Just a few comments on some current issues, now that the presidential primary season is well underway. And since the entire GOP field – with the occasional exception of Jon Huntsman – denies the existence of climate change, let me start by mentioning that here in upstate New York, where the typical January measures snowfall in feet, not inches, and where January temperatures are often subzero for days on end, it is raining and in the 30s. There is no snow on the ground and there hasn’t been, really, any significant snow yet this season. I’ve lived here most of my life and I can say that this is unprecedented in my experience. And yet when I mention the words “climate change” to people in connection with the fact that we appear to be locked in permanent November, they look at me like I have six heads. “Do you really think that’s what it is?” a friend asked me. He home-schools his son, by the way.
This, my friends, is the power of the fossil-fuel industry. Through their marketing and their political surrogates, they have taken a nation on the brink of consensus regarding climate change back in 2007 and turned it 180 degrees into deep denial. The great recession has helped in this regard, of course – jobs versus environment has always been an effective diversion. It has particular resonance now that the Democrats are effectively missing in action on this issue, running scared on the threat of nastiness from the other side. Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland election year.
Would that climate change were the only matter about which the major party candidates appear to know nothing. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from Willard “Mitt” Romney’s New Hampshire primary victory speech a few nights ago:
President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial. In the last few days, we have seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him. This is such a mistake for our Party and for our nation. This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We must offer an alternative vision. I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success. In these difficult times, we cannot abandon the core values that define us as unique – We are One Nation, Under God.
Okay, sure… there’s a lot that’s wrong with this. I think the most flabbergasting part, though, is the “bitter politics of envy” gambit. Who is advising this geezer? Someone who’s been living in a cave for the last year? For one thing, free enterprise doesn’t need Barack Obama or anyone else to put it on trial – it’s been doing a pretty thorough job on itself these past few years. I’m always astounded by these so-called free market evangelists who insist that government intervention is detrimental to economic growth in a world where command economies like China are eating our lunch and “European-style entitlement societies”, as Romney puts it, offer a far better standard of living than us even in the midst of a major debt crisis. Can they point to a single example of an unbridled capitalist economy in which the vast majority of people enjoy a rising standard of living? Thought not.
Lookout below. Looks like we may have another idiot president in the hopper.
First of all, what’s this “we” about? Got a mouse in your pocket? Second… cut taxes? Again? So much for fiscal responsibility. These guys have exactly one idea. No, wait – two: Reduce regulation. (See BP, above.) That will “speed up this pace of government” as we approach the cliff.