Climate Change & Shutting Government Down

I get it now: the GOP wants to shut down government to prevent Climate Change!

What? The denialist party is secretly taking climate change more seriously than the world's scientists, who only shout that the sky is falling, without doing anything about it?

What I mean to say: the GOP has a diabolical plan, while denying its existence: respond to climate change by insuring that more and more people are desperately poor, so they can't spend the money that would fuel further climate change: people's consumption would suddenly fall, reducing climate-change-inducing pollution, like CO2. Of course the geniuses who thought up this genius plan would benefit through tax-cuts, so they could keep more of their ill-gotten gains--and consume more, but only the gilded few.

I mean 'ill-gotten' in the sense that fortunes are made by transferring income (legally) from poor to wealthy, and taxes from wealthy to poor.

So only a few can consume to their heart's content, and they have the resources to pay people to protect their interests: from the President on down to key legislators in states, small and large.

An apparent example is the EPA's turning its back on its preliminary findings in Dimock, PA, Pavillion, WY and Parker County, TX: that fracking had contaminated ground water. Instead, it closed those investigations down, and continued to stand by while other parts of the Obama administration, like Interior, promote fracking. Who's being paid off, and by whom?

But it's better still to just shut government down, so that a program that might provide substantial help to a lot of people--and save money--can be repealed, so that taxes for the wealthy can be canceled,

So, instead of government intruding on our lives, it's lack of action will insure that so much less will be spent that we'll be plunged into a stark Depression. Since Republicans insist on cutting Food Stamps, the one program that's helped people survive in this, for the rich only, "recovery;" people will be driven to misery, as well; their consumption will sink to that of an average Bangladeshi. So, all talk of climate change will cease--because everyone else's lowered rate of consumption will dramatically reduce CO2 emissions globally. Then, the world's worst polluters will be able to continue in business, simply by paying off the corrupt political machine. The demand for greater regulation will fail, and will 'obviously' be unnecessary, especially since everyone (who's anyone) will be so much better off, living in their protected enclaves: protected from the chaos and misery beyond their gates.

Sounds like the 21st Century's version of Senatorial rule in the Fifth, when the wealthy ruled in their own interest even as the world was falling about their ears.

Comments welcome.

Democracy?

Does the United States have a functioning democracy? All the platitudes about democracy, thundered from every quarter, would make you believe so. But if you look even at the surface of our political "debate," and of the policies that issue from it, and then look at public opinion, as expressed in polls, the US doesn't look democratic.

It looks about as democratic as Marie Antoinette, or Diocletian (see http://www.roman-empire-america-now.com/history-of-the-roman-empire.html).

What are the main concerns of the public at large? Jobs, higher wages, more equity, health care, assurance that the older generation is taken care of, better schools, safety. The debt and deficits are hardly even a concern.

The debate in Washington, and in state capitols, is how to cut the debt and the deficits, and the way to do so is to cut the very services the public wants more of. The alternative offered: raise taxes on the wealthy, is still to cut deficits.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel economist, continually points out that the deficits are not a problem to be solved now, when the economy is only barely emerging from The Great Recession. And he says it's not the terrible problem those he calls "Very Serious People" constantly rail about. Government expenditures and deficits, relative to the huge size of the economy, are actually going down, and were never too large. He also points out that the deficits run by the Bush-Cheney administration were mostly wasted, while the current deficits are largely due to the extremely slow recovery and the inadequate attempts by the Obama administration to stimulate the economy: it would have been better if such deficits had been larger.

Yet, the VSP continue to insist: we must cut government expenditures now, because we have to "solve the debt crisis." And our media, and Congress, and even the President go along. Obama talks about reaching a "grand bargain," which apparently would cut benefits to Medicare, Social Security, Medicare, and a whole raft of other social programs like Head Start, in return for even a few concessions on cutting tax loopholes for the wealthy.

Popular opinion supports higher taxes on the wealthy. People know, without looking at statistical tables, that the wealthy have radically increased their share of the wealth, are grabbing even more and are taxed less, in relative terms, than the poor, or the middle class.

But higher taxes for the wealthy are a non-starter, while cuts to Medicare and even to Social Security, which doesn't contribute to deficits, are "on the table."

What's going on here?

Polls have shown that the very wealthy want cuts to social services (they don't need them); say large deficits are our worst problem and must be cut, by cutting expenditures for things they don't need--like Medicare and Social Security--but not by raising taxes on them; they need their yachts.

That's who the VSP represent: the equivalent of Rome's Selfish Class, the Roman Senators: that's plutocracy, not democracy.