If it's known by three letters, is not military or law enforcement, and has a .gov website, you can be sure Republicans are outraged and want to defund it. Short of Photoshopped fetuses or marriage licenses with two "Mr.s," nothing riles up "conservatives" like the 3 letters E-P-A. In their minds regulations are barriers, especially to Koch profits and campaign dollars. Somewhere I'm sure there's an app Republican congressmen have that tells them how much money they'll get for every regulation they kill. Anyway, who the hell needs an Environmental Protection Agency when the planet is fit as a fiddle -- a strapping, young 6,000 year old ball of godplasm?
To that end, just mid summer this year, the elected Extremists tried to slice a chunk of the EPA's budget larger than the ice shelves cleaving off the Antarctic continent.
The House of Representatives is currently debating an appropriations bill that would reduce the EPA’s budget by $718 million, or by 9 percent, and prohibit certain environmental regulations, including a sweeping proposal from the Obama administration to tackle carbon emissions.
Holy farfegnugen, cut to this month. (Do I really need to link to it?) The world's newly crowned global leader in auto sales, a darling of eco-conscious brands, Volkswagen publicly admitted to doctoring the emissions software in 11 million cars sold globally, including 500,000 in the U.S. The damages in fines and retro-fitting of cars will exceed tens of billions. This excludes potential civil action by owners and 650 very pissed off dealers in the U.S. who no less than
538 tells us all pretty much self-identify as Republicans.
It turns out that all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats...
Half its paper value is gone from its stock value. It's among the largest and most brazen frauds perpetrated by a multinational company. Only the LIBOR scandal by the banking cabal may be worse, even if it was too arcane for a soundbite-sotted American public to digest. But we drive these things, we love our cars and we pay dearly for them, so the public gets this scandal.
And who caught them first? A group of public university scientists operating off a grant from an international clean air non-profit. Now, this would pretty much be the definition of a suckling satan in the mind of a Republican. Academics from a profit-stealing school! Scientists who accept climate change! Environmental non-profit! International meddlers! Except the university is in Red State West Virginia.
The data they uncovered was funneled to the EPA, which has regulatory control of such things, and it was able to dig deeper and confirm the fraud. As liberals we of course know this is why we have regulations in the first place, but for Republicans, this situation epically ties them into knots and this is where Democrats have a platinum opportunity to destroy so many Right wing memes.
1. It proves the liberal assertion that without regulations, companies will do anything for profits.
2. It validates the EPA's existence, why it's budget should be expanded, not cut.
3. It illustrates the public good of public universities.
4. Any public discussion invariably leads to discussion of carbon emissions, climate science, and thus man made climate change, or at least it's too damned close for anyone on the Right to go there.
5. It showcases the risks of privatizing social security, especially how disastrous it'd be where deregulation encourages greedy corporate behavior.
How do we know this situation has the Right scared out of its mind? Because this is what we've heard from them so far:
**crickets**
That's right, finding a Republican quote on this major story is as rare as finding a GOP politician acting as a grand marshal in a gay pride parade.
To be sure, there are no winners here. This is a burden for people with these cars, a disaster for workers at auto plants around the world and the chain reaction that will ensure (it ain't called a 'supply chain' for nothing), since VW has deep ties to many brands, from Porsche to Skoda to Audi. But how this happened is worthy of public hearings, for many reasons. So I request Democratic senators and Congresspeople call for public hearings.
...And when that happens, let's use at least that list of 5 realities to force the Extremists in office to hoist themselves on their own petards.