Trump is willing to trade our children’s future for a billion dollars
“Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed…” – Jesus (Luke 12:15)
“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy.” – Donald Trump
The Washington Post revealed yesterday that Donald Trump told a group of fossil fuel executives that if they’d give him a billion-dollar bribe, he’d use it to become president and then eliminate all of President Biden’s environmental regulations and prevent any new ones from coming into law.
The industry barons had been grumbling that they’d already spent more than $400 million lobbying the Biden administration over the past year to little effect. They really shouldn’t have a basis to complain: just the three largest oil companies operating in America made $85.65 billion dollars in profits last year, which they could split up among shareholders and senior executives.
Nonetheless, Trump’s brazen appeal for them to grease his palm seemed to shock even these hardened planet-killers.
This comes during the same week that The Guardian broke the story that most of the world’s top climate scientists surveyed — all of them among the 843 authors of the IPCC’s most recent report — believe the planet is going to crash through the 1.5° Celsius threshold they’d previously defined as a disaster scenario. Most are now expecting us to hit 2.5° or even 3° Celsius, levels that could make much of the planet uninhabitable for humans. And it’s going to happen a hell of a lot sooner than anybody had anticipated just a decade ago.
It’s gotten so bad that some climate scientist’s are questioning the wisdom of their own families having children.
In other words, Donald Trump and his Republican friends are explicitly willing to trade our and our children’s future for a billion dollars. And they couldn’t have offered this deal to the industry if five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court hadn’t legalized political bribery of both politicians and judges (like themselves and Aileen Cannon) when they overturned the good government laws Congress passed in the wake of the Nixon bribery scandals in the 1970s.
It may have been an unnecessary effort on Trump’s part.
The Saudis and Russians — who both desperately want Trump back in the White House — cut oil production over the past two months by 1.4 million barrels a day with the apparent goal of driving US gasoline prices up past $6 a gallon in time for the election this fall.
Remember the GOP hysteria around gas prices hitting $5 a gallon in October and November of 2022 just in time for the midterm elections, with Fox “News” hosts hyping stickers being put on gas pumps across the country bearing a picture of Biden pointing to the price with an “I did that” slogan? It almost singlehandedly gave us GOP control of the House of Representatives and was the result of a similar Saudi and Russian production cut.
Now, it looks like we ain’t seen nothing yet.
When he was president, Trump allowed the Saudis to buy the largest gasoline refinery in America (at Port Arthur, Texas); between their oil supply cuts and the possibility they could reduce that refinery’s output this fall (no doubt because of “maintenance issues”) gas could easily puncture the $7 a gallon ceiling by November.
Analysts found that throughout the midterm election year 2022, there was a nearly one-to-one inverse correlation between the price of gasoline, Americans’ perception of the state of the economy, and approval ratings for the Biden administration. As The Washington Post pointed out that year, there was an estimated 91 percent inverse correlation between the price of gas and the popularity of Democrats when they’re in power: as gas prices go up, Democrats’ approval ratings (and electability) measurably and predictably go down.
The willingness to destroy our collective home in exchange for riches is one of the most tragic and extreme examples of greed run amok. Which shouldn’t surprise us: for the past century, the unofficial slogan of the GOP has been “Greed is Good!” as memorialized in the 1987 movie Wall Street.
As Trump told a cheering audience when he was first running for president:
“I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy — I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?”
And that is not all:
Conservatives are plotting the demise of health care entitlements and health insurance subsidies ahead of the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House.
Republican sources told Axios there was more planning underway ahead of this year's election than there was in 2016, when Trump scored a surprise win, and a chaotic transition period and the lack of a replacement plan doomed efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in his first year in office.
"Several GOP lobbyists told Axios they've received intensifying requests from health care clients in recent weeks to game out the beginning of a new Trump term and build relationships with Trump world," Axios reported. "Insiders say they're generally skeptical that Republicans would pursue a major ACA overhaul or full repeal of new Medicare drug pricing negotiations, but conservative-preferred changes to those programs are possible."
If Republicans also win the House and Senate, they're planning to fast-track a reconciliation budget to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts and push through partisan health care cuts.
"The new reality is that you've got to push and you've got to really do reconciliation quickly," said one GOP lobbyist.
GOP majorities would not renew enhanced insurance subsidies that caused ACA enrollment to surge, and Republicans see this as an opportunity to crack down on Medicare Advantage overpayments to insurers and cutting back on Medicare payments for outpatient care at hospitals.
They're also looking at cuts to Medicaid and pushing through GOP-favored work requirements in a reconciliation package, and Trump-aligned groups Paragon Health Institute, America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation are already fielding calls from the health care industry.
"You don't want to get ahead of your skis and give industry a chance to start figuring out what they're going to do and what actions are going to reduce government subsidies to industry," said Paragon president Brian Blase, a former Trump health official.
