Several days ago I began writing a well balanced article about right wing ideas to dissolve, curtail or under-fund agencies (who knows actually) like the EPA and OSHA. Regulations are costing us jobs they say. They say the huge pile of private capital on the sidelines would come rushing to create jobs if only for those burdensome government regulations. I planned to point out in my column how a 50 state solution could be counterproductive economically. I wanted to explain how a 50 state solution would actually cost jobs. I planned to tell you, in my expert opinion, being an environmental professional in the transportation field for over 15 years; the country needed nationwide certainty in its environmental and workplace regulations. I intended to approach the subject from a purely economic position.

I won’t do that now.

Yesterday, my daughter’s Papa received a diagnosis we all dread. His doctor told him he had Mesothelioma. He is a good man by most people’s standards. He worked over 50 years and provided a good living for his family. He raised two sons. He also raised a daughter which I married. Two of his kids went to college. He has two grandchildren one of which is my daughter. He goes to church most Sundays. He pays his taxes. He is not sophisticated by his own admission. He is a veteran and loves his country. He depended on that country to protect him in the workplace.

He is no different than most of the other 3,400 people who received a cancer diagnosis yesterday except for one thing. His disease was a preventable man made disease. After all the political spin and corporate hand wringing, his disease represents a gamble by his former employer. The employer decided rolling the dice with his life was cheaper than the cost of retrofits. Oddly enough, that dice roll was the employer’s fiduciary responsibility. Shareholders could have sued the corporation if they proceeded with the retrofit in some cases.

So it was just an unfortunate accident. No one is to blame, right?

The dirty little corporate history of asbestos and Mesothelioma is interesting until it happens to you. By the early 1970s there was pretty convincing evidence Mesothelioma was caused by breathing asbestos fibers. Companies knew this because they were already being sued and were losing/settling. Knowing this linkage and the fact they were probably killing their workers, many waited until they were forced to protect workers from breathing asbestos fibers in 1984. Even having the information, companies had a responsibility to shareholders which trumped their human responsibility. As regulators negotiated the well-organized and funded resistance to any regulation, people died. According to some websites, as many as 500,000 people died during this unregulated period.

The same game is being played again.

Michele Bachman (R-MN), a candidate for the Republican nomination for President, and others are making great sounding political hay at our government watchdogs’ expense. They tell us the EPA, OSHA and others are government monsters devouring our economic engine. They call government watchdogs incompetent, lazy and careless when they find rules on compact florescent light bulbs. After they find a few silly rules like the light bulbs they use the information to advocate trashing the whole system. They tell us corporations will do the right thing or the markets will punish them. They wrap up weakened, under-funded and ineffectual oversight in a blanket of soothing states rights or federalism and tell us eliminating agencies will create jobs. They say stuff like this when people all over this country have been without jobs for years. I have been an environmental professional working for the corporations she calls “small businesses” and I can assure you the deck is already stacked in the favor of the money.

Using government agencies like the EPA and OSHA for appealing conservative soundbites is, in my view, the height of immorality. Politicians who pride themselves on their morality saying these things when people are out of work is especially immoral. I am afraid the siren song of less government is making some of us forget the important work government regulators do to protect us. It is easy to forget when you are unemployed. Do really want to reduce a system which is apparently woefully inadequate. How much deregulation can we stand and what is the corresponding death toll? Just tell us, we can handle the truth. Do we really want leaders who think some of us should be sacrificed on the alter of economic growth? It’s a hell of a way to reduce the unemployment rate. I, for one, would like to live in a country where people who work for a living can depend on the regulatory cop on the beat. A country where good people like my father-in-law can punch the clock knowing they are not trading their lives for a paycheck.