From the editorial board: About half a century ago, American magnates saw that power was getting out of their hands due to the fact that average people began to loudly request their rights and participate in the regulation of the country. Strong trade unions, successive waves of feminism, a mass civilian rights movement, anti-war demonstrations, and large protests in universities, and yet an expanding revolt in society against the demolition of the environment—the rich considered all this a crisis (read: excess) of democracy. That's erstwhile they started working. In Thom Hartmann's text, you will read about what happened next.
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Where to Search for Roots Fascist MEGA-style moves On the modern American right? Many people look for them in the 1954 ultimate Court ruling on a case known as Brown v. Commission of Education: the minute erstwhile the court declared racial segregation unconstitutional, he besides added wind into sails of highly racist groups in the kind of the John Birch Society. However, there is another interesting explanation regarding the genesis of today's Republican organization electorate, linked to the establishment of the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In the years immediately prior to the establishment of the EPA in 1970, the contamination in the United States was so large that it was no longer possible to overlook them. The subject was becoming more and more political.
In 1962, Rachel Carson published a book Silent Spring about how birds die due to the widespread usage of DDT pesticides worldwide. The book shook the Americans and launched the first real ecological movement in the US. A year later due to the smog died 400 fresh Yorkers, and most of Lake Erie died from pollution.
In 1969 a spark from a passing train She started a fire. on the Cuyahoga River. That same year, a giant spill off the California coast covered over 100,000 ha of beach and shoreline with oil, killing thousands of birds and another chaotic animals.
According to technological reports, in 1969 the concentration of automotive exhaust was so advanced that it caused perinatal defects and cancers. How read in 1 of the “TIME” magazine numbers of that period, in large American cities specified as St. Louis, the air smelled like an “old pharmacy was on fire”.
Richard Nixon, a sly politician who always skillfully sensed American sentiments, swept around the subject and founded in 1969 Environmental Quality Council – Environmental Quality Council. This step was well taken, but did not make a major contribution to solving the problem. That's why Nixon did something that remains to this day, possibly the only good deed of his presidency to America: in 1970 he contributed to origin EPA.
The wealthy oligarchs of the American industry, especially in the petrochemical industry, have not been peculiarly fond of the EPA since the beginning.
Environmental government reduced their profits. Until now, fat cats for generations poisoned the air and water without causing any reaction from the authorities. And now all of a sudden, the fuel might have felt that they were under fire. This outraged them almost as profoundly as the 74 percent income taxation imposed on everything they earned above their first 3 million dollars (in terms of today's dollar).
The moods that prevailed among the pathological rich at that time could be summarised as follows: “So what if children have cancer? Screw it! We don't live close our refineries and factories. alternatively of making these green farts, let them be glad we give them work!’
In the 1970s, efforts to regulate poisonous industries and reduce fossil fuel emissions have gained widespread public approval. However, they did not like billionaires. How We Read in archives The EPA, erstwhile Russel Train [the same 1 who had previously founded the planet Wildlife Fund in 1973], the wealthy had already begun organizing and activating.
During Train's EPA term, issues related to air cleanliness were a powerful bone of disagreement between the environment of eco-activists and industry. "The energy manufacture did everything to make the full environmental program go down. Therefore, the fact that a pro-ecological course has been maintained should be considered an achievement," said Train himself. Many attacks have been repulsed to undermine the competence of the EPA, specified as attempts to lift the requirements for building advanced mill chimneys, to curb efforts to prevent a crucial deterioration in cleaner air quality than national standards, and so on.
Around the same time, in the early 1970s, American industrialists took to heart the advice from the celebrated Lewis Powell memorandum, a lawyer in the tobacco industry: the rich must wake up and start bribing politicians and judges, take control of the media and usage their influence to fill universities by right-wing lecturers who will displace the old left-wing defender from the university.
In 1976 and 1978, U.S. Cresus caught even more wind in the sails, as 5 Republicans on the ultimate Court ruled in 2 consecutive cases that buying politicians by billionaires and corporations did not constitute bribery within the meaning of criminal law. Since that moment, it has been "constitutionally protected on the basis of the first amendment" and corporations have ceased to act as legal fiction, becoming full "persons" who can request protection from the Charter of Rights, which, as it has seemed, has calculated rights due to people.
Besides, it was the ultimate Court justice Lewis Powell who wrote the ruling on the case Bellotti of 1978, granting corporate “persons”, including abroad corporations, the right to pump an unlimited stream of “dark money” (that is, funds from undisclosed sources) into political campaigns. (Five corrupt Republicans of the ultimate Court have added here to the furnace in the 2010 ruling on the case Citizens United).
Nevertheless, the lamentation of fuel magnates continued in the face of a regulatory offensive that seemed endless. due to the fact that the EPA began to require that refineries spitting out tons of carcinogenic benzene cease to poison so that radioactive waste, carbon waste with arsenic and drilling waste would not enter rivers to reduce workers' vulnerability to hazardous substances. The billionaires were besides much.
Petrobogs and their companies decided to organize themselves. In all state of the United States, they founded and began to finance political think tank, and each specified institution had 2 main objectives: deregulation and taxation reduction.
The point was to convince Americans that regulating anything is wrong, the 74 percent taxation rate for rich people must necessarily be reduced. The advanced taxation rate was the main obstacle preventing billionaires from placing their hands on the cash register, which went on to keep the families of the union working class.
Think tank rolled up their sleeves and supported Republican efforts at all opportunity. Money was flowing across a wide stream into the pockets of Republican politicians at state and national level. A pocket army of commentators was created, partially scientists, partially economists (also willing to make a cabal) to convince Americans that regulations do not service to defend average people, but are 1 of the tools of socialism or communism.
Their man for everything, economist and writer Jude Wanniski, He made it up. even a new, peculiar economical theory, in which the professional-sounding phrases specified as snorkeling and snorkeling have appeared, to justify gigantic taxation cuts for American cresus.
The EPA agencies, which introduced further regulations, began to be referred to as a deep state. This patch proved repugnant that fewer people chose to stand up for them.
Reagan abolished the application of antitrust law in 1983, and Clinton deregulation the media in 1996. More than 1.5 1000 local right-wing radio stations were created, Fox News began to hit the market. Already in 2000, Republicans openly agitate on various platforms, promising deregulation and massive taxation cuts for billionaires who "create jobs".
And so thanks to appropriate indoctrination, the Republican electorate was convinced that black was white, becoming a useful idiot for rich people.
Republican voters believed think tanks that claimed climate change was a sham. They believed erstwhile Trump told them that for his presidency the economy "was best in the past of the world" (before the outbreak of the pandemic it was only on an average level). Kiwali with approval of the head erstwhile he claimed that taxes for pathologically rich had to be reduced by another $2 trillion.
Often quoted Alexander Hamilton noted: “He who believes nothing will believe everything.” This became the motto of the Republican vercheque, for which the highest value is the greed of themselves and their wealthy patrons.
For any 40 years the white Republican electorate has been lied to and utilized with specified strength that it has become an easy prey to predators from both the planet of large business and the Republican Party.
All he inactive believes is blind obedience to Republican politicians who will completely impunity The game of pyramidal nonsense – The Washington Post, for example, collected over 30,000 lies spoken by Trump during his presidency. Republican voters are being mocked in front of the world:
“Democrats command a pedophile net from Washington pizzeria? All right, I'm going for the rifle!
– Teachers hatred students and want to screw up their lives at all costs? Absolutely! Why would they survey so many years to make inexpensive money if they didn't?
– On new fatal virus It's best to usage a horse deworming agent or a drug that kills a malaria parasite. Why not? Better than those horrible masks! How about a fast shot of bleach? Sounds reasonable!
– We are observing a real heap of flatlanders and anti-Semitic swarms that Jews regulation the planet and want to “replace” white Americans with black or brown skin.
– Although unprecedented atmospheric phenomena ravage the states dominated by Republicans, their residents proceed to vote for Republicans who refuse to take any action to mitigate the effects of climate disaster.
– Republicans referring to Christian values tie their fates with a man who betrayed each of his 3 wives, repeatedly committed fraud in business and charity, cast quotes from Hitler, rip off infants from mothers' breasts, and sale them to organizations impersonating charitable adoption agencies that smuggled and sold over a 1000 children to places that have not been established to this day.
The Republican electorate is so indoctrinated that erstwhile then president Trump threw more than 100 environmental regulations into the basket, no 1 even spoke – although it meant that life and work in America became more toxic and dangerous, and children are threatened by childhood cancers and birth defects. Most Republican voters don't really know that something like this happened, though ‘New York Times” kept a list of Trump's repealed regulations with which you can read more here.
And so on.
In all this, there is no indication that the wealthiest American oligarchs have any uncertainty about the course chosen. A fewer years ago, the Ford Foundation ordered an investigative article in the Guardian to analyse the financing of political activities by 100 richest American billionaires. All right, most of us have heard names like Koch, Soros or Gates, but the remainder of us don't truly tell anyone.
Most indecent Americans are from GOP very on their way. How read in ‘Guardian’:
“Our fresh systematic investigation on hundreds of the wealthiest shows that Buffett, Gates, Bloomberg and others are not typical representatives of this group. Most of the wealthiest American billionaires, those little known and little frequently described, alternatively closer to Charles Love.
They are highly conservative in economical matters. They're obsessed with taxation cuts, especially inheritance taxes, that only apply to the wealthiest Americans. They argue government regulations on environmental protection or control of large banks. They are not peculiarly pleased with the government's programmes to advance employment, increase wages, improve the quality of medical care and rise pensions, supported by the majority of citizens. They are always willing to reduce public deficits and administration by cutting or privatising guaranteed social benefits."
So why do the Americans not seem to announcement who's tampering with their political system, and why? Let's take another look at Guardian:
"The answer is simple: billionaires, who advocate unpopular, ultra-conservative economical solutions, actively working for their implementation (i.e. most politically active billionaires) will not be in public on any of these topics. They do it consciously. Billionaires have excellent media access, but most of them like to avoid speaking on topical political issues. They consciously implement a strategy we call stealth policies, conduct a policy of concealment".
That's how things are.
American billionaires have had their taxation cuts. alternatively of paying 74%, as before Reagan's presidency, or at least 50%, which pays most billionaires in Europe, the average American billionaire presently pays a income taxation of around 3%, which is most likely much little than the average Republican organization voter.
The fuel magnates besides achieved the dream level of deregulation (although Biden overturned any of Trump's worse), while the American ultimate Court, encouraged by sponsored holidays and household homes for millions of dollars will shortly begin deliberations on the repeal of the legal doctrine known as "Chevron deference", which allows the explanation of the law by the executive authorities. If the court revokes this principle, it will deprive EPA of any ability to regulate the fossil fuel industry.
As a result, over $50 trillion in wages and households in the working class It's gone. 1 percent of the richest bank accounts, and environmental devastation continues at its best. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress, trusting in the generosity of fuel magnatery, are fiercely opposed to any action taken by those who are not indifferent to the future of climate and the environment in which our children will live.
For 50 years, any of the wealthiest people in America (with a fewer exceptions they are almost exclusively men) have been plotting a strategy that is expected to burn the American government with live fire to the rules governing income taxation and environmental protection. They had an awesome success. Without income taxes, they have reached an unprecedented wealth level in the past of our globe. They are rich from Pharaohs, from Caesars, from all king in the past of Europe, Africa or Asia.
Do they care that the remainder of us They leave the planet agonal.? That their actions caused toxic fumes of paranoia and distrust, which, along with the orange monster fed on their chests, threatens to end the American experimentation soon? That Americans die all day from contamination and climate change caused by their products?
Not as long as they keep their taxes and deregulation in check. Meanwhile, from Oxfam investigation it follows, "Emissions generated by investment and lifestyle 125 billionaires exceed the emissions of all France".
Dear right-wing billionaires of America! You can congratulate yourselves on your mission. And we have nothing to thank you for.
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Thom Hartmann is simply a radio and tv commentator. He has published over 20 books including Unequal Protection: The emergence of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights (Project Censored award, 2004) and The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, on the basis of which a documentary was created in 2016 Before the Flood. Twitter: @thom_hartmann
Article published in stock Common Dreams under Creative Commons. From English she translated Dorota Blabolil-Obrębska.
