Louisiana Parishes File Suit Against 97 Oil And Gas Companies – Wingin’ It Wednesday

This week on "Wingin' It Wednesday", panelist Mike Stagg, Warren Caudle, and Carol Ross joined "Mornings with Ken and Bernie" to discuss the lawsuit Louisiana Parishes have filed against oil and gas companies as well as the comments former President Clinton made against President Obama.

Here's what the panel had to say:

1. Two Louisiana Parishes have filed suit against 97 oil and gas companies for damage done to the Louisiana coastline. Do you think is a good thing?

Mike Stagg started us off:

There’s no disputing the facts, the oil and gas industry is responsible for some part of the damage to the destruction of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, which affects levies, it affects flood protection, and it affects communities up and down the coast. It’s the pottery barn rule; you break it, you but it. The oil and gas industry inflicted some percentage of the damage on the coast. If we don’t take the protective measures to restore our coast then we can’t save ourselves.

Warren Caudle added:

If we’re going to concede the fact that the oil companies have done damage, then why are we just suing them, lets go after everybody that was involved and everyone who worked for them. Let’s go after all these cities and towns that made money off them. If they’ve done so much damage, then let’s go after all those people. Then let’s put taxes on the people who use those products that came out of the ground down here regardless of where they went.
I think we’d be more inline if we would sue the politicians that have been in charge of Detroit for the last 60 years for the environmental and human damage they’ve done.

Carol Ross Concluded:

There’s a reason these legacy lawsuits have gone nowhere. They will not settle. There have been reasonable settlements put forth. They have not been accepted.
The reason these suits are narrowly defined is because a little thing call the class action reform suit. This requires all of Louisiana’s future class action cases to be filed in federal court. That makes it a lot harder to venue shop and find a favorable judge.

 

2. Referring to the Affordable Care Act in a recent interview Former President Bill Clinton said President Obama should live up to his promise to Americans that if they like their health plans, they can keep them. Do you think this signals major problems for the President and will this statement jeopardize a possible Obama endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016? 

Carol stated:

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I did not say anyone has a better shnozzle for politics than Bill Clinton. He’s the best at sniffing out political weakness. He smells blood in the water and wants to help insulate Hillary from Obamacare fallout, but Hillary has blood on her hands and one day she’ll have to answer for it.
This is the worst piece of legislation in generations.

 

Warren added:

I think that once again Bill Clinton has risen up and showed he does understand politics and how things are. He figured this was a good time to get some press. He’s right, you can’t go around promising one thing then turn around and say you never said that. When everything you say is recorded it’s hard to go back and say you didn’t say it.
There’s not going to be a rift between Obama and Hillary because Obama knows he owes a lot to the Clintons.

Mike stated:

The president and Bill actually agree on this. Those policies that were cancelled were cancelled because of the insurance companies, not because of the law. Those policies were grandfathered in. It’s not the law, it’s the fact that the insurance companies chose to change the policies.  There’s no disagreement between former President Clinton and President Obama.

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Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think about today’s Wingin’ It Wednesday topics. Who got it right, who got it wrong, and who was way off? Let us know in the comment section.