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Obama's Weak-Kneed Regulatory Regime
The Republican Party has a sense of humor, however inadvertently. Its ardent advocates regularly accuse the Obama Administration of heavy handed regulation of business.
Tell that to the hundred federal poultry inspectors who just picketed the Department of Agriculture in opposition to a proposal that would allow those crammed, bacterial poultry slaughterhouses to do their own inspections. The picketers fear that with this license, the poultry bosses will speed up the slaughter rate to 175 birds per minute from the present 70.
Tell that to the Securities Exchange Commission that will have to allow the return of the notorious boiler room practices where “start-ups” with up to $1 billion in annual revenues can sell stock to investors like the old Wild West days with little discourse or regulation. After the recent devastating Wall Street crash and bailout, here they go again—just throw the federal cop off the corporate crime beat.
Tell that to David Michaels, the superbly qualified head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration who can’t get the White House to approve issuance of long-overdue life-saving safeguards for worker health and safety. Fear of Republicans by the Obamaites in an election year super-cedes their oath to enforce laws that save lives in hazardous workplaces. Nearly 60,000 workers lose their lives to workplace-related diseases and trauma every year. That is equivalent to nineteen 9/11 casualty tolls every year.
Tell that to a strapped Environmental Protection Agency that at long last was trying to reduce the toxic materials in your air and water. President Obama personally intervened on two of their forthcoming regulations to stop them.
Tell that to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that was the subject of a front page New York Times article on April 3, 2012 titled “White House and the F.D.A. Often at Odds.” It seems that President Obama’s deputy chief of staff, Nancy-Ann DeParle, has been leaning on FDA Commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg to drop proposed rules requiring labeling of calories for foods served on airplanes and movie theaters, as well as regulation of sunscreen and asthma inhalers.
The Obamabush White House objected to what the Times said was “the enforcement of an agency decision on a drug to prevent premature births.”
The FDA believed that the Obama “hope and change” campaign in 2008 would start a new day from the years of George W. Bush who believed, for example, that the agency should not issue rules preventing contamination of eggs and other produce. Alas, said a top FDA official to the Times: “Employees here waited eight long years for deliverance that didn’t come.”
Mr. Obama, as with his other choices of White House staff, set himself up by choosing the “regulation czar,” Cass R. Sunstein who can give thumbs down on agency safety proposals. Professor Sunstein, who thinks harder than he feels the pain of victims of non-regulation (or law and order) has a philosophy known as “libertarian paternalism”. (Google it if you wish to discover its meaning.)
FDA scientists sadly recall Mr. Obama’s White House ceremony to sign a memorandum in 2009 to replace Mr. Bush’s politicization of science in government with scientific integrity and to listen to scientists “even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it is inconvenient.” Once again, words, words, words, succumb to the power of corporatism.
Obama’s regulatory agency officials receive constant pressure from Congressional corporatists on their meager enforcement budgets. They are made to behave as if they should fear the criminals and defrauders they are supposed to be catching to protect the American people.
All of them are envious of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created by Congress to shield consumers of credit, mortgages, payday loans and other financial transactions from the Wall Street-driven crime wave. You see, the CFPB resides inside the Federal Reserve and receives its $500 billion budget from the Fed, which gets its budget from bank frees and is free of the Congressional hammers.
Still, the CFPB and its sterling staff (with few exceptions) is an agency waiting to start producing long-needed rules of decent business behavior. It is not clear what is causing the delay, but it couldn’t be Congress now. It may be the high hurdles that the Bureau has to overcome vertically with its supervisory council—real or fancied.
Occupy Washington needs to mass in front of these agency buildings soon to highlight the truth about Obama’s weak-kneed regulatory agencies. In a perverse way, the Obamaites would probably welcome such protests as enhancing their corporate fundraising efforts.
Meanwhile the people pay!
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21 Comments so far
Show AllLesson: Don't eat meat or seafood. Eat lower on the food chain to protect yourself because no one else cares. Go organic. Grow your own food if you can...
In other words, do exactly what the capitalists want you to do - buy your own food safety. Can't afford it? Tough!
Cass Sunstein is married to Samantha Power. She is considered to be an advocate for human rights - even as she works for the National Security Council and has repeatedly advocated peace through war.
Democrat Delusions depend upon a belief in "lesser evils" as a good thing.
Of course, like attracts like, and the illusion of opposition is their chief deception in Washington.
Thank you, Ralph! Great article, as usual!
WonderWoman, I second that. This POTUS will fold every time--that's based on a big and unrealistic assumption that the way things are going is not what Obama wants.
"Libertarian paternalism" means (Expletive Deleted) you! It is the national motto of the United States, a nation in which the majority of citizens is gleefully hellbent on destroying themselves. And Obama is the Maltese Falcon, a cheap fake!
Long time no see, Mordechai.
Welcome back!
Ralph, you did the right deed by running for president before. Year after year, it has only become crystal clear that when the Republicans say "JUMP !", most Democrats will react "How High?". Obama is no FDR and the FDR Democrats are just about as extinct as the Eisenhower Republicans. My recommendation is to vote third party progressive when given one or more choices of them on the ballot at each of their voting booths.
I agree with your recommendation. It would be easier for any of the unhappy and wavering progressive type Democratic supporters to consider if you were to rephrase that to "Vote for the least of the three evils". Progressive Democrats are habituated to holding their noses while voting for lessor evil.
I don't know who will show up on the ballot in my state. If worst comes to worst, I'll try a write-in or just not vote.
It is incredibly frustrating and just down right infuriating to have so little choice in our national elections. I hold my nose and vote for the democrat because I value the efficacy of both medicare and social security and now as an old fart I fear the loss of both. I've seen those old pre safety net news reels of destitute elderly Americans, homeless and hungry left to die after a life of usually very hard labor in the fields and factories. This was the picture of America before FDR and Johnson. This is the America we will revisit if the right wing reprobates get their way.
Ralph, I must say we have be disillusioned by this current president, as he is not what he said he was, and in fact seems to be more of a Dictator than a President who abides by the US Constitution. We must get this guy-Obama-out of office as quickly as possible, before he enacts his Third Reich mentality on us all. Obama has signed bills like the NDAA and the H.R. 347 bill against peaceful protesting, and I see that as being "totally Un-American". Obama isn't weak kneed, he is a puppet of the Oligarchs, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission,NATO,the Federal Reserve, and others. Obama answers now to no one but them.
If you can, please press on and help folks like Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson gain political strength.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/An-End-To-Authoritarianism-by-Rocky-Anderson-120328-754.html
If salmonella could vote, they'd vote for Obama.
I have voted for Ralph at least 2x that i recall when there were just no other realistic candidates. I understand the cost and time associated might prohibit Mr. Nader from another symbolic run but the thought excites me as it would give me the opportunity to say i voted my conscience. Out of curiosity, does anyone know (or can Mr. Nader answer himself) who he thinks is a viable candidate for president in the next election? I would love to hear his take on it
I hope Ralph Nader runs again this time around. I, too, would love to hear Nader's takin on Nader's candidacy for POTUS. I will vote my conscience this time around.
Ralph, if you're listening, thanks for another great article! Way to go!
I have been voting for NADER for more than 30 years, and will continue to vote for him. Free yourself from the D/R box. Vote for the best - not the lesser of the evils.
VOTE NADER 2012
I second that, rosemarie jackowski. I voted Democratic for nearly 40 years, voting for the "lesser of two evils", but I'm no longer buying that. I will vote my conscience from now on. I may well piss a great many people off, but hey...you can't please everyone, so you've gotta please yourself, as the song goes.
One of the government's main functions is to act as a regulatory watchdog for the people's interests and concerns in such areas as: equal justice, corporate functions, banking, employment, education, healthcare, environmental pollution, climate change, safety and health issues in the workplace and the environment. Policymakers and legislators who write legislation must be grounded in the knowledge, understanding and necessity for regulations and have the ability to apply and enforce those regulations when it is required. (i.e. Apple Corporation/Samsung vs.Chinese Worker Abuse) Without tough, enforceable regulations driving the policies and legislation for its intended purpose, the laws become marginalized, ineffective and potentially harmful and disastrous for the people, economy and environment. (e.g. Wall Street banking abuses, giant oil, gas and coal corporations causing mining disasters, poisonous spills, pollution, climate change, dangerous pharmaceutical drugs, health insurance abuses, Patriot Act, surveillance, wiretapping, signing statements, gag orders, war crimes abuses and now the dangerous NDAA with indefinite detention, no due process rights, no representation or fair trial and U.S. citizens can even be targeted for assassination) This begs the question of Unions, workers and the rest of us: If the government NEGLECTS to enforce these vitally important regulations, what entity will fill this enormous void? What entity will enforce legal justice for everyone or social justice or economic justice or environmental justice?
When leadership is weak, submissive and fearful of bully Republicans, giant corporations, Wall Street bankers and Pentagon/Military, the bullies win, and they win big by getting 90% of what they want and everyone else gets 10%. Those who appease to avoid conflict and confrontation leave a country floundering without a compass, guidance or a sense of direction. Where are we heading? What is the short and long-term Action Plan? What is the vision for America for the next 10-20 years? Are we leaving it up to the giant corporations and the military to determine our destiny?
These are important questions that need answers. Politicians who fail to raise the level of discourse from the lowest common denominator to a level requiring critical thinking, analysis, reason and enlightened arguments are doing the American people, our democracy and our country a great disservice!
In the spirit of the Easter season, politicians and humanity need to rise up to our better selves, and take our call to service seriously by serving the human needs of people everywhere. One crucial way for the government "to serve" is by watchdogging/regulating those who place money and profits over the value of every single human being.
The people have been paying with their lives for 38yrs. Ralph...Where you been? The only ones weak kneed in the US is our bought and paid for Congress who now legislates what ever their buyers tell them to...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yOno_2m_8LY
Why do you think they now move to mandate a lot more vaccine to add to the prion mix? For the fun of watching them fall so they can then declare more swindle flu---thats why. You might not have been around when their lies started killing us...Back then it was called AIDS..Now its called seronegative Lyme or MCIDS to all the stupid syndromes they gave out to let the people suffer with. As they change the money at the doors...
Vote out all the politicians and fill those offices with our wounded veterans from the VA.
He isn't weak kneed, he is on his knees in front of the corporate body eager and ready to service them just like the previous 4 presidents