stopping
offshore drilling will bad for the local economy and for the
industry. "Bad for the industry", I can understand the oil
industry's point of view on that....but would the negative
impact on the local economy (not to mention the environment)
be worse than the impact from the oil well blowout? What about
the cumulative impacts from relatively small amounts of oil
continually leaked, spilled or dumped. I am left with the
opinion that oil industry execs, share holders, and CEOs are bad,
greedy, and...sick people.

Judge Feldman most likely owns stock in Hornbeck Offshore Services and doesn't want his portfolio to lose value if the moratorium where to stay in place. This is how our system works now.

So this "judge" is basing his decision NOT on justice, right and wrong, impartiality, let the chips fall where they may, but simply because he, Feldman, found that the administration had "failed to properly weigh the economic impact it would have on the industry and the surrounding communities"? That is, he is basing his decision on money.

Is he a judge-economist that bases his decisions upon a balance sheet? Does he perhaps let a little under-the-table "economic impact" influence his decision? After all, apparently economics (i.e., MONEY) plays a major role in justice these days, don't it now?

He sounds just like the shrewd BP executives that convinced themselves that the "economic impact" of installing better, more appropriate, but much more expensive blowout preventers on their offshore wells weighed far more in their decision than the risks of not installing them. So they saved the money. And created the disaster. Some savings!

This judge should be impeached, removed and disbarred. EVERY judgement has some kind of economic impact, from a fine that cannot be easily paid by a poor person, to a family breadwinner going to jail and so unable to provide for his family, to an employee unable to fight a corporation for justice, to overcrowding prisons with minor offenders, to a government unable to provide for its people, to enabling an administration to spend trillions for war, ad infinitum.

Just because there will be "economic impact" does not matter in a case decided upon law and justice. Or no case could ever be brought.

Oh, I get it, what Feldman meant to say was, "that the administration had failed to properly weigh the economic impact it would have on ME, Feldman, and my surronding cronies."

The only reason there are as many drilling operations thus high employment (52,000 + wells in Gulf!..with 27,000 not empty but just capped!) is because the oil companies "make" money from just drilling! Corporate welfare is provided for the cost of their exploration for oil ...which means drilling. Back in the 70's when I study energy production for a environmental degree, the reason for big and bigger power plants wasn't so much for increased generation for the future but for large capital flow locally as the project got underway!! Same now with the government covering cost for the exploration/drilling. Oil drilling right now, considering whats already drilled, is no more than a government works program administered (controlled, covered up by, for the profit of, ect ect) by oil companies!

1) if we live in a country where laws have been adopted that allow a judge to rule that the federal government cannot make hard decisions about private commercial operations on is own property (these are US territorial waters, used by lease), then we have a much bigger problem than whether Obama is either serious or too late with this moratorium effort. If we don't have any such laws and the judge has twice ruled against the government, than he should be easily reversible and the impropriety of his known stock holdings becomes less important, although the degree and obviousness of the impropriety of the ruling itself becomes greater. However, based on the terms of Obama's appeal, it looks like the judge is aware of actual laws he can apply to his ruling.

2) Yesterday there was a MSM story about how almost all the federal land leased for solar energy production is sitting idle, with no projects underway. The biggest impediment turns out to be that most of the land was given, essentially under a neo-homesteading system, to companies that have no solar energy divisions or experience. Unsurprisingly, the single biggest claimer of these lands is Goldman Sachs (see Treasury, Dept. Of, last three administrations, and Generation Investment Management -- Al Gore's carbon offset trading company -- for a list of their executives). In other words, the government allowed (if I were cynical, I'd say "invited," since this problem would have been easy to screen during application review) most of their land that's productive for commercial-scale solar to be taken by investors, not solar firms, so that should viable technology come along, it cannot become a going concern without paying a skim on the lease of federal lands to private investors.

3) It seems that by one means or another the government has ceded total control of public lands -- and the future of energy production of all kinds, and the status of the environment -- to private investors, whose executive offices were the training grounds of most of the public officials who design the programs that make it happen without even being required to surrender the portfolios that would profit from these decisions while they hold office. They golden-parachute out of the corporate boardrooms and into Washington (remember when Halliburton paid Dick Cheney $30 million to run for VP? they sure got their money's worth), and then golden-parachute back into the boardrooms (or start up "private equity" funds and holding companies like Carlyle with other former top worldwide government leaders, specifically to profit from their own decisions as office-holders).

These situations simply cannot be cured by voting, even for third parties, nor by changing our own consumption habits, since we can't even switch to renewable energy in a large enough way to be meaningful without paying off and amplifying the control of Goldman Sachs and the rest of the investor class. We are actually living under feudalism, not capitalism (let alone democracy). You can't cure a problem until you can diagnose it. The only hope we have is agitation on a mass scale. That requires organizing. Please say hello if you are organizing.

BREAKING NEWS -- MSNBC

Another oil "platform", "not a rig", according to MSNBC, 80 miles off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico just blew up. 13 workers got off the "platform" into the water and are being picked up by rescue vessels. No word on whether there were any killed...