No Going Back!
Republicans, Regulations, and the American Dream
There is a reason why so many elected Republican law makers try to make laws to curb or eliminate regulations. It happens when they are campaigning. Some guy with a little company employing 5 people calls the Republican candidate into the back room and shows him a big stack of binders.
“These are government regulations I am required to follow if I am to stay in business,” he tells the politician. “These regulations are so complicated, and take so much time to do all the required paper work, that I had to hire three more people just to stay in compliance with these regulations. Since my profit margins are thin, I am actually losing money trying to keep the doors open while complying with these stupid government regulations.”
When you are talking with some guy and he tells you that the regulations are cumbersome and expensive and stupid, well, hell, those are three excellent reasons to be against regulations. When we are talking to some guy, eyeball to eyeball, in the back room of his business, well, you just don’t get all skeptical. After all, you are campaigning for votes, and this guy has employees, and customers, and keeping him on your side seems like a good idea. That’s why we don’t question the complainers.
The regulations are:
- cumbersome
- costly and
- crazy
To be honest, sometimes the regulations are unnecessarily complex, and too expensive to comply with if you expect to be competitive in your business, and you betchuh, some of the regulations are crazy, ludicrous, stupid, and dumb, dumb, dumb.
It is easy to do, and it is the lazy thing to do, but when we see something we don’t like we put a label on it, and then we hate everything else that has a similar label. If some regulations are bad, then they are all bad. This wouldn’t be a problem if it was true, but it isn’t.
In high school, I sold paint form Monkey Wards. The law had just passed outlawing lead paint. I can’t tell you how many house painters came by and complained to be about this crappy Latex paint and explaining to me just how stupid it was for the government to pass a regulation that eliminated lead paint. To these house painters the regulation was stupid. To parent who have children who’s brains were damaged by exposure to lead paint, and the lead paint dust that filled their little apartments, the lead paint banning regulation was not all that stupid.
The problem for most of us is that we want there to always be one clean, clear, easy answer that can be universally applied and will be right every single time we apply it. There isn’t. Such easy answers don’t exist.
Regulations are indeed horrible. Sometimes. Regulations are vital, and if we fail to regulate we are hurting ourselves. Sometimes.
The AIG bonus issue has angered most Americans, but why? Is it because we failed to regulate AIG ? Both Democrats and Republicans share guilt in eliminating regulations that would have stopped the millions of dollars bonus orgy that occurred at AIG . Similar bonus misuse took place in some of the other financial institutions that also got Stimulus Rescue Money.
There are Conservocrates (conservative democrats) and Republicans, and conservative talking heads that seem to have suffered some sort of schizoid-personality-split over this AIG issue.
Consider the position coming from Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh:
“Let me tell you something, folks. I am all for the AIG bailouts, and I am all for the AIG bonuses. Well, I’m not for the bailouts, well, in a way I’m for the bailout because I’m for the bonuses.
“We need some perspective here. Okay, so they’ve got $170 billion in bailouts, the bonuses are $165 million. The AIG bonuses are one-tenth of 1 percent of all the bailout money, not just for AIG , but for everybody else. It’s in their contracts. What is the number-one asset any company has? It’s people. It’s employees. This $165 million in bonuses is gonna help estimate the economy. It’s going to stimulate the New York City economy, $165 million, one-tenth of 1 percent of all bailout. The populist thing to do, the popular thing to come and do here today is bang my fist and be outraged over how in the world can they use my taxpayer money this way.”
Do conservatives support stronger regulations on the financial industry that has so dramatically failed the country and wounded the world? Obviously, many Republicans are outraged by the AIG bonuses, but over the past few days other conservative talking heads (Hannity for one) have joined with Rush to support AIG . It seems like an odd thing to do, when the populous outrage over the AIG bonus program is so wide spread.
Too many regulations that are too strict, too narrowly focused, and applied by people who have never done the job and know nothing about the consequences of their rules is just too dang stifling to business, and these these stupid regs hurts business, the economy, and all citizens. On the other hand, t oo few regulations invites criminality, (Maddoff), and corporate greed that leads to monopolies, and, when too much of the economy is controlled by too few corporations, well, should anything go wrong; it places the economy of the country, and of the world in jeopardy. There is no one single simple answer to the regulation issue. We must have regulations. We must allow the good regulations, the ones that protect the citizens, and keep us from putting all our economic eggs in too few financial industry baskets. We must also eliminate silly, senseless, cumbersome regulations that choke out the entrepreneurial efforts that gave America the American Dream envied and desired so many people all over the world.
Article submitted Thursday, March 19, 2009 & read 2443 times.
Tex Norman is a social worker, currently working at the Oklahoma DHS Abuse and Neglect hotline. He will have been married to Kathie for 40 years this August 2012. He has a son Ryan who earned a PhD from Princeton. Tex spends his free time working as an artist and writer. : http://texnormanartist.blogspot.com/ ... http://collagepoetrybytex.blogspot.com/
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