Bush's Cabinet - The Corporate Connection

Adam

Members of Bush's Cabinet, all from big oil and energy and mining? You bet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/americas/1138009.stm
http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet.asp

russ_watters

Having corporate leaders in government is far better than having career politicians. I highly recommend Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders."

Zero

Pointing us towards fiction, huh? LOL, ok, it can't be any worse than the fiction that is modern politics!

Having corporate leaders in government is not the best thing in the world, because the first thing they push for is deregulation, which inevitably leads to trouble.

Dissident Dan

Well, I think that you could guess what I think about the fact that big business people, many of whom are in oil and energy, being the leaders of the country, and then their industries subsequently getting great government contracts and policy changes.

Dave

Would it be fair to not let people with corporate connections be President? I mean, alot of the corporate skills could overlap with the Presidential ones?

Zero

Is it fair to appoint someone to run an agency for the benefit of the people, when it is in his financial interests to run it into the ground instead?

Dave

I guess that answer would be no...

schwarzchildradius

terrific quote, DD. so far as I've heard, it's Bechtel (search 'big dig' in boston) and Worldcom (search 'biggest fraud in history') that've been anointed with the Iraqi booty.
You know, one of the things that Clinton did, was to sign policy that flew in the face of the very industries that supported him, because it was in the best interest of the country to do so. Few men are as devoted to principle.

russ_watters

Hehe. You serious? I guess you probably are. [8)]

schwarzchildradius

Thanks, RW, yes I'm serious. It's just too bad that Gore smoked so much pot etc, he couda been a contenda!

Shadow

I'm not saying that I disagree with you Zero, but you must take into account that there are many benefits too. These people can see a bigger picture than an every day politician and in addition, I would like to say that if they are from:

as Adam said, then they would probably be good choices in this time period for two reasons. 1) They have experience running such large companies that they would probably be better off helping run a country than some senator that at most has represented his/her state and never had any real experience running a country or business.
2)Right now, we need those things; Energy, Oil, and for Mining all sorts of things like Gold for example.

Zero

The problem is, these people want to deregulate everything...and as it has become abumdantly clear, unregulated business is a bad idea.

Dissident Dan

Shadow, the big problem with your post is that it has the assumption that CEOs will care about others. Big oil CEOS are big oil CEOs because they were cutthroat and maximized profits for their own business, regardless of how their actions affect others.

Shadow

With all due respect dan that pretty much sums up quite a few politicians these days. Some would give anything for power.