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What Can Obama Do on His Own to Tighten Gun Control? |
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Tuesday, 08 December 2015 09:12 |
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LaFrance writes: "Many advocates for stricter firearms laws believe Obama is again poised to use executive power to address gun violence. The step he's likely to take, they say, is to broaden the definition of what it means to be in the business of selling firearms - a move that would mean more oversight for gun dealers, and would end up requiring more buyers to be subject to background checks."
President Barack Obama. (photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
What Can Obama Do on His Own to Tighten Gun Control?
By Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic
08 December 15
The president appears poised to bypass Congress, and impose stricter regulations on the purchase and sale of firearms.
 ive days after a gunman murdered nine people attending evening prayer services at a South Carolina church last summer, President Barack Obama reflected on his country’s intensifying record of mass shootings.
“It’s not enough just to feel bad,” Obama told the comedian Marc Maron in an appearance on Maron’s podcast. “There are actions that could be taken to make events like this less likely … And I don’t foresee any real action being taken until the American public feels a sufficient sense of urgency and they say to themselves, ‘This is not normal; this is something that we can change, and we’re going to change it.’”
Speaking from the Oval Office on Sunday night, Obama said that “Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun.” He added that Americans “also need to make it harder for people to buy powerful assault weapons, like the ones that were used in San Bernardino,” but he offered no specific proposals to do so.
Yet there is still more the president can do on his own, without congressional action. Many advocates for stricter firearms laws believe Obama is again poised to use executive power to address gun violence. The step he’s likely to take, they say, is to broaden the definition of what it means to be in the business of selling firearms—a move that would mean more oversight for gun dealers, and would end up requiring more buyers to be subject to background checks.
Federal regulations already require professional gun dealers to be licensed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. But the law doesn’t clearly define what it means to be in the business of selling guns. Some sellers use the ambiguity of the current law to advertise the fact that they don’t require background checks, which makes it easy for people to purchase weapons without any scrutiny. Officials have identified, and in some cases convicted, individuals selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of guns per year without a license because they don’t consider themselves to be in the gun-selling business. In many cases, those guns end up linked to criminal activity, according to a report by the Center for American Progress:
In July 2015, an individual in Orlando, Florida, was convicted of selling guns without a license after he sold 113 guns over a 14-month period for around $63,000, including at least one sale to a prohibited purchaser. In June 2015, an individual in Camden, New Jersey, was convicted of selling guns without a license after he admitted to selling at least 200 handguns over a nine-month period, many of which were sold to an admitted drug dealer who then resold many of those guns to other drug dealers. In May 2013, a woman in Manassas, Virginia, was convicted for violating this law after she purchased 31 handguns at guns shows across three consecutive weekends with the intent of reselling them. A number of these guns were later used in drug-trafficking crimes in Maryland.
Obama could use executive power to clarify the existing law—perhaps by adding a set number of guns sold, or the amount of money that a person can pull in from gun sales—and determine what constitutes being in the firearms business. Doing so would require more sellers to be licensed.
“Becoming a licensed dealer has two immediate consequences,” said Chelsea Parsons, the vice president of guns and crime policy at the Center for American Progress. “The seller becomes subject to oversight and regulation by ATF, and they are required to conduct background checks for all gun sales.”
Those who oppose a new definition of what it means to be in the business of selling guns say that the existing regulation is working—officials are catching and convicting some unlicensed sellers, after all—and that stricter rules will unfairly trip up individuals who really aren’t professionals. The NRA, for instance, likes to give the example of a widow who is trying to sell her late husband’s guns after his death.
“The NRA often talks about the person who is inheriting guns, needing to sell them, and that this would make it very hard for that person to dispose of their guns,” said Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, the vice president for social policy and politics at the think tank Third Way. “But it’s very easy to make sure the person you’re selling a gun to is not a criminal—by going to a gun store and requesting a background check. If I were a responsible firearms owner, I would already be doing that voluntarily.”
Advocates for stricter gun laws have long been pushing for more explicit rules on what it means to be a gun dealer. The president considered using executive power in this way after the shooting massacre that killed 20 children and six women in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, but ultimately opted against it. At the time, he announced 23 other executive initiatives related to gun violence, and urged Congress to pass legislation to reduce gun violence.
“Back in 2013, there was a real sense that all of us might come together and actually agree on some common-sense gun legislation. I think that that hope—at least in the Obama administration—has passed at this point,” Erickson Hatalsky said. “They may be willing to go further than they were in the past because they are no longer trying to court anyone in Congress.”
While Obama appears willing to do more than he has in recent years, the president is still unlikely to make sweeping changes to the nation’s gun laws. There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, Obama has already stretched the limits of what he can do with his presidential authority when it comes to tightening gun laws. That happened after the Connecticut elementary school massacre in 2012.
The limitations of executive power are such that the president can only alter existing laws or make administrative changes to existing programs; he can't create new laws from scratch by himself. A more modest approach is also more likely to stick, at least for a while. “It can get tied up in the courts pretty easily, and the courts seem open to dealing with questions of executive power,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “Conservatives are ready to challenge anything he does on this, and he’s aware of that.”
Timing is another challenging factor. Obama’s presidency is nearly over. “The next president can get rid of whatever he does,” Zelizer said. “The durability of executive action is much thinner than legislation, and much more fragile.”
Republican candidates have already told voters they plan to undo Obama’s work using their own executive action, if elected. “We’re going to be unsigning a lot of executive orders,” Donald Trump recently promised on the campaign trail, according to The Daily Caller.
Although the majority of Americans believe gun sales should be stricter, according to an October Gallup poll, many Republicans believe Obama will go too far if he uses executive power at all. But the idea that Obama would do anything dramatic, like an attempt to ban firearms or significantly restrict access to them—an approach taken in several other countries following mass shootings—is unrealistic.
“Unless somehow he invokes wartime power, but that’s not going to happen,” Zelizer said. “No, he has to deal with laws pertaining to background checks and licenses and try to take action through that. Without question, his preference is legislation, but I think he just doesn't see that happening. Even if public opinion is strongly on the side on regulation, the process is broken.”
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Is the Left Prepared for the Right's Terrorism? |
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Tuesday, 08 December 2015 09:10 |
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Emanuele writes: "Lately, there's been a rash of politically motivated violence in the U.S. from both state and non-state actors. Interestingly, the same is true in Australia, as right-wing organizations such as Reclaim Australia (RA) and United Patriots Front (UPF) display their violent tendencies during street protests and target left-wing activists on city streets."
Tea Party protesters demonstrate in front of the White House. (photo: Reuters)
Is the Left Prepared for the Right's Terrorism?
By Vincent Emanuele, teleSUR
08 December 15
The Left needs to be resilient and serious, because the future isn't going to be nonviolent.
 ately, there's been a rash of politically motivated violence in the U.S. from both state and non-state actors. Interestingly, the same is true in Australia, as right-wing organizations such as Reclaim Australia (RA) and United Patriots Front (UPF) display their violent tendencies during street protests and target left-wing activists on city streets. In both cases, at least in my thinking, these violent acts will only escalate, which raises important questions about political violence, security, and the state.
Right-wing Violence in the U.S.
In the U.S., three key events have taken place in the last two weeks. The day my plane landed in Chicago, Monday, November 23, five Black Lives Matter protestors were gunned down while protesting the police shooting of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis, Minnesota. So far, the Minneapolis Police have arrested three suspects, all of whom are white males in their twenties.
The next day, on November 24, Chicago Police released video footage of police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald sixteen times, instantly killing the seventeen year old. Laquan's murder took place over a year ago, yet the video was just released to the public. Audio recordings from police dash cameras were also missing. According to the Chicago Police Department (CPD), the missing audio can be attributed to "technical difficulties." Additional reports have concluded that Chicago Police officers entered a nearby Burger King and tampered with the restaurant's security footage, deleting almost 86 minutes of video.
A few days later, on November 27, a lone gunman opened fire and began shooting police officers and civilians at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Three people were killed and nine injured during the madness. Subsequent reports indicate the shooter "mentioned 'baby parts' to investigators and in later interviews expressed anti-abortion and anti-government views." According to a report from the Guardian, "Since 1995, there have been a total of 5,147 violent incidents recorded at US abortion clinics, not including 2015."
Fortunately, activists and organizers have responded to all three events with protests and acts of civil disobedience. In Minnesota, hundreds of protestors took to the streets the day after white supremacists shot members from their encampment. In Chicago, protestors halted traffic and blocked stores on the historic Magnificent Mile during Black Friday (the largest shopping day in the U.S.). Further, pro-choice activists, gun control advocates and those who support Planned Parenthood held rallies and actions throughout the U.S.
At the same time, it's important that activists have serious and critical conversations about security and the state. To put it differently, can activists develop alternatives to state security apparatuses? One step could be civilian oversight boards or committees who have the power to terminate officers and regulate their behavior. But that's only one step. What about actually replacing the police? Are left-wing activists prepared to provide security in a nation (the U.S.) that has over 300 million weapons? Could left-wing activists have effectively responded to the recent shooting at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs? Of course not. After all, leftists don't have tactical units or armored vehicles. After the shooting of BLM activists in Minnesota, the Left still relied on state security forces to provide actual protection, conduct detective work and potentially prosecute suspects. Are leftists prepared to perform these unfortunate but necessary procedures?
Right-wing Violence in Australia
In early November, I was in Australia's capitol city of Canberra promoting a film when my friend received a phone call: one of her comrades had been targeted and physically assaulted on the streets of Melbourne by fascists from the UPF. The woman who was assaulted endured a broken cheekbone. She was referred to as "the bitch in the video," as the UPF thugs recognized her from previous activist work and online video content. Unsurprisingly, none of this is new. In recent weeks, the UPF has also attempted to intimidate the Melbourne Anarchist Club and the volunteer-run community radio station 3CR, where UPF members gained entry into the station's headquarters and threatened members of the staff.
A few days before my friends and I attended a counter-demonstration against the UPF and RA in Melton, a rural suburb located outside Melbourne, a fascist sympathizer was arrested at his home with illegal weapons and bomb-making manuals. The suspect, Phillip Galea, claimed "the weapons were intended for self-defense during an upcoming anti-Islam protest."
The Right in Australia, almost exclusively white, much like the Republican party in the U.S., is utterly frustrated after years of neoliberal reforms, displacement, poverty and addiction - they are foaming at the mouth for a new enemy, and they've found it: Islam.
When the fascists in Australia are not protesting the building of mosques, they're more than happy to stalk and terrorize left-wing activists and organizers, as mentioned above. At the protest we attended, the police, who came out in full-force, faced the counter-demonstrators, while turning their backs on the fascists. Meanwhile, right-wing protesters surrounded the leftists and started several physical altercations. The police would move in, pepper-spray the leftists, usher the fascists to a safer place, and return to their formations.
I have to admit, without the police, the fascists would have destroyed the progressives, anarchists, communists and socialists who made up the bulk of the counter-demonstration. The vast majority of the counter-demonstrators were not prepared for the violence the Right was willing to inflict. Again, without the state providing limited protection to the left-wing protesters, the fascist groups would have beaten, stabbed, tased and potentially killed many.
Combatting Extremism
What worries me is a future in which right-wing individuals and movements in the U.S., aided and protected by the state, violently lash-out at left-wing activists, people of color, immigrants and Muslims with impunity. Paradoxically, it should be mentioned that right-wing extremists, many of whom occupy positions of power within the security state, will be the very same people to kill state officials and law enforcement officers, as they have in the past.
Here, there is a severe contradiction in the power structure of the state. Sure, the U.S. and Australia were built on a legacy of white supremacy, but certain elements of that culture and history also loathe the state. In the past, we've seen what this looks like in the U.S.: Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, etc. Are left-wing activists prepared to deal with these elements? If so, how?
The economy is failing. Militarism grows stronger with each passing day. And the planet is being destroyed. Right-wing parties and organizations around the world are growing, not dwindling, and they are armed and more than willing to employ violence. In the plainest of terms, the Left needs to be resilient and serious, because the future isn't going to be nonviolent. The sooner left-wing activists can create viable alternatives to the security state, the more likely political movements will be able to achieve their goals. Without alternatives, the Left will continue to rely on the state for security.
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Setting the Record Straight on Venezuela |
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Tuesday, 08 December 2015 09:08 |
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Ellner writes: "An opposition victory in Venezuela's National Assembly elections would undoubtedly fuel an anti-Chavez narrative that is both simplistic and deceptive, jeopardizing the deceased president's well-earned fame as a champion of the underprivileged."
Hugo Chavez speaking in Merida, Venezuela. (photo: CdO)
Setting the Record Straight on Venezuela
By Steve Ellner, Jacobin
08 December 15
The Bolivarian Revolution hasn’t been perfect, but it’s improved the lives of millions in the face of violent opposition
 n many ways, Hugo Chávez’s legacy is at stake on December 6.
An opposition victory in Venezuela’s National Assembly elections would undoubtedly fuel an anti-Chávez narrative that is both simplistic and deceptive, jeopardizing the deceased president’s well-earned fame as a champion of the underprivileged.
The opposition is poised to benefit from the country’s ongoing economic difficulties. Venezuelans face hours-long lines to purchase some basic commodities and an inability to obtain others, as well as an annual inflation rate that for the first time since 1996 has reached three digits.
In the face of these real political and economic problems, which are partly due to plummeting oil prices, opposition forces are ratcheting up their attacks by harping on the unsustainable nature of Chávez’s policies. The Washington-based magazine Foreign Policy titled one article on Venezuela’s economy “The Curse of Chávez’s Ghost.” Similarly, the opening sentence of a Council on Foreign Relations report titled Venezuela’s Economic Fractures reads “Hugo Chávez’s transformative presidency left behind an economic model that has sown deep, heated divisions within Venezuelan society.”
The basic argument here is that the chickens — in the form of Chávez’s populist policies — have come home to roost, generating extreme hardship. Some anti-leftist writers such as Mexico’s Jorge Castañeda even maintain that the social programs of leftist (or “populist”) leaders such as Chávez (as well as Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa) are inherently unsustainable.
According to these writers, the original sin of the Chávez government was not so much its socialism but its Keynesian-style intervention in the economy. Indeed, the allegedly unsustainable policies responsible for the nation’s economic predicament — such as price controls and currency exchange controls decreed by Chávez in 2003 — were longstanding features of state interventionism in Venezuela.
Even Chávez’s nationalization of basic industry carried out in 2007 and 2008 was a fixture of non-socialist political parties in Venezuela dating back to the 1930s and 1940s. Some of the industries that Chávez took over, including steel, telecommunications, and electricity, had long been state-owned only to be privatized in the 1990s.
Thus the discursive offensive against the Chavistas constitutes a broadside against state intervention in the economy even prior to Chávez’s ascent to power, and a vindication of neoliberal principles.
The arguments are based on a deceptive half-truth. It is true that certain policies Chávez enacted in his early years created patterns that generated problems further down the road. The implementation of those policies, however, has to be placed in a broader context. They were not the result of cheap populism, as the anti-leftists claim. Rather they were a logical response to dire circumstances, including politically motivated violence and economic disruptions.
To take just one example, Chávez responded to politically motivated shortages of goods and the price hikes that followed by implementing a system of currency exchange controls. Under the system the government sells artificially cheap dollars to importers to offset inflation.
This year the open market exchange rate for the dollar has skyrocketed. But with elections ahead, any increase in what the government charges importers for dollars would push prices up, and in doing so play into the hands of the opposition.
The opposition, too, is quick to dismiss even the most obvious gains of the Bolivarian Revolution. They deny the profound impact of social programs that facilitated educational opportunities and a sense of empowerment among formerly excluded sectors of the population. Since its founding in 2003, for instance, the makeshift “Sucre Mission,” with a budget far inferior to the established universities and which largely operates out of public school buildings at night, has taken in 700,000 students (370,000 of whom have graduated). The nation’s current university population of 2,630,000 represents a three-fold increase since 1998.
Yet the opposition belittles this achievement, saying they favor “quality over quantity.” And some anti-Chavistas vehemently question the qualifications of the graduates of the government’s innovative educational programs.
All or Nothing
For years, the Venezuelan opposition has made clear that regime change is their principal goal. They have engaged in insurgent activity to overthrow the democratically elected Chavista governments — in an attempted coup in April 2002, a business-promoted general strike seven months later, and more recently during a four-month period of urban violence in 2014, referred to in Venezuela as the “guarimba.”
Even though the guarimba violence resulted in the death of six national guardsmen, the protesters counted on favorable international media coverage and the solid backing of the Obama administration to paint a picture of a nonviolent opposition movement being ruthlessly repressed. The opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) announced its decision to center its campaign for the December elections on the liberation of the “political prisoners” arrested during the unrest.
For opposition leaders, there is little attempt at compromise. In recent months, they have rejected President Nicolás Maduro’s call for a “Grand National Dialogue” to be held following this month’s National Assembly elections. Responding to the proposal, MUD head Jesús Torrealba snapped at the president, saying “Maduro: you are not qualified to convoke a dialogue.”
The opposition’s aggressiveness and disruptive actions have had two opposing effects. On the one hand, they radicalized Chávez’s government after each victory. Thus, for instance, after winning the 2004 recall election (whose results the opposition refused to recognize), Chávez proclaimed socialism as his government’s goal. After winning the 2006 presidential elections by a landslide, he nationalized the telecommunications, electricity, cement, and steel industries.
But at the same time, the confrontational tactics and disruptions of opposition forces have pressured the Chavista governments into modifying some of its programs, and in some cases making concessions that resulted in backsliding. These revisions have included both pragmatic strategies to win over or neutralize sectors of the business class and populist initiatives favoring workers and other non-privileged sectors.
The cause-and-effect chain goes like this: radical changes, followed by hardened resistance from pro-establishment actors, and then government concessions to both privileged and non-privileged classes, agreements with non-leftists, and deviations from the original path.
Appeasing Business
The Chavista government and the Venezuelan left have paid a price for these pragmatic strategies designed to sway or assuage hostile business interests and other conservative sectors. As far back as his first presidential campaign in 1997–98, for instance, Chávez proposed a negotiated moratorium on the foreign debt as a possible alternative to his previous call for the unilateral suspension of payments. At the same time he applied for a US visa (a request the Clinton administration denied), looking to address US business and political leaders and assure them of his good intentions.
However, the strategy of moderation during these years had negative political consequences for the Chavistas’ progressive goals. It strengthened the position of the movement’s conservative wing led by Luis Miquilena, who ended up defecting and accusing Chávez of violent repression in order to justify the abortive April 2002 coup.
Other strategies to ensure economic stability involved tacit or unpublicized agreements with an allegedly progressive or productive fraction of the business class, and in some cases with the main business organization, FEDECAMARAS. After FEDECAMARAS spearheaded a two-month general strike in 2002–03 (seven months after it led the April coup), Chávez announced that his government would extend preferential treatment to businesspeople who had refused to participate in the lockout. This policy gave rise to a group of emerging businesspeople who grouped in parallel organizations and maintained friendly relations with the government.
While politically useful given FEDECAMARAS’ extremely hostile stance, the alliance with the emerging dissident business sector has had dubious economic effects. The 2009 financial crisis, for instance, implicated a group of capitalists that had collaborated with the government during and after the general strike (the Chávez government responded by arresting them and expropriating several of their banks).
Chavista activist Felipe Rangel of Puerto La Cruz commented to me: “When push comes to shove and the opposition is on the verge of returning to power, the so-called ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie will be the first to close ranks with the enemies of the revolution.” Indeed, one of the most prominent members of the emerging pro-Chavista business group, Alberto Cudemus, who controls much of the pork industry as a result of state contracts, has increasingly criticized the government’s policies as a “throwback” to the pre-neoliberal era of state interventionism. Maduro, for his part, has harshly criticized Cudemus’ statements.
In another example of the convergence of economic interests both old and new, several leftist think tanks have found currency fraud to the tune of $20 billion that involves traditional and emerging business interests alike, in addition to multinational capital.
While Chávez spoke of a “strategic alliance” with so-called productive businesspeople, neither Chávez nor Maduro, who uses the same language, that term implies trust between both parties and common long-term goals. What is really at stake is a “tactical alliance” with the more limited objective of guaranteeing economic and political stability in the face of disruptions generated by an aggressive opposition.
For example, when the government met with representatives of FEDECAMARAS as part of a “peace dialogue” proposed by Maduro, the objective was to counter the guarimba violence. The political opposition turned down the dialogue offer.
Now the objective is to find solutions to the problems of inflation, scarcity, and the contraband of subsidized goods. Although many factors — including declining oil revenue — underlay these predicaments, part of the problem is what Maduro calls the “economic war” waged by members of the private sector. Throughout the period of Chavista rule, there has been ample evidence of business-induced, politically motivated scarcity of basic commodities.
The “peace dialogue” with FEDECAMARAS implies concessions that have diminished the effectiveness of the effort to combat the economic war. The government evidently gave in to FEDECAMARAS’s demand that the jailing of businesspeople accused of price speculation, hoarding, and contraband not become, in the words of the organization’s president Jorge Roig, “a media show.” Roig expressed alarm that given the highly charged atmosphere in Venezuela, businesspeople in these cases would not be given a fair trial. He added, “we insist on the government’s strictest adherence to the constitution and the law.”
Over the course of 2014, the government ceased to reveal publicly specific information, including the names of those accused of engaging in the “economic war.” The discretion has created skepticism even among Chavistas that the government is determined to face up to business, specifically to the perpetrators of the “economic war.”
In short, the peace dialogue with FEDECAMARAS, though instrumental in defeating the guarimba campaign, came at a price.
Social Policies and Complicated Consequences
Throughout their administrations, Chávez and Maduro have prioritized social policy in favor of the poor and workers over economic objectives such as industrial development. Measures include highly reduced prices — or, in some cases, no charge — for commodities ranging from public housing to gasoline, books, electrical appliances, and laptops for students.
In addition, following the business-promoted general strike that threatened to trigger uncontrollable inflation, the government began to regulate prices for basic commodities and, in effect, subsidized imports. In October, Maduro announced that his government would set a price ceiling for all products.
The system of artificially low prices favors the underprivileged but also has a downside — namely the problem of scarcity, which over the last several years has reached an extreme. Scarce goods on the black market sell for two or three times more than the regulated price.
Once these and other popular policies were put in place, it was hard for the government to switch course when they ran into trouble. Subsidized prices create expectations among both the underprivileged and the middle class. The most obvious example is gasoline at virtual giveaway prices, a policy that some on the Left defend. The internal consumption of over 750,000 barrels per day represents about 25 percent of national production, thus depriving the nation of much-needed revenue.
Ultimately, the moderation of many Chavista policies and some of their negative consequences have to be understood in the context of the aggressive acts of the Venezuelan opposition, and the contradictions of populism. But the fact that they have been on the whole successful has kept the government in power. The guarimba campaign to overthrow the government in 2014 failed because it did not spread from middle class areas to the barrios. The refusal of the Venezuelan poor to join the protests was a reflection of the political success of the government’s social programs.
Timing Is Everything
Yet despite this longevity, throughout the seventeen years of Chavista rule, the aggressiveness of the opposition has taken a heavy toll. Its tactics have pressured the government into an unholy alliance with a new business elite that is responsible for much of the nation’s corruption.
If the destabilizing campaigns have had an adverse effect on the Venezuelan government, then the best time for it to address the negative effects of populist and pragmatic policies is when the opposition is weak. And the ideal moment is immediately following victories, when the enemy is discredited and demoralized.
Three goals can best be achieved by taking advantage of favorable circumstances: further radicalization, delivering additional blows to the enemy, and declaring war on corruption and bureaucratic lethargy. The third goal, which implies internal renovation, has proven to be the most elusive for the Chavistas.
In 2009, Chávez took advantage of the window of opportunity a string of electoral victories had provided by jailing corrupt bankers and expropriating financial institutions. In doing so, he helped undo the damage from the government’s preferential treatment of the emerging bourgeoisie.
In contrast, Maduro has failed to take advantage of moments in which his government has had the upper hand. One missed opportunity was in the aftermath of the defeat of the guarimba campaign of violence. At that moment, he was in an ideal position to make difficult decisions in order to correct certain failed policies — such as increasing the price of gasoline.
The government today finds itself in a perilous position. The outcome of Sunday’s elections may turn on whether discontented Chavistas stay home. Many Chavista voters place the full blame for the nation’s current ills on the Maduro government. Certainly mistakes have been made, and certainly corruption is a serious problem, as Maduro himself recognizes.
But any objective analysis of current problems needs to bring their origins into the picture. And one sure conclusion is that the relative strength of the opposition — its resources, international backing, and electoral showing — has much to do with whether the Chavista government can advance toward its far-reaching goals, or whether it survives at all.
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Even ExxonMobil Says Climate Change Is Real. So Why Won't the GOP? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=37556"><span class="small">Fred Hiatt, The Washington Post</span></a>
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Tuesday, 08 December 2015 09:00 |
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Hiatt writes: "No one would confuse the oil and gas giant with the Sierra Club. But if you visit Exxon's website , you will find that the company believes climate change is real, that governments should take action to combat it."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (photo: Getty Images)
Even ExxonMobil Says Climate Change Is Real. So Why Won't the GOP?
By Fred Hiatt, The Washington Post
08 December 15
 o understand how dangerously extreme the Republican Party has become on climate change, compare its stance to that of ExxonMobil.
No one would confuse the oil and gas giant with the Sierra Club. But if you visit Exxon’s website , you will find that the company believes climate change is real, that governments should take action to combat it and that the most sensible action would be a revenue-neutral tax on carbon — in other words, a tax on oil, gas and coal, with the proceeds returned to taxpayers for them to spend as they choose.
With no government action, Exxon experts told us during a visit to The Post last week, average temperatures are likely to rise by a catastrophic (my word, not theirs) 5 degrees Celsius, with rises of 6, 7 or even more quite possible.
“A properly designed carbon tax can be predictable, transparent, and comparatively simple to understand and implement,” Exxon says in a position paper titled “Engaging on climate change.”
None of this is radical. Officials negotiating a climate agreement right now in Paris would take it as self-evident. Republican leaders in the 1980s and 1990s would have raised no objection.
But to today’s Republicans, ExxonMobil’s moderate, self-evident views are akin to heresy. Donald Trump, the leading GOP presidential candidate, says, “I don’t believe in climate change.” Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) says, “Climate change is not science, it’s religion.” Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) at the moment seems to acknowledge that climate change might be real but opposes any action to deal with it.
Well, you may say, Trump revels in his stupidities, and most of the presidential candidates are appealing to the rightmost wing of their primary electorate at the moment. What about the grownups in the party, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.)?
Glad you asked.
In an op-ed for The Post published as President Obama traveled to Paris for the opening of the climate talks, McConnell slammed Obama’s policy for harming the middle class without measurably affecting climate change.
Does that mean, I asked the majority leader’s press secretary, that he believes climate change is real, and are there policies he would favor to mitigate the risk?
The spokesman answered: “While the Leader has spoken often on energy and the President’s policies, I don’t believe he’ll have anything new today. And as to the President’s policies, the President says he’s for ‘all of the above.’ He got that line from us. But as to his climate proposal and the Paris proposals, I think he’s spoken clearly on that in his op-ed. I hope that helps.”
I tried once more: “So as to whether he believes climate change is real, or would favor any policies to mitigate it, I should just say, declined to answer?”
I didn’t hear back.
A genuine conservative, as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state George P. Shultz has written, would acknowledge uncertainties in climate science but look for rational, market-based policies to lessen the risk without slowing economic growth. A revenue-neutral carbon tax, as in a bill Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has introduced, fits the description precisely.
What then explains the know-nothingism of today’s Republicans? Some of them see scientists as part of a left-wing cabal; many of them doubt government’s ability to do anything, let alone something as big as redirecting the economy’s energy use. Almost all of them, along with quite a few Democrats, would rather not tell voters that energy prices need to rise for the sake of the environment.
Their donors in the oil and gas industry encourage their prejudices. Three years ago, Grover Norquist, the Republicans’ anti-tax enforcer, said that a carbon tax wouldn’t violate his no-tax-increase pledge if the proceeds were returned by lowering the income tax, though he made clear he didn’t like the idea.
The next morning, the lobbying arm of the oil and gas industry swung into action. “Grover, just butch it up and oppose this lousy idea directly,” the American Energy Alliance said. “This word-smithing is giving us all headaches.”
For most of us, the reaction to this would have been: Butch it up? But Norquist got the message and within hours issued a clarification: Only a constitutional amendment banning the income tax could justify a carbon tax.
So the industry deserves its share of blame, and that includes ExxonMobil, which hardly trumpets its views on the advantages of a carbon tax. (Its most alarming slide, on the 5-degree temperature rise, can’t be found on its public site.)
But blaming it all on Big Oil lets the politicians off too easily. Yes, McConnell represents a coal state, and, yes, he wants to preserve his Senate majority. If those considerations are more important to him than saving the planet, let him say so to our children and grandchildren. Let’s not blame the oil companies for the pusillanimity of people who are supposed to lead.
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