VP Biden Knew Oil Drilling Oversight was BAD

The AP reported:

Vice President Joe Biden said the federal government's oversight of offshore drilling "was as bad as I thought it was." Biden was responding to a question about a New York Times story published Friday about Gulf of Mexico drilling plans that received approval from the Obama administration without the permits required under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Biden told Pittsburgh radio station KDKA he thought lax federal oversight of permits was a problem throughout his six-term Senate career.

Why didn't the VP inform his boss and the pair do something about it? Instead we have catastrophe and misinformation.

President Obama repeated the canard that nobody knows how much oil is gushing from the sea floor. Experts are confident it's much more than BP or the government have estimated.

As for limiting damages to $10 billion, that could be a drop in the bucket of a $1 trillion cost. While Transocean and BP try to consolidate cases in Houston federal court, Congressional corporacrats wrestle with raising economic damage limits from $75 million to $10 billion. The White House approves such a move. Corporate and legislative risk management is clearly underway.

At this point economic damages should have no cap. Legal cases from past disasters inspire little confidence that corporations will voluntarily step up to their responsibilities, much less BP.