"The reign of monsters"

In addition to stealing land from native Americans, here are a couple more things they're doing while we're all out here trying to carry the weight of covid-19 mitigation...

Meanwhile, with everybody looking elsewhere, the administration* is taking advantage of the situation to do away with government functions of which Republicans have disapproved for decades. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency. From The Hill:

The temporary policy, for which the EPA has set no end date, would allow any number of industries to skirt environmental laws, with the agency saying it will not “seek penalties for noncompliance with routine monitoring and reporting obligations.”...The EPA has been under pressure from a number of industries, including the oil industry, to suspend enforcement of a number of environmental regulations due to the pandemic.

“EPA is committed to protecting human health and the environment, but recognizes challenges resulting from efforts to protect workers and the public from COVID-19 may directly impact the ability of regulated facilities to meet all federal regulatory requirements,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement. In a 10-page letter to the EPA earlier this week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) asked for a suspension of rules that require repairing leaky equipment as well as monitoring to make sure pollution doesn’t seep into nearby water.

And the Department of Labor, re: affirmative action. (h/t to Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman on the electric Twitter machine.)

In view of the special circumstances in the national interest presented by the novel coronavirus outbreak, and consistent with agency practice relating to emergency responses, I have decided to grant a limited exemption and waiver from some of the requirements of the laws administered by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). OFCCP enforces Executive Order 11246 (EO 11246), as amended, Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 503), as amended, and Section 4212 of the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), as amended, which require that Federal contracting agencies include in all covered supply & service and construction contracts an equal opportunity clause.

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And this story, from NBC News, makes things infinitely worse.

The city of Detroit shut off her water late last fall because of unpaid bills and a broken plumbing valve that she couldn't afford to fix. Griffin, 55, was forced to rely on donated bottled water to drink, cook and bathe. She used space heaters to warm her home; without running water, the boiler didn't work. Then the coronavirus hit. Governors and public health officials across the country ordered people to stay in their homes and — most importantly — to wash their hands.But like millions of other people across the country who have their water shut off each year, Griffin can't easily do that — and now she worries that her life could be in danger. "I'm so stressed out. It's just despair," she said. "I'm not able to keep my sanitation level up enough for this virus. I'm not able to keep clean.”

Ms. Griffin is one of the citizens that the president* is shaking down because he doesn’t like the governor of Michigan’s tone. The reign of monsters is upon us.

  Charles P Pierce

It's not going to get better, because the monsters are not going to let up.