I’ve been interested in history for a good part of my life. Besides taking history courses in school and reading on my own, there were also history lessons imbedded in many of my other classes. That’s why I understand that regulations are necessary. There were reasons we have antitrust acts. There were reasons why we regulate food, drugs, and cosmetics. There were reasons we have banking and financial regulations. There were reasons why we have environmental regulations. There were reasons we have building codes, fire regulations, occupational safety regulations, and a host of others. The reasons? Large numbers of very painful lessons that were taught before those regulations came to be.
As I said in a previous post, as a result of all those lessons the country decided that it was necessary to keep all of that from continuing to happen. Unfortunately, people tend to forget, and as the pain becomes a distant memory and then never experienced, some begin to believe that they aren’t needed. They elect people who promise to do away with all those burdensome regulations, who promise that it will stimulate the economy and bring good times to their area.
It’s not too long after that the reminders of why those regulations were in place start appearing. Over and over again. When it happens there’s a sense of betrayal:
W. Va. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said his state’s share of the fine — $8.9 million — will be spent on stricter enforcement of the laws at the state level.
“We still appreciate coal mining jobs and the investments here in West Virginia, but they’ve got to be responsible,” Tomblin said.
One wonders what in history would make anyone think that a company would be “responsible?”
Federal prosecutors and environmental advocacy groups are investigating Duke, the country’s largest electricity provider, for evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Thousands of people in towns downriver are angry and scared; town officials are openly complaining that Duke kept them out of the loop at key moments after the spill. That intense scrutiny is an uncomfortable development for a company accustomed to cozy relationships with North Carolina officials. The state’s governor, Pat McCrory, spent 29 years as a Duke Energy employee and has benefited handsomely from its support of his campaigns.
Others are finding out the reason for all the financial regulations,
Last week, Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles admitted that the exchange’s 850,000 bitcoins — worth nearly half a billion dollars — were gone.
The firm, Karpeles said in a press conference in Tokyo, is filing for bankruptcy.
Those who held bitcoin with Mt. Gox were left to vent their frustrations online — and try to potentially organize for litigation.
A bitcoin bank has been forced to close after hackers stole 896 bitcoin, worth £365,000, in an attack on Sunday.
The company shut its website and posted a statement on Tuesday morning detailing the loss.
“On March 2nd 2014 Flexcoin was attacked and robbed of all coins in the hot wallet,” the statement read. “As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately.”
Bitcoin has been touted as the next generation of currency, not dependent on any government and without all those “burdensome” requirements. That sounded good in the abstract, but the reality? Well, it turns out that there was a serious down side to that. Which is that was “the norm” back in the “good old days,” and that is why there are all those rules and regulations.
Conservatives have been very good at getting people to forget the past, and not look back at history. So much so, that people in various areas of this country elected them to remove all those “onerous” rules and regulations, to have a “free market.” Let businesses have free rein, lower taxes, and stop all those “socialist” programs. They said that’s what they wanted after all, and the conservative politicians did just that. Now they’re experiencing the pain of that. My “evil” reaction?
Yes, now they’re screaming because they got what they said they wanted. It’s been said that pain is educational, so maybe the lessons of the past will be learned again. Of course, a study of history would have avoided that in the first place.
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“Conservatives have been very good at getting people to forget the past, and not look back at history.”
Yep. It’s part of the ongoing effort to dumb down American voters. If you can’t create barriers to keep them away from the polls then muddying the waters on history and facts has about the same effect, leaving the status quo unaltered.
Wonkette does a weekly look at various “history books” being used by various conservative Christian groups, and how they’re … slanted. The basic gist promulgated by the right is that things were just peachy in the good old days, before the evil socialist democrats (not the southern ones, the northern ones) went and ruined it. 🙄
Now they’re getting a lesson on “the good old days,” and while I hope it sticks, I have my doubts that they’ll learn. Some people just like to suffer.
” Some people just like to suffer.”
But they will always have their idealistic fantasy that one day they will be rich too. If only they had some boots with straps on them they would be half way there
What these folks have done is to successfully appeal to the emotion of the ignorant voters – that these regulations somehow impinge on their “freedoms”. As long as you convince people – dumbasses, really – that regulations and government are people who are robbing them of their stuff, creating hysteria among them, then you can say anything and do anything.
It’s not hard to convince them, when most people can think of (or you can point to) an example of a regulation that’s out-of-date, counter-productive, or keeps you from doing something you’d like to do. The difference is that it’s then used for a fallacy of composition, that is, “this regulation is bad, therefore, all regulations are bad.” 🙄
Kid with pot 3years in jail;stealing billions a bonus pay out of another billion.” We don’t need no stinking regulations”.