Greed Behind BP, Mine Disasters

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/06/15/greed-behind-bp-mine-disasters/

United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard and Mine Workers (UMWA) Cecil Roberts take on the root of all evil behind the nation’s disasters in this crosspost from the Campaign for America.

As oil mucked the Gulf of Mexico and families mourned 11 dead rig workers, BP officials proclaimed that the corporation’s priority always was safety. This tracked the tack taken by Massey Energy, whose officials also declared safety was paramount after an explosion in the corporation’s Upper Big Branch mine killed 29 workers.

CEOs commonly make such incongruous assertions to protect profits after corporate-caused disasters. They’re driven by the same factor that is fundamental to the catastrophes—greed.

Nothing wrong with that, right? Not in a society that has converted greed from a vice to a virtue. Not in the place that inspired the book, “Greed is Good: The Capitalist Pig Guide to Investing.” Surely it’s no problem in the land where “Greed” has its own game show on Fox and where Ayn Rand, the “money-is-the-root-of-all-good” philosopher, reigns as Republican queen long after her death…

in the midst of the Great Recession caused by Wall Street recklessness, has repeatedly delayed renewal of unemployment benefits and now is terminating federal health insurance support for the furloughed middle class.

Middle-class workers are the ones who die in coal mines and on oil rigs.

FULL story at link.

Predatory corporations thrive where ever corrupt governments allow them. Because these corporations can buy legislators and literally write the rules they have become pervasive.
That is why a minor oil corporations, like BP, can assume such power over the people who are supposed to be regulating them and the actual people who do their dirty work.
When you let the fox in the hen house the worst of foxes come home to roost.