I think I finally figured it out. The entire Republican party is suffering from PTSD. No, I don’t mean Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is much worse. Since November, the GOP has been suffering from Post Trump Sanity Deprivation. Basically, they’re losing their fucking minds!
Since the Democrats pulled off the Daily Double on January 7th, and flipped the Senate, GOP legislatures have gone batshit crazy passing racist voting restriction laws. And social media, activists, and widespread public pressure forced corporate America to step into the fray to defend the fundamental right to vote. And the GOP was stunned.
Following the year of highly successful, almost universally peaceful BLM protests, and especially in the wake of the Derek Chauvin conviction, GOP controlled legislatures are falling all over themselves to create unconstitutional anti protest laws trampling all over the 1st Amendment. Question for the GOP. Following up on their obvious success, what makes the GOP think that social media, the activists, and rampant public pressure won’t put the arm on Corporate America to step into this fray as well?
But let’s go back to the first, voting rights example, since it ties in better with my overall point. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is certifiable. Once his shock over corporate America spanking the GOP. McConnell, after a few back channel communications with CEO’s and corporate shills, McConnell convinced himself that all was well. This was all just another form of political Kabuki, the GOP understands that corporate America is just covering its asses with its employees and customers, nothing personal, and corporate America understands that the GOP is just beating its chest, nothing will happen to their corporate goodies.
Nothing could be further from the truth. As I explained in a previous article, corporations respond to two things, the quality and satisfaction of their employees, and the happiness of their customer base. If the GOP wants to punish corporate America, then they’ll just give their money to the Democrats and work with them.
Which brings us to today’s startling revelation. Earlier today there was a segment on MSNBC that blew me away, but which I’m betting just slipped right by most other people watching. Which is what I’m here for, after all, right?
It turns out that coal is dead. Trump can put on a hard hat, and mime shoveling a load over his shoulder all he wants, and it doesn’t matter. Besides, the only thing that Trump ever shoveled in his life was a fork load of cheddar bacon fries up to his fat face. Coal is dead.
Because corporate America killed it. There were two graphs that were displayed. The first showed that, although in its initial rollout, green electricity was far and away more expensive than all other forms of energy, in the matter of a few short years, it plummeted, as it became demonstrably cheaper than coal as it became more efficient and readily available. Which led to the second chart.
Corporate America killed coal. The chart showed that corporate R&D investment basically disappeared, as did support payments. And where did all of that massive kaboodle go? Where else? Renewable energy! Corporate America is at it’s simplest base, a profit machine. And if an industry like coal can’t generate the profits, then these companies will migrate their dollars to something that can fluff up their bottom line.
They’re only getting started. As the graph showed, natural gas is the next one on the chopping block. It showed that corporate money is fleeing natural gas, including fracking. And where is it going? Geez! To renewable energy of course!
Why is this such a surprise, especially to the GOP? GM announced that it plans a model line of 30 electric cars. Humvee previously announced that they are preparing to roll out an electric Hummer 2, because Schwarzenegger feels like such a twink tooling around in a hybrid. Corporations don’t become behemoths by getting caught behind the curve. They spend millions forecasting future trends, and when they see it, they put their money where their mouths are.
This is what Mitch McConnell and the GOP have never quite understood about corporate America. They always knew that it was bottom line driven, but because politi8cians see everything in terms of the next election cycle, they assumed it was short term, just like them. Fat chance. Corporations strive to get out ahead of the wave, so that they can ride it, not paddle like hell trying to catch up with it.
So you keep right on doing what you’re doing, geniuses. Because every time you try to force protections and subsidies for dying industries, you’re betting against there your largest contributors have already laid their bets. I’ll check back with you guys in 2022, and see how that’s going for ya!
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
Renewables will ALWAYS make more sense. The power plants cost less to build, because there is less ultra-heavy machinery plant involved.
And most importantly, THERE IS NO FUEL COST. THE FUEL IS FREE. Rain, sunlight and wind will always be there, and they cost NOTHING.
Corporates love near zero running costs, and as a bonus there are no exhaust emissions to (pay to) clean up, or pay for the consequences of.
Something for nothing means more profit.
Of course they love green energy.
My whole point…The GOP is totally devoted to constituencies, but their cxonstituencies don’t contriublute shit!!! They are beholden to corporate America, and cxorporate America is going to do what’s best for corporate America…
Also, the R&D is in the hands of smart young people working on open source projects to save Mother Earth, including, but not limited to, new safe highly efficient smaller nuclear power plants, when all the new grid activity gets going, [parts of Biden’s infrastructure]
I think the push for high quality, high temperature batteries, with their huge capacity and safe, self feeding systems will push our country into the future, years ahead of the predictions of a couple years ago … if the Republicans don’t go along with this plan for action, the GOP is totally dead in the water and McConnell’s shriveled up, shit stained hands from sitting on them for years will be a thing of the past …
Post Trump Sanity Deprivation…I’m going to have to remember that! As to the rest, the GQP just forgot who was dependent on who vis-a-vis Corporate America. I have every confidence that relationship will be clarified shortly.
Is there any other major historical figure who lives on in the popular imagination for the EXACT opposite of his actual conduct?
Cnut the Great’s actions at the water’s edge were meant to show his overly obsequious courtiers that he COULDN’T prevent the tide from rising.
I never could understand why the GOP was so adamantly opposed to green energy. After all, it was (and is) another BUSINESS model, meaning it would create jobs and, unlike oil or coal, you didn’t have to worry about those jobs going overseas. Oil and coal are only dependable for American jobs as long as the product can be drilled/mined and won’t cost more to extract from US land than the product costs from imported sources.
But, for some insane reason, the GOP decided to attack green/renewable energy as “unAmerican” even as the GOP was constantly talking about “growing jobs.” As if the folks working in the green energy field were just lounging around, twiddling their thumbs. (And considering the fact that the GOP was constantly supporting all sorts of tax breaks and financial incentives to Big Oil and Big Coal while letting those producers get away with paying almost nothing in taxes, even when they were recording record profits, the whole idea that the US couldn’t or shouldn’t help green energy companies with tax incentives or tax breaks just added to the GOP’s insanity.)
Always joe. Cannabis will be next. After all it was Hearst, Mellon, & DuPont that manipulated the law in 1937 with the marijuana tax act, a law designed to eliminate competition to their corporate interests, later overturned by the Supreme court, after being sued by Timothy Leary. Enter the criminal Richard Nixon. Taxpayers pay for the LaGuardia report, that Proves cannabis is one the safest substances on earth, a viewpoint stated by the judge, Francis Young. Old tricky dick places it in schedule 1. Defined as dangerously addictive,(false), & with no medicinal use,(also false). Later, his #1 guy, Halderman, admitted in a taped interview, they did it to get the Vietnam war protesters, & the black civil rights activists put in jail. Of course, like frump, Nixon pays no penalty for this crime that has criminalized millions of citizens, while allowing big alcohol & tobacco to get richer. Hypocrisy IS our religion in america. Has been since we’ve arrived on these shores as foreigners. Now that rich white boys are investing & making big money in cannabis, presto!, suddenly it will stop turning us into a nation of “hooligans & whores”, as Hearst’s movie in the 30’s, Reefer Madness, shows. Seems we’ve already managed that one as smoking, lying, self-righteous, shallow drunks. Those drunks sit in the legislatures & boardrooms.
Money talks bullshit walks. The trick is to get big money to walk the talk.
“Because corporate America killed it.”
IIRC, there was an old cinema of “Who Killed The Electric Car?” Same story. We have always wondered why fossil fuel companies didn’t diversify. Seems they have, but kept it under wraps.
“The GOP is totally devoted to constituencies…”
I think they are totally devoted to obstruction. They haven’t had an idea for decades. They don’t know how to govern. Recall, if you will, their big tax cut. The one which was literally written on the back of an envelope. Remember the scribbles in the margins? They can’t even type. Or spell, as the last administration proved altogether too many times.
But they didn’t REALLY kill the electric car, did they?
Well, they manged to delay it about 10 years. Back in 1997 I bought a new pickup. The sales woman told me that by by the year 2000 they would have to sell hybrid trucks to meet emissions regs. That of course didn’t happen. Fast forward to today, I’m finally driving a hybrid truck after my ’97 broke down. I’s a used 2018, was first available in 2016. Traded my Volt in on it.
I retired from a company that builds for the electric industry. They have been working on different green technologies for years. They are just waiting for said industries to pull the trigger on all this. And the other thing that these want to be dictators is that haven’t got through their power addled heads. The middle of the road citizens are going to see progress and they are going to see these tin pot idiots trying to block it along with their hard earned investment money.