Free Enterprise Gone Wild: How We're Getting Screwed in 4 Easy Steps

Good morning suckers. How are we doing today? Okay, enough pleasantries. Take the position. Go ahead, you should be getting good at it by now; lean over, grab your ankles and get ready for another dose of Free Enterprisers Gone Wild!

The pattern is now set, clear and undeniable. Here’s how it works:

    Step 1: Get your own people into useful positions in government.

    Step 2: Get your people in government to allow you to create a giant-ass problem or mess.

    Step 3: Get your people in government to hire you to fix, clean up and manage the mess they let you create.

    Step 4: Collect zillions of “bonus” (taxpayer) dollars cleaning up your own messes.

- Halliburton’s Dick Cheney started two wars and then hires Halliburton, with our money, as a kind of privatized Headquarters & Supply Company to feed, house and supply our soldiers while they fight, get wounded and die in the wars started by our $32 Million Man, Halliburton Dick.

- Wall Street and Big Bankers like Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and a few hundred others lobby against regulations, loot the economy into near-depression, get themselves hired to clean up the mess and promptly bail out their old companies -- with taxpayer money -- and hire their old friends to manage their own bailout -- with taxpayer money. (Bonnie and Clyde missed a huge opportunity by being too early.)

- Big Oil lobbies against regulations and then writes those they can’t stop, get their own people in government to run interference for them, create the biggest ecological disaster since Chernobyl and then convince their friends in government to hire them to clean up the mess, even allowing them to sell their own cleanup product Corexit -- which is banned in Europe --  for the process.

 "So why is BP sticking with Corexit? The answer may be Nalco's close relationship with major oil firms—including BP, as Greenwire reported last week. The company was founded in 1994 as a joint venture with ExxonMobil's chemical division. Nalco bought out Exxon's share in 2001, but retained its strong oil industry ties. One Nalco board member, Daniel Sanders, and a vice president, Steve Taylor, both served as senior executives at Exxon. Another Nalco board member, Rodney Chase, worked for BP for 38 years.“ (Full Story)

Oh, quick, look! Here’s Halliburton again. My, my, my, but that company gets around. It was Halliburton’s deep-well cementing job that failed and led to the BP blowout in the Gulf. But apparently there’s no mess big enough to take the shine off these tumor-like companies:

    Halliburton to Present at the 2010 UBS Global Oil and Gas Conference

    MarketWatch (press release) - ‎May 17, 2010‎

    Interested parties may listen to the presentation live over the Internet by accessing the link to the web cast at www.halliburton.com.

I get it. Just lean over and grab those taxpayer ankles. Because it would appear that electing a Democrat president who promised “change we can believe in," hasn’t changed a goddamn thing.

More below from ProPublica on this most recent screwing. Until then, just grin and bear it and try to learn to like it -- I guess.

From Propublica's blog:

In Gulf Spill, BP Using Dispersants Banned in U.K

The two types of dispersants BP is spraying in the Gulf of Mexico are banned for use [1] on oil spills in the U.K. As EPA-approved products [2], BP has been using them in greater quantities than dispersants have ever been used [3] in the history of U.S. oil spills.

BP is using two products from a line of dispersants called Corexit [4], which EPA data [2] appear to show is more toxic and less effective [5] on South Louisiana crude than other available dispersants, according to Greenwire.