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Rant 731: Republicans Go Off the Rails Again

3/11/2023

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​“Government should be so small you don’t even realize it’s there.”
--Tweeted by the Republican National Committee, March 6, 2023
 
These are the same people who have spent the last month defaming the Biden administration for allegedly not caring about the people of East Palestine, Ohio victimized by the Norfolk Southern derailment and the possible health hazards to follow. The RNC and its henchmen and women trolling the halls of Congress attribute the fictitious absence of federal concern to the fact that East Palestine is an overwhelmingly white community and thus, a victim of discrimination.
 
If the feds were miniaturized per the RNC, then presumably they should not have shown up in East Palestine at all. Instead of applauding the rapid and continuous federal response to the derailment, their lies exploit it as yet another battle in the war to Make America Hate Again..and again…and again.
 
As even Fox “News,” a.k.a., the Republican Ministry of Propaganda, reported, neither Donald Trump, while President, nor any member of his administration ever showed up at the scene of any of the 5,000 train derailments that occurred during their watch. Moreover, during his calamitous tenure in office, several railroad safety regulations were repealed. Now, as a failed ex-president, he came to East Palestine solely in order to gain political points, a shameless exercise in opportunism for his benighted 2024 campaign.
 
In contrast, Biden’s EPA, FEMA, and Department of Transportation have been to the scene of the derailment more than ten times and have been pouring aid and assistance into the community since the day after the mishap. If anything, the federal response and the State of Ohio’s encouragement of it demonstrate that there are many times when government must go big.
 
Moreover, the RNC is peopled by individuals so obtuse that they do not see the inconsistency between endorsing a minimalist government while at the same time promoting government intrusion into the most personal of individual and family decisions (abortion, gender-affirming care, LGBTQ rights).
 
This notion of a ghostly government is nuts. It is also the height of shameless hypocrisy.
 
Dick Hermann
March 11, 2023

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    Richard Hermann is the author of thirteen books, including Encounters: Ten Appointments with History and, most recently, Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times. Soon to be released is his upcoming Close Encounters with the Cold War, a personal reflection on growing up in the nuclear age. He is a former law professor and entrepreneur, and the founder and president of Federal Reports, Inc., a legal information and consulting firm that was sold in 2007. He has degrees from Yale University, the New School University, Cornell Law School and the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School. He lives with his wife, Anne, and extraordinary dog, Barkley, in Arlington, Virginia and Canandaigua, New York.

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