THE REPUBLICAN PARTY VISION FOR AMERICA-- EAT DUST AND DIE

Yesterday I started the day by painting a picture of the Republican Party dream of unfettered, unregulated capitalism, the kind that brings us polluted streams and air, as well as food, medicine and products that kill, gasoline prices through the roof and a current mortgage crisis that is dragging the whole economy down the toilet. Selfish, greed-obsessed Republicans are willing to push people until the have no choice but to strike back. FDR once saved the country from the evils of Republican excess. Bush is far worse than Coolidge and Hoover ever were. I sure hope Obama can rise to the occasion.

Meanwhile, the House, at least, is trying to ameliorate the worst of the Bush Regime's war on regulatory sanity. Yesterday 22 Republicans got in a mainstream mood and joined every single Democrat-- even the worst reactionary goons like John Barrow, Jim Marshall, and Nick Lampson-- to pass the kind of act that doesn't move Rev. Wright out of the headlines for one second-- but an act that will save countless Americans tremendous grief. Many of the Republicans who joined the Democrats to do the right thing (instead of the right-wing thing) are the ones who have already announced their retirements-- but not all.

H.R. 5522 (which Mitch McConnell is already plotting to filibuster to death in the Senate) is the Worker Protection Against Combustible Dust Explosion and Fire Act. If McConnell's filibuster fails-- it may-- and if Bush is too embarrassed to veto it, the bill will require the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue rules regulating combustible industrial dusts, like sugar dust, that can build up to hazardous levels and explode, the way it did this past February at the Imperial Sugar Refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia. The explosion killed 13 workers and injured dozens. Jesse Lee has far more details on the bill.

You might wonder how anyone could oppose a measure like this. 165 Republican extremists did. But many of the wingnuts who are in the worst jeopardy of losing their jobs in November slinked over to the Democratic side of the aisle yesterday and voted to help regular working Americans for a change, including radical-right nuts like Don Young (AK), Fred Upton (MI), the 3 GOP extremists in south Florida (the petrified Diaz-Balart brothers and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen), John McHugh (NY), Phil English (PA), Jon Porter (NV), Steven LaTourette (OH), and Thaddeus McCotter (MI).

Alan Grayson, the Blue America-endorsed candidate from Orlando, was in Somalia a few months ago. "No schools, no water, no garbage collection, no police," he told me. "Truly, a libertarian paradise.  And a 1000-mile-wide dumpster... Who are these nuts, who would rather see us sick, hurt or dead, than to have the law protect us?  What kind of 'homeland security' is it that 'protects' us from bottled water and nail files at the airport, but not from explosive dust?  Why don't all these black-helicopter, tin-foil-hat paranoids who feel that the law should be disemboweled move to Somalia-- there's a real no-government, libertarian paradise."

Almost all of our Blue America candidates for the House are facing lunatic fringe Republicans who refused to vote for this basic safety measure. Here's a partial list of the reactionaries who opposed this proven danger in the workplace:
Scott Garrett (NJ)
Charles Dent (PA)
Dave Reichert (WA)
Michael McCaul (TX)
Mean Jean Schmidt (OH)
Ric Keller (FL)-- the kook who Alan Grayson is challenging in Orlando
David Dreier (CA)
Robin Hayes (NC)
Dana Rohrabacher (CA)
Randy Kuhl (NY)
Tim Walberg (MI)
Gary Miller (CA)

Any of the anti-government reactionaries above could be captured on camera saying the same thing, but today we have a quote from New Jersey extremist Scott Garrett (courtesy of BlogTheFifth) explaining his law of the jungle "philosophy" of government-- although not its consequences. Please watch Garrett summing up in one minute why the 21st Century should see the demise of the Republican Party. And after you watch, think about these words from Dennis Shulman, the progressive Democrat running against him in the northernmost district of New Jersey. "Scott Garrett has endorsed the sentiment that members of Congress ought to go to Washington `to eliminate government,' and he is voting in line with that sentiment, opposing even the most basic effort by the government to provide common sense protections for America's working people. Obviously, people should not be forced to choose between a paycheck and a basic level of safety-- that's why we need OSHA to look out for people."




UPDATE: ONE OF THE OPPONENTS OF SAFTEY IN THE WORKPLACE REGULATIONS IS INLAND EMPIRE EXTREMIST GARY MILLER

Miller's progressive opponent, Ron Shepston, doesn't seem surprised that his congressman is on the wrong side of this issue. "I can say that I find it amazing that so many Republicans can carry their knee-jerk reaction against government involvement so far as to vote against something that is so fundamentally important. If you ask most Republicans if government should fund the military the response would be near universal but there are many other issues that are just as important to our country and our values which they somehow trust to the private sector. It never seems to occur to them that the founders recognized that bad behavior drives out good. No less than Thomas Jefferson worried about this and felt at the deepest levels that the function of government was to protect citizens from monied interests. Their ignorance knows no bounds. Fortunately, voters are running from them in droves."