This week,
the Twit of the Week Award goes to Ben Carson. The TOW Award comes with a
30-day supply of mouthwash to get the residue of those insipidly stupid remarks
out of his head. Ben doesn't get this distinction for the usual ignorant
ranting about women's health issues unless we include women's rights to an
environment what won't kill them or deform their babies. Nor is he deserving of
this Award for his take on Marriage Equality because people who need clean
water can be married or single, it just doesn't matter. Also he doesn't get
this Award for his desire to nuke Iran for their alleged enmity against
America.
What Ben
gets the Award for is his completely detached from reality position he has
taken on the EPA and how it operates. What we need to establish is that IF
businesses were responsible citizens of the Earth they would not engage in
activities that will severely injure and kill living people and we would not
need the EPA in the first place. Businesses failing to act responsibly makes
that need imperative.
Now if there
were not such an outcry by businesses that the EPA was being a bully and trying
to make them spend shareholder value on making sure their operations are safe
and that they ultimately clean up after themselves, the EPA would not have to
go out on-site and clean up for them. Mothers routinely wipe up the spilt milk of
their toddlers because the toddlers are not capable of doing it themselves.
However when the child is older he needs to clean up after himself. He also has
to be more careful of what he does in the first place.
The Animas River
suffered a massive contamination event from a decades old brew of acid mine
drainage that did not drain by the gallon.
This water backed up in the Gold King Mine in Colorado only to be let
loose be an EPA contractor while they were trying to clean up the site for the
defunct mining corporation. In short, the EPA is responsible for a 3 million
gallon surge of orange slush into the Animas River.
Now here is
where Ben Carson earns his title of TOW for the third week of August 2015.
“One
wonders, if this accident had occurred at the hands of a private business, or
even an individual property owner, would the EPA be as forgiving as they have
been of themselves? I think not,” Carson said, as reported by John Frank of the
Denver Post. Mr. Carson, let's just say the EPA was as hard on themselves as
they would be on a private contractor. They would issue a paltry fine and move
on to the next client. Then Congress would have to put the fine amount in the
next EPA budget.
Again from
the Post article, the candidate called on the EPA to perform a transparent
investigation of the spill and provide “full compensation and reparations” to
those affected. The response from the EPA should be "yeah, we caused the
damage and will pay $650 million dollars for reparations, just as soon as
Congress approves it.
Ben went on
to assert that the reparations should be paid out of the fines that private
companies incur for their violations and not use tax dollars. {takes a deep
breath}
The focus is part of his (Ben's) effort to overhaul the EPA, for which he plans a new mission statement that downplays fines and penalties, allows for laws that protect business from “unnecessary liability” and incorporates a cost-benefit analysis in its regulatory decisions. (Emphasis added.)
So now Ben
wants to protect violating corporations from unnecessary liability that would
pay to clean up their disasters. Furthermore, he wants a cost-benefits analysis
for EPA regulatory decisions. How about a Cost-Liability Analysis for any debacle
that the company ultimately will create.
“We all want
a better environment,” he said in the statement. “We all want to protect the
environment for generations to come. We all want more common sense in the
administration of our environmental laws and policies.” But we don't want to
pay for them or reduce shareholder value. What we see is a process of
privatizing profits and socializing losses, like we always have, but codified
into law so the next Administration can't go changing it willy-nilly. What you must understand is the GOP-Equal-Sign has nothing to its right side. [something = nada]
"Commonsense
regulations" is dog-whistle for lax regulations and non-existent
oversight. They want a better environment without a cost. You know, like the
one God will give to us after this one is trashed.
So Dr.
Carson, you get the TOW Award this week for trying to assert that TINSTAAFL is
a hoax and even if it is not free, it is free to the businesses who destroy the
only planet we have.
TweetTweet This Post
No comments:
Post a Comment