Science (Sanity) is Getting Sidelined (while we snooze?)

What's Really Going On While We All Watch the Clown Show (Nunes memo, et al)
We are all prisoners of REGULATORY CAPTURE

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Yassah, Master Oligarch, just call if you need anything else!

It's called "Regulatory Capture," and the Trump Administration foxes are capturing the heck out of some very important hen houses.

Republicans have advanced towards their key objective of “regulatory capture”. Regulatory capture is defined by George Stigler, a Nobel laureate economist, as “a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.” Now, because of direct action by Donald Trump, with a nod from the Republican Congress, virtually all Departments and agencies in our Federal government is headed by someone from the industry or who has advocated for the industry that they are charged to regulate. 

Thus, bankers become financial regulators, the petroleum industry takes over interpreting and enforcing environmental regulators, industrialists take over the agencies charged with protecting workers, big pharma takes over Food and Drug Administration oversight, big agriculture takes over the Department of Agriculture, an opponent of public schools becomes Secretary of Education, racists take over civil rights enforcement, and businessmen take over consumer protections. These have all happened by design during the Trump presidency, and it is high time that ‘the people’ take these functions back from these scoundrels hellbent on corrupting and subverting these functions. 

JUST IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION.

* cartoon credit