Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on BP's Victims
The leftarati is demanding the nationalization of BP. Chris "Hardball" Matthews recently hectored: "Why doesn't the president go in there, nationalize the industry and get the job done?" Salon's Joe Conason, likewise, advocates taking a leaf from Norway's page and nationalizing the whole industry to constrain a "dangerous economic sector." Former labor secretary-turned-Berkley-professor Robert Reich insists that if the government can take over AIG and General Motors, then why not BP's North America branch? And Rosie O' Donnell has opined… oh nevermind, who cares!
But the harsh truth, notes Shikha Dalmia in her latest Forbes column, is that neither the government nor the company can make the victims of the spill whole again. "But the absolute worst thing one could do to them is consign them to the tender mercies of a government-controlled BP," Dalmia writes.