http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0509050116sep05,0,1054101.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hedCorporate thieves are being allowed to walk off with billions
Derrick Z. Jackson, New York Times News Service
Published September 5, 2005
President Bush last week told ABC-TV, "There ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud."
Zero tolerance is meaningless when the White House lets the biggest looters of Hurricane Katrina walk off with billions of dollars.
We are not referring to the people you currently see in endless footage, crashing through storefronts and wading through chest-high water with clothes, food and pharmaceuticals. Some folks are disgusting in their thuggishness, but a great many others are simply desperate, having gone days without food or water. The latter are living out one of the most famous hypothetical problems in moral reasoning--should a husband steal a cancer drug he cannot afford for his dying wife?
No such sympathy is to be extended to big oil. The nation has on its hands a disaster so profound that we have not even begun to seriously count the bodies in the floodwaters. It brings us as close as we may get in our lifetime to places like Bangladesh.
New Orleans will not return to normal for years. Members of the Red Cross, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, police agencies and firefighters are sacrificing time and risking lives to save lives. Texas is opening up its school systems for homeless Louisiana children. Food wholesalers are giving away their stocks to passersby. The Astrodome took in the refugees of the Superdome.
In the midst of this charity, big oil looted the nation. The pumps instantly shot past $3 a gallon, with $4 a gallon well in sight.