The Republicans are busy blaming Obama for a chemical spill at an un-inspected storage facility to cover up the fact that they have led the parade to dismantle and obstruct regulation and enforcement at all levels. It’s sort of like unemployment figures. If the GOP really wanted people to be able to work their way out of poverty, they’d create some jobs, not block infra-structure repair bills. Hey – how about hiring enough inspectors to make sure regulations are being followed? That would create a ripple effect as contractors in all fields would be needed to make the repairs and improvements neccesary.

Let’s face it – it’s not just the GOP. Too many Dems are willing to go down that road too. Either they are just as complicite or they don’t have gumption enough to stand strong against atrocities like the Tar Sands Pipeline and the TPP.
We would probably all like it if we could have a small government with a modicum of understandable regulations. We could have it – In a perfect world where business cared about people, workers and the environment, at least as much as they care about profit. But they don’t. This is not new. It has been going on forever, in all sorts of business. Heck even in our private lives where some joker thinks his distraction by another person texting in a movie theater is justification for shooting someone. All of us are guilty at some point: rolling through stop signs, going a little too fast, etc. So we have rules. Bills are made more complicated as haggling over specifics and exceptions take over. Then they are made even more complicated as industry and other powerful lobbying groups seek to dismantle them.

So we get chemical storage on the banks of a river in almost century old tanks with no regulations and no inspection.

Who could have foreseen a problem with that?