ah the double standard again. In post after post I see you put out, we're supposed to trust explicitly our current crop of leaders as they go forth in the world dropping bombs and yet, when I talk about keeping the lid on some corporations leading us into a global energy crisis, you can't trust the corruption that might ensue. Tom, I'm well aware of the possibility of corruption but it seems to me to be prevalent on both sides of the isle.

Let's talk about the regulations that have saddled our corporations in America.

We'll start with the environmental ones. If a politician helps to create legislation that forces a factory to produce less pollution, exactly how can that guy personally gain from imposing those restrictions? Is every senator that has voted for that type of law in bed with the pollution equipment industry? Is his party in cahoots with an overseas manufacturing firm that will gain from the reduced profit of company having to conform to the higher standards? I don't know about you but I live in a city that used to hang under the pall of a brown cloud most of the year, something that happens rarely these days. I'm not quite willing to go back to the times when I could barely breathe simply to extend our supplies of gasoline or the profits of some manufacturing firms.

Oh I suppose you mean minimum wage and worker's protection laws. Yes, you can just smell the corruption that had to be in place to dream up horrible legislation like that. I don't advocate strong union laws so let's keep this instead to laws such as OSSHA regulations and minimum wage. Many of those regulations actually made American business stronger. Globally it's a bit tougher to compete but there have been countless studies done to show major productivity gains and reduced employee theft when workers have felt a sense of respect and safety from their employers. Can you imagine the crime rates and the welfare state we'd have if giant corporations were able to treat their workers as the factories in 3rd world countries do? Can you imagine the costs that would get passed on to all of us consumers if workplace accidents happened at alarming rates? Yeah, there's overkill in regulation at times but the net outcome seems to be positive.

Tom, refineries aren't getting built in the US not because of governmental restrictions. They're not being built because the price of gas is so damned cheap that they're not profitable enough. Nuclear power plants aren't getting built not because of government regulations but simply that their construction and maintenance costs are huge and the existing ones can't find enough place to put their waste. Want it in your backyard?

So government regulations create corruption? If I were trying to gain wealth and power it would seem that I would align myself with big business and work to remove restrictions rather than hook up with environmental causes and worker protection ideals. To not be concerned about those things seems to me to instead be encouraging a much deeper and more sinister form of corruption.