War on “the regulatory state”

Princess Ivanka is pleased that Daddy is getting rid of all those pesky regulations protections that might eat into her profits a little bit.

A couple of weeks ago he did a photo op with the Big Pile of Protections that he promises to kill.

Salon says wait.

There’s only one problem. That mountain of paper Trump used as a prop symbolizes hard-won measures that protect us.

To refresh the president’s memory, back in the 1960s, smog in major U.S. cities was so thick it blocked the sun. Rivers ran brown with raw sewage and toxic chemicals. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River and at least two other urban waterways were so polluted they caught on fire. Lead-laced paint and gasoline poisoned children, damaging their brains and nervous systems. Cars without seatbelts, airbags or safety glass were unsafe at any speed. And hazardous working conditions killed an average of 14,000 workers annually, nearly three times the number today.

In response, Congress enacted the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and other landmark pieces of legislation to protect public health and safety. Some of those laws also created the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and other federal agencies to write and enforce safeguards.

But Trump wants more workers killed in hazardous working conditions, more smog, more filthy rivers, more species going extinct, more people killed in car crashes because they weren’t wearing seat belts – the glorious land of FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOM.

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