Corruption Overwhelming America

This commentary was drafted in anger when I learned that pig farmers are refusing to allow inspections to look for the microbes that are killing people. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle exposed the filth of the meat-packing industry in 1906 and led directly to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the creation of the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration. Now they want to undo a century of relatively clean food by claiming regulation is bad – yes, particularly bad for filth in the food industry.

This country’s reputation for honesty and responsibility long gave us a huge market edge. American institutions check on errors and misbehavior. That drove our legal and corporate culture. Now we’re inviting the world to ditch its confidence in us, and inviting each other to be cynical about business and political claims, threatening our economic power and democratic system.

Everyone has a reason why you can’t check on them. China is more honest about their meat than our pig farmers. Police refuse to allow information to be made public about their behavior because the people might realize who is trustworthy and who isn’t. The President denies Congress’ authority to get information from him. Even George Washington turned papers over. Trump is the first President since Richard Nixon to refuse Congress his tax information, lest the American people get an honest look at his economic behavior, bankruptcies and unreliability.

Republicans lump everything under the title of regulation and, making no distinction, claim all regulation is bad. Regulation is a problem because they might have to take responsibility for the poisons they want to emit, the toxins and dangerous bugs in the food they want to sell us, and the financial shenanigans they use to fleece us of our money. No one has the right to poison or injure anyone else. That’s irresponsible at best, legally tortious and probably criminal.

The so-called Supreme Court authorizes corporations to force us into arbitration with arbitrators the corporations choose so that the arbitrators are only beholden to the corporations, and anyway, they have no power to cure corporate misbehavior. Heaven forbid corporations should have to own up for their sins. Why should they – no one else does.

We have fussed about the bribery rampant in other countries because it prevents law from working to produce decent and proper behavior that justifies reliance. Preventing investigations is almost as bad. We’re now allowing corporate and political America to behave like the Mafia where there is only accountability for hurting each other – the purpose of the organization is to fleece the public, impose protection rackets, and, where people object, kill. In this complex world it is increasingly difficult to protect yourself from dishonest business.

But the President does it – shouldn’t we follow his example? He failed to fire Mueller but he fires everyone else who might insist on honesty and accountability. Now he’s now moving federal agencies halfway across the country to encourage the staff to quit rather than relocate. What a step forward.

There’s a stench in the White House but who’s left to complain? Too many corporate officers can no longer be watched because Trump destroyed the civil service. Who’s to complain about what they do?

 

Freedom for the Boss; Drudgery for the Rest of Us

I keep looking for ways to talk with supporters of the Administration. President Carter started the deregulation frenzy. That has become half of the Republican cut-and-deregulate refrain ever since, consistently repeated by the current White House and the Republicans in Congress. I’d like to focus on the things that will affect those of us who are, financially speaking, ordinary, middle-class Americans.

Here are changes the Administration and congressional Republicans are considering that affect working conditions:

• The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has been postponing and considering cutting down a Labor Department rule that limits “workers’ exposure [to] toxic material, which can cause a deadly lung disease.”
• The same White House Office is also “considering a proposal to roll back protections for workers in construction and shipbuilding.”
  • Those rules allow our employers to save cash by risking our health.

• “The Working Families Flexibility Act … would give employees a choice between taking time off or being paid time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours in a week.”
• Either way, Republicans oppose changing overtime rules to raise eligibility for overtime above the current $23,660 per year.
  • Those rules allow our employers to save cash by shortchanging us.

Here are some that affect the health of financially ordinary Americans:

• The Administraton has already taken steps to “roll back healthy school lunch standards”
• The new head of the FDA “has invested in or consulted for dozens of healthcare companies” which suggests that the Food and Drug Administration won’t be much help in preventing unnecessary complications and expenses.
• The House health care bill would eliminate Obamacare requirements that insurance plans cover prescriptions drugs and mental healthcare. Like all insurance, drug and mental health care coverage are intended to protect people from unplanned changes in the costs of survival.
• Senate Republicans narrowly lost an effort to roll back a regulation that “limit[s] methane emissions from oil and natural gas drilling.” Methane is even more damaging to the climate than carbon.
  • Those rules risk our health for the sake of other people’s profits.

On savings for retirement:

• “Trump’s Labor Department delayed the so-called fiduciary rule, ordering financial advisers to act in … [your] best interest[s] … [if you] are saving for retirement.”
• The CHOICE Act would allow the banks that brought us the crash of 2008 to opt out of regulations adopted after the crash and intended to prevent another. And the bill renames the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and “reduces its power to enforce pre-existing consumer protection laws.”
  • Those rules risk our financial security for the sake of other people’s profits.

Meanwhile, Republicans on the Supreme Court show little respect for working men and women.

• With Breyer’s help they have blessed “Professional debt collectors … [who] built a business out of buying stale debt, filing claims in bankruptcy proceedings to collect it, and hoping that no one notices that the debt is too old to be enforced by the courts.”
• The Court continues to apply a 1925 statute intended for interstate business transactions to consumer contracts and the Court bars state regulation entirely.

What Republicans continue to give us is freedom for the boss and drudgery for the rest of us. As the old folk song has it, “same song, second verse, could get better but it’s gonna get worse.”

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, May 16, 2017.