Government is not the solution. Government IS the problem. That was the mantra of deregulation beginning in the 1980s and going forward until the economic crisis hit and hit hard. But the financial world was not all that was smashed. Today, 5000 citizens of the United States die each year of food poisoning. Another 300,000 visits to the hospital for treatment after poisoning do not result in death.

In June, after 69 people became sick from E. coli O157:H7 the FDA asked us not to eat raw cookie dough, specifically from Nestle. Nestle had a history of refusing to allow FDA inspectors to examine their safety records. After deregulation, compliance had become voluntary.

In January, the FDA traced 500 cases of salmonella back to a single plant owned by the Peanut Corporation of America. It turns out that company inspectors had found 12 instances of contamination in peanut butter about to be shipped out. Whew. Just in time, right? Except that, after discovering the contamination, the company shipped out the contaminated batches anyway. 8 people died. The firm was not required to share internal testing results for salmonella with regulators.

This is not a short term phenomenon. The Bush administration slashed FDA inspections by three quarters. The number of field employees were severely cut. Three years ago children were dying after eating spinach processed by the Dole Food Company. The response was even less regulation.

The conservative view of government at the most extreme is that regulation is pretty much always harmful and never necessary. Manufacturers will not poison you because it is not in their interest to get a bad reputation. If the upside to hurting consumers is less than the long term downside in the form of fewer customers then corporate behavior will be honorable. We are safe.

But the marketplace is not always perfect, is it? Inefficiencies create opportunities for the entrepreneurs who find them. But they also present dangers to unwary consumers. Of food related deaths, roughly half claim children. Not all corporate executives look to the long term. Of those who do not, some number lack scruples concerning the welfare of consumers.

Pointless extensions of regulation beyond what it takes to ensure safety can increase cost with no corresponding benefit. Regulations should be revisited from time to time. But the current state of conservative thought has crossed a line. Reason, science, and measurement itself have been discredited in the world of movement activists.

Teabaggers who rail against regulation would do well to look into the eyes of their grandchildren and think carefully before encouraging them to eat their spinach, rewarding them with a peanut butter snack, or letting them lick the bowl as cookies are baked.

You'll have lower prices under deregulation than you will through regulation.

- - Ken Lay, CEO and chairman of Enron, interviewed by PBS, May 22, 2001

Mr Lay died in 2006 before beginning his sentence for securities fraud.

The most basic problem with Bush era ID laws to prevent voter fraud is that they were transparently not intended to prevent voter fraud. They were intended to prevent targeted groups from voting at all.

That law prevents a voter from casting a ballot without presenting a picture ID. No ID, no vote. Someone who uses public transportation or an elderly person who no longer drives will be likely to have no license. Sometimes a new voter, having turned 18, will not yet have a license. A voter who does not drive can get a non-driver picture ID by visiting various offices to get the required documents, then making an additional trip to a driver's licensing office. A lot of folks would not go through all that just to vote.

An in-person voter without a license to drive is more likely to be a Democrat. The law applies to that voter. An absentee voter is more likely to vote for Republicans. In most jurisdictions, the law does not apply to that voter.

Most election fraud does not involve actual voters. Ballot boxes have been stuffed after polls have closed. Counts are manipulated, again after polls have closed. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU's School of Law (pdf) uncovered a surprising number of cases of in-person voter fraud. That surprising number was zero. There were a number of charges, but they proved to be false. The only documented cases of individual voter fraud involved absentee ballots.

There is a reason for this. In-person fraud involves considerable risk for the sake of a single vote. Someone who votes twice stands a chance of being recognized by a poll watcher, usually recruited locally. Someone who pretends to live at a local address stands an even greater chance of being exposed by some alert neighbor to the address. Ballot stuffing and manipulation of the count involves many more votes at a lot less risk. Absentee fraud is only slightly more risky than ballot stuffing.

We have had some experience with this sort of thing in Missouri. Republican Senator Kit Bond demanded and got a voter ID law to battle what he claimed was fraud among black voters. Bradley Schlozman was appointed by the Bush administration to enthusiastically enforce it. He later become famous back in DC. He force-transfered black female attorneys from the Civil Rights Division, intending to replace them with "right-thinking Americans" which he defined as white Christian males.

The Missouri law demanding picture IDs for voting was later overturned in court. Recently the Indiana Court of Appeals struck down a similar law, which "treats in-person voters disparate from mail-in voters, conferring partial treatment upon mail-in voters." Good. Such laws are a fraud.

Some Republicans, like Senator Bond, regard voters as a murderous suitor might react to being spurned. If he can't have your vote, nobody can.

On polls being kept open so black people waiting in line could vote:

"This is an outrage!"

- - Senator Kit Bond, pounding the podium, November 7, 2000
Later, Bond alleged massive fraud by St. Louis voters

Anecdote is not the singular of data, just as a focus group is not a nationwide poll. But anecdotes and focus groups are useful. They provide a human clarity that raw numbers sometimes lack. They are the music to what would otherwise be only lyrics.

When the chair of a Republican committee in a small northern state quits the party, it means little by itself. It is an anecdote. But Ivan Marte's reasoning says something about what the GOP faces.

The Research 2000 poll comes out each week and is sponsored by a left leaning blog that conservatives love to hate. The Daily Kos is openly partisan and blatantly ideological. They are close to my heart. But their poll has gradually been seen as thorough and mainstream. It shows President Obama as steadily popular. The Democratic party is fairly unpopular, in a 5 to 4 split. The Republican Party is wildly unpopular by a 3 to 1 margin.

There is a bright spot for the GOP in one, and only one, part of the country. More southerners embrace the GOP than disapprove of it, by 50 to 37%. The problem with this is that the GOP remains an increasingly regional party.

This has two effects. First, it concentrates the electoral power of the party in one section of the country. In the west, the margin for the GOP is abysmal: 14% to 75%. In the Midwest it is absurd: 13% to 78%. In the Northeast, it has become comical: 7% to 87%. The immediate future is cloudy. Each election carries its own dynamic, and the bumps and storms of the moment provide uncertainty. Republicans may surge in the next midterm election, where rage can more easily prevail over popular support.

But the longer term trend has been going on for more than a decade. Basic attitudes have been shifting. The private scandal of President Clinton swung voters to support him in 1998, and to support Bush in 2000, although Gore still got a majority. The 9/11 attacks pulled Republicans to lopsided victories in 2002 and 2004. There were other factors through the years. But, beneath the surface, a series of incremental shifts have produced a tide.

Ivan Marte has been the chairman of Rhode Island Republican Hispanic Assembly. He has been an important member of the national central committee. He was prompted to resign because of South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's disrespectful screaming during President Obama's address to Congress. But his dissatisfaction goes back to a more general disrespect toward Hispanics. Xenophobia extends beyond immigrants.

As the Republican Party becomes captive to extreme conservative elements, moderates are leaving. As moderates leave, the party becomes more extreme. It is a vicious downward spiral. Ivan Marte's departure is not earthshaking. Rather, it is one small effect of an already growing earthquake.

It is an anecdote that explains the data.

On GOP condemnation of "extremist views" and "coarse rhetoric":

Well, if we’re going to eliminate extremist views and coarse rhetoric, those House GOP caucus meetings are going to become so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

- - Jay Bookman, in Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 5, 2009