Conservatives Working For Big Business Want To Dismantle Regulations For Their Predator Allies... What Else Is New?

The whole GOP clown car claiming to be running for president vows to end regulations near and far. So do Boehner, Cantor, Issa, Ryan and the rest of the Ayn Rand acolytes in the House. Tomorrow they'll even waste part of the day voting against a regulation that doesn't exist!

“Now, here comes my favorite of the crazy regulatory acts. The EPA is now proposing rules to regulate dust,” Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, said on the House floor. He said Texas was full of dusty roads: “The EPA is now saying you can be fined for driving home every night on your gravel road.”

There was just one flaw in this argument. It was not true.

The EPA’s new dust rule did not exist. It never did.

Still, the specter of this rule has spurred three bills to prevent it, one of which will be voted on Thursday in a House subcommittee. It sparked a late-night battle on the Senate floor. GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain cited it in a debate as a reason to eliminate the EPA.

The hubbub over this phantom rule, surely one of the most controversial regulations that never was, involved a slow-moving federal agency and a Republican Party with the EPA in its crosshairs.

“I do believe that the EPA does have the ability to change its mind,” said Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., sponsor of the bill to be voted on Thursday. The EPA has now confirmed that it does not intend to strengthen standards on farm dust. But Noem is still pushing a bill to go further and weaken the EPA’s power to set these rules in the future.

“This EPA has been very hard on business in this country, and this EPA has been very hard on agriculture,” Noem said. “I think it’s time we pushed back.”

...For Republicans the EPA’s new dust rule was an ideal talking point for this agenda. Even though the EPA had still not proposed any new EPA dust rule.

“We’ll stop excessive federal regulations that inhibit jobs in areas as varied as cement and farm dust,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told the Economic Club of Washington in September. Boehner’s deputy, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post decrying “EPA’s proposed regulations” on subjects including farm dust.

On the House floor, other legislators sketched out an even more detailed picture.

“Say Bessie the cow kicks up too much dust running over to your pickup truck at feeding time,” warned Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas. “The EPA is going to fine you for Bessie’s misconduct.”

We pay these people. Did you read William Golding's 1954 classic, Lord of the Flies? Here's a 10 minute cartoon version, that makes the point. Notice this line about the Republican Party:

Now we see another problem on the island. At least one of the boys is a sociopath by nature. And since there are no adults to enforce rules, it's only a matter of time, or circumstances, before Roger realizes he can kill.

Boehner weeps too. (See above) And the Republican mania to destroy regulations on behalf of their wealthy donors is as sociopathic as it gets... and can (and does) kill. I've been re-reading Vance Packard's classic from 1960, The Waste Makers and last night I came across a chapter-full of descriptions of what happens when Big Business corrupts politicians into weakened or abolishing regulations that protect consumers. There were dozens of great examples but I pulled out one to share is related to a face legal battle Cheff v Mathes, a seminal 1964 corporate law case. Four years before the case, Packard, writing about the entire concept of "planned obsolescence," set the stage:

The most flagrant attempt to promote a throwaway mood was that of the Holland Furnace Company of Holland, Michigan. This company is the largest seller of replacement furnaces in the nation, with five hundred retail branches. In 1958, the Federal Trade Commission ordered Holland to stop the strategy that had been used by some of its salesmen to frighten furnace owners into replacing existing furnaces with new Holland equipment. What follows in the next two paragraphs is taken from reports of the commission.

The salesmen involved, according to the Federal Trade Commission, sometimes posed as government or utility inspectors in order to get into the homes. And some misrepresented themselves as "heating engineers." A householder in the St. Louis area testified that two young men came to her house and said, "We are from the government inspecting furnaces," and asked for admission to the house. She refused them permission and called the police. When the men were picked up by the police and questioned, they identified themselves as Holland salesmen. They denied telling her they were government officers but admitted they had told her they were working with the "government fuel-inspection program."

Once the Holland canvassers gained access to a house-- either by pretext or in response to invitations resulting from company advertisements offering cleaning service or free inspections-- "in many instances" they dismantled furnaces without the owners' permission. In some cases, the Federal Trade Commission asserted, "they then refuse to reassemble them when requested, misrepresenting that this would involve grave danger of fire, gas, and explosion." In other cases, it said, they declared that the existing furnaces were beyond economical repair or that companies making them were out of business. "Some of the furnaces condemned by these agents," the Federal Trade Commission order 4 asserted, "were to be either in safe condition or safely repairable."

The Federal Trade Commission order upheld its examiner's ruling that Holland's "false claims and improper business methods had caused many owners to discard competitive furnaces prematurely in fear of grave danger from continued use of this 'condemned' equipment." The company denied or minimized the various accusations and turned to the federal courts for relief. At this writing-- two years and three court decisions later-- the matter is still under litigation.

In light of the trillions pillaged by Wall Street fighting over furnaces seems almost quaint. So let's go right to a hot off the presses report from Pat Garofalo at Think Progress. And, as so often is the case, it's not just a slimy Republican undermining public safety, but an equally slimy Democrat. That there are no Republicans slimier or more corrupt that New Jersey far right fanatic Scott Garrett says something very scary-- something that must be dealt with-- about New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney.

For months, Republicans have been trying to undermine the Dodd-Frank financial reform law-- passed in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis-- by cutting budgets for market regulators, obstructing nominees, and advancing bills that would weaken the law’s key provisions. But sometimes efforts to dismantle the law take on a more bipartisan flavor.

One of the key sections of the Dodd-Frank law has to do with swaps, the complex financial instruments that felled, among others, insurance giant American International Group. Before the 2008 financial crisis, the swaps market was totally opaque, giving neither customers nor regulators any sense of what the instruments actually cost or how much risk was building up in the financial system.

Dodd-Frank brings transparency to this market by forcing swap trades onto open exchanges-- where they can be seen by everyone-- rather than allowing backroom wheeling and dealing in the instruments to continue. But a bill authored by Reps. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), as the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgensen explained, would take these bits of the bill out at the knees:

Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, has teamed up with Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat, to introduce the Swap Execution Facility Clarification Act. It would bar the Securities and Exchange Commission and the C.F.T.C. from requiring swap execution facilities to have a minimum number of participants or mandating displays of prices. Both mechanisms promote transparency.

Mr. Garrett said the bill directed regulators “to provide market participants with the flexibility” they need to obtain price discovery. This means maintaining the old system that can keep prices in the shadows.

On Nov. 15, a House subcommittee approved the bill by a voice vote.

As Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler-- whose agency is charged with regulating swaps under Dodd-Frank-- explained, “economists for decades have shown that transparency lowers margins, leads to greater liquidity and more competition in the marketplace.” “Transparent pricing is also a critical feature of lowering the risk at the banks, and at the derivatives clearinghouses as well,” he said.

As David Min and I explained back in April, 2010, opacity in the swaps market “means that no one-- regulators, investors, or even the dealers themselves-- has a good handle on the systemic risk these instruments pose, or who is bearing the risk. This prevents regulators from being able to take steps to reduce systemic risk and creates the conditions for financial panics.” Dodd-Frank did a lot to deal with this problem, but Congress now seems to be aiming to undo that progress.

It's not just that Maloney doesn't want another scare from a Wall Street whore like hedge fund attorney Resma Saujani, she would like to knock Maxine Waters out of contention and become top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. That must never happen. And, by the way, since arriving in Congress, Maloney has taken $3,717,221 in legalistic bribes from the financial industry she's supposed to be helping to regulate. Let's find a progressive to take her on this time. Know anyone who lives here?