Tobacco Suit...

Well, there appears to be another in the long list of Bush appointing people to regulate themselves.

It has been widely reported in the news over the past few days that the government case against the tobacco companies had been seeking an award of $130 billion dollars, and that in a surprise move at the last minute (after nine months of building a case and every reason to expect that they would win the whole ball of wax), the government reduced its requested damages by over 92% to a mere $10 billion. Still a large amount, and you can argue the merits of the case all you like, but why the sudden decision that perhaps the tobacco folks didn't need to be punished as much?

It turns out, this directive came from Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum, who prior to his current job was a law partner at an Atlanta law firm representing, you guessed it, the Tobacco Industry.

At a time when we are back to deficit spending, why are we turning down large sums of money?

And more importantly, if we're going to let people police themselves, why even have the pretense of oversight? Save the money and just shut down the Justice Department, the EPA, the SEC. Cut their funding. Not that I would advocate this course of action, but if you're going to remove the teeth from these organizations, such that they no longer have will or power to actually regulate anything, then why are we still paying for them?

Copyright (c) June 16, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net