4 Frightening Ways We're Reverting to the Dark Days of Our Past [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/4-frightening-ways-were-reverting-dark-days-our-past



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1. The Commons: A Toll Gate in the Grand Canyon

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We're heading back in that direction, and we don't have Teddy Roosevelt to knock some sense into Congress. Attempts to privatize federal land were made by the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. In 2006, President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in 41 states. Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity has proposed to sell millions of acres of "unneeded federal land," and the libertarian Cato Institute demands that our property be "allocated to the highest-value use." Representative Cliff Stearns recommended that we "sell off some of our national parks." Mitt Romney admitted that he didn't know "what the purpose is" of public lands.

2. Safety Deregulated: Workers Fell "Like a Living Torch to the Street"

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A century later the attitude of big business is that self-regulation works best. For the profit margin, it certainly does, but not for workers. The Texas fertilizer plant, where 14 people were killed in an explosion and fire, was last inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over 25 years ago. The U.S. Forest Service, stunned by the Prescott, Arizona fire that killed 19, had been forced by the sequester to cut 500 firefighters. The rail disaster in Lac-Megantic, Quebec followed deregulation of Canadian railways. Other examples include a salmonella outbreak that was exacerbated by shoddy FDA oversight; tainted syringes from a company that went two years without a federal inspection; and a sudden increase in coal miner deaths while the U.S. House was rejecting a proposal for safety measures.

3. Inequality: Workers Demand a 76-Hour Week in the Era of a $300 Billion Man

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A wage crisis exists today among fast food workers, who make about $18,000 a year. According to the Working Poor Families Project, the income required for basic needs for a family of four is about $45,000. A McDonalds worker would have to work 100 hours a week to reach that level.


4. The 14th Amendment: It Worked for Slaves 6% of the Time, and for Corporations 94% of the Time

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Today the American people are again under attack by the Citizens United and Speechnow decisions, which allow unlimited corporate campaign financing through independent "Super PAC" organizations, and by the pending McCutcheon v. FEC case, which would allow unlimited individual contributions. Meanwhile, we have people like Mitt Romney assuring us that "Corporations are people, my friend."