Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/04/18/a-pandemic-seems-like-a-great.html
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Look, we just don’t know what might work against the coronavirus. Now’s no time to be all precious with your chemicals and industrial waste. Hoarding those potentially lifesaving toxins is wrong! Get them into the air and waterways and soil where they might actually do some good!
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Fucking go for it, nobody else has a plan.
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Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Written in 2007 - Pretty damn prescient!
TL;DR. One man’s (world’s) disaster is another man’s (sociopath’s) opportunity.
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That’s how unchecked greed with no immediate negative consequences works.
(I really hate this timeline.)
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As a Cancerian, that hurts…
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The real insult-to-injury here is that it would be easy for the EPA to turn a blind eye to these sort of regulations. Offices are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, and with so much chaos in the world, shady actors in the EPA could deliberately let these rules slip by while still maintaining plausible deniability.
In fact, the EPA already did something like that earlier in this lockdown crisis. In late March, it announced that it was suspending enforcement of environmental compliance — essentially leaving it up to private companies to decide for themselves if they’re following pollution laws.
Both actually seem in keeping with tactics repeated by this administration, in the ongoing effort to dismantle government institutions and regulations.
Step 1: Install people in the the agency that are directly antagonistic to its founding mission statement.
Step 2: Take advantage of the timing of outside events to instate policy that is unpopular and would otherwise be headline news.
Step 3: Go even further with deregulating or rewriting rules, knowing that people who did notice the first time will easily think further headlines are talking about the prior incident, and ignore the additional encroachment.
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Yeah, same here, I thought we were better too
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Absolute power corrupts us all, absolutely.
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How long you can hold on for before you crack is the only difference. We are all potential tyrants.
I am such a ray of sunshine today!! 
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Oh, the assault on our environment never stops. Here’s another example of this governments idiocy, trying to hide behind more important news.
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Don’t forget step 4, which is “Get it all overturned in the courts because you don’t understand or think you can ignore the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946”
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Might make sense. A pandemic is also a great time to *checks notes* restrict abortions and *checks notes* further cut taxes for the wealthy and *checks notes* stoke xenophobia and sectarianism.
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not so funny when you consider the capitalist crab race is real and walk amongst us in human guise undetectable except for an an orange hue and constant un-abating crab like movements of the mouth.
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That’s what stacking the courts is for amirite?
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if Biden wins (and sadly right now that’s still a pretty big “if”) and he doesn’t turn his first day into a sit-down 8 hour non-stop signing ceremony to undo every single executive order and stuff like this then I am never voting democratic again
(of course if trump wins -nobody- might vote again)
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The prime directive: consolidate and protect wealth.
Is that a real book? Probably not, but I’d love it if it were…
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I’d read it; probably in a goodwill store or something, battered, sandy but legible and cheaper than a postage stamp. Yup, I’d definitely buy it.
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