'Flagrant Violations of the Law'

Think of Louisiana and oil, and one automatically thinks of the disastrous BP spill in 2010, whose effects are still being felt. But BP isn't the only polluter of those shores, and Shell's, Exxon Mobil's, and others' documents dating back at least 30 years show how much those companies knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it (not much): http://harpers.org/blog/2013/10/secret-oil-company-memos-on-pollution-in-louisiana/
   A great 2010 interview with the writer of that piece, Ken Silverstein, on why he decided to quit his post as Washington editor at Harper's and become, instead, a contributing editor. In a nutshell, he says this about that: "I began to feel like every story I wrote, I’d written five years ago or ten years ago or fifteen years ago, or all three. 'Lobbyists Kill Off Health Care Reform' or 'Private Special Interests Pouring Money into Campaigns.' It’s not that I don’t think these are good and important stories, but I started feeling like I didn’t want to be writing them anymore": http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/qa_outgoing_harpers_washington.php?page=all