Saturday, June 27, 2009

This is communism?

Yesterday Glenn Beck said that the cap-and-trade bill that just passed the House is communist and treasonous. He followed up on this on his Fox show saying that this is just a scam for people like Al Gore to make money off of the Big Lie of global warming etc. Typical Beck.

But here's the thing that I find difficult to wrap my head around.* Beck also said that the bill would enrich Goldman Sachs. Matt Taibbi - someone whom I put a lot more stock in than Beck - has himself written about how Sachs stands to profit from this bill. Let's assume they're correct (I'm not familiar enough with the legislation to know one way or another, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me, given how supercapitalism works.**)

Is this how Beck thinks communism works? Lobbyists for giant banks and corporations give money to politicians (who are often themselves former or future members of those very groups) and then those politicians take a greater sum of tax money and give it to giant banks and mega-corporations? Allowing those banks and corporations to write the legislation that is supposed to regulate them? That's communism?

Sounds like plutocracy to me. And while action on climate change continues to be held up by fools like Beck and members of the House who consider global warming "a hoax" and plutocrats in both parties who can't seem to write any legislation that isn't heavily influenced by the pollutting industries who profit from wrecking the global environment that fund their political careers, the time for inaction is running short.

*Actually, it's the second thing I have a hard time understanding. The first being how creating a capitalist market mechanism to reduce carbon emissions as opposed to a straight tax on carbon emission is "communist," regardless of how that mechanism might be perverted to benefit those being regulated.
**For more on the bill, see Grist's primer.

1 comment:

Left-wing Wacko said...

Yeah, Beck is totally incoherent. First he yacks about "communism" and then claims Gore and Goldman Sachs are going to make super profits. So which is it?