{"id":10336,"date":"2013-05-21T05:03:36","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T12:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10336"},"modified":"2013-05-21T05:03:36","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T12:03:36","slug":"bill-moyers-enabling-greed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/21\/bill-moyers-enabling-greed\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Moyers – Enabling Greed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very rarely do I repost an article in it\u2019s entirety.  As a rule, I include  just enough for you to get the gist of it, and link back so you can read the rest.  However, in Moyers\u2019 case, he not only invites, but encourages reposting his work, and in this case, that work is critically important.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"21Moyers\"At the end of a week that reminds us to be ever vigilant about the dangers of government overreaching its authority, whether by the long arm of the IRS or the Justice Department, we should pause to think about another threat \u2014 from too much private power obnoxiously intruding into public life.<\/p>\n

All too often, instead of acting as a brake on runaway corporate power and greed, government becomes their enabler, undermining the very rules and regulations intended to keep us safe.<\/p>\n

Think of inadequate inspections of food and the food-related infections which kill 3,000 Americans each year and make 48 million sick. A new study from Johns Hopkins<\/a> shows elevated levels of arsenic \u2014 known to increase a person\u2019s risk of cancer \u2014 in chicken meat. According to the university\u2019s Center for a Livable Future, \u201cArsenic-based drugs have been used for decades to make poultry grow faster and improve the pigmentation of the meat. The drugs are also approved to treat and prevent parasites in poultry\u2026 Currently in the U.S., there is no federal law prohibiting the sale or use of arsenic-based drugs in poultry feed.\u201d<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s a story<\/a> in The Washington Post about toxic, bacteria-killing chemicals used in poultry plants to clean more chickens more quickly to meet increased demand and make more money. According to Amanda Hitt, director of the Government Accountability Project\u2019s Food Integrity Campaign, \u201cThey are mixing chemicals together in these plants, and it\u2019s making people sick. Does it work better at killing off pathogens? Yes, but it also can send someone into respiratory arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n

As long as there are insufficient checks and balances on big business and its powerful lobbies, we are at their mercy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So far, the government has done next to nothing. No research into the possible side effects, no comprehensive record-keeping on illnesses. \u201cInstead,\u201d the Post reports, \u201cthey review data provided by chemical manufacturers.\u201d What\u2019s more, the Department of Agriculture is about to allow the production lines to move even faster, by as much as 25 percent, which means more chemicals, more exposure, more sickness.<\/p>\n

Think of that and think of the 85,000 industrial chemicals available today \u2013 only a handful have been tested for safety. Ian Urbina writes in The New York Times<\/a>, \u201cHazardous chemicals have become so ubiquitous that scientists now talk about babies being born pre-polluted, sometimes with hundred s of synthetic chemicals showing up in their blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think, too, of that horrific explosion of ammonium nitrate in the Texas fertilizer plant. Fifteen people were killed and their little town devastated. The magazine Mother Jones noted<\/a>, \u201cInspections are virtually non-existent; regulatory agencies don\u2019t talk to each other; and there\u2019s no such thing as a buffer zone when it comes to constructing plants and storage facilities in populated areas.\u201d For years, the Fertilizer Institute, described as \u201cthe nation\u2019s leading lobbying organization of the chemical and agricultural industries,\u201d resisted regulation and legislators went along. People can lose their lives when federal or state government winks at bad corporate practices<\/strong> \u2014 4,500 workplace deaths annually at a cost to America of nearly half a trillion dollars.<\/p>\n

An investigator looks over a destroyed fertilizer plant in West, Texas, Thursday, May 2, 2013. (AP Photo\/Pool\/ LM Otero, Pool)<\/p>\n

As Salon\u2019s columnist and author David Sirota observes<\/a>, \u201cIf all this data was about a terrorist threat, the reaction would be swift \u2014 negligent federal agencies would be roundly criticized and the specific state\u2019s lax attitude toward security would be lambasted. Yet, after the fertilizer plant explosion, there has been no proactive reaction at all, other than Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry boasting about his state\u2019s \u2018comfort with the amount of oversight\u2019 that already exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, consider this story from ProPublica\u2019s investigative reporter Abrahm Lustgarten<\/a> about a uranium company that wanted a mining project in Texas that threatened to pollute drinking water. The EPA resisted \u2014 until the company hired as its lobbyist the Democratic fundraiser and fixer Heather Podesta, a favorite of the White House. Her firm was paid $400,000, she pulled the strings, and presto, the EPA changed its mind and said yes, go ahead and do your dirty work. In fact, ProPublica found that \u201cthe agency has used a little-known provision in the federal Safe Drinking Water Act to issue more than 1,500 exemptions allowing energy and mining companies to pollute aquifers, including many in the driest parts of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, in a free society we\u2019ll always be debating the role of government and its agencies. What are the limits, when is government oversight necessary and when is it best deterred? But it\u2019s not only government that can go too far. As long as there are insufficient checks and balances on big business and its powerful lobbies, we are at their mercy. Their ability to buy off public officials is an assault on democracy and a threat to our lives and health. When an entire political system persists in producing such gross injustice, it is making inevitable wholesale defiance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Bill Moyers Journal<\/a>><\/p>\n

Of course Moyers is spot on.  We have one party brought about half the time and the other party owned lock, stock, and barrel by corporate criminals like the Koch Brothers.  We need more oversight.  To get ity we need to make the Democratic Party more progressive and the Republican Party more extinct.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very rarely do I repost an article in it\u2019s entirety.  As a rule, I include  just enough for you to get the gist of it, and link back so you can read the rest.  However, in Moyers\u2019 case, he not only invites, but encourages reposting his work, and in this case, that work is critically […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}