spills in the future if we can get off fossil fuels. jonathan alter, always a pleasure. good to have you with us tonight. thanks, ed. one final page in my playbook tonight. republican candidate for nevada senate sue lowden may have ruffled feathers throughout the nation with her chickens for checkups. that s hard to say. her health care plan, you do a barter. so far she s still standing strong in the polls. she s ten points ahead of her nearest challenger in the republican primary and she still has a four-point lead over majority leader harry reid. another poll question shows why. 27% of republicans said that bartering for the medical care with things like chickens is realistic. 27%. so it seems lowden s psycho talk hasn t hurt her too much as of yet, but there s a long way to go in this campaign. lowden s top primary opponent is
comprehensive solutions. the president is all for this. he wants us to look to the long term. so this is after the immediate crisis passes, this, ed, is a great opportunity to get the conversation where it needs to be. to move us off fossil fuels. well, i tell you, we have a midterm election coming up here, and the progressive movement in this country which was mad at the president for doing this future plan of offshore drilling are going to be heard. they re going to take it out on candidates and have to change their position to be environmentally friendly in this election cycle. that s what i think. they should. they do need to be more environmentally friendly, but instead of all the political energy going into the blame game yeah. why not focus that energy on getting comprehensive climate change legislation? because the thing about climate change, it s a twofer. it helps the climate and also, you know, helps the planet and also prevents these huge oil
safety of the environment? one family is suing don blankenship and nas massny ener. thank you so much for joining us. the target of the lawsuit is massey and also the ceo. what is your contention here? the $3 million isn t enough? where does this lawsuit take us? well, first, ed, i think it s important to note that the $3 million-offers that have been made by massey are only made to my knowledge to families that are not represented by counsel. they ve not made those offers to my knowledge to any families that are represented by counsel. the case that we have filed sues performance coal company which employed mr. griffith, our deceased miner, massey energy which owns performance coal, massey coal services, another
ed, is their willingness to cover up the truth. as you said starting this program, day one there was no problem, day two, there might be a problem, day just day after day it grew and grew and grew. you know why? because corporate thought this thing could happen without anybody knowing that there was an oil spill. the longer they could keep it quiet the better. and in the big picture we have a gulf that s still struggling with $110 billion loss because of katrina. we have a dead zone that s already out there, dead. the dead zone is as big as new jersey. beyond this new problem. mike papantonio, thanks your joining us tonight. when you think about the impact of this, the tourism, who wants to go on an oily beach? look at the wildlife. look at the fisheries industry. this is unbelievable. remember, it really wasn t that big when it first started. let s go now to walter hang, an anti-drilling activist and president of toxics targeting.
subsidiary of massey energy which was in charge of and ran the safety program at the mine and also don blankenship, individually, he was the ceo of massey energy. rachel, how are the families responding to this $3 million offer? have you had any contact with them? our clients haven t had any contact with anyone from massey. okay. but have you had a response in the community from any of the families that have been offered this $3 million? how are they viewing this? with mixed emotions. this is the most difficult time of their lives. mark, how are they viewing this go ahead. ed, as you mentioned it s a whipsaw. these folks are overwhelmed. the i think it s important to understand that the family structure in these communities is very traditional and very tight.