Almost to a man and one woman, the other night's GOP debate displayed a stunning array of total historical amnesia as each candidate explain their visions that the way to get the American Economy going again is to simply get rid of those job crushing regulations.
NEWT GINGRICH: The Congress this year, this week, ought to repeal the Dodd-Frank bill, they ought to repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley bill.
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): What we need to do is pass the mother of all repeal bills…and I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be called the job-killing organization of America.
RICK SANTORUM: This president has put a stop sign against oil drilling, against any kind of exploration offshore or in Alaska and that is depressing. We need to drill.
GINGRICH: And one of the things Congress should do immediately is ,b>defund the National Labor Relations Board.
HERMAN CAIN: If the federal government continues to do the kind of things that this administration is trying to do through the backdoor, through the National Labor Relations Board, that’s killing our free-market system.
But there are reasons why have these regulations, and apparently some of us need to be reminded.
Besides the fact that U.S. Corporations have already had three record breaking quarters of massive profits in a row and are now sitting on and trying to HATCH over $1.63 Trillion of Capital while refusing to invest in American Jobs and workers. Even with that dastardy Dodd-Frank Bill in place, Wall Street is doing Fine - while Main Street is Sucking Wind.
But then again, I think Wall Street likes it that way - because that's just the way it used to be in the "Good Ole' Days" - before Regulations.
Regulations in this country didn't just happen, it was the result of a reaction to a series of events. Tragic Events.
The Cuyahoga River Fire
On June 22, 1969, an oil slick and debris in the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio, drawing national attention to environmental problems in Ohio and elsewhere in the United States.
This Cuyahoga River fire lasted just thirty minutes, but it did approximately fifty thousand dollars in damage -- principally to some railroad bridges spanning the river. It is unclear what caused the fire, but most people believe sparks from a passing train ignited an oil slick in the Cuyahoga River. This was not the first time that the river had caught on fire. Fires occurred on the Cuyahoga River in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and in 1952. The 1952 fire caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage.
This fire essentially started the Environmental Movement.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Screams of "Don't jump!" echoed through the canyons of tall buildings. More than 50 bodies littered the streets surrounding 23 Washington Place, so many that New York City's firetrucks were unable to get close enough to raise their ladders. Even if they had, the ladders from nearby Company 20 were too short to reach the eighth, ninth or 10th floors of the burning Triangle Shirtwaist Co. factory.
...
A flimsy iron fire escape quickly gave way under the weight of the first trying to flee. The single elevator was immobilized by dozens of bodies falling into the shaft as some tried to shimmy down the grease-covered cables. But the main route to living another day, the exit doors, were blocked by boxes of trash and fabric scrap, or locked by the bosses to prevent workers from stealing the fancy blouses with puffed sleeves and tight bodices that the Triangle Shirtwaist sweatshop produced by the thousands.
The 146 lives lost in the fire ignited a passion for worker safety laws and indirectly led to the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Yet a century later, the laws that could have saved lives had they been in place on March 25, 1911, are being threatened by budget cuts proposed by a Republican-controlled Congress.
This Fire, the deplorable conditions and the complete lack of attention to basic safety was a large spark for the U.S. Union movement that the GOP would love to see dismantled.
TThe Santa Barbara Oil Spll
Twenty years ago today, on January 28, 1969, a “blowout” erupted below the platform and, before it was plugged, more than 3 million gallons of crude oil spewed from drilling-induced cracks in the channel floor. For weeks national attention was focused on the spill’s disturbing, dramatic images. Oil-soaked birds, unable to fly, slowly dying on the sand. Waves so thick with crude oil that they broke on shore with an eerie silence. Thirty miles of sandy beaches coated with thick sludge. Hundreds of miles of ocean covered with an oily black sheen. But the spills impact went far beyond the fouled beaches. The disaster is considered to be a major factor in the birth of the modern-day environmental movement.
It was the Spark, “The blowout was the spark that brought the environmental issue to the nation’s attention,” said Arent Schuyler, lecturer emeritus in environmental studies at UC Santa Barbara. “People could see very vividly that their communities could bear the brunt of industrial accidents. They began forming environmental groups to protect their communities and started fighting for legislation to protect the environment.”
This disaster eventually inspired the first Earth Day, how soon we've forgotten.
Love Canal
Thirty years ago Thursday, President Jimmy Carter declared Love Canal a federal disaster area. The decision came after the discovery that the Niagara Falls neighborhood was built on top of 20,000 tons of toxic waste that had been dumped by a chemical company.
The Love Canal contamination tragedy is very personal to me. In 1978 I was living there with my husband and two children when I began to wonder whether the kids' recurring illnesses were connected to the chemical waste. Research conducted by myself and several of my neighbors, coupled with our complaints, eventually led the New York State health commissioner to declare a state of emergency and close the area's 99th Street School (where my son Michael attended). That was followed by the evacuations of mothers and children under the age of 2.
Then, Carter stepped in and the federal government was ordered to provide funds to relocate more than 200 families living within the first two rings of homes encircling the Love Canal toxic waste site.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/...
Three Mile Island
The accident to unit 2 happened at 4 am on 28 March 1979 when the reactor was operating at 97% power. It involved a relatively minor malfunction in the secondary cooling circuit which caused the temperature in the primary coolant to rise. This in turn caused the reactor to shut down automatically. Shut down took about one second. At this point a relief valve failed to close, but instrumentation did not reveal the fact, and so much of the primary coolant drained away that the residual decay heat in the reactor core was not removed. The core suffered severe damage as a result.
...
The cleanup of the damaged nuclear reactor system at TMI-2 took nearly 12 years and cost approximately US$973 million. The cleanup was uniquely challenging technically and radiologically. Plant surfaces had to be decontaminated. Water used and stored during the cleanup had to be processed. And about 100 tonnes of damaged uranium fuel had to be removed from the reactor vessel -- all without hazard to cleanup workers or the public.
Yeah, well - since all of this is an ancient distant past and our business community has become so much more careful and sophisticated it's not like we really need to worry and be concerned that similar tragedies might continue to occur without Government Regulation and Unions to maintain Health standards for the Public and Safety standards for workers.
We'll never have anything like the Massey Mining Explosion happen.
Nothing like BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Or Water Contaminated by Hydraulic Fracturing.
Or Water Contamination from Moutaintop Removal
Or the Fukushima Nuclear Plant Disaster
The GOP seems to think that none of this ever happened, or worse - They Just Don't CARE that it did and it does as long as they can get a lobbying kick-back from the likes of the Koch Brothers. Who cares how many people die as long as a few can make a buck.
Vyan