what do these two stories have in common??

CORRUPTION -- VACCINE INDUSTRY LOBBYISTS HELPED WRITE FRIST-BACKED SHIELD LAW: "Vaccine industry officials helped shape legislation behind the scenes that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist secretly amended into a bill to shield them from lawsuits," the Tennessean reports, citing internal emails released in a report by the watchdog group Public Citizen. Last December, it was revealed that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) had inserted legislation shielding vaccine manufacturers from product liability claims into a defense spending bill "without debate and in violation of usual Senate practice." At the time, critics warned that the language was dangerously broad, shielding the vaccine makers from lawsuits even in cases of negligence or recklessness. But that's just how vaccine makers wanted it. In private meetings with Frist's staff and the White House, a vaccine manufacturer's trade group "asked that the legislation make clear that a vaccine maker could only be successfully sued if 'willful misconduct' on its part were proved," The Tennessean reports. In another e-mail, the group's chief lobbyist "described a meeting in which a deputy of Bush strategist Karl Rove said it was 'important to the President that a bill move this year,' and said 'they had invited industry to discuss what they understood to be a few key remaining points' of contention."

ENVIRONMENT -- POLLUTION AT BP REFINERY IN TEXAS TRIPLES IN ONE YEAR: British Petroleum (BP), which is already under criminal investigation for a huge oil spill in Alaska and was recently fined $21.3 million for an explosion at its Texas City refinery last year that killed 15 people, is now under fire for reporting the same refinery "released three times as much pollution in 2004 as it did in 2003, according to the most recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency." The "increase in emissions at BP was so large it distorted the data for refineries nationwide" and "makes the facility far and away the most polluting refinery in the U.S." BP "is investigating whether it has been accurately documenting pollution," and if their numbers turn out to have been inaccurate, it "could prompt the EPA to penalize the company" with a $32,500 per violation fine. "Most of the increase in pollution was from formaldehyde and ammonia, which can form smog and soot and irritate the eyes, nose and throat." "Erroneous estimates of pollution from the industry are not new," the Houston Chronicle reported this weekend. "In 2000, as part of the Texas Air Quality Study, researchers found that companies in the Houston area were underreporting emissions of certain chemicals by as much as three to 10 times." And in 2004, the EPA's inspector general "the agency was not monitoring pollution to double-check the industry's numbers" despite a court order saying they had to do so.

They undermine the founding principles of the objectivist libertarians. These corporations are acting in their own self interests, utilizing market forces to enrich their shareholders, and avoiding the messy entanglements of regulations and laws. That thousands of human beings will die serves only the greater interests of capitalism, no longer able to sustain the havenots with things that "belong" to the haves. At some point, basic essential human rights must be violated to sustain the privileges and rights of the elitist objectivists. Obviously that will never be a problem for them; in their own private relativisms they can create the rational justifications for preserving the free markets at the expense of human life.