One Of The Articles Of Faith

Saw a piece a few days ago in my local fish-wrap about how the gerrymandered GOP majority in the Ohio legislature will be pushing to reduce the number of state regulations.    Why?  Because Republican orthodoxy states that business and industry have the god-given right to operate with impunity, and that any regulation is, by its very nature, "restrictive," "unnecessary" and a "barrier to economic growth."  Therefore, cutting regulations for the sake of cutting is always appropriate.  It's an article of faith with the GOP.  (It's also dogmatic, sound-bite claptrap lacking any evidence or proof of validity.)

Obhof

Ohio Senate president and slimy tub o' goo Larry Obhof  maintains that Ohio has the third-highest  number of "restrictive regulations" in the nation, thousands more regulations than the average state.  He objects to "restrictive words" in regulations -- words like shall, must, may not, prohibited, and required.  (Egad, what horrible words!)  He'll lead the charge to place a hard cap on the raw number of Ohio's regulations, and would like Ohio to adopt the Trumpian idiocy of eliminating two existing rules every time a new rule is instituted.  Just because.

Obhof gets his data and his marching orders (and pretty much every thought in his head) from a little-known right-wing "think tank" called the Mercatus Center.  The Mercatus Center is connected to ALEC, and like them, is funded by the infamously anti-regulation petro-billionaires, the Koch brothers.  And that explains that.

For more "articles of faith," click the link (a old post that still rings true):

https://bustergammons.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-articles-of-faith.html