Svea Sauer’s wake up call in, “Don’t drill baby, don’t,” is all the more alarming when viewed against the big picture of ongoing disasters and decision makers. The F.B.I. is investigating executives at Massey Energy for that West Virginia coal mine explosion where 29 miners died. Wall Street money managers made a huge profit from our public dollar claiming “too big to fail.” Then, there is the Gulf Oil mega-disaster.
These disasters have in common one thing – decision makers at the top seeking the bottom dollar no matter what the cost to the public good.
The “market does not know best.” The market wants money for shareholders and the Stock Market is blind and uncaring following internal rules of money manipulation. The biochemistry of life is just as blind and uncaring – ducks, shrimp, unhatched sea turtles cannot live on oil sludge – it’s a merciless fact, life needs oxygen and clean water to survive. It is probably true that no one really knows how to control the human-made financial monsters and now it seems we can’t control the technological monsters in the deep-sea or deep coal mines either.
It is also true that governmental regulators were not trying to control them.
With a steady drumbeat that less government control is better and government is bad – is it any wonder that we have elected politicians who take a “hands off” approach to regulation and let the CEO’s run amok?
Politicians run for office while claiming that government is bad. If it’s so bad, why do they want to be part of it? And if the Federal Government is the enemy of State Government, as both Governor Perry and Louisiana Governor Jindal have claimed when they spurned the Federal bailout dollars, why do they run like puppy dogs to get federal dollars to fix things like this oil spill?
Isn’t it time we publically recognize that government controls are needed on giant corporations? And that it takes money? As for me, I would rather pay taxes for regulators than deal with the mess caused by disasters. Government is not perfect, but at least it is accountable to me as a voter. Massey Energy, Goldman Sachs and British Petroleum are beyond my reach.
Emily Carter
Wimberley
