Wednesday, July 8, 2020
The Merits of Medicare for All Have Been Proven by this Pandemic
There is no rosy way to view tens of thousands of dead Americans—especially in contrast with other nations that have managed to control the outbreak. In the words of one New Zealand health expert, “It really does feel like the U.S. has given up.”
Sonali Kolhatkar
https://portside.org/2020-07-07/merits-medicare-all-have-been-proven-pandemic
A pandemic is not the time to be having discussions about how to design a national health care system. The fact that the United States, which has 4 percent of the world’s population, leads the world with 25 percent of all coronavirus infections, indicates at a glance that something about our nation’s health care is irredeemably broken. In just a few months, more than 40 million Americans became unemployed in a country where a majority are expected to obtain health care through employer-provided insurance. Even the New York Times has pointed out that, “Nothing illuminates the problems with an employer-based health care system quite like massive unemployment in the middle of a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease outbreak.”
The Times has hardly been a champion of the nationalized health care system that progressive activists have demanded for years. The unimaginably large (and growing) death toll from COVID-19 should not be, as the paper’s editorial board member Jeneen Interlandi says, “an opportunity to look at health care reform with fresh eyes—and to maybe, finally, rebuild the nation’s health care system in a way that works for all Americans.” We, as a nation, should have figured this out a long time ago.
As Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, pointed out at a recent Senate hearing, left unchecked the coronavirus could spread to 100,000 people per day. Republican Senator Rand Paul was not happy with this grim assessment, instead demanding that the scientist instead offer up “more optimism” to the American people about the disease. But that is precisely how opponents of a single-payer health care system have painted our deeply flawed employer-based system for many years—with a veneer of positivity that was never matched by reality.
As FiveThirtyEight points out in examining pre-pandemic surveys of health care, “Americans tend to have a much rosier view of the health care they personally receive than the health care system in general or the cost of health care.” This should come as no surprise given the massive amount of propaganda that health insurers have paid for to convince people that the current system is good enough. However, no amount of optimism is going to help us survive the current COVID-19 crisis. There is no rosy way to view tens of thousands of dead Americans—especially in contrast with other nations that have managed to control the outbreak. In the words of one New Zealand health expert, “It really does feel like the U.S. has given up.”
In Arizona, one of the new hotspots of the disease, health care providers have taken to rationing health care—in a manner reminiscent of many developing nations or socialist regimes that the United States has criticized in the past. One report explained that Arizona’s rationing plan, “would see patients rated on a scoring system to determine who should be prioritized based on the severity of their condition.” In Houston, Texas, which is considered another COVID-19 epicenter, pediatricians are now taking on adult patients as hospital beds fill up to capacity.
There is little to no information about how the nation’s uninsured are expected to pay for COVID-19 treatments if they are hospitalized. Contrast that with a nation like the UK where there’s no question about any other entity besides the National Health Service (NHS) picking up the tab for any and all patients. During the current crisis, the UK government has even recruited all private hospitals to bolster the NHS’s capacity, forcing them to place lives over profits. Imagine the United States ever taking such a step to prioritize the health care of Americans!
The Wall Street Journal, aghast that a free-market system of the type that it has relentlessly promoted has not worked in the realm of health care, declared in an op-ed, “Rationing Care Is a Surrender to Death.” But op-ed writer Allen C. Guelzo, a fellow of the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, had no answers beyond standard capitalism pablum saying vaguely that we need to, “Improvise, innovate, imagine.”
It’s not just our health care in the form of treatments and hospitalizations that is showing itself to be wholly inadequate in the face of a pandemic. The pharmaceutical industry, which has also preyed upon Americans for far too long, is charging outrageous prices for drugs that taxpayers paid to help them develop. Amidst the worst medical crisis in modern history, the drug manufacturer Gilead has set the price for remdesivir—a drug that has shown modest success in COVID-19 treatment—at a whopping $3,120 per patient. Infuriatingly, that same company, which made good use of U.S. tax dollars in its research and development, is licensing the drug to generic manufacturers outside the U.S. to produce remdesivir at a substantially lower cost to non-American patients.
The shocking extent of the coronavirus crisis in the United States is explained in large part by a libertarian economic approach. It is the same sort of approach that successive administrations have taken in addressing our health care needs and can be boiled down to the adage, “survival of the fittest.” Rather than imposing rules and regulations to protect Americans through a nationalized health care system and an aggressive cost-control mechanism for lifesaving drugs, Americans have been left at the mercy of their employers, health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and private hospitals. Similarly, instead of taking a strong federal approach to controlling the spread of the coronavirus as other nations have successfully done, the Trump administration has washed its hands of any responsibility for the virus’ spread. An absence of strong federal guidelines on how people need to protect themselves has resulted in a culture war of comical proportions where Fox News-fed Republicans claim that rules requiring protective face masks are akin to “practicing the devil’s laws.”
Such hyperbolic language is reminiscent of the hysteria over so-called “death panels” in the early years of the Obama administration. That phrase was used to cast the most modest of government regulations of our health care system as a scenario where dispassionate committees of technocrats would decide who gets to live or die. Never mind that such a description was a more apt one for our existing system of care where corporate executives decide which treatments to pay for and which to forego.
Just as progressives were right more than a decade ago that a single-payer or Medicare for All system was best poised to meet our health care needs, that same rallying cry for such a universal and free health care plan remains more relevant and appropriate than ever. Even the New York Times agrees, admitting perhaps a bit reluctantly that, “A single-payer system in which one entity (usually the federal government) covers every citizen regardless of age or employment status, could work.” But is it too late?
Had the nation gone down a different path in 2008 or anytime in the decade following it, we would have been better poised to take on the current crisis. There is little comfort to be had in being right on the issue of health care under our current grim circumstances.
China reverts to its dirty coal ways
Beijing has trumpeted plans to reduce reliance on the sooty fuel but data shows consumption and production are trending up not down
By TIM DAISS
JULY 8, 2020
https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/china-reverts-to-its-dirty-coal-ways/
Coal-fired power plants that belch pollution and contribute to global warming were supposed to be phased out in a more environmentally sensitive China.
In recent years, Chinese officials have spun and won applause for new clean environment narratives at various climate change and other environmental events and fora. But the facts on the ground increasingly belie those clean energy ambitions and claims.
In June, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) said the country plans to boost domestic oil production this year by 1% to 3.85 million barrels per day (bpd). The NEA also outlined plans to ramp up natural gas production, the cleanest burning fossil fuel, by 4.3% year on year to 181 billion cubic meters (bcm).
Pumped up crude oil output is already underway, expanding by 1.3% year on year in May at 16.46 million tons, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data.
China’s natural gas production increased even more in May, up a whopping 12.7% year on year, as the country’s economy swung back into gear after a Covid-19 lockdown that crushed energy demand in the first quarter.
The NEA plan also aims to increase renewable energy, including hydro, solar, wind, ethanol, and coal-to-liquids, as a larger percentage of the country’s energy mix and to offset reliance on mostly imported hydrocarbons.The NEA plans 900 gigawatts (GW) of new installed non-fossil fuel power generation capacity in 2020, lowering the share of coal in the national energy mix to 57.5% from 57.7% in 2019, a small but noteworthy reduction.
China will continue to replace coal-fired power plants with electricity-based heating to curb coal consumption, the NEA said. It will also accelerate the construction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipelines and storage facilities.
But this is where central plans and statistical reality diverge.
While China – the world’s largest coal producer and consumer – is officially calling for a reduction in its reliance on the polluting fuel, its statistical consumption patterns tell a different story.
Coal used by coastal power plants at five major Chinese utilities hit 488,800 tons during the last week of March, more than double from a record low seen on February 10, according to China Coal Transport & Distribution Association (CCTDA).
Though China’s coal uptick was partly in response to a spike in electricity demand as factories restarted after lockdown measures ended in mid-March, coal imports in April surged 35% to 34.42 million tons from a year earlier.
That demand, which slipped slightly year on year in May, is projected to rise the rest of the year at power plants and among industrial users as the economy stirs back to life.
There are central plans to use much more. China plans to add coal storage facilities across its power plants in 2020 to ensure stockpiles at or above 15 days’ normal supply for coal-driven power plants.Despite the green rhetoric, China’s coal consumption in 2019 was up not down by 1% over the previous year, driven by stronger energy demand. That marked the third consecutive annual rise in coal use.
The government is also permitting more domestic coal production, with as much as 141 million tons worth greenlighted from January to June of 2019, an increase of 2.6% year on year, according to government data. In 2018, only 25 million tons of domestic production was approved.
Analysts now expect China will not only boost coal production and build more coal-fired plants, but will also ease pressure on local governments to shut older and inefficient coal mines.
The boost in coal production comes as the government struggles to meet energy demand and as it prepares for promulgation of its next Five-Year Plan, which will provide guidance for policy and industrial development from 2021-2025.
China, the world’s largest greenhouse (GHG) emitter due to its massive coal consumption, accounts for a whopping 27% of GHG emissions while representing only 18% of the global population.
China’s increased coal consumption, production and power development, critics say, is inconsistent with Paris Climate Accord goals, under which non-OECD Asia’s coal power generation needs to be reduced by at least 63% by 2030 and then totally phased out by 2037.
Given the reality that most coal-fired power plants have a lifetime of around 50 years, the fact that China is building new ones will necessarily put its stated climate change and GHG reduction agendas in jeopardy.
Simply put, China will remain reluctant to phase-out capex intensive coal-fuelled plants as long as it is faced with ever-rising energy demand and the cost of replacing coal with gas-fueled power plants remains more expensive.Jennifer Song, an analyst with Morningstar, a global financial services firm, told media two weeks ago “we expect coal to remain the primary source for [power production] baseload dispatch, given China’s cheap and plentiful coal reserves.”
“Coal-fired generation’s reliability and large-scale make it well suited to meet the country’s power needs,” she added.
China’s renewed, if not stealthy, coal playbook may come as a surprise to many given the ongoing supply overhang in global LNG markets, where the super-cooled fuel’s prices are now near historic lows.
Spot prices for the fuel in Asia, home to nearly two-thirds of global LNG demand, have plunged to $2 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), below the cost of most producers’ breakeven points.
That’s led, in turn, to a recent surge of canceled and redirected cargoes. The average LNG price for August delivery to northeast Asia is estimated at between $2.15-$2.30/MMBtu, compared to the July delivery assessment of $2.10/MMBtu and an August estimation of around $2.20-2.30/MMBtu.
But while China’s energy demand is still growing, even with global economic headwinds and a damaging trade war with the US, it lacks the LNG infrastructure to take full advantage of LNG market conditions and reduce its coal dependence.
To be sure, China is not alone to blame for the rise in coal’s usage. In 2018, at the height of climate change concerns, global coal demand rebounded and grew 1.4% due to increased consumption in Asia, where the fuel’s overall usage increased by 2.5%.
Some of the region’s largest coal users continue to rely on dirty hydrocarbons, mostly for their power sectors but also for industrial usage including steel production. Other coal addicts include India, though its coal usage slipped marginally last year, as well as Asian economic tigers Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/china-reverts-to-its-dirty-coal-ways/
Coal-fired power plants that belch pollution and contribute to global warming were supposed to be phased out in a more environmentally sensitive China.
In recent years, Chinese officials have spun and won applause for new clean environment narratives at various climate change and other environmental events and fora. But the facts on the ground increasingly belie those clean energy ambitions and claims.
In June, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) said the country plans to boost domestic oil production this year by 1% to 3.85 million barrels per day (bpd). The NEA also outlined plans to ramp up natural gas production, the cleanest burning fossil fuel, by 4.3% year on year to 181 billion cubic meters (bcm).
Pumped up crude oil output is already underway, expanding by 1.3% year on year in May at 16.46 million tons, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data.
China’s natural gas production increased even more in May, up a whopping 12.7% year on year, as the country’s economy swung back into gear after a Covid-19 lockdown that crushed energy demand in the first quarter.
The NEA plan also aims to increase renewable energy, including hydro, solar, wind, ethanol, and coal-to-liquids, as a larger percentage of the country’s energy mix and to offset reliance on mostly imported hydrocarbons.The NEA plans 900 gigawatts (GW) of new installed non-fossil fuel power generation capacity in 2020, lowering the share of coal in the national energy mix to 57.5% from 57.7% in 2019, a small but noteworthy reduction.
China will continue to replace coal-fired power plants with electricity-based heating to curb coal consumption, the NEA said. It will also accelerate the construction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipelines and storage facilities.
But this is where central plans and statistical reality diverge.
While China – the world’s largest coal producer and consumer – is officially calling for a reduction in its reliance on the polluting fuel, its statistical consumption patterns tell a different story.
Coal used by coastal power plants at five major Chinese utilities hit 488,800 tons during the last week of March, more than double from a record low seen on February 10, according to China Coal Transport & Distribution Association (CCTDA).
Though China’s coal uptick was partly in response to a spike in electricity demand as factories restarted after lockdown measures ended in mid-March, coal imports in April surged 35% to 34.42 million tons from a year earlier.
That demand, which slipped slightly year on year in May, is projected to rise the rest of the year at power plants and among industrial users as the economy stirs back to life.
There are central plans to use much more. China plans to add coal storage facilities across its power plants in 2020 to ensure stockpiles at or above 15 days’ normal supply for coal-driven power plants.Despite the green rhetoric, China’s coal consumption in 2019 was up not down by 1% over the previous year, driven by stronger energy demand. That marked the third consecutive annual rise in coal use.
The government is also permitting more domestic coal production, with as much as 141 million tons worth greenlighted from January to June of 2019, an increase of 2.6% year on year, according to government data. In 2018, only 25 million tons of domestic production was approved.
Analysts now expect China will not only boost coal production and build more coal-fired plants, but will also ease pressure on local governments to shut older and inefficient coal mines.
The boost in coal production comes as the government struggles to meet energy demand and as it prepares for promulgation of its next Five-Year Plan, which will provide guidance for policy and industrial development from 2021-2025.
China, the world’s largest greenhouse (GHG) emitter due to its massive coal consumption, accounts for a whopping 27% of GHG emissions while representing only 18% of the global population.
China’s increased coal consumption, production and power development, critics say, is inconsistent with Paris Climate Accord goals, under which non-OECD Asia’s coal power generation needs to be reduced by at least 63% by 2030 and then totally phased out by 2037.
Given the reality that most coal-fired power plants have a lifetime of around 50 years, the fact that China is building new ones will necessarily put its stated climate change and GHG reduction agendas in jeopardy.
Simply put, China will remain reluctant to phase-out capex intensive coal-fuelled plants as long as it is faced with ever-rising energy demand and the cost of replacing coal with gas-fueled power plants remains more expensive.Jennifer Song, an analyst with Morningstar, a global financial services firm, told media two weeks ago “we expect coal to remain the primary source for [power production] baseload dispatch, given China’s cheap and plentiful coal reserves.”
“Coal-fired generation’s reliability and large-scale make it well suited to meet the country’s power needs,” she added.
China’s renewed, if not stealthy, coal playbook may come as a surprise to many given the ongoing supply overhang in global LNG markets, where the super-cooled fuel’s prices are now near historic lows.
Spot prices for the fuel in Asia, home to nearly two-thirds of global LNG demand, have plunged to $2 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), below the cost of most producers’ breakeven points.
That’s led, in turn, to a recent surge of canceled and redirected cargoes. The average LNG price for August delivery to northeast Asia is estimated at between $2.15-$2.30/MMBtu, compared to the July delivery assessment of $2.10/MMBtu and an August estimation of around $2.20-2.30/MMBtu.
But while China’s energy demand is still growing, even with global economic headwinds and a damaging trade war with the US, it lacks the LNG infrastructure to take full advantage of LNG market conditions and reduce its coal dependence.
To be sure, China is not alone to blame for the rise in coal’s usage. In 2018, at the height of climate change concerns, global coal demand rebounded and grew 1.4% due to increased consumption in Asia, where the fuel’s overall usage increased by 2.5%.
Some of the region’s largest coal users continue to rely on dirty hydrocarbons, mostly for their power sectors but also for industrial usage including steel production. Other coal addicts include India, though its coal usage slipped marginally last year, as well as Asian economic tigers Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan.
The Impact of the Economic War on Venezuela
By Pasqualina Curcio on July 6, 2020
https://www.resumen-english.org/2020/07/the-impact-of-the-economic-war-on-venezuela/
It would be impossible to count each and every one of the ways in which the war on Venezuela declared by imperialism has harmed the country. The aggressions that we, the Venezuelans, have experienced since 1999 have been not only economic; they have been psychological as well. There is no way to measure the consequences of the hate planted by the anti-democratic opposition, with its anti-socialist propaganda; it has extended to the point of burning people alive for being Chavistas. The outrage felt by the Venezuelan people when they see those who have sold out their native land while calling themselves Venezuelan is also immeasurable.
Having said all that, but focusing on the economic effects, we have brought up to date the calculations made in March 2019. Up to that point the economic war had caused losses that totaled $125,000,000,000. (125 billion dollars.) We have calculated the corresponding damages for the year 2019 as a total of $68,000,000,000. (68 billion dollars.) Thus, the total economic losses between 2016 and 2019 total $194,000,000,000. For Venezuelans, these 194 billion dollars is equivalent to approximately 16 months of national production. With this money we would have been able to pay our entire foreign debt, which is 110 billion dollars, according to the Central Bank of Venezuela. Or we might have had resources sufficient to import enough food and medicine for 45 years.
The break-down of these losses is as follows: 25 billion dollars corresponds to the money and material goods that have been looted from us, while 169 billion dollars represents what we have been unable to produce from 2016 to 2019 as a result of the attack on Petróleos de Venezuela SA (64 billion dollars) and of the attack on the Venezuelan bolivar (105 billion dollars.) John Bolton confessed in January of 2019 that, “We froze all the assets in U.S. territory of the state enterprise Petróleos de Venezuela SA (Citgo). Today’s measure totals $7 billion in assets blocked at this time. Plus, over $11 billion lost in export proceeds over the next year,”
According to the Ministry of Foreign Relations, the U.S. and its allies have looted 25 billion dollars from us. They disguise this as “sanctions” while others elegantly call it unilateral coercive measures, but it is nothing more than a barefaced daylight robbery and an act of piracy. About 5,400 million dollars are held in 50 banks, including the 31 tons of gold that the Bank of England has retained. The assets and dividends of Citgo, amounting to 18 billion dollars, are also included.
They have not only robbed us but, in addition, in January 2019, the U.S. State Department announced that they would turn control of the assets, property, and goods in bank accounts belonging to the Venezuelan government over to Guaidó and making him responsible for the administration of these resources. We would like to know just how many of these dollars have been spent to protect the people of Venezuela in these times of quarantine? What is very clear to us is that 200 million of those dollars were allocated for a contract with SilverCorp whose objective was to pay mercenaries to kill Venezuelans.
With regard to the gold held by the Bank of England, we must say that the bank is required to return it to its owner immediately upon request. Now it seems, according to the English, that the owner is Guaidó, who they say is the “interim president” of Venezuela. This is such a crude robbery that no one in their right senses would believe anything so absurd. The whole world knows that it is not Guaidó who is seated in the UN General Assembly, nor in the UN Human Rights Council, nor in the UN Security Council, nor in the meetings of OPEC. Obviously he is not seated in the presidential palace of Miraflores either, nor does he give orders to the National Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela.
Is it Guaidó who is confronting COVID-19 in Venezuela and coordinating medical aid and protocols with the world Health Organization?
William Brownfield, ex-ambassador of the U.S. in Venezuela, admitted, “If we are going to sanction PDVSA, this will have an impact on the entire people, on the ordinary citizen. The counter-argument is that the people suffer so much from the lack of food, safety, medicines, public health, that at this moment perhaps the greatest resolution would be to accelerate the collapse even if it produces a period of suffering of months or perhaps years.”
The attack on Petroleos de Venezuela is not being done casually; it is a premeditated and precisely aimed action. Anything that affects the petroleum industry will have repercussions not only in the industry itself, but chiefly on the national economy and thus on the Venezuelan people.
The petroleum industry generates 95% of the hard currency that enters Venezuela as a result of exports. The decrease of these exports, whether due to a fall in the levels of petroleum production or by a decrease in petroleum prices, affects the influx of hard currency, and thus the imports of supplies, repair parts, machinery for national production. Petroleos de Venezuela is the catalyst for our domestic production.
The price of petroleum fell for 4 consecutive years for the first time in history, for a 65% decrease. In addition, the commercial and financial blockade against Petroleos de Venezuela, the difficulty or impossibility of getting supplies and repair parts, and the financial obstacles, among other reasons, have had an effect on petroleum production, which has decreased by 64%. – going from 2.8 million barrels a day in 2013 to one million in 2019. This has resulted in a 78% fall in petroleum exports, which went from 85 billion dollars annually in 2013 to 19 billion dollars in 2019.
Republican Virginia State Senator Richard Black admitted, referring to Venezuela,
“We demonetized their currency and, through the international banking system, we made the Venezuelan currency worthless and then we go and say: ‘Look how bad this government is, your currency is worthless.’ Well, it wasn’t them; it was us who made their currency useless,” (Sputnik 09-12-2019).
The attack on the Venezuelan bolivar currency, a main weapon of the economic war, not only induced hyperinflation and with this the loss of the buying power of the working class, it also shrunk national production. As wage earners see their buying power diminish due to rapid and disproportionate increase in prices, this also decreases demand for goods and causes a decrease in production by sellers.
Since 2013, imperialism has caused a criminal depreciation of the Venezuelan bolivar currency by 241,657 million percent, which has given rise to an increase in prices by 11,500 million percent from that year to this.
Each person can come to their own conclusions about what these economic losses of 194 billion dollars mean in terms of anguish, outrage, quality of life and lives of Venezuelans. Draw your own conclusions as well about the immeasurable level of consciousness and thus of resistance shown by the Venezuelan people who have confronted the enemies of their country with high morale and with the best of strategies; the union between civilians and the military.
Eugene Scalia Is A Comic-Book Villain Targeting Your Savings
Trump’s Labor Secretary is trying to funnel retirees’ money to private equity billionaires -- and prevent that money from being invested in environmentally sustainable assets.
David Sirota
Jul 8
Sometimes if you look closely enough, you can see government officials not just making bad or negligent decisions -- but actually acting like comic-book villains. Three recent moves by Trump Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia make it seem as if the agency is intent on being aLegion of Doom that funnels workers’ retirement savings to Wall Street billionaires and fossil fuel conglomerates.
First came Scalia’s announcement about private equity. He said that in order to make sure “ordinary people investing for retirement have the opportunities they need for a secure retirement,” his agency is expanding the kinds of investments that financial managers are allowed to shift workers’ retirement savings into.
The new letter allows for investments in private equity firms that charge notoriously high fees and often do not deliver returns that beat inexpensive stock index funds. Those firms also have made headlines fleecing investors, laying off workers, gutting local economies, strip-mining media outlets and creating public health and environmental disasters -- all while pumping investors money into fossil fuel assets.
Only a few days after Scalia loosened restrictions for private equity investments, he went in the opposite direction, proposing a rule to restrict financial managers’ authority to move workers’ retirement savings into socially responsible and environmentally sustainable investments (known as ESG). He declared that “retirement plans are not vehicles for furthering social goals or policy objectives that are not in the financial interest of the plan” -- a statement implying that green investments are automatically at odds with the goal of maximizing returns, even though that has been false and is likely becoming even more false as climate risk intensifies.
The “new red tape created by the Trump administration rule may dissuade fiduciaries from incorporating” ESG investments in their portfolios, according to Bloomberg News.
Capping off the regulatory massacre, Scalia then completed his longstanding effort to gut an Obama-era rule designed to make sure financial advisers are working in the best interests of their clients. Before being appointed Labor Secretary, Scalia was a corporate lawyer who was “part of a team representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and other associations in successful challenges” to the Obama rule, according to the Wall Street Journal.
These three directives were issued separately. But if you consider them together, Scalia’s nefarious agenda is right out in the open, almost as if he’s deliberately doing a Dr. Evil impression.
Here is the Secretary of Labor actively weakening conflict-of-interest rules for money managers and helping them shift workers’ savings into high-risk private equity schemes -- all while he tries to prevent those same financial managers from moving workers’ savings into lower-risk, environmentally sustainable investments. And he’s doing this while insisting with a straight face that the moves are about protecting workers and their retirement savings.
Left unsaid is that the trio of directives are a potentially big financial boost to the fossil fuel and private equity industries -- and surprise, surprise, they’ve pumped huge money into the Republican Party. Since 2016, donors from the fossil fuel industry and donors from private equity and investment firms have delivered roughly $300 million to GOP candidates for federal office, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
In light of that, Scalia’s seemingly contradictory directives can be understood as something much more straightforward: a scheme hatched by one of Central Casting’s most cartoonish bad guys. The initiatives are not designed to protect workers, but to instead protect the industries that Republicans are relying on to bankroll their election campaigns.
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