Oil Tanker Suit for Lost Income

Let’s see. Sen. Bob Dole and other Republican “friends of taxpayers” think the 5th Amendment requires that taxpayers compensate Exxon for the cost of not polluting the oceans (“Tanker Seeks Return to Alaskan Waters,” May 4). Other advocates of this principle want taxpayers to compensate farmers in the San Joaquin and Imperial valleys for not dumping pesticides into our ground water, and compensate property owners in Wyoming for not killing endangered species. By this logic, would they also compensate marijuana growers in Humboldt County and vast areas of rural Kentucky who have been put out of business by the federal “war on drugs”?

The really monstrous hypocrisy is that Dole criticizes Democrats as big spenders while supporting a bill that might give $100 billion in federal money to big polluters. The Republican battle cry for a balanced budget is nothing more than a smoke screen for policies that would return us to the vicious capitalism of the 1890s when (without an EPA) a few powerful industrialists raped the environment at will, (without an NLRB or minimum-wage law) paid starvation wages to workers who labored (without an OSHA) in such dangerous conditions and (without an FDA) consumed so much tainted canned food that their life expectancy was less than 40 years. It was big, expensive regulatory government supported by Progressive Republicans and Democrats that changed all that.

GERALD SHENK

San Pedro