Let's Go There

Finally, evidence that there is a planet outside our solar system that might be able to sustain life. My question is this: how soon can we go there?

Because this planet is nearly as screwed up as it's ever been.

Aside from the Hitler/Stalin/Hirohito period, which may well be the most evil passage in world history, our time is right up there is pure awful nastiness. There are a lot of theories about that. Glenn Greenwald was quoting the late lamented David Halberstam on that. His take was that since WWII we've become increasingly arrogant and over-confidant in our strength.

Nuclear weapons have a lot to do with it. There is virtually no threat of anybody invading and occupying the US (Red Dawn be damned), so we're cocky and looking to cause trouble.

But I think its more than that. The US has been cursed with a malleable and malicious extreme right wing. This cabal has grown adept at hiding its true nature, and also in using the tools of media to create illusions among the voting populace.

If you go back through the history of Rightists in America, you will see that they only believe in two core principals: racism and the power of money. Everything else is negotiable.

As an example, both before and after WWII, Repub's called for isolationism and economic protectionism (tariffs). They wanted nothing to do with a devastated Europe and Asia. They wanted to hide behind the bomb and stay within our shores.

Harry Truman saw how blind and defenseless this would make us. He saw that in the new bi-polar world, we would have to build and maintain a system of alliances, and make commitments to our friends and allies.

Long story short, it worked and we won the Cold War. The Repubs offered the statue-like Ike, the malevolent Nixon, the bumbling Ford, the truly lost Reagan, and the confused Poppie during that span. We won the Cold War despite them.

What did they have in common? What were the defining characteristics of these presidents that shows them to be Repubs to the core?

Well, they all used racism to win office. Ike was 1952-60; Jim Crow was his campaign director in the South. Nixon was Nixon - he cheated and screwed everybody. Reagan was the first real NeoConvict president - he gutted the Civil Rights division and would have done more if he could have stayed awake a few more hours in the day. Poppie had Willie Horton.

Now Georgie has Rove, and "voter fraud."

They all gave tax breaks to those who needed it least by claiming it increased the economy - a claim that is supported by nothing. They grew the government while claiming to believe in small government. They played to the "social conservatives" but never actually did anything for them.

But Geiorgie is the worst of all. He has entirely gutted the US government of all pride and capability. He came in believing that government couldn't do anything right, then screwed everything up himself to prove it.

The point is (there is a point) that the absolute rock-bottom lowest impulses of the American culture have been its over-riding unquestioned authority for six years, and have created the kind of dystopia that only true sociopaths could make. It's what they do.

Here's your example for today (there is, literally, an example of their deadly horror in the papers every day of the week going back six years. Amazing.):

OSHA, the agency charged with protecting workers, is being run by a former industry deregulation advocate and has not issued new workplace regulations since 2000. Really.

Meanwhile, people are being killed, maimed, and sickened needlessly.

Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.

Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.

The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.

“The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency,” said Dr. David Michaels, an occupational health expert at George Washington University who has written extensively about workplace safety. “If they ever knew how to issue regulations, they’ve forgotten. The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window.”

They see working men and women as industrial cannon fodder. Who's the sociopath in charge of protecting workers?

Mr. Foulke, the OSHA chief, has a history of opposing regulations produced by the agency he now leads. He has described himself as a “true Ronald Reagan Republican” who “firmly believes in limited government.” Before coming to Washington last year, Mr. Foulke, a former Republican Party state chairman in South Carolina and top political fund-raiser, worked in Greenville, S.C., for a law firm that advises companies on how to avoid union organizing. Representing the United States Chamber of Commerce, he had testified before Congress several times to promote voluntary OSHA compliance programs. He also opposed the ergonomics standards.

And as a member in the 1990s of an independent agency that reviews OSHA citations, he led a successful effort to weaken the agency’s enforcement authority.

Early in his tenure at OSHA, Mr. Foulke delivered a speech called “Adults Do the Darndest Things,” which attributed many injuries to worker carelessness. Large posters of workers’ making dangerous errors, like erecting a tall ladder close to an overhead wire, were displayed around him.

“Kids don’t always know what their parents do all day at work, but they instinctively understand the importance of them working safely,” he told the audience, which included children who had won a safety-poster contest. “In contrast, adults could stand to learn a thing or two. Looking at the posters, I was reminded of a couple examples of safety and health bloopers that are both humorous and horrible.”

That's who. Horrible, but not humorous. While workers are losing their lives and their lungs to preventable chemical damage that his agency is sworn to prevent, Foulke is out giving speeches about how funny workers are.

Hannibal Lecter can't touch these guys for body count. Rummy's war, Gonzo's Justice, Brownie's hurricane, the FDA, the EPA, and now OSHA - all the people and agencies we pay to protect us have joined the enemy. The American government is out to get us - and they've been allowed to.

I honestly don't know if this will ever get fixed. Maybe this sort of evil is the persist ant kind, the kind that doesn't go away.