Do you really want to do away with government?  Have you thought about it, really analyzed it?  Have you considered what this country would look like without government?  Consider just two examples, both recently in the news:

The Oil Disaster.  Deepwater Horizon, Halliburton and BP are all pointing fingers at each other, but there is no doubt that criminal negligence on the part of all of them in the pursuit of ever more profits caused this disaster.  Eleven workers killed, an entire body of water irreparably damaged, thousands of peoples’ livelihoods destroyed, millions of fish, birds and other species gone, wetlands (already severely degraded) destroyed and the list goes on.

Over the past decades, federal regulatory agencies such as the Minerals and Management Service (now the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement) stopped performing their duties as regulators and climbed into bed with the oil companies.  BP has been cited and fined too many times to count for safety violations, especially in the wake of the 2005 Texas City blast that killed 15 workers and injured 170 more.  The inevitable result of BP’s pursuit of profits at the expense of safety and lives and the utter failure of federal regulatory agencies was this year’s deaths of 11 workers and the destruction of a huge body of water.

The Egg Recall.  1.5 billion eggs recalled.  Yes, the figure really is 1.5 billion eggs.  Austin “Jack” DeCoster, the owner of one of this country’s largest egg producing industrial farming operations was chased out of Maryland because of his unsafe practices and his arrogant unwillingness to change them.  But Iowa welcomed him with open arms and while he has been cited, also too many times to count since the 70s, for horrendously filthy conditions for his chickens and workers alike and for the salmonella produced by those conditions, he has remained in business.  DeCoster has thumbed his nose at regulators for decades, sickens large numbers of people and reaps enormous profits.  DeCoster is a business criminal and regulatory agencies are either unwilling or unable to shut him down.

These two recent examples are stark reminders of why we need government to protect us from the excesses of corporate greed.  The problem isn’t that we need less government, we need ethical, honest government that works for us.  Both the BP oil disaster and the DeCoster egg recall illustrate the profound failure and weakness of a government whose regulatory agencies have become servants of the industries they are supposed to regulate.

But doing away with government and those agencies is the opposite of what is needed.  Doing away with regulatory agencies will only ensure more of the same death and destruction.  Do you want to be left at the mercy of powerful corporations which already rule our lives and control our government?

We must take back our government and demand not only enforcement of existing regulations, but tougher regulations.  We must demand an end to the revolving door between industry and regulatory agencies, which has done more than anything else to ensure that these disasters and deaths will continue.  Once industry insiders are allowed to take over the agencies that are supposed to regulate them, we the people are left with a destroyed Gulf of Mexico, over 1300 innocent people sick from salmonella and 29 coal miners dead earlier this year from Massey Coal’s takeover of the Mine Safety and Health Administration agency.

But the most important thing we can do as citizens is to vote for and elect people like myself who believe that strong and unwavering government regulation of corporations in all sectors – food, pharmaceutical, energy, financial – is of paramount importance.

We need regulatory agencies that do what they are supposed to do – protect us from the greed of corporations and their executives who value profit over our lives.  If we don’t demand this and elect people who will act on our demands, this year’s disasters will become commonplace and innocent people will continue to suffer and die.