November 1st - Anatole Carter

“It’s the economy.”

According to Anatole Carter, a former Marine living in Baton Rouge, nothing matters as much as what impacts the pocketbook, and nothing is scarier than government intervention in the stock market and supporting large corporations.

Anatole Carter at Riverbend Park in New Orleans on November 1st, 2008.

“We are gonna be like China soon,” Carter said.”Government is involved in everything we are doing right now.”

Carter, 34, is as a platform worker for a private oil company which taps wells for oil companies like Shell, Texaco and British Petroleum. According to Carter working on the platforms in the Gulf of Mexico exposes him to much of the outsourcing being talked about on the campaign trail. Carter says that many of the vessels and their work is being done by countries with cheaper labor.

“The well work I’m seeing is mostly foreign vessels from Malaysia, India, and Mexico,” Carter said. “Eight years ago it was all American boats. Things are getting outsourced. Now we got these economic problems, we need people.”

Carter thinks that the economy can bounce back if our next president can lower taxes and start creating jobs. But when he looks at the headlines he’s discouraged by the number of solid companies that are making massive layoffs.

Carter, who owns his house in Baton Rouge, isn’t worried about making his mortgage payments because the oil business is booming and he recently got a raise. But with the increase in salary comes increased responsibility.

“Man, right now, if the bat phone rings, I gotta hop on the helicopter and go.”

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