Mike Forster's Position Papers - Profit Over People

President Bush - Profit Over People

Mike Forster, Palo Alto California
Copyright © 2002 Mike Forster

President Bush favors excess profit for large companies, at the expense of the quality of life of citizens and residents, and at the expense of a healthy, appropriately-regulated free market.

Free markets are the best means for an economy to manage itself. However, any system needs some level of oversight and management. Totally unfettered free markets incur their own excesses.

Near the end of his term in office, President Clinton invoked legal executive orders that ended speculation in energy prices in California. Shortly after taking office, President Bush rescinded those orders, which again enabled energy price speculation.

One could argue that the executive orders restricted a free market. However, what actually occurred was excess profiteering that took advantage of California's bungling its deregulation of its own energy production and distribution companies.

The evidence is in the results of President's Bush's action. California citizens paid - and continue to pay - higher prices for energy, higher in the billions of dollars. Most of those billions of dollars have gone to profits to energy companies based in Texas - the same energy companies that made large contributions to President Bush's election campaign.

President Clinton's executive order would have allowed energy companies such as those in Texas to make a reasonable level of profit during this period. President Bush's rescinding of that order enabled those same companies to reap unwarrented excess profits, at the expense of California citizens and residents.