Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Has the phone stopped ringing in the White House? President Biden appears to be struggling with lukewarm support for dumping more trillions of freshly printed or borrowed money into the economy, to combat climate change.
Help wanted: White House seeks CEO support for climate plan
By Adam Aton, Corbin Hiar | 09/03/2021 12:40 PM EST
Democrats are scrambling to marshal corporate support for their $3.5 trillion reconciliation package as the fossil fuel industry and other business sectors seek to kill the party-line measure filled with climate initiatives.
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The oil and gas industry, meanwhile, is spearheading opposition to tax changes that could make drillers pay more. Its American Petroleum Institute lobby group is also pushing back against clean energy tax credits and a clean electricity payment program — the backbone of Democrats’ climate agenda — as well as a new fee on methane.
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President Biden’s team is trying to move companies off the sidelines. The administration is asking corporations across sectors to “put their full might behind combating the climate crisis,” a White House spokesperson said.
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“What I’ve heard from folks on Capitol Hill is that very few companies are really showing up,” said Bill Weihl, the founder and executive director of ClimateVoice, a nonprofit focused on promoting corporate climate advocacy. “And I think that’s a huge problem.”
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Amazon has spent over $10.1 million on lobbying in the first half of 2021 — the most of any company, according to data compiled by the transparency group OpenSecrets. Some of that went toward “issues related to sustainability” and “infrastructure and sustainable transportation,” lobbying disclosure filings show.
But Amazon is also a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, both of which have come out against the corporate tax increases Democrats are proposing to help pay for the reconciliation bill.
“The Chamber will do everything we can to prevent this tax raising, job killing reconciliation bill from becoming law,” Suzanne Clark, the Chamber’s president and CEO, said in a statement last week.
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Read more: https://www.eenews.net/articles/help-wanted-white-house-seeks-ceo-support-for-climate-plan/
The answer to why corporate support for Biden’s green agenda is faltering in my opinion should be obvious.
Companies like Amazon and Google are run by people who genuinely believe in the climate crisis, and they desperately want to be key players in what they see as the solution.
But what President Biden is proposing is essentially a total government takeover of the green agenda, if not an outright leap towards the government running the entire economy. Corporations will be expected to pay, but they won’t have any control – it will all be run by the government.
Once the government is running everything, current climate leaders like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and all the rest won’t be important anymore. At best the CEOs who currently see themselves as the leaders of the new green age will be relegated to being cogs in the government machine, subservient bit players in President Biden’s great renewable energy economic transformation.
If Biden had simply proposed tightening up emissions laws to force gasoline vehicles off the road, or giving massive tax credits to companies which install their own green energy systems, Amazon et al would have been right behind them – providing they got a few exemptions where it counted, like maybe retaining access to affordable diesel for Amazon’s long haul road transport.
But being sidelined and eventually forgotten, being thrown in the same discard box as all the corporate climate sinners they have fought so hard to defeat, surely none of them want that.
Corporations NEVER pay taxes .
Consumers do.
Idiot politicians …. beware.
Corporate taxes, especially on gross revenue not profit, restricts capital re-investments of profits which then restricts future profits to shareholders.
It also restricts future job and wage increases.
And innovation, production, and service. Also, the regulatory noose.
And they never increase government income.
Taxes, when passed on to the consumer, can sometimes make your product uncompetitive with alternatives and put you out of business. That’s the eco-objective with carbon taxes….but when alternatives aren’t readily available, it’s just a gov’t tax grab.
In fact, the owners, ie shareholders, pay the taxes, at least that’s the way it works in Australia. I would be surprised if it works differently elsewhere.
Basically, any profits are taxed. The dividends are paid from those profits, and the shareholders get an effective tax rebate on the corporate tax already paid. In Australia atm, shareholders can actually get a refund from the tax office if they don’t pay tax, eg retirees.
It’s true that raising corporate taxes provides less profit for reinvestment, at least in the short term. In the long term it makes no difference as the capital investment can be depreciated against profit. This is why raising ir lowering corporate tax has little effect except on short-term investment capital.
Cutting dividends makes the stock price go down, so does borrowing ability. If debt is secured by stock the loan might even be called, killing the company.
If the dividends are less because corporate tax has increased, the tax rebate for shareholders also increases. I fail to see how that impacts the share price, unless people determining the share value don’t understand accounting.
Share prices are determined by the payback to the shareholder. Part of that payback are the dividends, part of it is equity in the company. Anything that reduces dividends without a compensating increase in the value of the company reduces the value of the stock. Basic accounting.
…and part is the expectation of future advancement in the price of the stock.
There is no such tax rebate for shareholders in the US.
Dividends are taxed as ordinary income, corporate taxes reduce dividends and depress share prices. Then you pay capital gains taxes when you sell.
When all competitors face equal treatment, corporate taxes are most likely to result in higher prices where the tax is passed along to the consumer.
In other cases, the government interference in the market benefits a previously non-competitive, possibly lower quality supplier while burdening a more efficient supplier. This also harms the consumer who may pay more for lower quality or much more for the same quality. Pressure to cut costs may eliminate the best quality products altogether. (“They don’t make “x” like they used to”)
That system does not encourage investors, then. The corporate profit is taxed, and then dividends paid to shareholders out of taxed profit, and then shareholders are taxed again on this money on which tax has already been paid? I’d be investing elsewhere.
Yes, that is the story and the reason why the corporate tax rate was reduced under Trump.
Most US corporations pay no dividends. They reinvest the money in growing the business, buying out competitors, raising CEO compensation packages, etc. The shareholder experiences only indirect change as relates to stock price increasing/decreasing and then only if they sell.
Higher tax rates mean less money for reinvestment, but stockholders will feel that as slower growth, not a direct hit to the pocketbook.
In the US, corporate profits are taxed at
the corporate level, reducing dividends. Dividends paid to shareholders are then taxed at the shareholder level as ordinary income. The only time an American investor could be said to have received any benefit from this is if he invested 100% in companies whose only business was with the federal government (eg a major defense contractor). The money to pay that defense contractor comes from the taxpayers, who include that investor. The defense contractor is allowed only a small profit margin (15% is considered at the top end), on which the contractor pays federal income tax. Part of what’s left may be paid in dividends to stockholders, who in in turn pay tax on it as ordinary income. What’s left as “profit” to the stockholder just represents a minuscule offset to his federal income tax. It’s the dumbest investment one can make, if one is depending on dividend income.
As Ronald Regan once said “Companies don’t pay tax!”
Company tax is simply an avaricious government confiscating the wealth of a successful company because they “know” how to utilize it better. This is simply nonsense – government track records on redistributive taxation are appalling – rather leave the money with the people who have a track record of ability to generate wealth.
One of the common complaints is that “companies don’t pay their fair share of tax” – you mean they didn’t pay over vast amounts of VAT and all their employees and shareholders managed to evade personal tax? These companies produce vast taxes for the fiscus – because they are successful and employ a lot of people.
Ditto all the other industries and their employees that support that industry.
The only thing that is unfair is the tax itself and it is much harder for smaller businesses to operate via a Camen Islands account – we would be far better off without company tax.
Exactly! Any tax paid by companies is essentially rebated to shareholders.
I had long arguments with my government clients in Australia about GST, too. The government insisted that GST (or VAT or sales tax) was included in an invoice price, not added afterwards. I said it’s irrelevant, because I add GST to my invoice, you pay the GST, and claim it back. The net result is zero, except for actual retail transactions where it cannot be claimed back.
Eventually, the government capitulated on this, and only requires GST to be inclusive on retail receipts. The entire exercise was basically to prevent retailers from stating a price, and then adding GST, like they do in the USA for some unfathomable reason.
It’s added on the receipt so that people can see how much it is.
Unlike Europeans who prefer taxes to be as hidden as possible.
G’Day MarkW
“… taxes to be as hidden as possible…”
Queensland, 1962. I was a sales rep for a printing company. Had to come up with a new hand-written order form for a children’s toy retailer. There were five (5) different ‘sales tax’ rates to be applied. The interesting one depended on where the toy was manufactured.
A ‘one-time-carbon’ ‘Speedy-Set/Snap Out’ form. The ‘Office Copy’ was pegboard punched. The totals of the various taxes were entered across the bottom of the form, along with the ‘Total’ and the invoice number. When ‘peg-boarded’ with that edge exposed, the company accountant had columns of figures to add rather than flipping through multiple pages multiple times.
Correct .. the price on the label must be THE PRICE was the objective. It stopped advertising lower prices by simply excluding the tax and putting it on some fine print.
The US doesn’t have a federal sales tax, you must be thinking of Canada, and we call our version of VAT the GST as well. To anyone wondering about the ‘hidden tax’ debate, some people want the tax indicated on the receipt others want it on the shelf sticker or price tag. To me the latter is better because of price psychology, you see the final price. There is a difference in see something for sale at one price, then they tack on 13% versus just seeing the final price on the sales flyer or sticker. Say some was $9.99 and $11.29 with the tax. If $11.29 was put on the sticker it’s likely that sales would drop because people were used to paying 9.99. Eventually the store would end up eating part of the tax and lower prices to say $10.99 to get sales back up to the same volume. So the consumer would be winning a little bit.
Corporate taxes are also popular because the politicians and the media have convinced the masses that they don’t pay these taxes. Only the evil rich pay these taxes.
A company needs to make a profit to stay in business. When the government jacks up the taxes they have to pay, they have to raise their prices to ensure a healthy profit. Thus the consumer, who now pays more for their product or service, ends up paying the tax without knowing about it. Saying it’s the company, or the shareholders, that pay the taxes is simply obfuscating this truth.
There is another dirty little secret about increasing corporate taxes. To the extent that the government raises corporate taxes, the companies reduce future investment and lay off workers. We saw the reverse of this with the Trump tax cuts: companies increased investments and hired more workers. US manufacturing, which had been in long term decline, increased as a result.
Basic Econ 101: the more you tax something, the less you get of it.
Sometimes higher prices result in much fewer sales and reduce profit. In many case the alternative is to reduce quality.
This is especially true when foreign governments tax their companies less than the US government does. US companies are forced to raise prices or cut quality in order to pay US taxes.
Foreign companies are not as handicapped by their governments. The result is that foreign companies are able to undercut the prices of US companies. This is true whether the sales are in the US, or overseas.
US companies have two choices, continue to lose business worldwide to non-US companies, or move more of their operations over seas so that they can escape US taxes.
Which of course causes the usual suspects to start whining about greedy corporations shipping OUR jobs overseas.
When the US raises taxes, jobs go overseas. The only question is will those new overseas jobs be in US based companies, or overseas based companies.
When Trump cut taxes on US companies from the highest in the world, to one of the lowest, jobs started streaming back into the country. Biden wants to reverse this trend and return the US to having the highest corporate taxes in the world.
Biden’s policies are so destructive towards the US I can only conclude they have been formulated maliciously.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/iopPf0YM6m7C/
No Bob corporations kill people. Under reported here but is the same crowd. A UK undertaker has more facts than the entire CDC/FDA Pharma propaganda machine,
Let’s kill all companies. Everyone can be self employed. Surely that will make all of us as rich as Gates.
We can all be Millionaires tomorrow. Just increase the minimum wage to $500 an hour.
Being sidelined and eventually forgotten, being thrown in the discard box with all the other corporate climate science deniers is exactly what that opportunistic scum deserves. It will not help the rest of the hapless population unfortunately as they starve in the dark.
It would appear that the West Coast green corporate types are finally realizing where the Green New Deal ends up, and what it is—a fascist socialism designed by retarded schoolchildren.
Yep. The leaders of the people’s revolution always make the mistake of thinking they will still be in charge once the dust settles.
I had a horrified fascination with the history of Europe in the 1930’s, from which I drew the lesson it is quite dangerous to try to use fanatics unless one is in total agreement with them. It might very well result in a repeat of The Night of the Long Knives.
What was the name of that horse in “Animal Farm” that did most of the work but got sold to the glue factory?
Boxer.
When I read ‘Animal Farm’ to my 7 year old son, he explained to me that Boxer was the real bad guy in the story. He was the “true believer” who threw his back into rebuilding the windmill, convincing the others to work harder.
And Squealer’s rendition of Boxer’s dying words was: “Forward, Comrades! … Forward in the name of the Rebellion” and “Long live Animal Farm! Long live Comrade Napoleon!
The wisdom of children is often overlooked.
Except that Boxer wasn’t the “Bad Guy”. He was used and abused. He was the victim of the “Bad Guy’s” real goal. Power.
I fear a 7 year old understood Orwell’s intent better than you. The message of ‘Animal Farm’ is not that bad people do bad things. That is no revelation, nor is it that good people get used and hurt by bad people. The lesson my son instinctively understood was; don’t be an active participant in you own downfall (rather like wearing masks when it’s obvious they’re only used as crowd control. Don’t abandon our old and vulnerable to the torture of loneliness and fear on the word of politicians) … useful idiots. Don’t confer power on the undeserving (think Biden and the corrupt democrats).
Boxer’s faith in the pigs dominance increased the misery in Manor Farm by encouraging the other animals to help their own tormentors to do evil with ease. He was his own worst enemy because he was credulous and easily led.
In the end Robes Pierre was beheaded. enough said
Trotsky didnt have to great a time of it either, and only Lenin’s timely death prevented ruthless conflict with ‘Uncle Joe, from Georgia’ who then took over…
Once you eliminate democracy, it is simply a ruthless ‘Game of Thrones’.
Robes Pierre, members of the German SA, Trotsky and his supporters, many of the revolutionaries who fought along side Castro, all of whom thought THEY were going to be the new rulers, are utterly surprised when they are lined up along the wall and shot.
Please, it isn’t Robes Pierre, it’s Maximilien Robespierre. I know it’s a bit pedantic but let’s at least try for some accuracy, otherwise we might all as well be climate enthusiasts like Mikey Mann.
Speaking of pedantic … I was just thinking that precision would be even better than accuracy. Not a very nice man, The Apostle of Terror. He deserved his fate … Max, meet Mme. Guillotine.
Just sayin’.
Colleague Steve Milloy has a handle on this
Title page
Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity:
reinfections versus breakthrough infections on this:
See junkscience.com
Seems the corporate and Hollywood types are spending most of their spare cash trying to save Gov. Newsome’s job.
Speaking of:
Gawd I’d love to see that circulated during his attempt to steal this month’s election .
Thats all a bit gay isn’t it?
Er, not sure about the gay part but it is very, very pink. In some parts of the world that would be a very masculine look – maybe Brighton, UK or San Francisco, USA.
Did he leave a red sock in his whites wash?
If this isn’t the definition of fascism I don’t know what is. Even if the CEO’s are subservient, they will still be able to earn beau coup money as long as they remain loyal to the fascist leader.
as long as they remain USEFUL to the fascist leader. Fixed it for you…..
Is that three, or four redundancies in a single sentence?
Actually it is a partial paraphrase of a line from Heinlein’s novel “Friday”.
If they want the CofC to sign on they have to give them a subsidy instead of a tax increase. What’s another trillion?
The green new deal will have no effect on climate.
Water vapor controls the climate and CO2 has no significant influence are declared in a peer reviewed paper that corroborates what I have been asserting for years: The sun matters because it provides the energy to drive the water vapor into the atmosphere http://thelightfootinstitute.ca/imglib/Earth_temp_paper.pdf
Statements therein include:
“In other words, the non-condensing GHGs are passive and do not affect Earth’s temperature because they are always rendered ineffective by the much larger warming by water vapor.”
“The increase in temperature over the decades mid-1970s to 2011 was caused by an increase in water vapor and not by an increase in CO2.”
“Carbon dioxide and the other non-condensing greenhouse gases (GHGs) as in Figure 3 are small, passive, and have no effect on the Earth’s temperature.”
A recent update of my work which focuses on the observation that WV controls climate because it has been increasing faster than possible from just planet warming is at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338805648_Water_vapor_vs_CO2_for_planet_warming_14
It is known moist air is cooler than dry air. The notion that water vapor holds 400+watts (back radiation) at or below 20°lat when dry air over deserts hold more energy is imagined and programmed in a computer. Dew point isn’t 100% heat held by water vapor. Dew point is simple air cooling to reach saturation(maximum water air can hold) at pressure and temperature. The earth is heated by the sun 11.1w/latitude. Of which 6.3 is absorbed per latitude. Water vapor (evaporation) increases when heat increases making 1.1 watt cooling per latitude. The earth would be 67°C without water being present on earth.
Water vapour does NOT control the climate and the main climate driver currently is human produced CO2.
You are just making this stuff up.
ROFL!!!!
“You are just making this stuff up.” Hurts when someone uses your tactics against you, does it, Griffy?
You have been falsely indoctrinated and I don’t make stuff up.
If you think I’m wrong, why don’t you actually show where I’m wrong instead of making empty statements?
More childish make believe from Griff.
Repeating a lie doesn’t make it true.
It is not just business being castrated to weaken it, so it will be subservient.
The US Media and the USPS were mis-used by Dem/Progs to steal the 2020 election, to grab absolute power over the US government.
The Dem/Progs do not like such a dangerous/powerful rival.
The US Media will get their turn in the barrel, so they too can be screwed over by the Socialist/Communist Dem/Progs currently running the US government, which, after just a few Biden-in-the-basement months, is already driving the economy into ruination.
Giving these fanatic folks $3.5 TRILLION, plus $1.2 TRILLION, plus whatever, to play their ill-fated, Build-Back-Better games would be suicidal for the rest of US.
A united effort is required to take back the House and Senate in 2022, to derail this un-American freight-train.
Obsequious RINO-run businesses will be threatened as well.
Hopefully, they too will see the handwriting on the wall.
$3.5Trillion is bigger than the entire budget just 11 years ago.
California Senator Diane Feinstein, 88, is reported to be in ill health. Not surprising given her age. Many Dems are worried she may have to resign soon due to poor health. Now the worry for the Democrats is if Larry Elder can replace Newsom on the recall election, Elder has promised to appoint a Republican to fill Feinstein’s senate seat should it open.
That would be a ground shaking event in DC, similar to Republican Scott Brown winning Democrat Ted Kennedy’s seat did back in 2010. That Republican win destroyed Obama’s legislative agenda for remainder of his Presidency because it took away the Senate Dem’s filibuster-proof 60 seat majority to pass bills, including revising the poorly worded ObamaCare bill that no one read before passing the first time. It changed the course of history.
Similarly, Larry Elder taking the California governorship could easily change the course of history far beyond California.
2 senators were independents, and the next midterms meant they lost even more Senate seats. Hardly an 8 yr event
One analyst that I read recently stated that in his opinion, a loss by Newsome would end up making the moderates in congress even less likely to support the radical agenda of Newsome and the far left.
It’s only about 14 months till the midterms. If Newsome looses and a Republican takes over, it’s a sure bet that Pelosi won’t resign and will stay in office till the day she dies. IF the election is close enough, I don’t doubt the Democrats will try to hide her death long enough to ensure her replacement will be selected by election rather than by the governor.
Promising to save the world from climate change is one thing but asking us to reduce our profits for no other reason than to give you more money?
I don’t know about the phone ringing in the White House, but I do know the elevator stopped going all the way to the top in Joe Biden’s head a decade ago. Now after what he did with Afghanistan and his callous lack of compassion, it’s quite obvious we are in the very dangerous position of having a veritable Alzheimer’s patient occupying the White House, and our adversaries are certainly paying attention to that.
What people don’t realize frequently about Dementia progression is it doesn’t just affect executive functions of memory, reasoning and concentration, it affects emotional control centers in the brain as well.
It is very common in Alzheimer’s for compassion and empathy towards others to disappear as well as the disase progresses. Call it Emtional IQ, EIQ, that allows us to get along in society. Joe’s EIQ is diminishing as well as his cognitive IQ.
Doing some easy clinical reading here is an interesting meta analysis on “emtional decoding deficits” arising in Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
“Thus, our results suggest that impaired emotion processing in AD patients cannot be solely explained by the cognitive deficit. These findings provide evidence that progressive neuropathological changes characterizing the disease could affect emotional processing, which may suggest that clinicians should be sensitive to the emergence of impairments in emotional decoding.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22776967/
Emotional decoding is a fancy way to saying how we perceive and react to both negative and positive emotions when presented with images or various situations, essentially becoming emotionally numb, and this appears independent of cognitive decline indicators. Emotional decoding deficits in this regard are seen as a loss of empathy or diminished feelings when AD patients are shown unsettling images. That can explain a lot of what we saw during August with Joe’s determination to get out of Afghanistan regardless of the costs to those he promised to get out or costs to the moral values this country has represented until that moment.
Trump was just as much impaired. His stump speeches were rambling and incoherent, let alone the Twitter feed. His stumbles in the Rose garden were legendary once needing to grab support from McConnel who’s even older.
As always, you see what the party tells you to see.
I saw quite a few of his stump speeches, and “rambling and incoherent” hardly comes to mind. More like brilliant mixed with hilarious. And carefully designed to drive those with TDS totally insane.
you clearly never watched Trump at a rally. He never needed a teleprompter. He engaged with the crowd. He was coherent… and bombastic. He could stand and speak for hours.
Dementia Joel can’t do any of that.
never actually listened to one of his speeches did you. Just took the CNN or MSNBC narrative and ran with it.
Tell me about it!
Both my parents died in late progressive dementia.
(Dad died fortunately relatively quickly, but was incontinent for last 2-3yrs)
Mother lingered on and on turning from one of a most intelligent & athletic ballerina to a total cabbage.
The cruelty they managed to show to my wife & our children when their dementia was not even recognised, was/is beyond belief, with a more or less religious fervour in writing wills designed to damage others.
As a result, I can recognise the early stages of dementia/Alzheimer, almost instantly in anyone I happen to meet.
Anyone with a history of alcohol abuse is a prime candidate, but I am convinced the beginning of my mother’s condition was an undiagnosed brain aneurism….which destroyed her original personality, made her paranoiac and given to emotional fits of pique, in condition I term marginal “mental illness”.
These are exactly the same signs as I observe in Mr “forgetful” sleepy Joe with his constant lapses, and appauling behaviour.
Sort of like, when attempting to console grieving parents, spending the whole time talking about how wonderful his dead son was.
Or when asked about the photos and videos of people falling from airborne USAF C-17’s… Dementia Joe’s response was not one of empathy or compassion. It was simply a defensive, “That was like 4 or 5 days ago!!!” In his mind he had moved on from that tragedy, yet it was really less than 48 hours earlier from that interview with George Stephanopoulis.
Well at least you’re not contagious, that’s the main thing!
Note to Eric,
Rather than a picture of Biden standing on the top of mobile boarding ramp of non_AF1 jet (photo taken while Biden was campaigning last year), a better picture to use of Biden for future posts is this one (attached):
Cheers,
Joel
He he – I’m saving that for when his climate agenda goes down in flames in 2022…
Why do companies even matter? Voters don’t. Weird the Dems are not ramming this through, as they usually do… unless they are not getting kick-backs somehow? Maybe there is no 10% for the Big Guy?
No, they are run by peope who find it massively convcenient to act as if they genuninely believed in climate change, so as to present themselves as
Together with companies like Exxon who employ some of the brightest people on the planet, it is inconceivable that they do not know that the main response to climate emergency is totally ineffective – namely renewable energy.
Is he? they have gone full-on communist have they? I have always said that the alliance between a neo totalitarian government and big multi-national corporates is to promote their common interest in annexing wealth and becoming de facto and de jure monopolies, so that society is told what to do and what to buy, and there is no needless competition or wasted effort in design and devlopment of new products that have not got a market guaranteed by government mandate.
I do hope so. It has been said that the reason that Europe progressed so far and so fast during the Enlightenment was that its politics of essentially warring kingdoms, provided a fertile breeding ground for new ideas that would give them a competitive edge: Techological progress was massive during WWII and during the subsequent Cold War for similar reasons.
COVID 19 has seen massive strides in technology to combat viruses.
But ClimateChange™ has not. Instead a reversion to mediaeval technology has resulted. Conclusion? It’s not a real threat and they know it is not a real threat.
Unless the elites are scared of something they will not follow truth based policies, but power based policies of popular repression.
It is ironic that the CEOs of the tech boom companies, founded on ideas slaved over in the Cold War, and whose own education was similarly excellent, now seek to replace true education with propaganda.
In a similar vein, we now see that the forces of Dark Age religion are gaining traction. People it seems, do not really want freedom. They want someone to tell them what to do,what to wear, how to behave, what to buy, give them a job, make them wealthy, keep them healthy and so on. Whether this is the Priestly class, or climate change moralists, seems less important than being filled with religious fervour to change the world from something that works and gives them relative freedom into something that doesn’t work, and will signal the end of industriual civilisation.
Democracy doesn’t work when people are not in possession of the facts or the means to evaluate them: The ‘Democrats’ and the Islamists both pursue policies of public education to ensure people are in that condition, and then use that as an excuse to replace democracy with JAO – Just Another Oligarchy.
What we need is in fact a cold war or even a hot war with China. Only if they are shaking in their boots, will the Oligarchs respond to the facts, and align themselves with Big Tech to produces stuff that works – not Shiny New Thing Make it all Better™ which isn’t designed to work, just to sell…
The only technology I’m aware of is the MSM filtering reality, both for the Covid disease as well as the Climate one. Over the years people have been primed to use only certain MSM reality streams to enforce their beliefs. Anyone who disagrees with the MSM is abruptly shunted offstream, whether it be Covid or Climate or any other thing.
The result is a public perception fed in a vacuum of real data. This does not bode well.
California now get almost a third of their electricity from other states and still has rolling blackouts. There is not enough electricity produced in the US for the electric cars they now want to mandate. Nukes are the only way we can get reliable electricity without CO2 and the same people causing rolling blackouts all want to hate nuclear power too. What did leftists use for light before candles? Electric lights.
Amazon’s entire business model is based on shipping cheap goods made using fossil fuels from China to the West.
Bezos is no “climate leader” and nor are any of the multi-billionaires. Just watch them fly around the world in their private jets or sail their yachts between multiple houses.
They would drop the pretence if there was a dollar in it for them.
Or fly off world for a few brief minute at a huge cost in fossil fuel.
Last I looked the Recon Bill funding proposal was an almost 50% corporate tax increase from 21% to 29%. That is a huge hit! Dems now have a lot of Corp sponsors so we will see.
It is the eternal cry of the Demrat Socialist Party – GIMMEE DUH MONEY NOW OR ELSE!
Executives of publicly owned corporations using shareholders’ money to join the virtue signaling trope is an abomination.
That perhaps can only be done in a world of wild financial and political markets. Both have become so wild as to suggest ending action.
The financial bubble has become more extreme than the 1929 example, which was number 5 in the series that started in 1720.
All crashed, taking prosperity with it. All crashed in the Fall and rather quickly forced widespread hardship.
After booming, credit markets are now changing as they did in the Summer of 1929.
In a post-bubble collapse devastated balance sheets and shareholders will say a very loud “No!” to all such virtue signaling.
Well, maybe…
On the other most hand major corporations are making massive efforts to reduce energy use, get renewable electricity, use EVs, make their supply chain more sustainable, etc etc (and saving money in the process)
You mean, saving money despite that process Griffy.
Absolute bilge. All major corporation are doing is paying lip service and virtue signalling to be in sync with the political and social trends. The supply chains have become longer, and more wasteful since all consumers products are made elsewhere. Buying carbon offsets will not save you
A couple of years back, a few auto companies put out press releases about how they were investigating converting a few of their models to all electric.
For months after that, griff was telling everybody about how ALL of the automakers had committed themselves to going full electric and doing so immediately.
In griffies world, putting out a press release saying your company is thinking about doing something, is no different from that company already having done it.
Simply put, in these healthy and wealthy countries like the developed economies of the United State, EU, Japan, Australia, and Canada, every person, animal, or anything that causes emissions to harmfully rise could vanish off the face of the earth; or even die off, and global emissions will still explode in the coming years and decades ahead over the population and economic growth of emerging markets in China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Africa.
With at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than 6 billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity. Obviously, those poor in underdeveloped countries cannot afford to subsidize themselves out of a paper bag and continue to use what’s readily available – coal. The healthier and wealthier countries continue to exploit the most vulnerable people with yellow, brown, and black skin, and inflict environmental degradation throughout developing countries of the world today.
Printing or borrowing, it’s really the same thing, especially in today’s digital economy where very little of the money is printed. They inevitably result in inflation, decreasing everyone’s ability to buy things.
I call it legal counterfeiting.