The Sick Corporate/Government Collusion

Dana Milbank of the WaPo writes,

In Washington, belief in corporate divinity has become a bipartisan religion, and it's polytheistic: Lawmakers, despite the occasional bit of populist rhetoric, routinely provide generous offerings to the automotive, aerospace, financial, pharmaceutical and insurance industries, along with petroleum.

An article by The Post's Dan Eggen explains why: More than 1,400 former members of Congress, staffers and federal employees registered as lobbyists in the financial services sector alone since the start of 2009, according to a study by Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics. Many of these lobbyists, of course, moonlight as fundraising captains for lawmakers.

No wonder politicians have got the corporate religion. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), furthering the act-of-God view, asserted that "this is not an environmental disaster" in the gulf "because it is a natural phenomena." Rand Paul, the GOP Senate candidate in Kentucky, said the administration's vow to keep a boot on the throat of BP is "un-American." Former GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said the criminal investigation of BP is a "mistake."

Democrats have been only slightly less devout. They're giving no serious consideration to the demand from some on the left, including Robert Reich, to put BP into temporary receivership. The administration's criminal investigation of BP has little chance of getting executives locked up. BP CEO Tony Hayward won't even commit to suspending BP's dividend (more than $10 billion last year), as some Democratic senators have demanded, and he put the clean-up cost at a paltry $3 billion over six months, far less than what many analysts say the real cost will be.

That's just one more contemptuous utterance from a man who has already dubbed the spill "tiny," called environmental damage "very modest," denied the existence of underwater oil plumes, suggested that sickened oil cleanup workers had food poisoning and complained that he wanted his "life back."

Americans feel the outrage more than their leaders do. A recent Gallup poll shows that 73 percent think BP has done a poor or very poor job. Overall, Americans are just as distrustful of corporations as they are of the federal government. A Pew Research Center poll released in April found that 64 percent think large corporations are having a negative effect on the country, compared with 65 percent who say that of the government.