Saturday, November 06, 2010

Glad and sad...

 Well, the Republicans have majority control of the House of Representatives and are finally stating just what their agendas will be.. the same agendas that they had before, less taxes, less service, less regulation.

 Wait a minute, less regulation? Isn't that how the Banking Industry and Wall Street nearly wiped out the United States and World economies? Are they freaking nuts? They say less regulation will boost the economy. In the same way giving tax breaks to the ultra rich has made this a better country for the average working person.

 One thing that needs to go is the E.P.A. they say. According to their theory it's regulating the waste from industry that's making corporations send jobs to China. Oh, but wait.. China has gone and discovered that their lack of regulation of industrial waste nearly wiped out millions of the people that made their economy the giant it is and are now putting in place stronger environmental laws.

 Looks like our out sourcing corporations may have to look for some other desperate country that doesn't care if their people die from the effects of industrial pollution.

 I'm glad I'm old enough that I probably won't see the effects this has on our current crop of children, I'm sad they'll have to put up with the result of short sighted greed.

 These people have forgotten about communities like Love Canal. Where mother weren't mothers because of the incredible rate of stillbirths in that community, or the amazing number of people that developed cancer and leukemia .. or the fact that the town had to be evacuated and was declared unsafe for human residence due to the immense concentrations of pollutants that had been dumped there then buried.

 Yeah, get rid of the E.P.A. you can trust industry to not take short cuts to make bigger profits.
 In the same way you can trust Wall Street to not gamble with your pension funds.

 Probably I'm whistling into the dark and no one's reading this little missive, but if you are.. think about dioxins, lead and mercury in your water supply.. it won't kill you fast, it'll take 10 to 15 years to cause noticeable effects, your children will be drinking that same water.
 Ahh, but wait.. big industry sells bottled water so you can have a safe water supply. That shows they have your back, right? Just don't let the kids play in the back yard, or touch the soil. They'll be fine.

 Ask the coal miners how much corporations care about them. You can bet your bottom dollar that if they weren't dependent on the industry to feed their kids 99.9% of the guys that work down in the coal mines would rather do anything but mine coal.

 How many kids grow up saying I want to go work where I can get Black Lung, or killed in a cave in or methane explosion because the corporation that owns the mine can't be bothered making sure that the mine is adhering to the safety regulations because that want another fifteen cents a ton*.

  They'd rather pay lawyers millions to go to court and fight the regulations than spend that money on fixing the problems in the mine or threaten to shut down the mine and put those miners out of work. Yeah, regulations are bad for Joe the Coal Miner.

 Hey, why don't the Republicans get rid of the F.A.A. too? Let everyone decide how to they fly, and what's safe to fly passenger jet.

 Oh and then the Republicans could get rid of the F.D.A., after all a little e coli in your beef or samonella in your chicken is ok, right? And then the big drug companies would be able ship more drugs with less tests to make sure they don't kill you.. or make you even sicker than the disease they were created to treat.

 We need more deregulation like we need more thieves and murderers**.

 I'd had hoped that the Republicans would have learned a lesson about deregulation when they saw how badly things went when Wall Street had it's melt down.  They kept on saying the market could regulate itself. Could and would are not the same thing. I could jump off a bridge, but I don't think I would unless you forced me to do it.
 Even Mr. Greenspan who had preached that the market would regulate itself eventually said he was wrong.

(* Not the actual amount they save by putting their workers at risk, but you can find that information if you really want to know.)
(** We already have enough trouble, we don't need more!)