Agreed. I also hope that America begins to realize that government and politicians rarely have the interests of the population in mind.
In the case in which an industry makes lots of money and/or that money is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small handful of players, the nearly inevitable result is regulatory capture. All the regulations in the world don't help when the legislature rubber-stamps laws written and endorsed by the industry. And enforcement is worthless when the regulators do not have sufficient experience to truly determine culpability.
No it bloody well isn't. The same section of statute contains an exception to the liability cap for gross negligence or willful misconduct: only in the case of genuinely unforeseeable accidents is liability limited to $75m - and even tht does not limit cleanup or repair costs to be borne by the rig operators.
I just hope there's a discussion for more of a direct democracy. We have the technology...
Of course we also need more transparency.
Looks to me that we are in our infancy as techocrats.