Specifically, they have pushed to defund:
The US
Chemical Safety Board, which
polices major industrial accidents.
The
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which polices corporations’ compliance with civil rights laws.
The
Consumer Products Safety Commission, which polices industries to make sure their products don’t harm or kill people. The agency now
acknowledges that its “funding level has been insufficient to keep pace with the evolving consumer product marketplace.”
The
Internal Revenue Service, which polices the tax system and which is responsible for making sure the wealthy and large corporations pay the taxes they owe. Thanks to this successful effort to defund the police, the agency “conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010, a drop in the audit rate of 42 percent,” according to
ProPublica. With
30,000 fewer tax cops on the beat, a recent Treasury Department report found that 800,000 high-income households have not paid more than
$45 billion in owed taxes.
The
Department of Labor, which polices employers and makes sure they aren’t stealing wages, breaking workplace safety rules, ignoring overtime laws, and/or violating
workers’ union rights. Amid this particular Republican effort to defund the police, there are now
fewer cops scrutinizing employers than ever before and workplace inspections have
plummeted – as workplace injuries, deaths and disasters have
increased.
The
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which polices the accounting industry.
The
Securities and Exchange Commission’s reserve fund, which was
established after the financial crisis to bolster the agency’s work policing Wall Street. The agency
reports that the number of law enforcement staff “supporting our investigation and litigation efforts remained almost 9 percent lower” today than it was at the start of Trump’s term – and now white collar prosecutions have hit a
historic low.
The
law enforcement agencies that
police corporate mergers. This effort to defund the antitrust police has come as mergers have accelerated (and there has been
some recent effort to reverse the defunding).
The
independent law enforcement agency that policed agribusiness monopolies.
The
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which polices the financial industry and works to protect consumers from fraud.
The
law enforcement offices that police federal agencies and root out waste, fraud and abuse.
The
federal program that polices local law enforcement agencies.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which is responsible for policing polluters. Trump’s first budget proposed to reduce EPA “spending on civil and criminal enforcement by almost 60 percent,” and laying off 200 environmental cops, according to the
New York Times. By the middle of Trump’s first year in office, the EPA had “fewer than half of the criminal special agents on the job” during the George W. Bush administration, according to one
environmental advocacy group.
Bloomberg News noted that Trump’s most recent budget cuts “could hamper the EPA’s efforts to link contamination at hazardous waste sites to companies and others that may be responsible for the pollution.” The result:
environmental prosecutions have now hit a historic low.
Trump has called himself the
“president of law and order,” but these efforts to defund the police have created lawlessness and disorder. And yet, that hasn’t been mentioned by the politicians and pundits pretending to be scandalized by protesters’ demands for a change in criminal justice priorities.
Conservatives claim to love law enforcement - but they cut cops who protect us from powerful and dangerous criminals
www.theguardian.com
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when no one is looking, the republican want to defund the police and they have.
www.sfgate.com
