Deregulating Cautiously, If At All

THERE USED TO BE a rule that if a big American corporation made a payment, aka bribe, to a foreign government, the payment must be divulged. Transparency, baby. Now, that rule is gone. It got Trumpified. As of now, a big American corporation can bribe any foreign government it wants, possibly influencing the foreign policy of the foreign government towards the United States, without anyone knowing about it, without any legal requirement that the payment be divulged to the U.S. government. That's an example of deregulation. Getting rid of a burdensome government regulation, an unnecessary, tyrannical law placing and undue hardship on business, profits, virtue, and the American way. Exactly how this happens is never explained. Exactly how it places a huge bureaucratic burden and mountains of paperwork on a company to inform the government about a transfer of funds is, arguably, impossible to explain. Nearly all business people complain about the massive amount of government paperwork imposed upon them by an overbearing, overreaching government. It makes you want to weep while playing your violin softly, gently. As a retired teacher, I know all about paperwork. It doesn't take a mountain of it to get me to complain about it. Under Obama, the EPA issued a ruling that companies have to repair their own pipeline leaks. Sounds reasonable. Not according to Trump and his massive horde of wealthy corporate capitalists and wealthy corporate capitalist wannabes. Before we get all fired up about deregulating the economy to inspire enormous prosperity, we'd better take a long hard look at each end every regulations we want to eliminate, because, chances are, it was put in placed for a reason, and that reason still exists. The new director of the EPA wants to balance environmental and economic concerns, apparently quite oblivious to the simple fact that, without the environment, there is no economy. It used to be illegal to dump tons of cola ash waste into rivers and streams. Enter Trump and the radical deregulators, and it no longer is. No problem. By the time the air is too dirty to breathe and the water is too filthy to drink, we'll all be so rich we won't even care.