It’s not just the nuclear power industry. Virtually anything of significance to our national safety (or anyone else’s) gets fucked up once you add in the profit motive. It’s just that the nuclear power lobby has the capacity to harm so many more people than the average crooked contractor.

I caught some of the news this morning, and they were following a nuclear power lobbyist on his Capitol Hill rounds as he “reassured” members that “we have all kinds of safety procedures” in place, and it “couldn’t happen here.”

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? REALLY?

Look: Nothing is safe when there’s a buck to be made. And while I’d rather be someone who doesn’t see the worst-case scenario all the time, it would help if I wasn’t right so often. (As my therapist points out, pessimism tends to bleed into the rest of my life. I’d much rather be serene, but oh well.)

There were more than 200 safety violations covered up at this plant. Two years ago, the plant owners were informed they couldn’t handle anything more than a 7.0 earthquake; it would cost $1 billion to protect it.

Guess what happened.

Now tell me why it won’t happen here.

People have such touching faith in order, and logic. “We put all these rules in place, and they inspect it regularly.” “No one would ever put everything at risk by cutting corners.” Uh huh. Right. Worked for the banks, right?

The one good thing I can say about this is the international moneyed community, the ones who cared so little about what they’ve done to soil their nests here, who assumed they could always move somewhere else, might finally be getting at least a glimmer of understanding about this very basic truth: Once you’ve destroyed the social contract, you have no place left to hide.

And so, to the bankers who hired private jets and left Japan last night like rats deserting a sinking ship, I’d like to remind them that they’re only postponing the inevitable. Because the karma, man, she is a bitch.

Just look at the kind of people who are attacking her, and you begin to understand just how afraid they are of what she can do to protect consumers:

The attacks on Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) just keep coming, fast and furious, facts be damned.

The CFPB will be “powerful, hard-nosed and unaccountable,” warns Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard. The agency “will decide its own budget,” its “rulings can’t be vetoed,” and it “will be almost impossible to challenge” in court.

“Who in the world would consider it appropriate to have one person appointed to set the rules for the entire financial industry?” wonders Senator Bob Corker.

The Wall Street Journal describes Warren’s “ideological agenda that banks are the villains of the credit crisis while distributing cash to homeowners who will presumably be grateful on Election Day 2012.”

And the latest? A proposed $20 billion settlement with the Big Banks for foreclosure fraud and abuse is deemed by bank executives as “a naked shakedown” by the CFPB.

(Never mind that banks have illegally foreclosed on some homeowners, and imposed unwarranted fines on others, to name just a couple categories of violations.)

Clearly, what we have here is a scene straight out of South Park: a Godzilla-like CFPB with the face of Elizabeth Warren on a rampage. Upstanding citizens must either run for their lives or join the GOP, Wall Street, and conservative Democrats to bring this monster to its knees—just as these defenders of deregulation brought our economy to its knees.

Don’t let this concerted rightwing smear campaign—straight out of their stale playbook—distract from the facts. These daily hit-jobs on Warren and the CFPB are designed to do one thing only: lay the groundwork to limit the agency’s funding and autonomy and, consequently, its power.

Currently, the bureau is funded through the Fed—just as all bank supervisory agencies are independently funded—in order to avoid politicizing its mission by subjecting it to Congressional appropriations. Yet the GOP would like to create a different set of rules for the CFPB. That’s why Texas Republican Representative Randy Neugebauer has introduced legislation to house the CFPB in Treasury so that Congress can control the purse strings. He didn’t try to hid his objective, saying the move would allow Congress to “have some say-so on how big this organization gets and some of their activities.”

Warren addressed this issue squarely in a recent speech, “While the banking regulators charged with preserving the safety and soundness of financial institutions and ensuring consumer protection compliance by smaller banks would continue to receive independent funding, the agency in the financial regulatory system with lead responsibility for protecting consumers would face a different set of rules – rules that threaten its independence.”

It’s also a downright fabrication when people like Barnes and Corker paint a picture of a completely unaccountable CFPB.

Of course. After all, it’s not as if they could be prosecuting bankers, right? And in a time of economic despair, it’s more important to see that the rich get richer!

• The White House is concerned that “illegal streaming of content” may not be covered by criminal law, saying “questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works.” To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to “clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances.”
• Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move “would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses.”
• Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s generally illegal to distribute hardware or software–such as the DVD-decoding software Handbrake available from a server in France–that can “circumvent” copy protection technology. The administration is proposing that if Homeland Security seizes circumvention devices, it be permitted to “inform rightholders,” “provide samples of such devices,” and assist “them in bringing civil actions.”
The term “fair use” does not appear anywhere in the report. But it does mention Web sites like The Pirate Bay, which is hosted in Sweden, when warning that “foreign-based and foreign-controlled Web sites and Web services raise particular concerns for U.S. enforcement efforts.” (See previous coverage of a congressional hearing on overseas sites.)
The usual copyright hawks, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, applauded the paper, which grew out of a so-called joint strategic plan that Vice President Biden and Espinel announced in June 2010.

They just resent anyone saying no to them. Didn’t these people have mothers?