The GOP War On Just About Everybody

Oct 14th, 2011

It took less than a day for the GOP to truly distinguish itself as one of most reactionary and dangerous forces ever to confront our country. Facts don't matter. Science doesn't matter. The health and welfare of most other Americans doesn't matter.

Photo by Declan McCullagh 

First, they passed the "let women die" bill yesterday. This unprecedented (until this year) assault on women's rights, health and actual safety, gives any hospital the privilege of denying an abortive procedure on moral grounds in all instances. Even if the pregnancy is nonviable and not performing one will kill the pregnant woman, the house GOP unanimously endorsed allowing refusal of care.

One legislator had an interesting perspective.

Via HuffPo:

"Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said she personally faced a situation in which an abortion was medically necessary.

"I was pregnant, I was miscarrying, I was bleeding," she said on the House floor Thursday. "If I had to go from one hospital to the next trying to find one emergency room that would take me in, who knows if I would even be here today. What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to do is misogynist."

The GOP response? A barely coherent 'fuck you' from notorious, hate-mongering Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC)

Via LezGetReal:

"For my colleagues across the aisle who say that this is a misogynist bill, nobody has ever fought more for the rights of women than I have. Fifty percent of the unborn babies that are being aborted are females. So the misogyny comes from those that promote the killing of unborn babies. That’s where the misogyny comes in, Madame Speaker."

Psst, Virginia... the Speaker is a man. He's from your party. Oh, nevermind.

The bill is dead on arrival in the senate and President Obama would never sign it anyway. So, the GOP got right back to selling the crazy.

Having gone after American women yesterday, the Republicans decided to go after the rest us today. In what could be called the "now that we got the women, let's actually start killing everybody else" bill,

the house stamped approval on a piece of legislation so odious that, if enacted, it would provably cause

"20,000 additional premature deaths,12,000 additional heart attacks, and 123,000 additional asthma attacks that could have been avoided."

You read that right.

Those figures come from the EPA. The EPA's findings don't represent a maybe. They don't qualify as a set of risks that we are free to take for ourselves. They represent guaranteed increases in preventable deaths. This makes the legislation a literal death warrant issued at average citizens.

I suppose you can guess how they are excusing themselves:

"The House Republican jobs agenda is focused on removing the uncertainty hampering small businesses through policies that promote private sector growth," said House GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.). "Small businesses and entrepreneurial start-ups are the engine of job creation in America, and Washington should not be working to make it more costly and more difficult for them to do business."

He added that the proposed boiler regulations "could raise compliance costs, take away billions of dollars in capital annually and put hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk."

The National Republican Congressional Committee immediately began campaigning on the vote, attacking Democrats who opposed the bill, saying they voted to "endanger over 300,000 American jobs." The committee's press release cited a report prepared for the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners." EMPHASIS OURS

You can't make that up.

As Earth Justice notes via the industry magazine Cogeneration:

"H.R. 2250's proponents seek to portray themselves as helping the economy by eliminating "job-killing" regulations. But they have never provided any credible evidence that the clean air standards for industrial boilers (or cement kilns) would kill a single job or that rescinding these standards would save a single job. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated http://www.epa.gov/ocir/pdf/2011_0225_wyden_boiler_mact.pdf that pollution standards for industrial boilers would lead to the creation of 2,200 jobs, a figure which doesn't even include the jobs created in industries that manufacture and install pollution control equipment.

Further, the money value of the health benefits associated with reducing industrial boiler pollution--$54 billion a year--exceeds the cost of the standard by 38-to-1. For every dollar spent by dirty industries to clean up, $38 in health benefits are generated."

Thank God, it's Friday. These maniacs are on a roll. Can you imagine what they might have had for us tomorrow?