BP oil spill offers lessons

Opinion: June 5, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By TAMMY JOHNSON

McClatchy-Tribune

The Obama administration’s decision to open a case against BP for possible criminal violations is a good but tardy step.

The overall lesson of the BP oil spill, however, is that if we let corporations run their operations without proper regulation, we’re inviting disaster.

BP appears grossly negligent in the lead up to the explosion on the oil rig; it seems terribly incompetent in the cleanup. Plus, the Obama administration and the Bush administration before it did not exercise the oversight necessary to prevent this spill.

As a result, we watch the environment and the livelihoods of whole communities go down the drain.

Settlement deal

Days after the oil spill began, BP offered settlement agreements to coastal residents in exchange for giving up their right to sue the company. There was no legal assistance or language translation for the large Vietnamese population on the Gulf of Mexico or for any other community. But what BP did offer was work cleaning up the company’s mess for low pay.

In disasters such as this, communities of color are historically hardest hit by lack of public accountability (see Hurricane Katrina). This toxic mix of government and corporate shared responsibility — the whole laissez faire approach — has played out to the detriment of the average Joe before. And it’s proven to be especially detrimental to James, Juan and Jin.

The business model of government has gone bust. Not just in offshore oil drilling, but across the board.

Back in the 1990s, public school reformers were constantly confronted with the slogan, “We should run our schools like we run our businesses.” Entrepreneur Chris Whittle boasted that his Edison schools could both turn a profit and academically outperform public schools. Justifiably frustrated by public schools, black and Latino families gave them a chance. By 2003 the venture was in the red, the academics flat-lined, and Whittle was given a bailout from then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

After the Clinton administration’s broad deregulation of the financial services industry, profitable subprime loans encouraged bankers to take on larger risks. The first targets of predatory lenders were people of color, who were given high-rate loans even when they could qualify for prime loans. Then, everybody began to suffer. As borrowers began to default en masse and foreclosure rates rose, the on-paper assets turned into real-dollar liabilities. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama wagged their fingers and handed out bailouts — to the bankers.

As in the oil spill, education and banking, we need proper oversight, and we need to engage the poor and communities of color, who suffer disproportionately.If the BP disaster tells us anything, it is that government and corporations can’t be left alone with the public’s business.

Tammy Johnson is director of strategic partnerships at the Applied Research Center. She also writes and blogs at ColorLines and RaceWire. She wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.