Monday, August 8, 2022

Climate and Health, Neoliberal-Style

To call the odiously-named Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) a "watered-down" version of Joe Biden's original plan to fight climate change and expand the social safety net is actually doing unintended homage to such endangered bodies of water as Lake Mead, whose own declining levels are literally bringing up the bodies.



For despite the current hoopla,, there will be plenty of corpses arising from this "landmark legislation." Its very name is a dead giveaway that it is rife with debunked "trickle down" theory and tax breaks for the wealthy in lieu of cash aid to people. Despite a modest tax on corporations, stock buy-back schemes, and more money for IRS enforcement, the oligarchy will continue to profit at the expense of the rest of us. Wall Street's carried interest tax loophole, which Biden promised to close as a campaign stunt, survives and thrives. And the climate will continue to worsen.  The mere imposition of carbon offsets and the awarding of more carbon credits and threats of fines to polluters, while still allowing for the relentless destructive drilling for fossil fuels in the melting Arctic and the still-polluted Gulf of Mexico, is only one indication that this legislation is not serious. It is deeply and pathologically cynical. Joe Manchin's outrage-inducing perk of a new pipeline for West Virginia is a relatively miniscule part of it.

The establishment media is doing its damnedest, nevertheless, to cast the Senate passage of the IRA as a stunning victory for Democrats and a vindication for President Biden.  After all, any shallow body of water seems to take on volume in a storm. The froth and the frenzy that the headlines are whipping up makes this legislation seem more potent than it actually is. 

The media storm will die down soon enough, once people realize that there's nothing in the IRA. for them and they're still living in a cracked crater that used to be a reservoir.. There will be no debt relief, no subsidized child care, no paid family leave, no minimum wage increase, no reduction in drug prices if you're covered by private insurance or no insurance at all. The Democrats are banking on people not realizing how badly they've been screwed until after the mid-terms. The timing of Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema suddenly "caving" to the program at the last minute seems to be proof that the legislation is a self-serving grab for continued political power.

Granted, Medicare will finally be able to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry. But that change won't go into effect until 2026, and it will be for only ten drugs, with incremental additions kicking in thereafter. That gives lobbyists and their bought politicians plenty of time to fiddle around and whittle away. Who knows, for example, which party will be in charge three or four years from now? If a Republican Congress doesn't repeal the measure outright, then a future director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services could magically spin through the revolving doors from the pharmaceutical industry itself. That way, even if the measure were left intact, the prospect of good faith negotiations would be rendered minimal to nonexistent. 

Even were the measure to go into effect tomorrow, it would be no guarantee, given that Biden named Liz Fowler, the former WellPoint and Johnson & Johnson executive and chief architect of the insurance industry-dictated Affordable Care Act, to head the payment policy division of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It also should come as no surprise that of all the health-centered provisions of the IRA, only the COVID-based enhanced subsidies to the insurance cartel will take effect immediately. (They'd been set to expire at the end of the year.)

But meanwhile, the New York Times is creating artificial waves in the equivalent of a kiddie pool:

The legislation, while falling far short of the ambitious $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act that the House passed in November, fulfills multiple longstanding Democratic goals, including countering the toll of climate change on a rapidly warming planet, taking steps to lower the cost of prescription drugs and to revamping portions of the tax code in a bid to make it more equitable.

It does not reverse. It merely counters. It does not give relief to consumers of the for-profit health care marketplace. It is merely taking steps. Its revamping of the tax code is only a "bid" to make it fair. In other words, it's pretty much aspirational. It's pretty much a P.R. gimmick. It's a descent into yet another simmering frog-pot, which they're marketing as a thrill-packed ride in a water park.


Wheeeeeeeeee!

The government's "$400 billion investment" in climate change reversal partly consists of tax credits to well-off consumers who can afford to buy $40,000 or $50,000 electric cars, and to privatized utilities who, it is optimistically assumed, can be "prodded" but never quite required under threat of prison for CEOs, to invest in wind and solar power. 

Nonetheless,  The Times hypes the legislation as totally avoiding the "pitfalls" that 50 years of previous environmental control laws were subjected to. By using such language as "we're on the cusp" of solving global warming, the Times cheerleaders seem to contradict themselves.

But the actual goalpost is not stopping pollution.  Despite the fact that global warming will continue with a vengeance, we should be consoled. According to the Times, as long as people "believe" the evidence that they see and feel all around them, the oil and gas industry's propaganda war at least is lost.  And thus we might delay catastrophe for another relative nano-second:

All said that the incontrovertible evidence that climate change has already arrived— in the form of frighteningly extreme wildfires, drought, storms and floods afflicting every corner of the United States — has helped build political support. Increasingly, the sheer volume of real-time data has overwhelmed the well-financed, multidecade strategy of oil, gas and coal companies to sow doubt about the severity of climate change.

There was no mention in the article of the bribery power of Big Oil over corrupt politicians in Washington and in state-houses, however. That would have been a real downer for a populace which must be rendered triumphant and optimistic in time for the next election.

For the nation's poor people, whom the Times just condescended to notice in a different small-font buried headline on Monday's homepage, there will be no relief.  Instead, the IRA will dedicate "$60 billion to help disadvantaged areas that are disproportionately affected by climate change, including $27 billion for the creation of what would be "the first national “green bank” to help drive investments in clean energy projects — particularly in poor communities."

In other words. this reeks of being just one more creative way  for the wealthy to get government welfare and cast it as a way to help the poor - who simply cannot be trusted to spend money on their own.

A little history on this old bipartisan "trickle-down" neoliberal gimmick:

Promise Zones are the latest iteration of an idea first promoted by Jack Kemp, secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under President George H.W. Bush. He called them enterprise zones; the Republican approach offered tax incentives and regulatory relief for businesses that would provide jobs and commerce in impoverished inner-city and rural areas. Several states adopted this idea, but no federal legislation succeeded until 1993, when President Bill Clinton relabeled them empowerment zones, with little substantive difference. Modest levels of funding were attached, the bulk of which went to private-sector and government entities with claims that it would trickle down in jobs for the impoverished inhabitants. Success was likewise modest and accountability lacking.

From Barack Obama's version of the anti-New Deal regimen marketing of "poverty gold" promise zones as the lifting-up of poor people who themselves must be granted no say ordirect benefits, to Donald Trump's more blatant grift of the "opportunity zones" that his own family and cronies have directly profited from, we have now proceeded to "green banks" which I somehow doubt will be operated by just plain neighborhood "folks." Given how much Joe Biden loves his banking buddies in Delaware and at the Bank of America, look for the behemoths of hyper-capitalism to start submitting their bids and braying about their expertise and concern about the climate before his ink on the bill is even dry.

Remember his zoned-out promise to his donors that "nothing will fundamentally change?" It will remain a Winner Take All climate on Biden's watch.

Not for nothing is Lake Mead, rapidly being destroyed by the global warming of the Capitalocene epoch, just another endangered remnant of FDR's New Deal. It was created by the sweat and paid labor of the Civilian Conservation Corps, not a bunch of bespoke suits in a "promise zone."



4 comments:

  1. Thanks for this. I've read and re-read all the feverish praise for the IRA and was beginning to think, as usual, that I was failing to "get" something. I mean, even Mr. Krugman's panties are wet. It's actually frightening that the media cooperate so slavishly with this PR scheme. They're actually arguing that Biden has returned to his pedestal and his silver spoon, barely noting that virtually all morsels of public welfare have been thrown down the garbage disposal.

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  2. You know, the New Deal was compromised too. The New Deal/Fair Deal years actually deepened inequality between Black Americans and White Americans, as laid out by Ira Katznelson in When Affirmative Action was White . And no, it was not just housing policy or even exemption of domestic and agricultural labor from Wagner. (And those same Dixiecrats who helped pass the Fair Standards labor Act and Wagner provided key votes to override Truman's veto of the extremely anti labor Taft Hartley Act when it became clear that union organizing might be heading down south). The book was not written to skewer Roosevelt. The author knew that Roosevelt was hamstrung by political realities and our awful system of federalism. He wrote the book to make the case for affirmative action. And by affirmative action he was not referring simply to admission to elite universities as it is often portrayed. Furthermore, the big deficit spending did not come until the build up for war. It was military Keynesianism.
    I would also recommend this article which gives a less romanticized view of the New Deal
    https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-40/reviews/the-people-it-depends-2/

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  3. Karen, an off topic thought about are current lying evil power hungry bastardized mendacious governmental leadership. Didn’t the President and Vice President promise to legalize marijuana if elected? Enquiring minds want to know. The powers that be will not even take marijuana off the schedule one list, yet alone save the planet, dream on dear readers dream on. Never, never trust the government.

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  4. I received an email soliciting donations from Michael Bennet/Colorado:

    Excerpt: « « Lower prescription drug and health care costs, by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices — and cap prescription drug costs for seniors at $2,000 a year. Julia from Denver told me that her dad has a heart condition, and he pays $6,000 a month for medication — that’s $72,000 a year for something he needs to take for the rest of his life. That’s outrageous and ends with this bill« 

    Yes, it is outrageous and no, it doesn’t. Not a word about how long it will be before ‘Julia’s’ father will be able to benefit from a provision that doesn’t begin until 2025. in fact based on the information given Julia’s father will still need to pay over $200 thousand until then. Well done, Democrats.

    And let me add that the Republicans voting to disallow the $35 dollar cap on insulin for private insurance plan holders just furthers the resentment of the under 65ers toward the over 65ers.

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