[Mb-civic] Big oil's bigtime looting - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Big oil's bigtime looting

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  September 2, 2005

PRESIDENT BUSH yesterday told ABC-TV, ''there ought to be zero tolerance 
of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it 
be looting or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of 
charitable giving or insurance fraud."

Zero tolerance is meaningless when the White House lets the biggest 
looters of Hurricane Katrina walk off with billions of dollars.

We are not referring to the people you currently see in endless footage, 
crashing through storefronts and wading through chest-high water with 
clothes, food, and pharmaceuticals. Some folks are disgusting in their 
thuggishness, but a great many others are simply desperate, having now 
gone three days without food or water. The latter are living out one of 
the most famous hypothetical problems in moral reasoning -- should a 
husband steal a cancer drug he cannot afford for his dying wife?

No such sympathy is to be extended to big oil. The nation has on its 
hands a disaster so profound that we have not even begun to seriously 
count the bodies in the floodwaters. It brings us as close as we may get 
in our lifetime to places like Bangladesh.

New Orleans is under martial law and will not return to normal for 
years. Members of the Red Cross, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, 
police agencies, and firefighters are sacrificing time and risking lives 
to save lives. Texas is opening up its school systems for homeless 
Louisiana children. Generous food wholesalers are giving away their 
stocks to passersby. The Astrodome is taking in the refugees of the 
Superdome.

In the midst of this charity, big oil looted the nation. The pumps 
instantly shot past $3 a gallon, with $4 a gallon well in sight.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/09/02/big_oils_bigtime_looting/
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