Eliminating Red Tape = More Money for the One Percent

I ran across an informative article by writer Brian Bienkowski in the Great Lakes Echo about state officials eliminating burdensome regulations in order to release the restraints that bind businesses and prevent them from achieving their full potential in the marketplace.

Some things never change.

I remember fighting state lawmakers when they wanted to use a newly-created “Office of Regulatory Reform” to promote “viable alternatives to regulation including non-regulatory, market-based solutions” (emphasis mine) almost two decades ago. Unscrupulous politicians always want to reduce the size and scope of government in order to “save” money (read: make more money available to steal and redirect to their puppet masters in the One Percent).

So Michigan Governor Rick Snyder – the nasally Republican who cut taxes on businesses to the tune of $1.8 billion – decided to set up a 13-member task force known as the “Environmental Advisory Rules Committee” to help “create a business-friendly environment.” The committee of state officials, industry and utility representatives, lawyers and one environmental group (the Michigan Environmental Council, my former employer) worked with Snyder’s newly-reshaped Office of Regulatory Reinvention to come up with almost 80 just-announced recommendations to overhaul the state’s regulatory structure.

Michigan Environmental Council policy director James Clift - one of the smartest, most tireless advocates I’ve ever known – dissented on 20 recommendations that he thought represented threats to public health.

No one else dissented.

In a move as surprising as discovering that milk comes from cows and Americans drive on the right side of the road, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce praised the state’s efforts to “eliminate red tape.” (See “Michigan Chamber Praises Governor Snyder’s Focus on Regulatory Reform” here.)

State lawmakers in action

The GOP-controlled legislature needs to approve the recommendations before they go into effect. Anyone who’s spent more than 91 seconds observing today’s state lawmakers in action (and I use that word loosely) knows how likely it is that business will get what it wants.

See, it’s environmental regulation that’s hurting us, not class warfare and pandering politicians and tax cuts for the richest one percent of Americans and Wall Street greed and corporations being granted the same rights as human beings and unjustifiable, unnecessary wars that cost over a trillion and kill innocent brown-skinned people.

St. Ronnie of Reagan

This anti-regulation, anti-government mindset is older than Miss Jane Pittman and as legitimate as Brad and Angelina’s three adopted kids. I remember hearing St. Ronnie of Reagan’s terribly funny quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help,'” years ago and thinking, “Oh, great. Let’s demonize government and do away with child labor laws, the Safe Drinking Water Act, seat belts and motorcycle helmets. Let’s make ‘consumer protection’ a bad thing.”

Reagan told that dumb joke in July of 1988; 23 years later, Gaseous Newt Gingrich publicly stated that child labor laws are “stupid.”

Frankly, I don’t know why environmental advocates are so concerned. The Environmental Advisory Rules Committee included such pro-environment entities as Dow Chemical, DTE Energy, the Michigan Manufacturers Association and Consumers Energy. Surely these corporations emphasized public and environmental health above profit margins and bottom lines, right?



Sources: Great Lakes Echo, Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Michigan Office of Regulatory Reinvention.