History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.
~James Madison
As we watch our banks, automobile companies and health-care sectors co-opted by a contemptuous executive branch, an elitist Congress, and parasitic lobbyists, American citizens have to wonder what new trick President Obama has up his sleeve to deprive the taxpayers of their wages. Thanks to the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it appears the President is circling his wagons to launch his next offensive on the free market: climate legislation, also known as “cap and trade,” is looming in the shadows as the next decimator of economic prosperity. It is curious that Obama, whose campaign highlighted the theme that he was above the fray of self-seeking corporate and lobbyists’ interests, is at the epicenter of a form of corporatism that threatens to undermine any sense of fair business practice.
Although Obama’s rhetoric promised to usher in a new era of transparency and responsibility, the President and his charges have become entangled with corporations in a way that fundamentally and irrevocably perverts the relationship of corporate entities and our government. Obama and Congress are using the hazy concept of a “green economy” to push an agenda of political thuggery on par with the Chicago Daley machine or Tammany Hall.
His nomination victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota alluded to his intentions regarding climate change legislation when he said, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Obama’s soaring hyperbole resonated deeply with both environmentalists and the general populace, positioning him as a global prophet sent to save the world from environmental apocalypse. However, his rhetoric ultimately morphed into a cloaked collusion between corporations, lobbyists, and Washington elites who conspire to fleece the American public of their money while simultaneously lining their pockets with the ill-gotten booty. As scientist Bjorn Lomborg, an established and respected environmentalist, pointed out in the Wall Street Journal: “Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets.” It is this central piece, the idea of carbon regulation, that is most disturbing, because it is an unholy alliance with the very people that are supposedly polluting our planet to begin with. As Tim Carney, a columnist of the Washington Examiner explains, “cap-and-trade is a corporate welfare porkfest of nearly unprecedented proportions.” 1
What Carney is pointing out is the corporatist nature of the Obama administration. Of course, many Americans point the finger of corporatism directly at Big Oil, and rightfully so. Big Oil has enjoyed a “special” relationship under both Democratic and Republican administrations alike, contributing to campaign funds of various presidential and congressional candidates while extracting tax-payer funded subsidies, and as the oil “spill” in the Gulf would suggest, lax regulations via sympathetic cronies. There is no denying this link. However, according to the Science and Public Policy Institute, which scrutinized government spending records, “The U.S. government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks.” The reality is that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), big government, and “pro-environment” big business have formed a muscular juggernaut that flattens its opponents, demonizes its skeptics, and sucks up revenues in the form of subsidies.
Unfortunately, many people labor under the illusion pedaled by Washington that big business has conspired in a concerted effort to hold down wages, fix the market, and rob the individual of his soul while simultaneously destroying the planet. Conversely, people have been propagandized to believe that our government works tirelessly in some abstract, morally superior, selfless manner to uplift the downtrodden and safeguard our civil rights from the rapacious march of corporations. And while corporations are certainly not saints, it is laughable to overlook the 800-pound gorilla. Our government, in conjunction with lobbyists and the supposed malicious corporations, have underwritten each other’s fates and stuffed the profits in their pockets. As Congressman Ron Paul (TX) so aptly states: “…there is an agenda behind this silly comic-book version of history: to make people terrified of the ‘unfettered’ free market, and to condition them to accept the ever-growing burdens that the political class imposes on the private sector as an unchangeable aspect of life that exists for their own good.” 2
As the old maxim goes, if you want to know the truth, just “follow the money.” In the case of cap-and-trade and a “green economy,” the money trail leads directly to Obama and Congress, and to the energy companies decried for causing global warming, including “king coal.”
According to Public Citizen, a social justice and pro-environment watch-dog organization, “the Waxman-Markey climate bill that passed the House in June (and a very similar Senate Environment Committee-passed bill) are cap-and-trade schemes [that] hand billions of dollars to corporate utilities, gift Wall Street with a lucrative $2 trillion derivatives market, relies on offsets to achieve false emission reduction targets and raises costs to working families - while bestowing windfall profits to utilities like Exelon.” So once again, big business along with their attendant lobbyists and government shack up to financially and politically enrich each other, and the American citizen gets stuck with the bill twice: once in the form of hidden taxation, and again through increases in the cost of energy use. Carney also points out that other players have gamed the system as well, including agri-giant Monsanto, Alcoa, and…drum roll please, Goldman-Sachs. The Wall-Street bail-out recipient is waiting with baited breath to jump into the carbon-trading market, a dynamic that will set loose a feeding frenzy as traders swap derivatives in a dizzying rush to cash in before the next inevitable bubble burst, splattering the American public with the economic entrails. 3
And these economic implications are far reaching. As Robert Shapiro, a former undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration and a cofounder of the US Climate Task Force stated in an interview with MotherJones: "We are on the verge of creating a new trillion-dollar market in financial assets that will be securitized, derivatized, and speculated by Wall Street like the mortgage-backed securities market.” Of course, our government, in their predictable hubris, promises regulation to prevent such an occurrence.
However, if the savings and loan bailout of the 80s, the dot.com bust of the 90s, our current housing bust, and the BP fiasco are reliable barometers, government regulation is an impotent tool at best. Impotent, unless you’re a company with a vested economic interests and enough financial heft to lobby the living hell out of Washington, or lucky enough to be the political figure showered with corporate largess. And the deeper you dig, the more grotesque the truth becomes: a conglomeration of shady alliances between corporate pimps, lobbyist pushers and political propagandists rolling in a giant bed of taxpayer money—a menage et trois of Machiavellian proportions. Except the taxpayer is the only one who will be screwed in this sick love affair.
1. Carney, Timothy. Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses. Washington, D.C. Regnery Press, 2009.
2. Paul, Ron. The Revolution: A Manifesto. New York. Grand Central Publishing, 2008.
3. Carney, 2009.
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