American Conservatives from Joe Barton to Rand Paul and Sarah Palin have expressed outrage that the President Obama would use the the power of his office to hold BP accountable to the residents of the Gulf Coast. They are outraged because they believe this is something the government should not do: help Americans who are out-matched by corporate wealth, power and influence get some measure of justice.
Conservatives haven’t quite reduced government to "the size where we can drown it in the bathtub". Not yet, but they keep trying because they believe government shouldn’t do what people cannot do themselves. So, if only to see what kind of world they have in mind, it’s worth looking at what happens when government doesn’t act to hold corporations accountable and protect people from the consequences of corporate negligence or malfeasance, and what happens when it can’t.
