Last Thursday, a federal judge ruled that

BP’s “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct” had caused the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and that the company’s “reckless” behavior made it subject to fines of as much as $4,300 a barrel under the Clean Water Act.

Antonia Juhasz, Oil and Energy Analyst and author of three books – Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry–and What We Must Do to Stop It , and The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time – joined me on the show this morning to talk about the ruling and its ramifications.

What does this have to do with money? Everything. Absolutely everything Juhasz explained to Democracy Now on Friday morning.

The judge found that BP routinely put profit over prudence, people, safety, and the environment and the result was and remains catastrophic.  

 Over and over again the judge ruled that BP made decisions that were ‘profit-driven’ and an ‘extreme deviation from the standard of care and a conscious disregard for known risks.

In April, around the time of the fourth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Antoina Juhasz participated in an expedition to the site of the explosion. It was the first time since 2010 that researchers were allowed to travel to get a first hand look at the rig and well; Juhasz is documenting the expedition for a feature article for Harpers. She gave us a preview in this blog post. 

As we do most Monday mornings, I chatted with Howie Klein of Down With Tyranny and the Blue America PAC this morning. We talked about the Democrat’s biggest problem – which I see as their failure to be real Democrats. Howie wrote about it in a post called “DSCC: Dereliction of Duty.” It’s indicative in the circular firing squad in which this party is known to operate and its uncanny ability to pull defeat from the jaws of victory.

Should you care to help the progressive Senate candidates that the DSCC is ignoring, Blue America has a special senate page set up here. 

They’re also running a special fundraiser for Ted Lieu, who’s running to replace Henry Waxman. Any donation of any amount to this page will get you in the drawing for a platinum award for Fleetwood Mac’s “The Dance”. This ends Wednesday, so if you want in, act quickly.

We also spoke about tomorrow’s primary in New York and a couple of other states, which officially sticks a fork in primary season. After tomorrow, it’s onward to November 4.

But the situation in New York is especially interesting, where ConservaDem Gov. Andrew Cuomo picked someone even more conservative than himself as his running mate, Kathy Hochul, and cut some sort of backroom deal with PINO (Progressive in Name Only, apparently) Mayor Bill de Blasio to endorse her.

Again, there’s that money question.. Here’s your answer: Just moments after today’s show ended, this article popped up from The Nation, written by Tim Wu: “Why I’m Suing the New York State Democratic Party for Interfering in Its Own Primary.”

Under the direction of Andrew Cuomo, the party has spent a small fortune supporting my opponent’s campaign.

Want to fix what’s wrong with this nation? Then we must get the money out of politics. Then we can start talking…

It’s also very much about the money when you don’t have enough to get by. This morning, I spoke with listener Mitch Heldt (aka Snorky) for a few minutes. He’s a brilliant engineer with multiple degrees who’s having trouble getting a job– when we’re constantly hearing that we need to allow more immigrants in on H1B visas because we don’t have enough qualified citizens already here!!!

Mitch is headed to Hawaii to present his ideas to help the planet, but he’s trying to keep a roof over his family’s heads… If you can help him out with a few dollars, his paypal address is mitch@heldt.org.

Back tomorrow with Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church & State (another good place to start), and the always fun @GottaLaff too… radio or not.