Promising the Moon

 REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS run for office and for reelection bragging about cutting taxes and reducing regulations, assuming that a naive and uninformed electorate will embrace this wonderful sounding but dubious agenda, as it regrettably often does. Cutting taxes, eliminating regulations has the sound of a superhero coming to the rescue, or like zombies, reading from an old cue card. I support the police and I am in favor of law and order, and I spout the usual company line, blah blah. cliched rhetoric,  full of sound and fury,saying nothing. Americans pay comparatively low taxes, and every tax every American pays is paid for a good reason, and goes to a necessary cause, namely, the public good. Taxes should generally be left as is, with the exception that the wealthiest Americans, people like our tax evading president, should start paying their fair share. Regulations exist for a good reason,  usually to prevent people and corporations from misbehaving. With but few exceptions, every regulation on business serves a necessary function, even if it imposes a constraint on business, and adds friction against profit. people opposed to regulations often advocate a neo-liberal friction free business environment for profit maximization., which they place above all else. There is more to life than business profit. Under Obama the EPA instituted a new regulation that when an oil pipeline develops a leak, its owner must repair the leak. Oil companies had found that letting the leaks leaks was less expensive than repairing them, so the oil was going into the ground. Trump's EPA eliminated this annoying anti-business regulation , and once again the oil began flowing into the ground, polluting the soil. Profit maximization at the expense of the environment, which helps the corporations, but harms all of us. Profit maximization at the expense of the environment, oil leaking the ground. Republican politicians are generally very adept at placing business profits above environmental protection, an agenda which greatly helps business in the short term, but harms us all in the long term.. Beware the Republican politician who comes knocking promising to cut taxes and regulations. Be sure to inquire precisely whose taxes are intended to be cut, and which exact regulations are on the chopping block, and for what reasons.Wherever you see a tax cutting deregulating enthusiast, there is usually a large group of large corporations lurking in the shadows, eager to install their limited agenda at the expense of the nation's poor and unempowered. These corporations are quite willing to spend massive amount of money on political candidates in exchange for a little deregulating here and there.