"Let's Make It Official: Your Life Isn't Worth Chicken Shit"
"Like a vulturous auction during a death watch, fat-cat lobbyists for stinking-rich corporations that lock in good things for your life -- like malignant air and inhumane working hours -- have descended en masse on the Bush administration's racketeering regulators, pleading for a final push of even grosser, antisocial malevolence.
Both sides -- the lobbyists and the Bushies -- have rung the gong, because both are fairly convinced that in 2008 Democrats will sweep elective offices, from the White House to the lower House, and will then actually start catering to the electoral inmates, rather than the plutocratic wardens who have profited so handsomely from seven years of Bush's corporate piñata.
Where these lobbyists got the idea that elected Democrats aren't as amenable to legal bribery as their Heyakian counterparts is beyond every thinking soul; at any rate, that's the prevailing theory, so it's serious crunch time -- wipe off the books any remaining, regulatory protections that menace the sustained flow of fat into already fattened corporate pocketbooks.
The laissez-faire cesspool envisioned by lobbyists on behalf of their corporate capo regimes is delineated this morning by the New York Times, and said delineation of the "wide range of health, safety, labor and economic rules" they seek to overturn -- "in the belief that they can get better deals from the Bush administration than from its successor" -- will gag you.
Or, perhaps you'll just yawn. I don't know. It all depends on how familiar one is with the capitalist shell game of promising the American Dream through your utter submission and resignation.
Prepare for that gag- or yawn-reflex to this quick survey of deregulatory shenanigans in the last-minute works:
"Businesses are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back rules that let employees take time off [that would be unpaid leave] for family needs and medical problems." It seems too many of you out there, or your loved ones, are getting inconveniently sick or croaking at inopportune moments.
"Electric power companies are pushing the government to relax pollution-control requirements." But they have no choice, you see. Their every fiber is devoted only to meeting your growing demand for "safe, reliable and affordable electricity," albeit at unregulated or bribed utility-commissioned rates.
"Trucking companies are trying to get final approval for a rule increasing the maximum number of hours commercial truck drivers can work." And if you find the thought of a sleepless roadster on crank barreling up behind you with a 40-ton payload prohibitively disturbing, then your empathy level for harried trucking executives is woefully, capitalistically and, yes, unpatriotically low.
"Coal companies are lobbying for a regulation that would allow them to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys." The tree-huggers are characteristically incensed, saying that would only hasten "the destruction of mountains, forests and streams throughout Appalachia," but they say such silly things only because they haven't yet achieved Larry Kudlow's penthouse lifestyle made possible by the destruction of mountains, forests and streams -- the 40-ton products of which are then raced to Larry by a sleepless maniac on crank.
But my favorite? This one is absolutely priceless.
"Poultry farmers are seeking an exemption for the smelly fumes produced by tons of chicken manure" -- from, that is, "laws and rules that require them to report emissions of ammonia exceeding 100 pounds a day. They argue that 'emissions from poultry houses pose little or no risk to public health' because the ammonia disperses quickly in the air.
"But environmental groups ... noted [that] a federal judge in Kentucky has found that farmers discharge ammonia from their barns, into the environment, so it will not sicken or kill the chickens."
What could I possibly say that could top that?"
This (from same NYT article blogger refers to):
