How MAGA capitalism works: Shafting the public interest, hiding truth, making money for special interests

NBC News reports that private equity funds are increasingly acquiring control of hospitals and cutting costs. The result is 13% higher death rates in private equity hospitals relative to comparable nonacquired hospitals. The data was reported in research published by Annals of Internal Medicine. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the DHHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The AHRQ's function was to do research on improving health care delivery, reducing medical mistakes, and reducing costs.  

Gutting pro-public interest federal functions: MAGA gutted the AHRQ because it tends to generate data and analyses inconvenient to authoritarian-kleptocratic MAGA policy and propaganda. Over 80% of AHRQ staff in place on January 19, 2025 are now gone. About half of remaining employees were fired on April 1. MAGA kleptocracy goals have rendered the AHRQ functionally incapacitated. No surprise about any of this. By now it is clear that MAGA is building a pro-special interest, kleptocratic dictator deep state. Pro-public interest federal Agencies like the AHRQ therefore have to be eliminated.

Propagandizing inconvenient truth: Regarding the news about increased deaths in private equity-owned ERs, capitalism has surprisingly effective ways to neutralize bad news. Corporate propaganda ("public  relations") always employs tried and true tactics to deny, deflect and downplay inconvenient truth. 

A core corporate tactic is deflection, sometimes called deflection marketing (DM). Corporate responses to criticisms about employee, customer or environmental harm or deaths follow predictable DM patterns. This applies across multiple industries. In short, DM is a strategic corporate communication tactic designed to shift public accountability from corporate actions onto individual consumers. By redirecting scrutiny, DM tactics avoid or limit regulations and structural change, while presenting a false sense of empowerment and moral agency to bamboozled consumers.[1] 

In addition to DM tactics, common initial corporate responses to criticisms downplays the severity of findings or placing them in reframing them allegedly an "appropriate" context. This tactic downplays the severity or importance of an issue to deflect attention and criticism by portraying concerns as not particularly serious.

This is how MAGA capitalism works.

 

Footnote:

1. Four Pillars of Deflective Marketing:

Freedom Framing – Emphasizing individual choice to resist regulation.
Guiltwashing – Leveraging guilt and moral responsibility to shift blame.
Greenwashing – Performative sustainability to be associated with greener brands.**
Sciencewashing – Funding biased research from reputable institutions to support a claim.

** Performative sustainability is engaging in environmental actions primarily to be seen doing something green rather than to achieve meaningful environmental outcomes. Tactics include (1) surface-level changes without systemic reform, e.g., changing packaging colors to green while maintaining harmful core practices, and (2) instead of using money for meaningful change, companies spend on marketing campaigns that promote a false green image.

An example of Deflective Marketing to shift blame to consumers from corporations:

BP's "Carbon Footprint" Campaign British Petroleum (BP) launched its "Beyond Petroleum" marketing campaign in the early 2000s, coining and popularizing the term "carbon footprint" through an expensive advertising campaign created by the propaganda firm Ogilvy & Mather. BP created online calculators and advertisements that encouraged individuals to measure their personal impact on climate change, with messaging that we, the working people, are personally responsible for the climate crisis. The campaign was designed to shift responsibility for climate issues onto consumers, thereby absolving the industry of its (1) duty to seek solutions and cut carbon emissions, and (2) all-out resistance to regulations and social accountability, e.g., carbon taxes. There was corporate hypocrisy going on. While promoting individual responsibility, BP actually increased its oil production after 2003 and in 2018 bought "massive oil and gas reserves in West Texas." Despite showcasing initiatives to invest in lower carbon energy, only 2.3% of total investments went to clean energy.

Corporate polluters say: It's all our fault

Facts say: It's mostly polluters' fault

Germaine says: It's ~90% polluters' fault (maybe ~95%) because

polluters wield ~90% (~95% ?) of relevant political and social power

The upshot was that BP's cynical pro-pollution campaign was wildly successful in focusing consumers' attention on their own personal lifestyle changes instead of systemic corporate irresponsibility and profit lust. The oil and gas industry remains responsible for ~55% of emissions causing climate change. The cynicism and hypocrisy in PB's propaganda campaign is breathtaking to say the least.