Oil Drilling: Virginia Gets All the Risk, But Has to Share the Rewards?

As Not Larry Sabato points out, this is what the McDonnell/Bolling/Cuccinelli administration is working so hard to bring to Virginia:Survivors of a thunderous blast aboard an oil platform off the Louisiana coast were being reunited with their families at a suburban New Orleans hotel early Thursday as the search for 11 missing workers continued.But there's more! Via The Deadrise, if some senators get their way, Virginians would get no more of the revenue from drilling off our shores than would go to Iowans:Three key Senate Democrats are urging their colleagues to reject a proposal in the emerging climate bill that would give a cut of oil and gas production royalties to states that allow offshore drilling. Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia called "revenue sharing" an ill-advised "giveaway" of money that belongs to all U.S. citizens.All the risk, only a fraction of the rewards. I bet you didn't realize that when Bob McDonnell promised drilling revenue would fund transportation, he was referring to an expanded Route 20 to Sioux City, did you? UPDATE: Brian at Too Conservative says it's outrageous that we keep using the deaths of workers to suggest maybe we stop doing things that kill workers. UPDATE #2: Officials had been saying the explosion didn't pose much of an environmental risk. That was before the platform sunk:The well could be spilling up to 8,000 barrels of crude oil a day, McNamara said, and the rig carried 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel. She didn't know whether the crude oil was spilling into the Gulf. UPDATE #3: We could be looking at an oil spill washing up on Gulf Coast beaches.