BP deserves to be taken over

May 18, 2010

ON MAY 13, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration is creating a burst of new federal agencies that "have toughened or proposed new standards to protect Americans from tainted eggs, safeguard construction workers from crane accidents, prevent injuries from baby walkers and even protect polar bears from extinction." The article refers to this as a "new age of regulation."

The following day, the president assailed BP, Haliburton and Transocean for their roles in the gulf disaster, and promised to end the government's "cozy" relationship with the oil industry.

I don't buy any of it, not for a moment. Why? There are two reasons.

First, I learned from the administration's "regulation" of the health insurance industry that the administration is duplicitous. They gained favor with progressives by accurately identifying the insurance industry's role in our failing health care delivery system and relied on the president's appealing demeanor to convince us that they were addressing the issue in a meaningful way.

We ended up with a bill actually written by the insurance industry that includes modest regulations, replete with large loopholes, and that mandates American citizens to purchase a private health insurance plan from the very corporations that have created these disastrous circumstances in the first place.

The second reason is because I know in my heart that we no longer have time for these ridiculous games. I care too much about people to stand idly by as the international corporate state destroys our habitat. I care too much about my 10-year old son's future. I can't witness an endless oil reserve exploding into the sea without doing everything in my power to dismantle the powerful capitalists who seem bent on destroying the human race.

Since governmental regulation is impeded by the corporatizing of democracy, all of BP's assets must be seized by an international people's tribunal--environmentalists, revolutionaries and dreamers of a better world.

To hold the companies involved in this travesty accountable, we must all unite now to end the despotic oligarchy whose primary goal is to see that BP's CEOs and shareholders survive this calamity unscathed. Only a united people's action can mitigate the worst-case scenario in which capitalists continue to destroy our habitat.
Steve Blank, Madison, Wis.

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