Regulate this!

Everyday, somewhere someone (generally with an "R" party designation) blames 'over regulation' for our country's economic woes, its trade deficit, the horrendously high national debt, obscenely profitable corporations' refusal to create jobs, the nation's devastatingly high unemployment rate, and probably even toenail fungus.

Everyday, I find reason to celebrate and give thanks for government regulations.

This morning, it was when I learned my son was sick with what he suspected was food poisoning.

This afternoon it was an NPR "Fresh Air" interview with the author of a book about how A&P changed the way Americans shop.

It wasn't that I was celebrating or thankful that my son had food poisoning. Learning about his plight made me think for at least the millionth time how amazing it is that food poisoning isn't more rampant that it is, and remind myself that a major reason that it isn't is  -- ta-da! -- government regulation.

As for the "Fresh Air" program, the descriptions of how food was sold in the "good old days" really amped up my appreciation for government regulations. Back in those days, grain, meal and even vinegar was transported, sans inspection for contaminants or noshing and nesting varmints, in wooden barrels. Once in the general store, those barrels were often left open or at least unsealed where they could be -- and often were -- invaded by whatever opportunistic life form happened to be around.

So, strip away regulations that "keep companies from creating jobs" and you get to buy dry goods and all kinds of food supplies -- and these days, all kinds of processed foods, which is just about all a lot of people put in their mouths -- that might be riddled with weevils and/or maggots, cut with sawdust and watered down with, well, with water which might be contaminated.

Also, because scales in grocery stores of old could vary widely from one store to another, if we go back to those good old unregulated days when merchants, manufacturers and corporations "had the freedom" to conduct their businesses however they wanted to, unless you carry your own scales with you when you shop, the "pound" of hamburger you think you're buying might very well weigh only 14.5 or 15 ounces. And should you be fore-thinking enough to carry your own scales, any discrepancy you find will simply devolve into a "he-said, she-said" argument.

What Rs demonize as  business-crushing regulations, I see as efforts of our government to keep us safe, to try to keep mega agri-farms from fouling ground water and feces-laden run off from getting into neighboring streams and rivers, to keep asthma- and other respiratory-damaging pollutants from filling the only air we have to breathe, and to keep food-producing/processing/packaging/transporting/selling people from sickening and killing us with bacteria-laden food.

Deregulation advocates maintain that if people aren't happy with a company, they'll take their business elsewhere. I say, when, after they're dead or maimed? Heck, these same corpor-ites and their elected lackeys are making sure we can't even sue for such malfeasances in court. So what incentive  would they have to put people's health and well being or the public good above making as big a profit as they possible can unless the government regulates them?

I keep hoping (in vain, so far) that someone, some news organization with a mass-media megaphone would pin these regulation demonizers down on just what they would deregulate. Chances are they will be very liberal about wanting to slash all manner of regulations that either don't affect them or that don't put money in their pockets (like those who demand spending cuts in every program that doesn't benefit them or that they aren't slopping at the trough at.

As for me, I'm truly conservative about not letting people who run companies for a pure profit motive to operate completely unchecked or with no oversight. We see over and over what the henhouse looks like with nothing but foxes standing at the ready.