Last night in the “debate,” crazy-eyed teahadist fembot Michelle Bachman stated the following:
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the newly minted White House contender, used Monday night’s GOP debate to call for clipping the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) wings.
Bachmann called for limiting government’s scope by passing the “mother of all repeal bills” to target “job-killing regulations.”
“And I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America,” she said, according to a CNN transcript of the debate.
As chance would have it, today in my post office box (another government service that I absolutely cherish) there was a piece of mail from the local public service department, where I get my water. It was an annual EPA required report, detailing in clear English, where my water comes from. Half of it is treated surface water from the Ohio River, the rest is from deep wells along the banks of the river. The report outlined backup plans should the Ohio become contaminated (more and more likely as Pennsylvania allows drillers to simply dump whatever the fuck they want in the water), and then went on and provided the annual data on the level of contaminants in my drinking water.
I like this. I think it is valuable for a number of reasons, beyond simply keeping me informed. It also verifies that the folks who provide me my water are keeping an eye on things, and providing a safe, clean product that I and my neighbors can consume. It’s the very model of good government. This is why we band together to form government- to do things that would be impossible to do otherwise.
To Republicans, though, this is an evil thing. And this is why I get so livid at the assholes in the media who cover the Republicans and give us the he said/she said version of things. If Republicans had their way, you and your kids would likely be drinking contaminated water and no one would be around to tell you about it. That’s the facts in the case, not “Bachmann claims the EPA kills jobs, while Democrats disagree.” This is why our media is failing us. When Republicans want to end the EPA, it’s not some esoteric debate about big government Democrats and small government conservatives. It’s not he said/she said. It’s “they don’t want you to know about all the shit GE dumped in the Hudson, and furthermore, they don’t want GE to clean it up, either, and as a matter of fact, GE should not be regulated in any way shape or form and should be free to dump shit in your water” versus “we need some sensible regulations to limit the harm corporations do to the environment so we can protect the population and make sure we have clean drinking water.”
That’s a big difference, and it is something our cowardly press is afraid to say out loud. I honestly don’t get it. Don’t they have kids? Don’t they have relatives? Don’t they care about this country? There are insane people trying to do awful things to the nation, and the watchdogs are sitting around licking each others balls and promoting themselves and their pals on twitter. Mark Knoller’s busy doing his Rain Man act counting how many times Obama golfed or how many times Jay Carney winced during a press conference or some other stupid bullshit. All of them today are focusing on who “won” the debate, instead of dissecting the truly disgusting, evil, and awful things these lunatics proposed last night. It’s crazy.
How about we compromise? Republicans leave the EPA alone, and instead go after this Nixon era disaster?
fasteddie9318
I think your real compromise is to just start dumping the drugs into the water table. Then nobody will care how contaminated it gets from the fracking frackers.
dp
Not to mention employees hired for compliance, jobs created with the regulatory bodies, and the innovations created to make compliance more efficient and less costly.
MagicPanda
It’s not the media’s job to call out the GOP. It’s the job of the Democrats.
Martin
The solution is obviously for-profit water companies. Rather than all of those expensive pipes and shit, we can shower under a hundred 12 ounce bottles of Desani. It might cost $200 per shower, but it’d be the most freedom you’ve ever had getting clean.
Poopyman
Silly Cole. Obviously, if your water is contaminated you and other customers will go to another water dealer, and this one will be out of business. The market will “regulate”.
Chris
Recall Julie Chambers of the New York Tribune going undercover at the local insane asylum and revealing what a dysfunctional hellhole the place was.
That was journalism at its best. If it were today, you’d probably just have a headline reading “Bloomingdale Asylum: Some Like It, Some Don’t.” Worse, investigative journalism’s increasingly been co-opted by Breitbart or O’Keefe style yellow journalists, often intentionally misleading and targeted on tabloidish non-issues like Weiner’s wiener (or Obama’s birth certificate).
Martin
@MagicPanda: The Democrats have magic bullhorns now that can project their words directly into your brain? Coooool.
Comrade Dread
Because the Invisible Hand will protect us from pollution.
Because companies that pollute the environment will get bad press and everyone will stop buying their products, just like what happened with British Petroleum.
Oh wait.
Well, then, uh, maybe private ratings agencies will appear to give the public information about which companies are good environmental companies. They can give them ratings from AAA to F and people can simply look up the ratings before they buy stock or products from that company. Just like with mortgage securities.
Shit.
Okay, okay… uh, the courts will still be there to adjudicate settlements for people who suffer from corporate pollution.
And I’m sure someone struggling to pay for chemotherapy will be just as adept at navigating the law as a team of highly paid lawyers.
So, don’t worry. And just think of the new jobs that will appear for folks in these towns, cleaning up polluted lakes, scrapping oil off of the ocean’s surface without protective gear, drilling for new sources of unpolluted fresh water.
It’s good for the economy.
kdaug
Cole, I believe the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers lobby would like to have a word with you on line 2.
PhRMA on hold on line 3.
El Cid
The problem is that without the EPA, water would be better quality and safer because of consumer choice.
Those areas which experience high degrees of cancer or explosive diarrhea will know that to exercise their preferences they need only move to areas with more preferable water ingredients.
Eventually market competition will result in better water to the degree that sufficient water table is left to find alternatives.
qwerty42
…All of them today are focusing on who “won” the debate, instead of dissecting the truly disgusting, evil, and awful things these lunatics proposed last night. It’s crazy….
John, John, John. It’s all part of the Freedom Agenda. Cripes, you need to keep up here.
Keith G
Not gonna happen.
EPA: “faceless” officials protect (especially the poor and brown) people from capitalist profit seekers.
War on Drugs: America’s best shoot and/or arrest brown people.
Bonus feature: EPA easily fits on a bumper sticker.
c u n d gulag
This is a Republican Outreach Program.
The more toxins in the air, water, and food, the more brain damage people suffer from – hence, more Conservatives!
jheartney
John, these are all excellent arguments. Perhaps some Democrats might think about making them when they get called to comment on the latest GOP absurdity.
ABL
this. a million times this.
if we had an honest media, there would be no Republican party. Full stop.
Phyllis
Yeah, that Richard Nixon, liberal democrat job killer: http://www.epa.gov/earthday/history.htm.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
It’s the 21st century tea-publican take on the broken window fallacy. Just think of all those jobs making widgets we’d have if we could just have poisionous crap in the water, and think of the jobs we’d create cleaning up the polluted water.
Republican plan 2012 – Smash every government institution to pay someone private more to replace it.
Oh, and if something doesn’t cost cash dollars, it’s harmless and not for corporations to worry about.
Cris (without an H)
This is why I really don’t like when the conversation turns to “jobs, jobs, jobs.” When the economy goes sour, people want jobs no matter what the cost. And that cost means the environment, and it means labor rights. It means giving the employer all the cards, and telling the employee to “just be thankful you have a job at all.”
It gives the Republicans a pass to refer to all the things we’ve worked so hard for as “job-killing.”
Nutella
They buy bottled water. Of course, they have no idea if that stuff is safe or not, but since they pay extra for it they assume it must be good stuff.
kdaug
@Phyllis: Pro tip: When going for sarcastic snark, it’s best to make sure your links work.
Culture of Truth
General Electric is a media company.
El Cid
@Phyllis: No doubt. Things have changed. That which is considered insanely radically leftist today — not just on the politician level, but in public discussion, bigger blogs too — wasn’t so out of question that far back.
Though there was that whole ‘genocide’ and ‘give power to the Khmer Rouge’ bit outside the borders.
Alex
@MagicPanda
Yes it is! That is exactly what their job is! That’s the whole #$*%ing *point* of having journalists.
Culture of Truth
Should we start referring to “People-Killing Industries?
Han's Solo
Republicans hate clean water because they think that decades ago the CIA began loading our water reservoirs with brain washing drugs. It is the same reason Republicans hate cable/satellite boxes (the DVR type things) and college educations.
That the most brainwashed people in America fear their water will brain wash them is beyond me, but there it is.
My bigger problem with Bachman (and many other baggers) is they insist on using the words “job killing” in ways that rob the words of any meaning. I swear we are only days away from hearing some wingnut complain about Obama’s “Job Killing Blackness.”
D. Mason
When all major media is owned by much larger entities with their own bottom lines to guard, some of which are perpetrating the very offenses you spotlight, how can you even hope for objective news? The media is owned by the same billionaires who own capital hill, why shouldn’t they act in sync?
Villago Delenda Est
@MagicPanda:
It’s not the media’s job to do anything but sell advertising.
scav
Tea leaves are magic leaves and all water they touch is healed, kinda exactly like baptism!
cmorenc
@John Cole:
This is one of the minority of instances where hard-core Galtian libertarians are actually on the side of both practical and principled good, rather than being insane ideologues. Ron Paul, for example, is fully on-board with us on this one. Sometimes, factions among our usual opponents will be seized with surprising pockets of sanity and humanity, for example the recent LDS church’s official opposition to the wave of state-level anti-immigrant legislation.
Cris (without an H)
@Culture of Truth: No, that would be uncivil.
eemom
@Phyllis:
heh. It really is fucking hilarious how sane, nay benevolent, the paranoid, sociopathic Nixon looks compared to today’s republicans.
Or it would be if it weren’t so very unhilarious for the country.
Anonymous
@kdaug: Pro tip: When the link doesn’t work notice the period at the end of the URL. Remove the unnecessary period, and then the link works fine.
meh
The press writes those stores because a) nobody gives a shit about clean water or being told how evil the GOP is and b) it’s easier to write a he said/she said article and move on to the next assignment. Newspapers are terribly understaffed and are constantly having to “do more with less” so they have no incentive to do hard line reporting anymore – which in turn becomes a self-defeating fail spiral.
Unless your like ProPublica with a $25M endowment at which time you can say were gonna write whatever the fuck we want.
Bullsmith
Only now is the fog lifting and I can realize that the period 1930-2011 was not the time where America became a superpower that overshadowed the world and amassed unprecedented wealth and prosperity. No, it turns out the whole 20th century was a job-killing, freedom-killing, socialist triumph. America will only be great when it’s workers finally earn less than their third world competitors.
Dave
Bachmann is crazier than a sack of wet cats.
kdaug
No, silly. That’s what the helicopters and private islands are for.
Chris
@Cris (without an H):
And after all that’s said and done, people still won’t have jobs. The rich are swimming in more money than they’ve had at any time since the Gilded Age. If they’re not using it to hire people, it’s because they’re not interested, and simply giving them another round of tax cuts isn’t going to change that.
Own-ry
“…it is something our cowardly press is afraid to say out loud.
Wish we’d stop with rationalizations that keep us all comfortable in our chairs. We don’t *really* know why, except that they are paid by corporate media. Paid. This earns them money, and that provides the motivation. So it’s probably that. But we don’t actually know, and we certainly cannot dismiss the whole process as one of cowardice.
(Similarly, the Dems are not really keeping their powder dry and they are not spineless either … or confused, or out of touch, or cowardly, or too polite, or playing multiple-dimension chess, or bringing a knife to any kind of fight. They are not outgunned or cowed either.)
Anonymous
@eemom:
Nixon supported universal healthcare.
For that position alone I’d vote for his reanimated corpse were he to run for president.
Chris
@El Cid:
I found out a few years ago that there was an idea for a “full employment act” being kicked around in Congress during the 1970s. Today, we can’t even raise taxes on the rich from their lowest point in eighty years to their previous lowest point.
We’ve fallen bloody, bloody far, and I’m still not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
Gravenstone
I know he devolved into a Libertarian crank, but Heinlen had a perfectly serviceable answer to this. Force industries to place their water intakes downstream of their effluent discharge.
In that spirit, I suggest we provide only the finest bottled water, direct from the fracking fluid contaminated aquifer of your choice, and make it the exclusive source for these wingnuts daily needs. Let them sup on the milk of industrial kindness and find out just exactly how a world without coherent environmental regulation would be outside their little bubbles of factual denial.
Culture of Truth
Just got an e-mail from Robert Gibbs blasting the GOP candidates for the EPA proposal and more.
Of course, he was also asking for money, but still.
Pangloss
They will never be satisfied. If they abolished Medicare, Social Security and the EPA tomorrow, on Thursday they would be after the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Education.
AAA Bonds
We have a tactical problem here, is what I think.
The Republicans are on the 1994 playbook, and I believe time is on their side. There will always be new targets to criticize in government.
When you’re always attacking all spending except weapons/military under a unifying ideology with the same language, it’s nearly impossible for your opponents to keep up in America.
Because not all of your opponents are opposed to all of your cuts (regulation, unemployment, education, whatever), so you’re wielding a unified offense against a fragmented defense.
And if you are opposed to most if not all of those cuts (like me), you have to muster defense on each point individually – and as soon as you’re halfway through your sound bite, they’ve switched over to another area of attack.
The only unified defense here is a pro-government social-democratic one, versus an anti-government one, and how to sell Americans on that one I have yet to figure out.
It may be that our country has no more cultural and social defense against Republican anti-government rhetoric than Rumania had against German Nazi rhetoric in the interwar period. They’re hitting all the right notes.
Culture of Truth
They have job-killing kids who play with job-killing toys and go to job-killing schools taught by job-killing teachers who take an entire job-killing summer off.
Fluffy
That’s a big difference, and it is something our cowardly press is afraid to say out loud. I honestly don’t get it. Don’t they have kids? Don’t they have relatives? Don’t they care about this country?
Out here in Nevada they tend to have reverse osmosis filtration at the main into their McMansions. Which cleans out some but not all heavy metals, the E. coli the crypto and the giardia. However, the great majority of Bachmann zealots don’t have filtered water, wouldn’t know how to maintain the system if they did, and would find the operating costs to be onerous.
As for the press, they don’t have the practical technical experience to know if they are getting screwed. Do you think any of these Ivy League journalism majors have ever taken a CivE class? They are as virginal as Bachmann supporters when it comes to the infrastructure that provides them with a modern existence — both its costs and the specifics of its operations.
Michael D.
Go
STDRILLERSMnemosyne
I wish I could blame this all on conservatives, but it seems to be a pretty common way of thinking. Look at the anti-vaccine crowd, who are convinced that since measles isn’t killing thousands of kids in the US every year, the problem is completely solved, which makes vaccinations just a big scam.
It’s the same thing with conservatives and the EPA: since things are better than they were in Nixon’s day, that must mean the problem ceased to exist and we can get rid of those regulations since there’s no way the problem could come back.
It’s weird magical thinking, but sadly it’s not reserved to the other side.
El Cid
@Chris: No, actually, a bill more explicitly codifying the Employment Act of 1946 wasn’t “being kicked around,” it was passed and signed into law under Carter in 1978.
It was the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act.
And it’s the law right now. And in some utopian fantasy land, someone would give a shit about following it.
This is one of the chief missions of the Federal Reserve, but doing too much about it would be insanely radical, obviously.
Law or not, our government doesn’t give a shit, no one enforces it, and no one in the billion dollar press does either. And if anyone did try to give it significant implementation, the entire structure of power of the nation would go bat-shit crazy to stop it, from political to business to media.
Although I’m sure they could turn on a dime and just make shit up about how cutting the deficit and debt would fulfill all those goals because of whatever and SHUT UP MARXIST!
This sort of legislation was one of the major reasons behind an elite / corporate push behind Reagan’s election to attack the sort of liberal-labor coalition which could pass such things and enforce them.
kdaug
@Pangloss:
Just keep your hands off the DEA, Pentagon, and Border Patrol. Those are essential services.
Mnemosyne
@Anonymous:
Nixon “supported” universal healthcare the same way that the Republicans “supported” healthcare reform in 1993 by proposing their own competing plan.
Like Nixon, they knew that there was no way in hell that their plan would be acceptable to Democrats, so it was easy for them to propose something that they knew they’d never have to implement. Oldest Republican trick in the book — propose your own “reform” plan so that both plans die in committee and nothing gets done.
Chris
@eemom:
Just a product of his time. What we miss is the days when no matter how many good or bad politicians were, at least we’d moved on from the Gilded Age, and the notion that government could actually do things for the people wasn’t the anathema it is now.
Today, we’re having to refight all the battles we fought a hundred years ago to drag the country out of the nineteenth century. Imagine if in European nations, one of the two major parties openly advocated the dismantling of representative democracy, and a return to aristocracy and divine right of kings.
That’s what’s so exhausting about the current climate: we’ve been over this. We’ve tried each and every one of their bullshit ideas, over a hundred years ago, and it didn’t work – that’s why we moved on. It’s one thing to have to deal with assholes from your own age, quite another when they’re crawling out from the pages of history.
Poopyman
@Culture of Truth: Same here, and just adding that he’s busking for democrats.org, Obama’s re–election funding apparatus.
Personally, I’ll give my cash to House and Senate candidates’ campaigns. Obama doesn’t need my $.02.
j low
Democrats kill jobs. Republicans kill kids(and everyone not wealthy enough to import water harvested from 10,000 year old arctic ice).
slag
So, what are all the employees of the EPA going to do after Michelle Bachmann kills their jobs? Not to mention all the private contractors the EPA works with.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
But fracking is totally clean and renewable and not at all toxic! All that bullshit about hydraulic chemicals and contaminated water are all part of the Green Fascist Conspiracy!!
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Chris:
It’s not even that we’ve fought this battle before. It’s that despite the failures of their ideas time and time again, somehow they’ve gamed the game to where said failed ideas, philosophies, and policies are the absolute ONLY acceptable things on the table, and if you dare say otherwise, the full brunt of the GOP, plus at least 1/3 of the Democrats, will be on your ass faster than you can say ‘I hate America and I Resign’.
burnspbesq
I don’t think there is any room for reasoned doubt as to who won last night’s debate.
Barack Obama won last night’s debate.
Own-ry
Fluffy: As for the press, they don’t have the practical technical experience to know if they are getting screwed.
Again with the rationalization … can’t we just say we don’t really know why the media is doing what it’s doing (or not doing): yes it’s scarier, but maybe we need to face some fear.
MagicPanda
@Villago Delenda Est:
Correct.
The reason I get fed up with people blaming the media is because I’ve begun to see it as a way for our side to avoid responsibility for pushing back against the GOP. “Oh noes! The media is failing at their job, and thus we are helpless!”
Sure, it would be great if the media debunked all the GOP bullshit for us, but sitting on the sidelines complaining that the media isn’t doing their jobs isn’t an effective way to counteract the GOP message machine.
Instead of wishing that the media were better, I think we should start from the assumption that the media isn’t going to change overnight and figure out how to use it effectively.
Now, back to the comment about advertising.
It’s easy to disparage news outlets for being ratings whores, but I kind of think the cow has left the barn on that one. There will always be a segment of the population that would tune into a BBC-style newscast, but there are so many media choices now, and people have short attention spans.
Attracting advertisers, fundamentally, is about attracting attention, and I think that in today’s media environment, we need to find ways to attract attention to the causes that matter to us.
Think about the way the Wisconsin union busting bill turned out. Events unfolded in a dramatic way, and there was plenty of news coverage. As a result, people are more excited about supporting unions across the board than before that incident happened.
Now that situation was an outlier for sure, but there are small ways that the Democrats could be doing more to attract attention to the things that matter to us.
MagicPanda
Also, as far as fairness goes, the media just has a different conception of how they should be doing their job than we do.
We see the media’s job as being arbiters of fact. If someone on the GOP says something ridiculous, we want the media to make them look like fools.
Meanwhile, the media thinks of their job as being to present both sides. We ridicule them for it, but I propose that we just accept the fact that the media isn’t going to change overnight and change our tactics to compensate.
So if the GOP says something ridiculous, it is OUR job to make them look like fools, not the media.
Poopyman
@Poopyman: Also too, I just now got an email from Fred Clark thanking me for my contribution (via BJ) to his WI Senate campaign.
Hope you’re all getting them as well. Otherwise, DougJ might have to drop another bleg on us.
Chris
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Well, true – we’ve got a system where mistakes go unpunished no matter how big they are, as long as they’re committed by people with the Right Ideas. Which is a whole level of dysfunctional all by itself.
trollhattan
“Bachmann Turner Diaries” FTW.
States’ rights! Oklahoma wants to pollute up the ass, they should be able to do so. If Texas doesn’t like it they can just erect a giant pollution fence (and trench wall) at the border. Also, too, light bulbs and toilets. And give me back my DDT.
Damn hippies.
Also, also, too: about our shiny, shiny new-cue-lar future–our new-cue-lar past is distinctly unshiny.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015312615_hanfordwhistleblowers14m.html
gnomedad
@Gravenstone:
Excellent. We’ll call it “Freedom Water”.
Mart
I have been touring industry for over thirty years and the change for good has been remarkable. How these asshats think going back to the good old days would be a benefit is beyond comprehension. Cuyahoga Forever MF’rs/ http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2009/06/cuyahoga_river_fire_40_years_a.html
quannlace
Under New Rules For Republicans:
If you want to get rid of anything-regulations, legislation, whatever. Just claims it kills jobs!
Southern Beale
That’s a big difference, and it is something our cowardly press is afraid to say out loud. I honestly don’t get it. Don’t they have kids?
Um, John. Let me state the obvious:
GE is a huge fucking advertiser. And until recently they owned 80% of NBC-Universal. Now they just own 49% of NBC Universal.
I mean I’m sorry but how can that NOT affect the news we get? And I know you pulled GE out of the air as an example (I mean I assume you did) but please tell me how it’s any different with any major corporation? The news media is in business to make money, not inform the public. The problem is not that the media is too conservative or too liberal, it’s that it’s too profit-oriented.
David in NY
How about a book John!? I’ve got the title: “Words of One Syllable: Why Republicans Are Bad for You”. Democrats don’t do nearly enough of it.
lacp
So basically they want US businesses to observe the same industrial standards as their counterparts in the People’s Republic of China? Of course, one difference is that when the Chinese gummint catches these bozos, it executes them – ours gives them a tax break.
Bender
Because that is retarded, fear-mongering, lefty cartoon-talk. Only at MSNBC can they get away with such a laughably Mickey-Mouse “argument,” and if even they don’t do it, ask yourself: How stupid is this proposition?
No one is advocating letting corporations dump whatever they want into the water — not Bachmann, not even Paul, not anyone — especially not GWBush, who, if he would’ve wanted to, had years of a GOP Congress to make your nightmare scenario a reality. It didn’t happen, because no one wanted it to happen, not even the spooky Republican bogeymen that you see in the corner of your bedroom, receiving bags of money with “$$$” printed on it from a man with a tophat and a monocle, when you turn off the lights.
If you choose to argue with straw-men (because the alternative is to talk about the Main Verboten Subject among Ball-Juicers — President ShovelReady and his Failed “Administration”), then you go into a hissy-fit of fake outrage whenever a Republican does the same (“The EPA Only Cares About The Snail Darter, Not Your Job”), then I pity you for your high blood pressure.
Bender
@j low: I didn’t realize Debbie Whatsherface-Schlitz (motto: “Literally, worse than literally Stalin and Hitler literally combined”) commented here.
John Weiss
@Chris: What would change things, more jobs and so on, is higher taxes on the ‘guided ones’.
John Weiss
@Bender: Ha, ha. How’s about how you can light your water faucet in Penn? And, thanks for your concern about my blood pressure; it is well in hand. The likes of you certainly don’t raise it an iota.
Chris T.
@Chris:
That implies they had more then than now. In fact, it’s the reverse, both in absolute terms (which is trivial due to inflation) and relative terms (which is the important part).
Karen Eliot
This week, we happened to listen to a recording of Richard Nixon’s 1974 State of the Union address. He went on and on about how proud he was, and the USA should be, of the cleanup (for which he naturally took credit) of our previously disgracefully filthy water and air.
The text of the speech is here:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4327#axzz1PHFzhf4K
One realizes that Nixon couldn’t get elected dog catcher with the crazies in today’s Tea Party-run GOP. He sounds like a radical leftist compared to them. Shows you how far things have shifted, in a generation.
Nixon sounded most contemporary towards the end, when he addressed the Watergate controversy and Cheneyishly planted his flag on the issue of strong executive power (to which Congress applauded! go figure).
Ash Can
Shorter Bender: BECAUSE SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY
David in NY
Bender: Man Without a Sense of Nuance.
By the way. For years and years, GE did just dump poison in Hudson. Because they could. And for years and years after that, they avoided having to clean up after themselves, until the EPA made them. Bachmann wants to do away with those laws that keep GE, or other companies, from doing so again. At worst John just engaged in a little instructive hyperbole — but in all likelihood, he’s right on the money.
Chris
@Bender:
No, they’re just advocating the abolition of the agency that prevents corporations from dumping whatever they want in the water. Clearly no relationship at all.
Much the same way, advocating the abolition of the police is NOT advocating letting MS-13 rule the streets… and if someone points out that MS-13 rule is the inevitable consequence of said policy, why that’s just retarded, fear-mongering, lefty and straw-mannish. Liberally biased, uncivil, and the newest insult in the right wing arsenal, “Mickey Mouse,” whatever that means.
Chris
@Chris T.:
I was speaking in relative terms, but I’m interested to learn that they actually have more now than they did then. I didn’t know that. I thought they’d have a bit less, since the restraining institutions built during the New Deal remain in place, albeit in a decrepit state.
trollhattan
So, going to The Source I googled “Ron Paul on environmental protection” and via “Daily Paul” discovered the Secret Republican Solution to Fighting Pollution: Property Rights and the Free Market. As in…
Or, how about…
I’m not sure how the inbred winger hatred of “trial lawyers” dovetails with suing and jailing anybody who “destroys your property” but there’s that magical thinking again. I also see the brilliance of preventing the poor from becoming homeowners–no property, no harm, no recource. Just suck it up, Jose.
Sociopathic doesn’t begin to describe this rabble.
Much more here:
http://www.dailypaul.com/106581/how-does-free-market-capitalism-deal-with-corporate-pollution
Mike in NC
@gnomedad:
Cutting into “Brawndo’s” market share? Will it contain electrolytes, or merely toxins?
The Bender troll would like to order a few cases, also, too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
That’s the problem with our entire sick society, in a nutshell.
It’s ALWAYS about profit. Specifically, short term profit, not long term prosperity and quality of life for the vast majority of the populace.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan:
This is all based on the bizarre notion that the “free market” is a force of nature, and not a social construct.
The stupid. It burns.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
On our current spectrum, that’s the same as being “too conservative.”
Berial
@trollhattan: Wow. That link contains some mighty powerful magical thinking on the other end. It was almost painful to read.
I still find it hard to wrap my head around the idea that those obviously educated people actually think someone making poverty wages or less is going to be able to effectively sue some mega-corporation because it’s dumping poison in the water they drink or the air they breath.
trollhattan
@Berial:
Yup, the calculus corporations use today is, “Do we pay up front for these safety measures/pollution controls or do we do nothing and pay off any fines and lawsuits at the back end. Actuaries, get cracking!”
Imagine our situation with fewer laws, regulations and regulatory bodies.
John Weiss
@trollhattan: I disagree. ‘Sociopath’ describes the current GOP perfectly. Not to mention the libertarian wing.
fidelio
You know, if it weren’t for that evil Big Gummint, New Orleans would be underwater this year for sure (only opening the spillways at those Big Gummint projects, the Morganza and Bonnet Carré floodways kept the Mississippi from topping the main levee in New Orleans last month; only opening the New Madrid Spillway kept Cairo, IL from being obliterated and Memphis from even more flooding than it had. The only thing between Hamburg, Iowa and the Missouri River right now is an emergency levee being thrown up by the Army Corps of Engineers. It’s federally-funded flood insurance that people buy to get coverage for flood damage, and it’s federal disaster-relief funds that state governors hold out their hands for (ESAD, Eric Cantor) when the big bad lands in their backyard.
Unless it’s only Evil Big Gummint when it keeps your friends/puppetmasters from making bigger bucks than they already do. I can never tell with these nudniks.
John Cole
@Bender: The GE thing was not a hypothetical, you clown.
Mnemosyne
@Bender:
Why bother to pass laws when you can just drastically reduce enforcement to get the same effect without all of that nasty bad publicity?
Sorry, you’re going to have to find a new talking point if you want to convince anyone outside of your tiny brain that Republicans haven’t done anything to harm environmental laws.
Scott P.
I think you’re selling Romania short. Romania sided with Hitler not because of Nazi rhetoric, but out of simple geopolitical considerations: Both of the nearby superpowers (Germany and the USSR) had taken huge chunks of Romanian territory — the one for its ally (Hungary, which got Transylvania) and the other for itself (the USSR got Bessarabia and South Bukovina).
Romania lost over a third of its territory and population as a result. The difference is that Hitler promised to guarantee Romania’s reduced borders and moreover to give Romania Bessarabia back after he conquered the Soviet Union, while Stalin refused to guarantee that he wouldn’t come back for more later.
So, Romania sided with Hitler. Then, when the Germans were going down, it switched sides and joined the Allies. It suffered the fourth-most casualties of all Allied powers in Europe in 1944-45.
As a result, Romania was the only Axis power to come out of the war with more territory than it started with (it got Transylvania back).
Wfeather
I’d say they don’t want to know themselves. It’s like being in that clique at school and knowing you’ve got to emulate everyone else – even if it’s bad for you. “You took dead man’s curve at 60? Hell, I can do it at 70. Watch this!”
Bender
Of course, everyone sane understands that laws would not be revoked — POOF! — just because the agency administering those laws changed or ceased to be. Any high school graduate should know that entire departments have been abolished in the past.
Politicians have recently advocated the abolition of the Commerce Department (Typical Juicer: OH< NOES! THEY"RE GONNA OUTLAW THE COMMERSE!1eleventy1!), Education (THEY"S GONNA STOP SCHOOLIN"!) HUD or Energy or Defense or the CIA. In those cases, the duties of that agency are seen to be better/more efficiently/less corruptly handled by another agency.
In this case, the EPA has over-reached its correct boundaries under the Obama Administration. It has become politicized, extra-legal (circumventing laws passed by Congress), and bloated. I can see why a candidate might think that a slight overhaul won't solve the problem of an EPA that is just a little less than the Environmental Extremists Gestapo (I win with that!).
Mnemosyne
@Bender:
If there’s no one who can enforce the law, how are you picturing it being any different than outright revoking the law? Will polluting companies voluntarily turn themselves in once they don’t have the big bad EPA breathing down their necks?
It’s the simple faith of conservatives that I find so fascinating. No matter how many times they’re proved wrong, they just double down and wish harder and declare that, no, really, just because more companies commit criminal acts in the absence of regulation and enforcement doesn’t mean that they committed those acts because of the lack of regulation and enforcement. Because argle bargle free market soshulism Kenya.
At least be honest about what the actual argument is from you guys — you claim that all of that enforcement can take place on the state level without help from the federal government. Of course, that doesn’t work and has never worked when it comes to problems that affect multiple states at the same time, but why should you look at that record of decades of failure when you can wish rilly rilly hard that this time the free market fairy will show up and rescue you?
Citizen_X
@Bender:
It’s not that we think the laws would be revoked, it’s that they wouldn’t be enforced.
Idiot.
Mark D
@Bender
The dumb is strong with this one.
It is a truly, awesomely, spectacularly special kind of stupid to believe that eliminating agencies tasked with enforcing laws will mean those laws will somehow still be enforced.
I guess the Magic and Invisible Hand of the Free Market has a little, slightly-retarded brother: The All Seeing Eyes of Laws Without Enforcement Mechanisms.
Bender
@John Cole:
That is the definition of “hypothetical,” John. And “scare-mongering.” And, likely, “lying.” One of your own called it “hyperbole,” but he was being kind.
One easy way to show you’re right: Show me where Bachmann (or hell, anybody) has called for GE being free “to dump shit in your water (of course, most of us realize that all Americans “dump shit in their water” at least every day, and it’s cleaned by waste-water plants).”
Of course, you can’t show that. But you’d rather fear-monger your own drones (Why? Ball-Juicers aren’t voting for Bachmann anyway!) with extremist buffoonery, and then pretend that you’re right because GE was asked to dredge part of the Hudson for a declining amount of pollutants from 20 years ago!
Epic post!
trollhattan
Cite, or shove off. The current administration is still unraveling eight years of Bush admin constraints–many of them extralegal–on the EPA. And with the Republican House, progress is barely detectible.
khead
@Bender:
No it hasn’t. The EPA just decided to actually enforce a few laws that hadn’t been enforced for, oh, 8 years or so. Oh, the horror…..the horror. Elections have consequences and all that….
But don’t worry, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph has your back. Clearly, the 44 jobs in Glen Lyn are more important than the air in southwest VA.
On a side note, I’m not sure why the people of Glen Lyn are worried since they have God on their side. Those jobs will be saved.
Bender
@Mark D:
Tell me more, Mr. History, as to how the current Agency set-up is the exact same as it always has been and will always need to be.
When the War Department was abolished, did we lose the ability to fight wars, Mr. History? Please, enlighten me, ’cause I swear we’ve managed to fight wars since that entire Department was abolished in 1947.
Idiot.
fasteddie9318
@Bender: Of course, the War Department was never “abolished”; it was renamed so we could try to pretend that we only fight wars in self-defense. But you were
making shit upsaying…Mark D
@Bender:
History: You’re doin’ it wrong.
Shorter Bender: Even though Truman already had in place a plan for the DoD BEFORE they trashed the Dept. of War, thus ensuring we could continue making
lovewar, the fact Bachmann and other wingnuts have advocated for abolishing federal departments without a single, solitary replacement is the exact same thing because SHUT UP BECAUSE I’M A MASTER OF HISTORY THAT’S WHY!!It must suck to wake up every single day and be as clinically fucking stupid as you …
Jesse
@Bender: Wow. You’re really this fucking dumb. That’s amazing.
Do me a favor, champ. Find out who George Pullman was, then come back and tell us again about how there are some lines people won’t cross for a profit, because it’s “illegal.”
If that’s your argument about getting rid of the EPA, why can’t I do it to every one of the law enforcement agencies? Surely no one will cross the US border, because that’s illegal. No one has ever murdered and tried to get away with it, because that’s illegal.
Fucking incredible.
Ash Can
@ Bender: The War Department? The fucking War Department? That’s your example? Really?
Golly gee, you’re right! We still can fight wars without the War Department! You’re amazing!
Now, for his next trick, Bender will explain to us all what would magically appear, Pentagon-like, to replace the EPA upon the EPA’s abolition.
Bender
Okay, for all you geniuses who believe with all your Unicorn Hearts and Rainbow Tears that the Mean Ol’ GOP wants your kids to drink liquid death so Corporate Fatcats can… well, whatever you think Corporate Fatcats do (I mean, they’re already fatcats — a status no doubt attained not by hard work and good ideas, but by breaking the backs of the Proletariat!):
Why didn’t Evil BusHitler and Satan’s Own Republicans (BOO!) overturn all pollution laws and “let them dump whatever shit in your water” when they had the chance? I mean, that’s what Republicans WILL DO, right? And they had both houses and the Presidency! But they didn’t do it! Hmmmmmm.
This is the easiest kind of fearmongering to expose. This “Evil Republicans will do Villainous X if they get power” thing is quickly dispatched by the question “So why didn’t they?”
Bender
@Mark D:
It’s 2011 and they’re not in power, but they should have all the nuts and bolts of regulation enforcement NOW, or it proves they will abolish all pollution regulations?
Dumb. No sale.
The Raven
Because they’re in love with death. We corvids are sympathetic.
Mark D
Um … they did and, in fact, still are.
But that’s in this reality. I have no clue what the fuck goes on in yours, but it doesn’t match the one the rest of us inhabit.
Bender
@Jesse:
Of course, I never intimated for one second that Bachmann advocates the honor system for conformity to pollution laws. What I said is that she must think that the EPA under Obama has become an extralegal, over-reaching detriment to American goals, and she must think it is beyond saving. Some other agency will have to be created or expanded to take up enforcement of those environmental laws.
trollhattan
Not overturning? Really! Heard of new source review?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/magazine/04BUSH.html
Also, too, what would you consider the practical difference between non-enforcement and overturning? Right, nothing.
e.g., OSHA. How many big OSHA prosecutions and fines did Bush hand out in eight years, and how did that mesh with historical patterns? How about Justice Dept civil rights cases? How did those compare?
Back to the books.
David in NY
@Bender: We just take them at their words, that’s all Bender. And they haven’t proven us wrong yet. Why is she saying she’ll abolish the EPA if she won’t???? sheesh.
El Cid
Ha. All you liberals wanted to blame humans and freedom for the CO2 in the air, but just like we told you, the amount we put in is nothing compared to a single volcano eruption.
And of course, it’s a government scientist. Yawn. Let me know when the Heritage Foundation issues a statement from its climate research teams.
You people won’t be satisfied until we’re all reduced to living in caves and praying to statues of Al Gore.
David in NY
@Bender: “Some other agency ….” HAHAHAHAHA!!!! ROFLAO!
Just more BS from the wingnut brigade. Bender is more unbelievable, and nearly as fact-detached, as the lady herself.
Cris (without an H)
“profit.” The word you’re looking for is “profit.” It’s one of the little things that motivates business.
Mark D
So … let’s remember, folks, that we should:
Ignore what Republicans say they want to do if given power any time they’re not actually in power because it doesn’t count unless they’re actually given the power they’re asking for so they can do what they say they want to do … believe that eliminating organizations that enforce federal laws — without proposing any replacement organizations — doesn’t mean laws won’t be enforced because the Magical Enforcement Fairy will ensure all laws are followed … and ignore every single shred of available history that proves businesses will ignore any and all laws they can if it means more profit, simply because the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will ensure those businesses are punished (just like BP has been, and Coke has been, and GE has been, Monsanto has been, and Aamco has been, and …).
Or, at least that’s what we need to do if we want see what it’s like to live in Wingnutville — where up is down, black is white, lies are truth, and reality be damned.
David in NY
Bender: “Those miners in West Virginia aren’t really dead, because the Massey Company would never have allowed violations of mine regulations in order to increase its profits. NEVER I TELL YOU! NEVER!”
Mark D
@El Cid:
Fixed for greatest justice!!
Bender
@Mark D:
What nonsense.
Your two measly examples are the definition of “weak” and don’t even begin to answer my question, but it’s all easily disproved bullshit. Thousands and thousands of pages of environmental laws obviously “survived” the Republicans (But how? Republicans HATE pollution laws, you guys keep telling me, and they want children to drink “shit!” How could this be?).
Thousands more pages were, in fact, created WHILE Bush was in office! Just because there is still some pollution doesn’t mean the Republicans did it. In fact, you may be shocked to find out that there is still pollution under Obama!
Cris (without an H)
“Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Dark Side!”
“And you can’t possibly weaken existing regulations by adding more pages! Republicans write laws! You liberals love laws!”
Bender
@David in NY:
So are you saying that even in 2010, with reams of regulations and the most aggressive EPA in history, the Massey Company still was able to operate an unsafe mine?
And how does this validate how we need the superb EPA to protect us?
Liam Ridgewell thinks that was an awful own-goal.
Bender
Obama proposes Health Care Reform in an entire Presidential Campaign without going into messy details like constitutionality.
Obama proposes the Stimulus without realizing that “shovel-ready jobs” were a fiction he was being sold by grifters.
But dammit, Michele Bachmann had better answer all the technical details in a 30-second debate answer or SHE’S KILLING AMERICA!
Thoughtcrime
@Southern Beale:
Keith Olbermann during his interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air” http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=136931640
David in NY
@Bender:
Ever hear of the filibuster? Anyway, you do forget that lack of enforcement equals effective repeal.
I cannot believe the BS you comfort yourself with. I mean, if these people, actual candidates, God knows, for the Presidency of the United States, are willing to say that they’d abolish the EPA then its a fortiori (if you know what I mean) that they’d be willing to permit the evils it has done away with. And if they do away with the agency, the regulations, as a legal matter, are dead.
Also, you can hardly rely on GW Bush’s failure in these regards (as you do) to console any suckers you find, since every single one of these dimwit candidate will tell you, if asked, that the problem with GWB was that he wasn’t conservative enough. They are the real McCoy, and they’re telling you they’re going to do away with the EPA. Why do you think they’re lying?
David in NY
@Bender:
These are logically irrelevant to your point. And false too, at least as to the second one. {Lots of your good Republicans have already taken credit for the “shovel-ready” jobs undertaken in their districts with stimulus money.) But mostly, they’re just logically irrelevant. So what, I say.
Neither of these two examples takes away that fact that Bachmann has proposed a horrible thing — the abolition of an agency that actually does protect the environment.
Ash Can
Cripes, Bender, you’ve been dumb before, but you’re outdoing yourself on this thread. Are you going for some kind of record?
Phyllis
@kdaug: Aargh.
Thoughtcrime
@Mnemosyne:
Laws and penalties against theft, rape and murder don’t stop all theft, rape and murder.
Abolish the applicable laws and penalties and the agencies that enforce them.
Let the free market decide.
shano
Bender: Are you too young to remember when our RIVERS used to CATCH ON FIRE? oh yes, the good old days.
Oh, poor poor American Power. They have had a sweet, sweet deal operating the dirtiest of coal plants for decades now. AND they are sitting on millions of tons of fly ash just waiting to cause another environmental disaster in the USA.
Jeebus, if anyone thinks industry in America will give one flying fu*k for the environment if it will cost one penny of profit, they are IDIOTS. We have to have laws to regulate them. I mean, look how well the banks did with no regulation, amirite?
In fact, some laws may help an industry modernize and come into the 21st Century instead of sitting on their ass gloating over past success. Basically, I am waiting for new products, ones with true use and energy efficiencies, to come onto the market. Maybe Americans are ‘deleveraging’ because there is nothing worth buying?
trollhattan
A shoutout from Steve Benen on this very post, who takes the discussion further.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_06/we_shouldnt_grow_inured_to_mad030267.php
Caz
So you think the EPA is great because they provide clean water, and they’ll also let you know immediately how contaminated it is when they fail to prevent PA from dumping whatever the fuck they are dumping into your water source. Do I have that right? Do you hear yourself when you speak, or are you just following a script given to you by your overlords like the good little useful idiot puppy dog you have become? I’m sure the all knowing, all powerful, all seeing, national puppysitter is very proud of you for taking your useful idiot role so seriously! Your “usefulness” is beyond description.
Bender
No, that does not logically follow at all. You’re trying so hard to muster up a rage that you’re being willfully stupid. Nothing in Bachmann’s 5-second answer to a debate question would preclude another less-political, more contained agency from being established to deal with environmental compliance. In fact, Gingrich has said he wants to abolish the EPA and replace it with an “environmental solutions agency.” I think it’s logical to assume that Bachmann’s plan would be roughly the same.
Again: If Republicans wanted the pollution laws gone, they’d be gone. They’ve had the chance, but they didn’t do it. Why not? They didn’t want to do it, because, believe it or not, Republicans don’t want to poison children! Hard for you lot to believe, no doubt, but true.
Bender
@shano:
So is your brilliant point that 40-50 years ago, there was bad pollution, and now it’s much better? Granted.
shano
I have never heard one ‘conservative’ current day politician say how they would regulate industry from polluting the environment. Including the air, water and soil. Or our food. The want to get rid of the FDA too.
Where were they when we had the China ‘scare’? Pushing for more free trade, right? Beside that one suggestion of Newt, which is very low on details, who else in the GOP has had a detailed discussion about this?
Sure the EPA and the FDA have some serious problems, nothing that cannot be fixed.
I would have some respect if they said they needed to make these agencies more efficient or less likely to cower before corporate lobbying. Dream on, sure, but no one in the GOP is going to do or say anything that will upset their corporate masters.
All a corporation wants is to increase the bottom line in any way possible, as we have seen from American corporate actions all over the world.
shano
Face it Bender. If the GOP will not regulate MERCURY and ARSENIC (levels that they raised in Bushs Clear Skies Initiative) they are not going to do a damn thing.
Except collect the checks from the appropriate industry. Why do you continue to let them fool you?
shano
And I will say it is punks like you who never fought the fight- on clean air or anything else- who make we wretch.
Seriously, you are the fuckers that have swung the GOP to the hard right, where candidates like this horrid group who debated last night are in the mainstream now. These modern day GOP are radicals of the worst sort. You support them.
Good god, if any of these GOP candidates get elected it will be a sad and tragic day for America and modern civilization.
Mark D
So … to prove that Bachmann (who has openly said she’ll abolish the EPA) won’t actually abolish the EPA, Bender uses an example of someone who didn’t say he would abolish the EPA and, because he didn’t abolish the EPA, neither will someone who said she actually would.
Um … wait. What?
It hurts my head trying to be that stupid. It really does.
I mean, de-funding an agency ain’t all that hard, and the Bush admin. proved quite well that they don’t even need to do that — just tell their cronies to ignore violations, turn the other way when possible, and have the companies write up their own reports (ala BP on the Deepwater Horizon).
So … yeah. I just don’t get how folks on the right can twist themselves into such knots — ignoring anything resembling facts, logic, or even the type of basic reasoning skills usually found in the average eight- year-old — in order to defend a corrupt and failed ideology.
It’s like a psychosis. Or a cult.
Right-winger
Wow…my first time ever to view a left-wing/liberal blog and I must say you are everything we conservatives joke about and more–foul-mouthed, ignorant, and sophomoric.
fasteddie9318
Damn that’s some weak trolling. Just shamefully bad.
amom
This party bashing gets better and better. This is crazy to believe that people buy this good and evil.propaganda. Maybe there are enough young paranoid Americans to believe this since they have been fed this for years. Meanwhile….I have done sea turtle research, everglades protection acts, science major, etc….not just complain and drink kool-aid to not funk for myself. I fear for my two year old because this stupid crazy.accusations have to stop or else bot parties will fool all.of us into voting them into power with no concern wit anything but themselves. First time blogger…disgusted with the.ignorance sad for all our futures.