More "Conservative" Fuckery

"Conservatives" play this game where they dangle your job in front of you and say, "Give us what we want or we'll fuck you over."

And then they fuck you over anyway, because that's how this game is played.

Sometimes, what they want is another tax cut. Sometimes it's the OK to siphon tax money directly out of the treasury and into their pockets.

When they're whining about "gubmint reggalations", it can mean anything from forcing us to accept the poisoning of the air and the water and the soil, to stripping away more of our labor rights (or consumer protections - or civil rights - or whatever) to making it impossible for most people to make their own way in the world without selling their souls for little more than subsistence level survival.

This is Daddy State plutocracy.

Catherine Rampell, WaPo:

Last week, amid damning new testimony in the impeachment inquiry, the White House tried to change the subject by touting one of its supposed wins: President Trump’s “historic deregulation.”

“We are now reducing the size, scope, and cost of Federal regulations for the first time in decades, and we are already seeing the incredible results,” Trump said. In a Cabinet meeting, senior officials likewise offered inflated economic numbers about Trump’s “gangbusters” deregulatory achievements.

In reality, Trump’s regulatory rollback has largely been a bust. In some cases, in fact, it’s been an outright fraud: The Trump administration has added bureaucracy and uncertainty for businesses that it either willfully misunderstands or overtly dislikes.

Consider a list of Trump’s major deregulatory efforts, many of which involve allowing companies to pollute more.

Yes, there are a few identifiable, isolated winners from this agenda. Like, imagine you run a company whose business model depends on dumping lead, mercury or arsenic into the water; pumping methane or fine particulates into the air; or using pesticides that give kids brain damage. Sure, recently loosened restrictions on these toxic activities might fatten your profit margins.

But whether such policy changes significantly boost the overall economy is a different question entirely.

One reason to distrust the administration’s claims about these regulatory rollbacks: In its official cost-benefit analyses of such changes, it has used a lot of shady — one might say dishonest — assumptions. In other words, it’s cooking the books.

For instance, in some cases it has thrown out solid scientific studies that happen to produce inconvenient results. In others, it has disqualified large categories of benefits historically counted in such assessments. It has also arbitrarily scaled back estimates for the social cost of carbon. And so on.

These are all wonky, technical accounting changes that go largely unnoticed by the public. That’s by design. The goal is to make Trump’s deregulatory efforts look like they’re turbocharging the economy.

In fact, even some of the companies the Trump administration claims to be helping have protested that they’re being harmed. As a result, several major deregulatory changes have faced opposition not just from the usual tree-huggers and public-health advocates, but from industry, too. That’s been true for the administration’s laxer requirements for methane and mercury emissions, as well as its automotive fuel-efficiency standards.

In those cases — as with the trade wars — the Trump administration seems plainly confused about what policies will be “pro-business.” In others, though, its regulatory changes seem deliberately anti-business. Or at least they seem designed to hurt certain disfavored businesses or populations.


Let's take a quick look at that one aspect - Trade Wars:

Gosh - maybe the "policies" coming out of Cult45 aren't meant to achieve peace and prosperity for all, but to blow smoke in our faces while the Kleptocrats loot the joint.