Corporate Bombs Demand Justice Too

President Barack Obama said Sunday that his administration and law
enforcement officials are investigating who is responsible for a
bombing attempt in New York City's Times Square on Saturday night.

Obama, visiting Louisiana to inspect the oil spill efforts, said
he'll do what's necessary, "to protect the American people, to
determine who is behind this potentially deadly act and to see that
justice is done."

It must have sounded odd to the families of the oil rig workers lost
in the rig explosion of now two weeks back. Or the families of the
Massey Energy miners, 29 of whom lost their lives in an explosion last
month.

In the Times Square case, nothing exploded, no one died. The Pakistani
Taliban have claimed responsibility but officials aren't giving that
much credence.

In
the case of the Deepwater Horizon rig, there was a real explosion,
eleven real deaths, more injuries and quite possibly some violations of
safety regs. But still no Presidential use of that word justice. How
come when the threat's packed into a car on the street it's a matter of
seeking justice, but when it's corporate malfeasance, or oil spewing
onto the beach it's a matter of money?

To BP -- a company that saw $6 billion in profits this last quarter
-- talking only about money makes little sense. Besides, if companies
want to be treated as people for electioneerring purposes, isn't it
time we started talking about walking them away in cuffs?