Deregulation And Regulatory Capture Are Killing Us All
After The Boeing Scandal, It’s Hard To Imagine Reforms
Brakes on a plane, brakes on a train
Breaks to make you go insane. ~~~ The Breaks, Kurtis Blow (1980)
Ben Norton has a superb piece on how deregulation and regulatory capture directly caused the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank et al, see:
Which reminded me that the Boeing crashes and the East Palestine train crash (February 3) preceded the Silicon Valley Bank crash (March 10) – and all happened for the same reasons.
Ralph Nader explained why way back in his 1965 book: “Unsafe At Any Speed”.
In the wake of the Paulsboro Toxic Train crash and before that the Gulf of Mexico blowout, we explained those reasons.
Here’s an example: a NY ABC TV news story (6/17/10) on Gov. Christie’s Executive Order #2 on deregulation:
Environmentalist Bill Wolfe spent 13 years with New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection. He says the massive spill in the gulf occurred because B-P cut corners on safety while the regulators looked the other way. Wolfe says Governor Christie is making the same mistake by issuing executive orders that call for immediate relief from “regulatory burdens” and “waivers” from regulations.
Bill Wolfe: “This executive order will put into force of law, the exact same policies that led to the disaster in the Gulf.”
Eyewitness News Reporter Jim Hoffer: “You’re saying that this executive order will bring the polluters and government to an even cozier kind of relationship?”
Wolfe: “Right, it will make government facilitate, not regulate, but actually promote the interest of the polluters, protect the polluters, not the people of the state.”
Current NJ Gov. Murphy has not reversed the Christie DEP regulatory rollbacks.
He has maintained continuity with virtually the same pro-corporate regulatory policy and to demonstrate that Murphy even appointed a former corporate lawyer as DEP Commissioner.
And so it goes.
(as my grandfather would say: “How do you like ‘dem apples?”)
[End Note: From a regulatory policy perspective, the Boeing plane crashes served a similar role as the prior Sandy Hook elementary school massacre. When massacres of children at school and plane crashes do not prompt assault weapons bans and stricter gun control and plane crashes killing hundreds of people don’t result in criminal prosecution (jail time), stricter regulations, and bans on privatization and deregulation, you know that democracy and government are badly broken and subservient to corporate power.]