this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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He let all the benefits of the Trump-Era COVID spending lapse. No more free testing. No more daily case tracking. Huge decline in public investment in vaccine development/distribution and mitigation of side-effects of innoculation. No further efforts to regulate against continued spread.
No more monthly child tax credits. Student debt collections have restarted. No national leadership on extending Medicaid to states. No Public Option. Less than 1% of outstanding federal student loans have been forgiven.
Meanwhile, tens of billions were released by the FDIC and Fed Reserve to stabilize Silicon Valley Bank, despite the bank being in blatant violation of a host of financial regulations.
No productive action on climate change. Increased drilling permits. Increased construction of new pipelines. Increased O&G traffic on the Mississippi, resulting in more spills and more contamination of waterways. A virtual standstill on advancements in domestic clean energy, in an era when highly efficient Molten Salt Reactors are being constructed in France, China, and India and wind/solar energy have dipped below liquid gas prices.
He's once again juiced the Pentagon/police budgets. Escalating conflicts in Syria. New war in Yemen. Hundreds of billions spent on Ukraine. Tens of billions more to ramp up military across the South Pacific. Still hasn't closed Gitmo. $7B stolen from the Afghan treasury, kicking off the worst hunger crisis in the world prior to the Gaza invasion.
No DC statehood. No restoration of the Voting Rights Act. No national law to protect a woman's right to health care during a miscarriage. No DOJ action on any of the above.
It took four fucking years to get Trump to trial on any of his 91 indictments. In the same time, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested, tried, convicted, and has been in jail for a month.
Why indeed? Almost as though that's not his real constituency.
Most of what you've described are things Congress does, not the president. I highly doubt the quality of your research.
Plus, if you had done proper research, you'd see that the Inflation Reduction Act was actually such a productive climate action that it forced Canada and European countries to pass similar legislation.
Every year since the passage of the Act has seen an increase in gross carbon emissions both domestically and when combined with Canada and Europe. We crested the 2 C mark for several months in 2023, half a decade sooner than expected, despite its passage. US production and consumption of fossil fuels has increased. New well drilling is at its fastest pace since pre-COVID. O&G companies made record profits and have rededicated a big chunk of that new wealth into propagandizing against additional climate change reforms, both domestically and globally.
Uh... yay.
It hasn't even been 2 years.
There's an important lesson here too -- actions that we take today will not have an observable effect until months later. Everything has a lag time. It'll probably take 3 years until we see the start of the Act's impacts, 5 until they become obvious.
You mentioned increased emissions in Europe, and Germany is a fantastic example of this effect. They created a moratorium on nuclear energy years ago, and many reactors were shuttered these past few years. They've also been burning more coal now, year over year. And they had to temporarily increase energy imports from France... Which was largely nuclear generated. I think we'll see in the coming years that Germany gained nothing from closing nuclear plants, and will probably lag because of it too.
We could've stopped all pollution with the IRA, and we still would've hit +2C early. The trends are already in motion and will take time to reverse.
You: "The Inflation Reduction Act has made huge improvements against the threat of climate change"
Me: "Nothing has improved. In fact, things have gotten significantly worse."
You: "Obviously, but that's just because the Inflation Reduction Act hasn't done anything yet!"
:-|
Which was in response to the Fukushima failure and the recognition among European countries that all their nuclear hardware was well outside its maintenance limit. So, instead of retrofitting and repairing these facilities, they shut them down and switched to imported natural gas as a short-term cheap substitute.
Ironically enough, the biggest contributor to reductions in Greenhouse emissions in Europe has been the Russia-Ukraine War. Thanks Mysterious Climate Activist for blowing up Nordstrem II. Total game changer!
So I guess, in that regard, you can give Biden credit for reducing carbon emissions. But that's got nothing to do with the IRA.
We could have stopped pollution with the IRA and it would have radically reduced the rate at which we are heating up the planet.
Instead, we implemented a policy that has resulted in increased pollution since it was implemented.
We played this game with Obama back in 2009. He promised a bunch of measures to reduce carbon emissions. He failed to take direct action as chief executive and he let Republicans kill his climate legislation when he had a 60 vote Dem majority. What middling bullshit he did pass - in the direct aftermath of a massive oil spill in the Gulf - failed to curb development of the enormous gas fields across the Southwest and Great Plains.
And now the US has grown its O&G development industry into a world leader, drastically increasing the volume of emissions globally thanks to both domestic consumption and foreign exports.
I have seen nothing to suggest the IRA isn't on the exact same trajectory.
So, when something good happens: It’s Biden. But, when something bad happens: It’s Congress.
Schrödinger’s Government.
No, you're correct. It's primarily a victory of Congress. One that Biden argued for, yes, but one he ultimately did not accomplish.
Then it’s a fait accompli and no one should be upset when Biden loses.
I don't need Biden to win, I need Trump to lose. I'm all ears on other ways to make that happen.
And in becoming so focused on identifying pitfalls against combating capitalism, some of which were completely hypothetical and theoretical, Lenin became blind to the consequences of the attained power consequently corrupting purported socialists.
The USSR was a failure of revolutionists to correctly wield the power they had attained, and instead of controlling it, it controlled them. Lenin was so focused on wresting power from capitalists that he did not consider safeguards on that power.
Death does tend to limit one’s control over social situations.
He was alive to see the revolution succeed and the Bolsheviks take power, and remained healthy and in power for a few years. He didn't set up a strong, foundational government.