Letter to the Editor

Justin Stayton
Eng.20803
A. Patrick
Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor, I read the article that you presented on Wednesday September 10th, 2008. I am deeply concerned with the information in this article. You reported that thirteen employees in the Denver office of the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service were allegedly were accepting “gifts” such as golf and ski trips from oil companies. The report you mention also alleges that Gregory W. Smith the former head of the Denver Royalty-in-Kind office “used illegal drugs and had sex with subordinates.” According to the article “Between 2002 and 2006, nearly a third of the 55-person staff in the Denver office received gifts and gratuities form oil and gas companies.”
This arises many questions in my mind. First and foremost how does a situation like this occur for as long as it did. How come in four year no one seemed to care enough to look at the income of these government officials and notice that one was working part time for an oil company. Well I know some may claim that this would be an unconstitutional invasion of privacy but I disagree if you work for the U.S. government dealing with such contracts as they do it should be public record and checked at least on a yearly basis to prevent such crimes from accruing. This problem is an apparent lack of supervision from our government in Washington. I and the rest of the country would like to know who exactly is responsible for this supervision.
Second, What action has been taken against these 13 men? Aside from the apparent sexual assault and drug charges, what these men did was a crime. It is a textbook example of white-collar crime and resembles everything wrong with this country. We as the citizens of this country are sick and tried of seeing our elected and high ranking officials go unpunished for these types of crimes. All to often it is these crimes that often go unnoticed by the general population. The media in this country which is also fed by the “generous handouts” of such industries to keep these crimes out of sight. It is crimes like this that do the most damage to this country. Just because there is not a physical victim in these crimes does not mean that these crimes are victimless. When government contracts like these are swayed one way or another the taxpayers and blue-collar hard working Americans pay, our economy suffers and we lose power in a global market.
You also explain that these “charges also come as lawmakers and both presidential candidates weigh giving oil companies more access to federal lands, which would bring in more money to the federal government.” We now have a answer to the prior two questions if the federal government is going to profit off of these same persuasive contracts are we really to suspect that they would do something to stop them? I would like to know exactly were the candidates stand on this issue. If either one supports this issue we might as well pack up and head for the hills because this will be the candidate the oil companies support and back financially and this is the exact problem we have with the current president. And yet congress passes legislation to stop the deposition of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to allow for more on the market which is suppose to lower gas prices. Yeah ill believe that when I see it, which doesn’t seem to be anytime soon.
Authors Note: I claim this as a first draft and welcome any and all suggestions to polishing and revising. All the content I would like added is here but I am still undecided as to whether it is arranged to strengthen my argument.