Soapbox: Fold it six ways...

Hola, Hippies! From HIGH atop the WWH/CJE Great American broadcast Soapbox, this is Dr. Woody, John Konopak, on the stump from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Recently, in the wake of the poisonous chemical spill into the drinking water of 300,000 West by-gawd Virginians, Rep. John "Too Much Tan Time" Baner, the "Congressional boner in chief," declared that West by gawd Virginia probably already had enough regulations, and by gawd, I agree.
I too, am sure that 'west-by-gawd' Virginia has enough regulations to have prevented the spill.
Unfortunately, that's not the issue.
The problem izzat: Regulations, all by themselves can't prevent spills, even if you wad them up and shove into the cracks in the infrastructure. That needs inspectors and regulators.
But West BY GAWD VIRGINIA had no where enough REGULATORS with powers to enforce those regulations--and NEITHER does anybody ELSE.
The tanks where the spill occurred hadn't been inspected in 23 fucking YEARS.
NOT cuz they didn't need it.
It's because there weren't and aren't and never are enough people to inspect all the facilities where shit like this might be going on.
Remember West, Texas? Literally...Nobody'd inspected that fertilizer plant/bomb factory for a dozen YEARS or more. One night: Boom.
And that's because those regulatory agencies which SHOULD have been catching dangerous violations have been systematically and chronically underfunded by legislative bodies for DECADES, at the behest of the industries to be regulated, to keep them from interfering with "commerce."
Or they've been colonized by CorpoRatz' influence through "regulatory capture" through revolving doors and other stratagems by the industries themselves they're supposed to be overseeing.
In any case, it's not a shortage of regulations which is at fault, of that you can be assured...It is with the will and the ability to enforce them where the most significant failings occur.
In West By-Gawd Virginia, by the way, in the last three elections, voters have chosen to reduce regulatory oversight.
Correlation isn't causation, but it's close enough for schadenfreude.
From the WWH/CJE Soapbox, this is yer pal, Dr. Woody...See ya at the beach shars...Paz!