It's now well over a month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the Gulf of Mexico and created the largest man-made environmental catastrophe in American history. The question haunting everyone is: how was this allowed to happen? From the devastated fishermen and business owners in the Gulf Coast to environmental activists across the country -- we all have been watching, horrified, as millions of gallons of oil continue to pour into the ocean, destroying people's livelihoods, poisoning marine life and destroying coastlines and eco-systems for decades to come.
In the wake of this disaster, I have no doubt that the spill occurred because the pendulum of power in our country has swung dangerously far in favor of corporations. The systematized deregulation of our industries, which began under President Reagan and continued vigorously under George W. Bush, is now literally destroying our environment.
For eight years, Bush and Cheney were both far too cozy with corporate America, and were deeply committed to deregulating industry from the government's oversight. Bush and Cheney moved people from big industry into government positions, placing them in charge of both writing the rules and policing the very industries they once worked for. Whether in financial meltdowns or oil spills, we are reaping the consequences of these actions and will continue to do so for years to come. Now, the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizen's United allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on federal elections, thereby giving the biggest industries unprecedented influence in our democracy (that's why we need a progressive on the Court).
Over the last six weeks, the perpetrator of the Gulf Coast spill, British Petroleum, has been playing the blame game, stating that Transocean, the owner of the oil rig, is at fault and that Halliburton's poor job cementing the base of the well contributed to the spill. Each day we uncover more information on how these private companies, concerned only with their bottom line, have cut corners and neglected maintenance in a race toward higher profits (for instance, BP decided NOT to purchase a $500,000 blowout preventer valve, which gets bolted onto the sea floor at the wellhead as a failsafe to prevent these types of disasters). Many other countries require that oil companies purchase blowout preventers to protect against accidents and do not allow individual regulators to make these decisions. In addition, in other countries, regulations require oil companies doing deep water drilling to build and maintain a relief well from the outset to alleviate the affects of possible spills.
The BP spill also brought to light the corruption and ineptitude in the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service office. President Obama inherited most of this staff since many of the employees were placed into these regulatory roles during the eight years that Bush was President. Many of the regulators were already friends with industry officials and some had worked in the oil and gas business before their stint in government. These regulators apparently let the oil and gas companies fill out their own inspection forms in pencil and then traced over their writing in ink. In return for their leniency, regulators accepted invitations to hunting trips and tickets to college football games courtesy of the oil and gas companies. Basically, Bush put the foxes in charge of guarding the hen house! In addition, the Minerals Management Service frequently granted waivers to BP and other oil companies releasing them from providing regulators detailed environmental impact and safety contingency statements regarding the areas they planned to drill for oil. These waivers allowed oil companies to take short cuts, which ultimately lead to the kind of disaster we are now experiencing in the Gulf.
Lack of accountability, lack of oversight, lack of regulation, corruption...this all sounds frighteningly familiar. Although many had hoped we had learned our lesson after the recent financial meltdown, this disaster has further proved that free market capitalism can only be trustworthy and accountable if industries are properly regulated. Bush allowed polluters to self- regulate. We can't assume that companies like BP and Halliburton will spend the time and money to ensure environmental safety, just like we have learned the hard way that financial institutions like Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns will not safeguard our life savings. Sadly, we now know that when companies driven by profit are not regulated, they will not prioritize the public's best interest.
We have heard people say over and over again that less government is good government. During the health care debate, people wanted government to "stay out of their Medicare," not realizing that Medicare is a government program. Without government regulations and a trustworthy system of checks and balances, this will not be the last oil spill that could have been prevented...or the last financial meltdown. There's little the federal government can do now to save the birds, beaches and marshes steeped in oil along the Gulf, but as we move forward, we can demand that our government move quickly to put strong, sound regulations in place across all sectors in order to protect our people and our country.
Alex Leo: 'Den Of Thieves': Why Regulators Should Be Cultural Kings
What is clear in "Den of Thieves," clear in the Gulf and clear in our economy, is if our regulators aren't as important, educated, and hungry as the people they're regulating, Americans don't have a chance.
Ted Danson: The Winds of Change
While images of oiled wildlife and beaches hit us in the gut there's another reason why it's time to stop drilling for oil in our oceans. It might not have a face or feathers, but it's just as important.
going to work. Then the dispersant's would stop. We need to just voice up and voice out.
Can we please I am begging everyone to show a sign of dismay, be present, go to
your local green and speak out, all this talk, what is it doing?
The current prez put a favorite go-to-guy of the extraction industries in as Interior Secretary. And he did nothing to clean out top level political appointees from the prior regime. And provided no direction to Salazar to tighten regulations or provide effective management.
The permit for the BP deep water drilling was issued under the current administration.
If we have to blame some politicians and political appointees for this one, blame should include the current group as well as the guys who started it (Reagan + Clinton + Bush 1 -> accelerating with Bush 2).
Amazing how these Democrats get the issue right and yet vote for Democrats instead of somebody like Nader.
How obvious can you get? Corporations do what is best for the people at the top of the corporation. Such as pay them 400 - 1000 times what the average worker gets.
To make that money, corporations try to set any situation of interest in their favor. They do not rely mostly on being more clever, faster, etc., the surest way to success is to fix the outcome. Fix the outcome. Take the profits and socialize the costs. Buy influence.
That means NOT regulating themselves in any way that might restrain profits. That means not being cautious about calamitous events that might or might not happen. That means polluting and otherwise socializing costs.
This is not even being critical of corporations. In reality, corporations are not controlled by their stockholders. They are controlled by one or a few powerful people. And corporations today are nothing like corporations at the time of our founders.
We need to wrestle the control and influence of corporations on our nation away from them. Corporations must be recognized as artificial financial constructs rather than super beings with super powers and no responsible humans at the helm.
BP would have operated in an entirely different manner were they not drilling on a Government Lease, without Government assistance, and had Government not limited their liability and drilling options.
And, yes, let's let those big oil boys do whatever they want to. I'm sure they'll do the right thing. The only reason we have BP's oil volcano is because of the mean old government. If we didn't have all those safety regulations, they probably would have had enough money to invest in better safety equipment.
The only thing you said that made any sense at all was that we should not give corporations limited liability. When we write corporate charters to mandate a singular allegiance to generating profits and limit liability, corporations are much more willing to take risks with "the commons" because they have very little to lose.
Government will never be able to "regulate" companies when they grow so large that their net worth exceeds the net worth of many countries. You just can't get there from here. Massive corporations have corrupted our democracy.
So, what do we do with these monstrously large corporations?
We have two choices. One is to break them up. In most cases, this is the preferred solution. The second, in cases where huge economies of scale are gained from the mammoth size of certain corporations, is to nationalize them.
Finally, we must change all corporate charters to require a "societal objective" in addition to the profit motive. If we empower corporations with the singular purpose of generating profits, they will inevitably work against society's interests. We cannot allow that to continue.
Whittle this sentence down to its key components: PROFITS INEVITABLY WORK AGAINST SOCIETY.
What made America "great", if it ever was, in fact great, was a free and open SOCIETY, one with mobility rather than entrenched classes. It was the idea that anyone could come here and, regardless of social status, could increase wealth and status by hard work and/or initiative.
America was never "great" because of high corporate profits. The idea that free market capitalism, without government interference, is "best" for the people of America is myth. It is past time to challenge the GOP and make them prove their assertions, using facts and history to demonstrate. They cannot do it.
My view has been that we should not allow corporate charters to mandate only the pursuit of profits. It sounds like you're arguing to outlaw profits. Let's examine this in more detail.
If you think of profits (i.e. undistributed profits) as a form of savings (i.e. retained earnings), profits can allow businesses to put aside something for a rainy day. If they don't, they could easily be forced to layoff workers if their business hits bad times. So, it's not clear that profits are inherently anti-societal. Also, profits can be plowed back into businesses to enable them to expand (and possibly hire more workers). Again, this can be socially beneficial.
However, let's say we mandated that corporations had to distribute their profits (or some percentage of them) at the end of the year. Instead of giving all profits to the shareholders, suppose we mandated that some percentage, say 50%, had to be distributed pro-rata to the employees before the shareholders realized any gains?
We need to start reducing the gap between rich and poor. A system that caters to labor before investment capital is a good starting point to do that.
A corporation will not stop until another corporation or a government destroys it. And, left to itself, a corporation will destroy, first its environment, including all of us, and then itself. Remember October 29, 1929? We didn't get a replay of that one in 2009 because we went in and rescued the bumbling fools before they destroyed us all and themselves.
We keep them around because accumulated wealth generates the power needed to do things we could not do individually, but corporations are like bulls, you must castrate (tax) them and yoke (regulate) them before you put them to work plowing your fields.
But, like Sarah Connor, we don't get it. The last dumb thing we did was to give corporations the power to choose our leaders.