Stephanie
Diamond Member
- Jul 11, 2004
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ugh....
SNIP:
By Tom Johnson | May 25, 2013 | 08:36
If you were looking for righty-bashing blog posts related to the Moore, Oklahoma disaster, Daily Kos was the place to be this past Wednesday.
Ian Reifowitz argued that conservatives' childish hostility to government regulation boosted the tornado's death toll because neither state nor local law requires safe rooms or shelters, and that absent a mandate, such life-saving structures quite often won't get built. Reifowitz wrote (emphasis added):
Free market conservatism kills? Yes, that's right...[T]here were no rules in Moore or anywhere else in Oklahoma mandating that buildings...have so-called "safe rooms" or underground shelters to protect people during a storm...
What happened in Moore is outrageous, and represents a(nother) failure of conservative ideology, an ideology built around faith in the free market and a reflexive rejection of regulation. This kind of Ayn Rand-based extreme thinking claims to exalt "freedom" of the individual, but what it does in reality is force individuals into a death race where, in order to compete on cost, they have to cut corners -- putting themselves and others at risk if something goes wrong -- or lose the race. If the chances of disaster are relatively small, too many will choose to cut those corners...
...Freedom does not mean the right to not build an underground shelter because no pointy-headed government regulator's gonna tell me I have to. That's the "freedom" of a five-year old who won't eat his broccoli and spills his plate on the floor...
Read more: Daily Kos: Oklahoma Tornado Casualties Show That 'Free Market Conservatism Kills' | NewsBusters
SNIP:
By Tom Johnson | May 25, 2013 | 08:36
If you were looking for righty-bashing blog posts related to the Moore, Oklahoma disaster, Daily Kos was the place to be this past Wednesday.
Ian Reifowitz argued that conservatives' childish hostility to government regulation boosted the tornado's death toll because neither state nor local law requires safe rooms or shelters, and that absent a mandate, such life-saving structures quite often won't get built. Reifowitz wrote (emphasis added):
Free market conservatism kills? Yes, that's right...[T]here were no rules in Moore or anywhere else in Oklahoma mandating that buildings...have so-called "safe rooms" or underground shelters to protect people during a storm...
What happened in Moore is outrageous, and represents a(nother) failure of conservative ideology, an ideology built around faith in the free market and a reflexive rejection of regulation. This kind of Ayn Rand-based extreme thinking claims to exalt "freedom" of the individual, but what it does in reality is force individuals into a death race where, in order to compete on cost, they have to cut corners -- putting themselves and others at risk if something goes wrong -- or lose the race. If the chances of disaster are relatively small, too many will choose to cut those corners...
...Freedom does not mean the right to not build an underground shelter because no pointy-headed government regulator's gonna tell me I have to. That's the "freedom" of a five-year old who won't eat his broccoli and spills his plate on the floor...
Read more: Daily Kos: Oklahoma Tornado Casualties Show That 'Free Market Conservatism Kills' | NewsBusters
