"When push comes to shove, it seems, the imperatives of crony capitalism trump professed faith in free markets."
-Paul Krugman, NY Times
And when push comes to shove, the Bush Administration has taken every effort to undermine our regulatory agencies, and thus, both weaken and demoralize our democracy and put citizens in very real danger of a variety of health risks.
Krugman points out one of many cases of the "fox guarding the henhouse," approach Bush has taken:
"Thus, when mad cow disease was detected in the U.S. in 2003, the Department of Agriculture was headed by Ann M. Veneman, a former food-industry lobbyist. And the department’s response to the crisis — which amounted to consistently downplaying the threat and rejecting calls for more extensive testing — seemed driven by the industry’s agenda."
Again, this disturbing scenario has been the RULE, not the exception in the last 8 years of our democracy; and while the citizens doze in front of their 24 cable news, our democracy is dismantled from within. Concerning another regulatory agency, Al Gore discusses the role of special interests in the highest echelon of US democracy:
"After members of FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) were appointed with Mr. Lay's (yes, thats Ken Lay, former head of Enron) personal review and approval, Enron went on to bilk the electric ratepayers of California and other states without the inconvenience of federal regulators trying to protect the trying to protect citizens from the company's criminal behavior. Likewise, this explains why many of the most important EPA positions have been carefully filled with lawyers and lobbyists representing the worst polluters in their respective industries, ensuring that these polluters are not inconvenienced by the actual enforcement of the laws against excessive pollution."
-from: The Assault on Reason
This is disturbing at the very least, and more broadly a systematic deception and dismantling of the democratic system in this country. It is a rebuttal to every basis of truth that this country was founded on. Al Gore sums up the inherent relation between the governed and the governing, brightly framing the current failures:
"The derivation of just power from the consent of the governed depends upon the integrity of the reasoning process through which that consent is given. If the reasoning process is corrupted by money and deception, then the consent of the governed is based on false premises, and any power thus derived is inherently counterfeit and unjust. If the consent of the governed is extorted through the manipulation of mass fears, or embezzled with claims of Divine guidance, democracy is impoverished. If the suspension of reason causes a significant portion of our citizenry to lose confidence in the integrity of the process, democracy can be bankrupted."
