By Robert P. Bomboy
Not
many of us in our everyday lives look deeply into the political world around
us. A generation of intense political propaganda has biased Americans against a
federal government we know very little about.
The
truth is that for 330 million American citizens – you and me – the
federal government is the world’s greatest protector of individual freedom and
our greatest shield against domestic danger.
That
be it so, the average American doesn’t like the federal government – because he
or she hates paying federal income taxes, as we did yesterday. In fact,
for most Americans, the income tax is almost our only personal contact with the
federal government. Yet we do hate it at tax time and hold a grudge against it
throughout the year, even though 83 percent of us – more than four out of five
of us – get income tax refunds year in and year out - refunds that actually
average $3,120! (Rich people don’t get many refunds, but most rich people –
like President Trump – don’t pay any income tax.)
President
Trump and his associates have taken advantage of our ignorance, our hatred, and
our bias, chanting that they will “smash the federal government” and wipe out
the very parts of it that protect us most.
How’s
that?
That’s what it said in
one of his first executive orders, that the federal departments he controls
must stop issuing
new financial, environmental,
workplace,
health and safety, and other vital public protections. The
President has reinforced his order by not filling
His executive order of February 8 allows Big Business to exploit workers; Wall Street bankers to rip off consumers; dirty energy companies to pollute
the air we breathe and the water we drink; the big pharmaceutical companies to
continue price-gouging; auto companies to
sell dangerous cars, and to strip away many other protections that we rely on.
President Trump’s
order will make it nearly impossible for the government to carry out its duties under
popular and effective laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Motor Vehicle Safety Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
Even after the Wall Street crash of 2008 and the Great Recession, the BP oil disaster, and other failures that resulted from letting corporations "regulate"
themselves, President Trump's
order will endanger us and make us victims of still more recklessness and greed.
His presidential
order will mean more contaminated food, an accelerated rush to climate catastrophe, more dangerous cars and trucks on our roads, more workplace injuries and deaths, fewer consumer rights, more oil spills, more human misery. All unnecessary. All preventable.
Who determines
what will or won’t be done now? Why, Big Business will decide. I’m sure
you all like Big Business. They’re the people who cheat you, lie to you, lobby
against you. But under President Trump’s executive order, they’re the ones who
get to decide the usefulness of regulations only according to what those
regulations cost business, while completely ignoring regulations’ substantially greater – and real –
benefits to society, which is us.
It’s a heck of a
way to run a railroad – and the Trump train’s running right over us.
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