ULTIMATE ERROR author discusses effects of rampant deregulation

Last week, NPR reported that a top official in the executive branch promised “massive” cuts in government regulations equal to at least three out of four. U.S. government regulations mean “You can’t do anything,” said the top executive branch official. Yet, here are some things U.S. businesses and government agencies CAN do under current regulations, as evinced by their ACTUALLY HAVING DONE THEM:

• Send government officials from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (yes, that’s the name of an official U.S. Senate committee, complete with its own police force) to “remove” protesters blocking construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline

• Cause thousands of man-made earthquakes per year in Oklahoma and Kansas through injecting wastewater from oil and gas production into the substrate with tremendous force

• Spill 1.3 million gallons of petroleum on average per year into U.S. marine ecosystems and onto U.S. land ecosystems

• Profit 100 billion dollars per year on average among the top five oil companies doing business in the U.S.

• And millions more “things” that are ALREADY killing the Earth and its people

So, come now, Mr. Executive Branch! That’s certainly SOMETHING. Reading through the above list and others like it, can you really still say, “You can’t do anything” in America, because of over-regulation??

An policy expert from the CATO Institute told NPR that the White House was doing no more than “signaling” to their base of supporters that “they’re serious” about deregulation. The CATO rep also noted with a laugh the growing number of other euphemisms for “lying.” One of the euphemisms NPR insists on using is “regulatory reform.”

The originators of that term in Congress are also responsible for the laughably-named “SCRUB Act of 2016” (Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome). The purposefully open-to-interpretation term there is “unnecessarily.” “Is protective equipment for asbestos-removal workers really necessary?” some might ask. What about fines for oil companies that allow “Deepwater Horizon” types of disasters? “The fines aren’t going to unspill the oil.”

The most distressing facts in all of this are that unfettered, cynical avarice exists, and that it’s now being encouraged at the highest levels of government. Right here in the United States of America. We will look back (if we’re still here) at this era in history and marvel at how blind we were to the pathologies of the men and women we put in power. It will make sense in the context of overall dark ages of social psychology and leadership psychiatry. The “a-ha!” moment will come, and we will understand how psychopaths around the world were able to attain the power for which they madly longed. Hopefully, they will fail to destroy humankind, that we may look back and contemplate the error of their ways and of our own.

My upcoming novel, ULTIMATE ERROR, is about the manipulation of populations by the greedy and the power-mad. To allow ourselves to be manipulates so is to push ourselves to the brink of self-extinction.