Sure It's Wrecking The Planet And Killing People, But My 401(k) Has Never Looked Better

We're coming to you today from the This Should End Well Department here in the marbled Halls of IM Central. TSEW is a division of the Bought And Paid For Company, a wholly owned subsidy of Put Your Mouth Where My Money Is, LLC.

Yesterday we mentioned some of the more...um...shall we say colorful members of the incoming Congress. And by colorful we mean full on howl at the moon, run naked through the woods covered in turpentine, set the house on fire, eat your hair, scare the dog insane.

You know, characters, like your Uncle Billy and Auntie Alice? Well, before they went to the rest home and the nice lady gave them all those pills that is.

Anyway, one of the inmates patients members of the incoming circus Congress is Darrell Issa (R - ACK!! OBAMA!!).  As we mentioned in passing yesterday, Mr. Issa has proclaimed that President Obama is the most corrupt president evah! He knows this because...ah...you see...erm...well never mind he just knows, OK? It has to do with the Ganzfeld effect, quantum teleportation and the Altairians (staunch republicans by the way). You just wouldn't understand.

So one of Mr. Issas's new jobs is to oversee government regulations, you know, make sure our environment is protected, our drugs effective, our food safe. Stuff like that. And he's taking his new position quite seriously too.

Rep.Darrell Issa wants the oil industry, drug manufacturers and other trade groups and companies to tell him which Obama administration regulations to target this year. The incoming chairman of the Corporate Protection and Profit Maxification Committee - in letters sent to more than 150 trade associations, companies and think tanks last month - requested a list of existing and proposed regulations that would harm job profit growth. "Hey, didn't Citizens United tell you anything,"  asked Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella. "Corporations are people too."

The goal is to investigate the Obama administration's promise through the 2009 economic stimulus bill and other measures to create jobs, which "has gone unfilled, I guess is the most honest way to put it," Bardella said. "Well, except for the jobs it created that is."

"Is there something that we can do to try to erase that [regulatory] burden and stimulate profit creation?" he added. "Is there a dollar to be made at someone else's expense? Is there a logical practice or regulation that hurts our corporate overlords? Until you have all the facts, you really can't make a lot of determinations and judgments. Then when you get the facts you ignore them and do what the people who bought you tell you to."

"I believe for the last couple of years that the desire to protect the consumer actually took precedence over our right to guaranteed profits, at least on the House side," NPRA President Charles Drevna said. "Our right to milk each and every last cent out of the market without regard to public safety or environmental destruction has not changed one iota. [But] now that our man Issa is in charge, is there a better chance of what I would consider a more fair hearing? Absolutely."

Rosario Palmieri, NAM’s vice president for regulatory policy, and Drevna both highlighted EPA greenhouse gas controls for major emitters that went into effect Sunday. "Look, the planet's already trashed, probably," Palmieri said. "Why take it out on us?"

"These are all high-priority regulations that can cost manufacturing jobs and will if implemented the wrong way or will as currently proposed or finalized," Palmieri said."Course, if all the workers are too sick to work because of the air they breath and the water they drink, that's going to cost jobs too, but one problem at a time I always say."


Well, Mr. Palmieri has a point. We mean, if people go to work in industries making scrubbers and solar panels and all the other hardware associated with cleaning up the mess unbridled capitalism has made of the planet, who'll be left to work for him?