The government is the problem.
It was the mantra of the 'Reagan Revolution'...the government is the problem and not the solution. Well right now government is the problem not because the Reagan ideology was ignored but because of it.
We have dangerous products on the market which contain substances like lead which are poisoning us. There are so many diseases making their way through our food supply that it would put the CDC lab to shame. Every week it is something new, Salmonella, E-Coli, etc.
The reason the government is the problem is because of what Reagan, his conservative minions and many Democrats did to gut the effectiveness of government. All for the almighty buck. The regulatory agencies have been gutted. There are no longer enough people left in government who oversee industry to make sure that the products we buy don't poison us, the food we eat doesn't sicken us, the air we breath doesn't choke us, the water we drink doesn't kill us and that our financial institutions don't bankrupt us...
What we are now witnessing is the maturation of the conservative ideology as espoused by Ronald Reagan and we are paying a heavy price. Time to make sure government doesn't allow some people to put the American people needlessly at risk for the sake of a fistful of dollars. Time to restaff agencies like the EPA, FDA, SEC, and other regulatory agencies and give them the authority to enforce the laws already on the books and any that may/should be passed in the future.
We have dangerous products on the market which contain substances like lead which are poisoning us. There are so many diseases making their way through our food supply that it would put the CDC lab to shame. Every week it is something new, Salmonella, E-Coli, etc.
The reason the government is the problem is because of what Reagan, his conservative minions and many Democrats did to gut the effectiveness of government. All for the almighty buck. The regulatory agencies have been gutted. There are no longer enough people left in government who oversee industry to make sure that the products we buy don't poison us, the food we eat doesn't sicken us, the air we breath doesn't choke us, the water we drink doesn't kill us and that our financial institutions don't bankrupt us...
What we are now witnessing is the maturation of the conservative ideology as espoused by Ronald Reagan and we are paying a heavy price. Time to make sure government doesn't allow some people to put the American people needlessly at risk for the sake of a fistful of dollars. Time to restaff agencies like the EPA, FDA, SEC, and other regulatory agencies and give them the authority to enforce the laws already on the books and any that may/should be passed in the future.
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This post was partially inspired by Jason Everett Miller's fine post found here.
Houston we have a problem...
May 7, 2009 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the shout-out, Libertine. Great blog as well. It really is less about the companies who are destoying us and more about the government that allows it in the first place. This is isn't the first time we have let greed derail America. One of these days I hope it is the last though.
May 8, 2009 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah it wasn't exactly along the lines of your post Jason but your post got me thinking along these lines...besides your post was outstanding in terms of content and comments and deserved a shout out.
Well, companies and government. Government and companies. They almost seem to be Siamese Twins linked at the wallet.
May 9, 2009 3:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno Libertine. But I do suffer from a lot more heart-burn, I guess.
May 7, 2009 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Heartburn? Are you sure that is all it is...you never know nowadays...
Agida is an Italian word that sums that up too...sometimes I get when I think about what our government has been reduced to over the past 25 years dd.
May 7, 2009 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
The reversal of the 'Reagan Revolution' is beginning, I believe. The EPA and FDA have both received a boost in funding from the Obama admin. It couldn't have come too soon. Those two agencies lost a lot of respect, not entirely of their own making, because deep budget cuts forced them to reel in their duties. Fresh funding and extra money coming from the stimulus package will do a lot to bring them back to something resembling usefulness.
May 7, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well I hope that it is too flowerchild...but with how the financial sector is being handled in the wake of its meltdown I am going to withhold final judgment on the efforts. We have an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen above and beyond what has happened already with the financial markets.
May 7, 2009 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with you Libertine. Look at our infrastructure, after years of neglect, now there's no money to fix it.
We're too busy bailing out BANKERS.
May 7, 2009 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep Bwak...and instead of, God forbid, taxing the rich we've rolled back their taxes and now there isn't the money to make sure our bridges don't fall into rivers. What is wrong with this picture?
May 7, 2009 10:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's worse than an oligarchy? A government not led by people, but by corporations.
Not much of a punchline, or a joke for that matter.
May 7, 2009 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah well corporations feel they are people too...seeing that the SCOTUS back in the 19th century created the noxious idea of 'corporate personhood'. I wish it were a joke...lousy punchline or not.
May 7, 2009 11:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Granted that much of our infrastructure is broken and frayed. Off the top of my head though, I can think of government that does work. So when I hear the wingers bloviate endlessly about how government doesn't work, I wonder if they listened to the weather forecast today. Or did they get in their basement because a tornado was headed for their house?
Have they ever had to evacuate because a category 4 hurricane had made their state its target? And if they decided to ignore small craft warnings on a sunny day because they know how to operate a boat, were they glad to see the Coast Guard come to rescue their wet asses? Or maybe they stayed safe on land because they DID listen to the warnings.
Have they ever strolled through the Smithsonian or used the Library of Congress? Landed safely at an airport because of the air traffic controllers?
And for Michael Hip-Hop Steele, who guarantees that government has never created one single job, I would like to ask who does he think issues the warnings, rescues the wet asses, sets up the exhibits, directs the planes to land his ass safely and catalogs the books?
And that's just off the top of my furry little head. I feel better now, thank you.
May 7, 2009 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I do, too. Also.
I just wish we were paying more blue collar workers. There's work as needs doing, and workers and skilled enough to do it.
Our priorities got screwed up somewhere 'round 1980.
May 7, 2009 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bwak, you always make me feel better. Also. :-)
I'd say the priorities got screwed up on election day in 1980. With a few brief exceptions, they've stayed screwed ever since. Truck Nutz!!
And yes, blue collar workers, women and immigrants are all a vital part of the US economic fabric. What I don't understand is how the 1% doesn't understand that they will do even better when everyone does better (assuming that doing better than the gazillions they already have is their goal).
May 7, 2009 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno, seashell. They're stooopid.
Also.
My dream is that we all rise up and carpool to the Capitol, (pack an extra sandwich, everyone) and then firmly but gently remove each and every congress critter and drop them in the Potomac.
I dreams of it. The big flush.
=D
May 7, 2009 10:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you.
May 8, 2009 1:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's not forget the millions of Social Security checks that get delivered on time. Government agencies, properly funded and competently managed, can and do operate every bit as effectively as the private sector. Sometimes in spite of the political leadership. Privatizing SSA or FEMA would be a disaster. I'd argue that for-profit entities are incapable of doing it effectively.
May 8, 2009 7:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Libertine. My new bumper sticker: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the government!
Then again, I do tend to change bumper stickers every six months or so. I haven't given up on government coming around to serve the people again (just not so sure it'll be the American government that does it).
May 7, 2009 9:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well the reason that it doesn't work is because the Reagan Revolution set out to make it so ineffective that it could be nothing but a failure...kind of a 'self-fulfilling prophesy' sorta thing. We can insist that it does work but that would entail telling our politicians to fund the positions and start putting the help wanted ads in the newspapers again...no matter what it costs we save in lives, improve the environment we live in and reduce the amount of taxpayer money required cleaning up corporate America's mess after they are left to their own crooked devices, inevitably get too greedy and mess everything up royally.
May 7, 2009 11:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
But I have to give the D's credit where credit is due, they are sooooo much better than the R's even with their occasional pro-corporate biases...under Clinton at least FEMA did a competent job. George 'El Presidente' Bush took care of that though. FEMA is another agency that is in need of a major staffing upgrade...along with USGS, NOAA. Didn't the Elmer Gantry wannabe, Rick Santorum, want to privatize NOAA?
May 7, 2009 11:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
and the FCC too, I guess.
May 8, 2009 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
So -- what has the government done for us lately?
1. Generated a huge asset price bubble by manipulating interest rates (FRB).
2. Loaned money to people who had no hope of paying it back (FNM, FRE, FHA, etc.).
3. Polluted our ground water and our lakes and rivers by subsidizing agribusiness' factory farming.
4. Induced homeowners to destroy our coasts, beaches and wetlands by promising to pay most of their costs of rebuilding when the weather, as it always does, turns against them.
5. Turned Paradise into a parking lot so real estate speculators could make money.
6. And finally, gone to war -- over and over again.
May 8, 2009 9:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ummmmmm...unfortunately sounds about right Ellen. But we seem to be destroying almost every part of our ecosystem...as we, as a race, keep breeding at an exponential rate depleting/destroying the all the resources we need to sustain life even further.
I hope there wasn't a #7 which said "Go back to #1 and start over again".
May 9, 2009 3:22 AM | Reply | Permalink