Government regulations protect us from dangerous products in the marketplace, dangerous conditions in our workplaces, dangerous food in our food supply, exploitation in the financial markets, contaminants in our water supply . . . and on and on.
Think objectively about what actually happens when you step onto an airplane. You're going to be in a metal can that flies at 600 miles per hour at 30,000 feet. That sounds incredibly dangerous. And by all rights it should be. Yet air travel is one of the safest modes of transportation. How is that? Because the FTA (an agency of the federal government) strenuously regulates every aspect of airplane maintenance. Those government bureaucrats make sure that the airplanes we step onto are safe.
Are these the kind of regulations that Republicans want to get rid of? Really???
{S}tudies have shown that Texans paid more for the electricity they used than they would have in a regulated market. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis estimates that Texans paid $28 billion more for home electricity in the 20 years of deregulation than they would have, if they had only been charged the average regulated rate for the rest of the country.
Source: "The Texas blackouts were caused by an epic government failure" By Robert Bryce - Texas Tribune - Aug 1, 2021
President Trump’s actions to loosen clean water rules have intensified a battle over regulations and environmental protections unfolding on the most intensely local level: in people’s own kitchen faucets.
Rural communities call it their own, private Flint— a diffuse, creeping water crisis tied to industrial farms and slack regulations that for years has tainted thousands of residential wells across the Midwest and beyond.
The groundwater that once ran cool and clean from taps in {the] Midwestern farming town {of Armenia, Wisconsin} is now laced with contaminants and fear. People refuse to drink it. They won’t brush their teeth with it. They dread taking showers.
“The regulations favor agriculture,” said Gordon Gottbeheut, 77, whose nitrate-contaminated well near Armenia, Wis., sits next to a field that is injected with manure. “When they keep cutting enforcement and people, there’s nobody to keep track of what’s happening.”
Few water-quality rules regulate those wells, meaning there is no water company to call, no backup system to turn to, and often no simple way to cure the contamination. In Flint, lead-tainted water prompted a public health emergency that led to a criminal investigation.
Some voters who say they cannot drink from the taps or water their livestock without worrying about nitrates or E. coli bacteria say the state’s deregulatory spree has gone too far.
Source: "Rural America’s Own Private Flint: Polluted Water Too Dangerous to Drink" By Jack Healy - NY Times - 11/3/18
In loosening the standards, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was fulfilling President Bush’s broader pledge to free industry of what it considered cumbersome rules. In the last six years, the White House has embarked on the boldest strategy of deregulation in more than a generation. Largely unchecked by the Republican-led Congress, federal agencies, often led by former industry officials, have methodically reduced what they see as inefficient, outdated regulations and have delayed enforcement of others. The Bush administration says those efforts have produced huge savings for businesses and consumers.
But advocates of tighter rules say the administration’s record of loosening standards endangers motorists. The fatality rate for truck-related accidents remains nearly double that involving only cars, safety and insurance groups say. They note that weakening the rules has reversed a course set by the Clinton administration and has resulted in the federal government repeatedly missing its own targets for reducing the death rate.
In decisions that had the support of the White House, the motor carrier agency has eased the rules on truckers’ work hours, rejected proposals for electronic monitoring to combat widespread cheating on drivers’ logs and resisted calls for more rigorous driver training.
While applauded by the industry, those decisions have been subject to withering criticism by federal appeals court panels in Washington who say they ignore government safety studies and put the industry’s economic interests ahead of public safety.
To advance its agenda, the Bush administration has installed industry officials in influential posts.
In addition to supplying prominent administration officials, the trucking industry has provided some of the Republican party’s most important fund-raisers. From 2000 to 2006, the industry directed more than $14 million in campaign contributions to Republicans. Its donations and lobbying fees — about $37 million from 2000 to 2005 — led to rules that have saved what industry officials estimate are billions of dollars in expenses linked to tougher regulations.
In 1995, Congress directed regulators to study truck driver fatigue and its safety consequences and to consider new rules. But the agency then charged with truck safety, the Federal Highway Administration, never did so. Two years later, the Clinton administration vowed to cut the annual death toll of truck-related accidents in half within a decade. In 1999, Congress created the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in response to what lawmakers considered ineffectual regulation and high casualties.
A year later, the agency proposed tighter service hour rules. They would allow long-haul drivers to work a maximum of 12 hours a day, and require them to take 10-hour breaks between shifts. They also required installation of electronic devices to replace driver logs.
Action stalled when trucking lobbyists inserted language into a spending bill that forced the motor carrier agency to delay action until after the presidential election that November.
Industry leaders overwhelmingly supported the candidacy of George W. Bush, confident that his administration would be friendlier than one led by his opponent, Al Gore. On the campaign trail, Mr. Bush accused his Democratic rival of wanting to expand government, while Mr. Bush repeatedly expressed his desire to reduce federal regulations.
During the 2000 election cycle, trucking executives and political action committees gave more than $4.3 million in donations to the Republicans and less than $1 million to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research organization.
In the months before and after the election, a leading industry figure in the campaign against tighter driving rules was Mr. Acklie, who became chairman of the American Trucking Associations in the fall of 2000. A longtime Bush family friend and Republican fund-raiser, he led one of nation’s largest trucking companies, Crete Carrier, based in Nebraska.
In April 2003, the agency issued rules that increased the maximum driving hours to 77 from 60 over 7 consecutive days and to 88 hours from 70 over 8 consecutive days. It capped daily work hours at 14, which included driving as well as waiting for loading and unloading. The agency also decided not to require truck companies to install electronic monitoring devices.
From 2000 to 2004, the American Trucking Associations donated $2 million to lawmakers, mostly to Republicans who served on committees with jurisdiction over trucking issues.
Source: "As Trucking Rules Are Eased, a Debate on Safety Grows" By STEPHEN LABATON - NY Times - December 3, 2006
Source: NY Times - 12/3/06