Slouching Towards Oblivion

Saturday, January 31, 2015

It All Comes Down To Money

Money's what matters.

From Zach Carter at HuffPo:
Next week, the House will consider a bill to amend the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, which then-Speaker Gingrich (R-Ga.) shepherded through Congress. The 20-year-old law imposed a host of cost-benefit standards on federal regulators, including a requirement that they consider the costs that new rules might impose on state and local governments. But in order to garner Democratic votes and protect against a presidential veto, Gingrich made a significant concession: The regulators' calculations could not be challenged in court.
--and so-- 
"Cost-benefit analysis has been and will continue to be a blueprint for big banks to water down, dilute and block Wall Street reforms," warned Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate for Public Citizen. "The bill ensures that if financial agencies adopt reforms based on cost-benefit analyses that do not reflect Wall Street preferences, big banks will be waiting in the wings with a lawsuit to overturn the rule."
So on one hand, it kinda looks like they just wanna "play fair" and make sure that all those poor hardworkin' Uber Ethical Biz-Fucks can enjoy access to the courts on the same footing as all those dirty fucking hippies who use Da Gubmint to steal the money I've earned by the sweat of by own brow, just so they can turn around and give it to some Welfare Queen blah bah blah. Or maybe they'll sell it as making sure all three branches get a chance to weigh in on the effects of legislation.  That's all horseshit, IMHO.  It's never really about what they tell us it's about.

Regulation is a key component in any form of device, organism, organization, system, et cetera ad nauseum ad aeternam.  I've hit on this point before, but it's a good one to remember.  The analogy is that without my pancreas to regulate it, my blood sugar goes nuts and while I have a pretty good time for a little while, I'm in sugar shock in a coupla days and I'm dead by this time next month.

What these guys want - "guys" meaning the embedded weevils congressional staffers who work for Monsanto and ExxonMobil and Raytheon, but get paid by suckers like me and you - what they want is another way to exempt their shadow employers from rules that they tell us are oh so very important to maintain "law and order".

So that's the dodge.  We've been almost perfectly conditioned to think government is always and only bad.  If you buy into that, then it follows naturally that pretty much anything that helps Public Governance has to hurt Private Enterprise.  Which is exactly what we end up arguing about, instead of recognizing that it's really "rules for you but not for me".

Right now, once the Regs have been vetted by the Cost-Benefits thing, and they get put in place, you can't challenge them in court - that's not great because we get some really weak shit regs to begin with, but at least Goldman Sachs can't challenge them either.  So fuck that. What's the point of having all this money if I can't just buy the government that all my rich friends keep telling me I deserve?

As usual, Coin-Operated Politicians who already play us like a cheap kazoo are pushing to turn the whole thing over to a Judiciary that's all but bought and paid for now too.  It costs a good chunk o' change to slug it out in court.  Do you suppose Halliburton might have some small edge when you need the courts' help because your well water is now usable as a fuel for your backyard grill?

While we've been distracted, taking the rhetorical beatings because of ridiculously successful creations of Straw Man crap like the Nanny State, the "conservatives" have been busily installing The Daddy State.  The loop is closing apace.



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