The chemical tank leakage in Charleston, West Virginia have the ideologues drawing up positions
for greater government oversight versus those fighting a rear guard
action to placate the public and then forget the disaster. The usual
Chamber of Commerce argument of less government interference
defending industry are tiresome when the real problem in a rural poor
state dependent on large companies extracting natural resources is
crony capitalism circumventing an individual's property rights; such
as to clean air, water and unspoiled woodland.
It
is sad to see Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a former coal
broker, “expounded
on the theme. “Coal and chemicals inevitably bring risk — but
that doesn’t mean they should be shut down,” Mr. Manchin said.
“Cicero says, “To err is human.’ But you’re going to stop
living because you’re afraid of making a mistake?”
No, but why circumvent the process of making sloppy operators pay
for their mistake in court? Let me get this right Joe. You want
give industry the right to rape, pillage and spoil your state to the
economic detriment of it's citizens so that your coal brokerage has
more business?
As a Libertarian I
believe in less government and more liberty. I believe in Adam
Smith's observation that many players acting in their self interest
most efficiently increases the public good. Concentrations of
economic power that reduce the number of players capable of operating
on an equal basis distorts this basic law of economics so that the
public good is reduced. When society attempts to regulate these
monopoly distortions with rules it is inevitable that wealthy
operators will hire the best legal talent to ameliorate if not
eliminate them. West Virginia appears to have a long tradition of
letting industry run rough shod over regulations already in place. I
doubt that additional ones will help. On the other hand what would
help is the economic sting of making the despoilers of the state pay.
The first order of
business in West Virginia is to expose the cozy relations between
industry and regulators with thorough well argued journalism of the
same caliber of McClure’s magazine described in Doris Kearns
Goodwin's The
Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden
Age of Journalism.
Hopefully these exposes elects a reforming governor much like TR to
clear the sinecures of influence out of State Government so that the
judiciary can do it's job of making industry pay for the damage they
create. With regard to additional regulation this TR like persona
would order a commission to study accidents such as the chemical tank
incident in Charleston and develop valuations necessary to protect
the public with bonding requirements. Industrial facilities with the
potential to put hundreds of thousands of people at risk will require
sufficient insurance that the underwriters, protecting their
reserves, will inspect, audit and eliminate sloppy operators
beforehand. If there is an accident, then there is a pool of money
to fix and compensate.
