Wealthy Republican capitalists hate regulations. They really do. Regulations tend to impair their profits. Yesterday's Republican Supreme Court ruling that gutted the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide pollution was a smashing victory for pro-pollution businesses and corporate profits generally. This Republican attack is not just limited to gutting environmental protections.
The victory yesterday is something that wealthy laissez-faire capitalists have been working toward for decades. The public interest and environment are going to receive massive damage in coming years from the unleashing of unrestrained, callous capitalist greed.
The Supreme Court ruling in the Environmental Protection Agency case on Thursday was a substantial victory for libertarian-minded conservatives who have worked for decades to curtail or dismantle modern-style government regulation of the economy.
In striking down an E.P.A. plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, the court issued a decision whose implications go beyond hobbling the government’s ability to fight climate change. Many other types of regulations might now be harder to defend.
The ruling widens an opening to attack a government structure that, in the 20th century, became the way American society imposes rules on businesses: Agencies set up by Congress come up with the specific methods of ensuring that the air and water are clean, that food, drugs, vehicles and consumer products are safe, and that financial firms follow the rules.
Such regulations may benefit the public as a whole, but can also cut into the profits of corporations and affect other narrow interests. For decades, wealthy conservatives have been funding a long-game effort to hobble that system, often referred to as the administrative state.
“This is an intentional fight on the administrative state that is the same fight that goes back to the New Deal, and even before it to the progressive era — we’re just seeing its replaying and its resurfacing,” said Gillian Metzger, a Columbia University professor who wrote a Harvard Law Review article called “1930s Redux: The Administrative State Under Siege.”
When the United States was younger and the economy was simple, it generally took an act of Congress to impose a new, legally binding rule addressing a problem involving industry. But as complexity arose — the Industrial Revolution, banking crises, telecommunications and broadcast technology, and much more — this system began to fail.
Congress came to recognize that it lacked the knowledge, time and nimbleness to set myriad, intricate technical standards across a broad and expanding range of issues. So it created specialized regulatory agencies to study and address various types of problems.
While there were earlier examples, many of the agencies Congress established were part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program. Wealthy business owners loathed the limits. But with mass unemployment causing suffering, the political power of elite business interests was at an ebb.
The NYT refers to the wealthy people and powerful businesses that are attacking government regulations as “libertarian-minded conservatives,” but that is the wrong label. It is another example of mainstream media not getting it. These people and companies are greedy, radical laissez-faire capitalists with no social conscience. They are not libertarian-minded conservatives. Real libertarians actually do have some social conscience. In applying that misleading label, the NYT commits malpractice and plays into the hands of powerful pro-greed special interests at our expense.
One is forced to ask, do regulations tend to benefit society and customers more than they impair profits? That is the central question. The business community firmly rejects the idea that government regulations confer more benefits than harm. According to wealthy elites, the businesspeople always know what is best for us, while government always screws things up. That propaganda is a blatant lie. But it works for lots of people with conservative mindsets who have been exposed to decades of capitalist anti-government and anti-regulation propaganda.
Once again, the destructive power of dark free speech is on display for all who can see it. Many cannot see it.
This radical right capitalist Republican attack on government and society will be at least as damaging to average Americans as the Christian nationalist social agenda will be with its attacks on civil liberties. Loss of civil liberties has already started with loss of abortion rights.
Things are probably going to get much worse for average people in America. It will likely stay that way for a long time. At this point, all that average people can do is try to save themselves from the coming onslaught to the limited extent it can be averted. Patriotic Americans need to vote against all Republicans and constantly voice opposition to the literally and figuratively toxic Republican capitalist and radical Christian social agendas.
Qs: Is it unreasonable or inaccurate to argue that the Republican Party, its wealthy capitalist donors and its elite radical Christian nationalists are enemies of the American people? What about the GOP rank and file who support the party?
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