A year after the BP disaster erupted in the Gulf, Cherri Foytlin walked from her home in New Orleans to the White House, to let President Obama hear firsthand the suffering that continues to affect the residents of the Gulf Coast. Sadly, she couldn’t get an invitation to get past the gate. (Rubbing salt in her wounds — she got to watch Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles stroll past her on the sidewalk on their way inside.)

Meanwhile, BP and certain parts of the government continue to try to spin the news, limiting media access to heroic rescuers, limiting scientific access to spill sites, and otherwise trying to hide the record and avoid accountability.

Access. It’s the name of the game.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of America’s most horrific industrial accidents, happened 100 years ago today, on March 11, 1911. Though New York City’s fire department arrived on the scene within two minutes of the call, the fire at this “modern” high rise at the corner of Washington Pl. and Greene St. still claimed the lives of 146 people, most of them young women and teenage girls. Some were burned, some died of smoke inhalation, some were crushed pushing for the exits, some fell from a faulty fire escape, and some jumped nine stories in an attempt to escape the flames.

It was a catastrophic, once-in-a-lifetime failure of what were considered more than ample emergency response systems. No one could have possibly anticipated. . . .

What do shooting sprees and massive oil rig blowouts have in common?

After having spent five months in the Gulf, I decided to read Bob Cavnar’s book of the story behind the Deepwater well blowout starting with chapter 7 on the “BP-government merger.” This was one of the most troubling twists in events that I had witnessed in the Gulf. I figured if he could shed some light on this, then maybe he would have frank insights on how we got into this mess – beyond the human error – and how we might avoid another.

Halliburton and the other companies involved, like Transocean, have been pointing the finger at BP, and vice versa. At stake is responsibility for the tens in billions in expected fines for violating the Clean Water Act and other environmental statutes, as well as claims from individuals seeking damages.

Seafood buyer Bruce Guerra, owner of Yscloskey Seafood, sums up the dilemma faced by everyone in his industry. If the state prohibits its summoned biologist from coming to test seafood about which everyone involved has questions, how can he be sure he’s buying — and selling — safe seafood?

The executive summary and the full investigation rely heavily on jargon, but they basically describe a systemic failure. However, BP cleverly sidesteps the question of well design, for which they have personal responsibility, and basically looks at the incidents on the Deepwater Horizon in a vacuum.

On June 9, Senator Mary Landrieu questioned Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing in which she proclaimed that the Obama administration’s six month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would result in more job losses than the BP oil spill itself. Today’s New York Times brings us the reality behind Landrieu’s hissy fit, and, surprise, surprise, she could not have been more wrong.

On Thursday evening’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert had a fascinating interview with Professor Michael Blum of Tulane University. Blum opens by pointing out that although most of the oil is now out of sight, it is not gone. He then goes on to discuss the toxicity of the material that remains in the Gulf. Here [...]

Carol Browner helped BP and the Obama administration to spread the misinformation that 75 percent of the oil from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is “gone”. Scientists at the Georgia Sea Grant counter that up to 79 percent of the oil that entered the waters of the Gulf is still there and capable of having further environmental impact.