Monarch Butterflies & Radical Right Governance

Monarch butterflies

The New York Times reports on the state of affairs in the cash-strapped Environmental Protection Agency, which is unlike the cash bloated Department of Defense:

The monarch butterfly is threatened with extinction, but will not come under federal protection because other species are a higher priority, federal officials announced Tuesday. ..... But their numbers have been decimated by climate-change-fueled weather events and pervasive habitat loss in the United States.

“We conducted an intensive, thorough review using a rigorous, transparent science-based process and found that the monarch meets listing criteria under the Endangered Species Act,” Aurelia Skipwith, the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement. “However, before we can propose listing, we must focus resources on our higher-priority listing actions.” As part of the decision, monarchs’ status will be reviewed each year by the agency and conservation efforts will continue.

Federal protection would have helped, Dr. Oberhauser said. But officials said Tuesday they do not have the money or resources to protect all the species that need it.

“We have to work within the funding resources that we have,” said Lori Nordstrom, assistant regional director for ecological services for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Midwest region. (emphasis added)

This is what the leadership of the radical right GOP has been working toward for decades. As we all know, the radical right hates government generally. Agencies like the EPA are especially hated because it sometimes impairs revenues flowing to companies and rich people. Instead of blatantly getting rid of government functions that most Americans approve of, like the EPA, the radical right simply starves the agencies for cash and slowly strangles the function to death. That way the American people do not understand what is going on and the GOP leadership escapes a lot of blame and public blowback.

The radical right operates by heavy reliance on dark free speech to distract, deceive, divide and then betray the American people. Among the GOP leadership, there is great rejoicing over the fate of the monarch butterfly and dozens of other species the EPA does not have the budget to try to protect. Once those species are extinct, there's nothing left for people to get upset about. That is how the radical right operates day to day. Profit first, foremost and only. That's the modern GOP leadership.

A bit of context

1. In December 2017, the GOP passed a tax cut law. No democrat in congress voted for it. Over 80% of the tax cut benefits went to the top ~10% of earners. That new law added about $1 trillion/year to the federal debt. The radical right howls in outrage that due to the debt, the federal government cannot spend money on domestic programs like the EPA, food stamps, etc. Nonetheless, the GOP finds ways to massively deficit spend for rich people and special interests. 

The radical right goal is simple: Starve domestic spending into non-existence, while money gushes up to the rich and powerful, making them richer and more powerful and the rest of us less rich and less powerful.

2. My estimate of the net tax gap (tax that is owed minus what was paid) is that it is running at about $700 billion/year. My estimate is based on extrapolation of detailed tax data analyses from 2001 and 2006, showing that the gap was increasing by $19 billion/year starting from about $290 billion. The IRS disputes that and estimates that the tax gap is 'only' about $400 billion/year. Since the IRS refuses to do another detailed analysis, I'm sticking with my estimate. The IRS knows how to prove me wrong but it doesn't have the guts to do so. That is because the GOP would damage the IRS more than it already has. (the GOP hates the IRS -- taxes are theft)

Independent analysis indicated that for every extra dollar that congress gives the IRS for enforcing tax law, the treasury would get about $4 dollars in extra collected taxes. Every year, the IRS pleads for a bigger budget to shrink the tax gap. Every year the GOP (and to a lesser extent, democrats who have been bought by lobbyists) in congress blocks money to do that. Therefore, every year, tax cheats in America get a gift of about $700 billion from the tax-hating radical right GOP (and some corrupt democrats). The IRS is simply denied the budget it needs to collect taxes from tax cheats.

So, when the radical right GOP leadership screams in outrage about federal debt and too much domestic spending, just ignore it. That's just dark free speech and hypocrisy intended to poison our minds and keep us deceived and thus powerless.