Seminole Chronicle Viewpoints: We need to clean up oil-slick business:

By Chris Lomas, Chairperson, Seminole County Democratic Party | June 02, 2010

Up until about six weeks ago, the cable news channels were peppered with ads from BP, saying things like, "We have lots of oil," and "We should be looking closer to home," while an animated map of the Gulf and Atlantic coastlines lit up, dotted with little derricks. They don't show these commercials now. But eventually the leak will be stopped, the story will morph into one of cleanup and investigation, and the crisis will fade from the front page. And soon afterward, especially if gas prices start rising, we'll once again see those happy little derricks.

What's to be done by way of public policy? Certainly there will be an overdue sweep of personnel at the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, along with criminal indictments for corruption. But will business as usual be changed? The same profit drive that cut corners around operational safety leading to the explosion won't go away. Such actions span both industries and history-from Carnegie Steel to Triangle Shirtwaist to Massey Energy's Big Branch coal mine just eight weeks ago. And though less physically messy, the same sort of ethic ruled at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and their ilk-resulting in destruction every bit as real. It is extreme devotion to an abstraction called the free market, which the Bible more colorfully describes as worshipping the golden calf.

But these are not necessary behaviors. Business can be profitable and sane. And special favors given to well-connected corporations and favored industries are actually anti-business because they stifle honest competitors and suppress innovation. We need rules that constrain the ugly excesses, create level opportunities, and punish the wrongdoers. We need political leaders dedicated to choosing worth over greed. And we need an informed citizenry to demand that laws be written and enforced to serve people-not corporations.

Seminole County residents of Congressional District 7 have a particularly clear choice this November. Heather Beaven, a medal-winning Navy veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm, is our Democratic nominee in that race. She unabashedly proclaims on her campaign website, "I still believe that, through it all, America's greatest legacy is our commitment to limitless opportunity." Contrast that with incumbent Congressman John Mica, who boasts of his affinity for giving the oil industry whatever it wants, including drilling in the Everglades, while cutting the Coast Guard budget. With a brother who's an oil lobbyist in Tallahassee, and having received a slick $60,000 in oil industry political contributions, Mica's priorities are not those of Florida and its future.