"A Little Fresh Air?"

We've all been deluged by political ads from all sorts of candidates. Some are comical, some are serious, some are pretty obnoxious. If these ads are to be believed, then it's no wonder the country is in such condition, since "Candidate A" says "Candidate B" is a scoundrel, and "Candidate B" says "Candidate A" is a scoundrel. Unfortunately, I think, at times, both are right! I prefer to have some skepticism about many of the claims made by candidates from any party.

I've been seeing ads by a couple of regional candidates (for the state legislature, in different districts) saying, if elected, how they will "get government off the backs of business." There are no specifics, just the Reaganesque one liner.* I got to wondering, just what has "government" done to burden business people so much? These ads, run for candidates who are Republicans, have obviously been given the tag line by some consultant, or by the Ohio Republican Party. Fair enough; Democrats do similar things. But the question still remains, "What regulations have so burdened business people?" The current governor has been in office for four years, and he is a Democrat. Did he churn out so many regulations that Ohio business people have been overwhelmed? Hmm, maybe, but I've heard this campaign slogan before, so it must go back further, maybe to.....the former governor? Well let's see, he was governor for eight years, and he was a Republican. Hmm, that's curious. Maybe the ads refer to the governor before that. Let's see, he was governor for eight years, and he too was a Republican. That's even "curiouser," and I hope my Third Grade English teacher isn't rolling over in her grave. So, my question still remains.

We've all heard similar on the national level for many years now from Republican officeholders or candidates. Those American business people just have one hell of a life! The government (in this case, at the federal level) is just throwing one thing after the other at these folks. Maybe that's why so many business people are so wealthy? Hmm, that doesn't make any sense, does it? Now, I'm not naive, and I'm sure there are some regulations, some going back decades, that need to be changed or even done away with, but again, just what regulations are so terrible? Should we have more arsenic in our water? Hey, Cary Grant was in that great movie, "Arsenic and Old Lace," maybe we could do a remake, but change the title to "Arsenic and Our Water Supply." How about lead paint? I'll bet removing lead from paint was one regulation that burdened business people. Hey, so it saved some lives or deformities; what's that compared to making money? Besides, we now seem to get our fair share of lead from Chinese imports. Hey, that reminds me, I'm sure that inspections of imports into the U.S. is one awful burden on American importers, don't you think? Maybe that's what they mean by "get government off the backs of business?" Then of course there's a real biggie! Air pollution! If we just didn't have all of those regulations about the air that we breathe, a lot of business people and wealthy investors could make a bundle. Yep, we could coin a new slogan for Sarah Palin, "Dig, baby dig!" We could just burn the hell out of coal, if we didn't have all of those darned regulations. What's a little, or even a lot, of smog and soot in the air? As Sharron Angle would say, "Man up, Americans." First though, just ask yourself, do I REALLY want to go back to such things? Will I be willing to live in close proximity to such places, or are those places just good enough for the "peasantry?" After all, the "peasantry" exists to make my life better, right? Will I be willing to breath all sorts of pollutants 24/7? If you answer "yes," there could be a good side to this for you, lung disease often kills quickly, so take a deep breath, and THINK ABOUT IT!
(A Word History is below the note)

* Reagan used to say, "Government isn't the solution to our problem, government IS the problem.

WORD HISTORY:
Water-This important noun goes back to Indo European root "wed/wod," which gave rise to the variant "wodor/wodr" (and some other forms are possible), all meaning "wet/water." This gave Old Germanic the offshoot "watar," which in turn gave Old English "waeter," before later developing the modern pronunciation and spelling. The verb form, as in "water the garden," was derived from the noun, and in Old English it was "waeterian;" later the ending was dropped and the "ae" became just "a." The word, in various forms, is present in all of the Germanic languages: standard German has "Wasser," and in Low (Saxon) German it is "water," Luxemburgisch has "Waasser," "Frisian has "wetter," Dutch has "water," Danish has "vand" (the "t" sound died out in Danish), Swedish has "vatten," Norwegian has "vann" (like Danish, the "t" died out), and Icelandic has "vatn." The standard German and Luxemburgisch forms were influenced by what is called a "sound shift," in this case, the Germanic "t" sound became an "s" sound (also spelled at times as double "s"). English, Low German and Dutch were not affected by this sound shift; thus English has "kettle," but German has "Kessel," English has "better," but German has "besser," for instance.