Don't worry, it's for your own good

(Tom Toles)

Tom Toles' commentary:

Everything conservatives don't like now is a "Job-Killer". The Phrase Factory that operates in the well-funded world of conservative messaging must be operating at near capacity and may sop up the 9 percent unemployed all by itself. "Death Panels" was a recent fav, as is the less-glossy "Uncertainty!" which is the new plague of the American economy and refers to any action the government might take, about anything. The same swaggering business community that tells the newly unemployed to suck it up and enjoy the swashbuckling "Creative Destruction" that just destroyed their jobs suddenly can't seem to deal with a government effort to provide health insurance to the sick or dying because that would create "Uncertainty!"

So when egged on to name some nasty regulations the government could get rid of so the corporations might just possibly hire somebody, what a list they came up with! Get rid of that requirement to disclose the how much the chief executive is paid relative to workers! THEN watch the jobs materialize! DON'T reward whistle-blowers for reporting fraud to the SEC! Now THERE is the blockage to your job prospects!

Then there is the whole range of environmental regulations that require companies to actually COVER the costs of the waste they create rather than dump them for free into your air and your water. These are not about cost efficiency, they are about cost-SHIFTING. To you and your health and your wallet and your planet. "DEATH PANELS" that you don't get to sit on.

Yeah, businesses don't like "uncertainty," so the Republicans are going to keep hammering away at health care reform - keeping the issue up in the air forever, apparently. Oh, that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

And did you look at that list of nasty government regulations? It's sure a good thing that Republicans are looking out for you, isn't it? Now you won't even have to hear about corporate fraud. And if you don't know what's happening, it can't hurt you, right?

Likewise, you won't have to know about your rights under federal labor law. And you won't have to be depressed at knowing how much money your CEO is making - or how many hundreds of millions of dollars in that "golden parachute" he gets when he's finally kicked out for running your company into the ground.

Just two years after the deregulation of arcane financial instruments blew up into the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, anti-regulatory zealots are riding high again. It's just incredible, don't you think? I know we've got short memories, but this is really ridiculous.