So not exaggerating this one. Today's front page of the Wash Post has a horrifying article on what happens when you give Republicans their anti-regulatory wet dream. People get sick and die.
I truly believe that our talking points shouldn't just be about Bush, they should be about how the Republicans got the revolution they always wanted - the White House, House and Senate - and what ensued was war, death, disease, and economic malaise. The point here isn't just to get Bush out of office, it's to make "Republican" as dirty a word as "liberal."
Tuberculosis had sneaked up again, reappearing with alarming frequency across the United States. The government began writing rules to protect 5 million people whose jobs put them in special danger. Hospitals and homeless shelters, prisons and drug treatment centers -- all would be required to test their employees for TB, hand out breathing masks and quarantine those with the disease. These steps, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration predicted, could prevent 25,000 infections a year and 135 deaths.
By the time President Bush moved into the White House, the tuberculosis rules, first envisioned in 1993, were nearly complete. But the new administration did nothing on the issue for the next three years.
Then, on the last day of 2003, in an action so obscure it was not mentioned in any major newspaper in the country, the administration canceled the rules. Voluntary measures, federal officials said, were effective enough to make regulation unnecessary.
