File:They are going to take your Hamburgers away etc.jpg

Hamburgers, Hot Dogs & Smirks

Let's take a quick look at a clip from an article by Kate Aranoff, then a brief commentary on the state of politics in the U.S.

By Kate Aranoff

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, holds a hamburger while making a statement during the Western Caucus's press conference on the Green New Deal bill at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 27, 2018.

For years, the terms of the debate about climate change in the United States have been clear. One side — flush with fossil fuel cash — cast doubt on whether the problem existed at all, spreading disinformation and calling global warming an elaborate hoax to bring about socialism. For the most part, they were Republicans.

On the other side were those who believed the science and usually rallied around some call for climate action, however vague.

The conversation around the Green New Deal has brought those sides together, as politicians on both sides of the aisle scramble to cobble together a third way.

That Republicans being paid by the fossil fuel industry have come out against a plan for the United States to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 is hardly surprising. That they’re being joined by prominent Democrats in casting doubt on the idea is a signal for how old tribalisms around climate change are starting to radically shift.

“The Anti-Green New Deal Coalition,” a new report from the Public Accountability Initiative, or PAI, attempts to map these evolving allegiances.

Unsurprisingly, a common bipartisan thread in Green New Deal opposition is fossil fuel donations. Raking in 81 percent of all oil and gas donations since 1990, today’s GOP “operates as a de facto wing of the fossil fuel industry,” the report’s authors write. The exclusively white, male, and Republican leadership of the Congressional Western Caucus is a prime example. In the last election cycle, it accepted $837,480 from political action committees linked to the energy and natural resources industry, a fraction of the $4.3 million that same group has taken in from fossil fuel PACs over the course of its career. On Wednesday, the caucus hosted a “policy forum” on the Green New Deal — a “Green Pipe Dream,” as they call it — flanked by a who’s who of the country’s most prominent climate deniers, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell to ClimateDepot founder Marc Morano. Ceremoniously, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, ate a hamburger.

KA:

Every single @SenateGOP member has lied on the Senate floor about the #GreenNewDeal.

It does not:

1. Cost $93 trillion - that's a Koch-funded talking point

2. Kill cows

3. Eliminate nuclear

4. Stop air travel

5. Decommission nuclear

6. Rule out CCS

7. Kill private sector

Follow the Money: Paymasters and Marching Orders

• PoliticoPay -- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Money_in_Politics

They have been called "Merchants of Doubt". Too often their politics present politics of big money at work.

The history of climate science denial is a case study of political forces richly financed by interest groups, much of this as "Dark Money" funneled out of sight, powerful brokers wielding inordinate influence. The results of these powerful paymasters are proving to be far from what consensus science says is a rising, existential threat to life as we know it.

In contrast to earth systems science and warnings, and efforts to find solutions to human-produced damage, the goal of some is deny and block, to misinform.... to mock, exaggerate, throw up hashtags and memes.

Political tactics include'flooding the zone', where a strategy attempts to set the terms of a debate with a coordinated release of talking points. The examples of this are numerous but one of the recent cases included the U.S. Affordable Care Act, where the costs and failures of the U.S. health system are set aside, while opponents of the ACA broadcast extreme claims with press conferences, media releases, quotes and social media, spokesperson-by-spokesperson talk of "death panels", illusory government "death panels" that supposedly will rule on "your grandma and grandpa's fate".

The ACA campaign of misinformation 'succeeded' in that the polling numbers indicated that core target audiences picked up the anti health care refrain and carried it as a chanted banner, while health care crisis facts were ignored and the U.S. health system continued to be an outlier among nations.

In March 2019, money in politics talking points are back with attacks on the Green New Deal in its beginning stages, when no legislation has yet been proposed, no hearings held, no policy debates yet scheduled in Congress. Yet already the attacks and exaggerations and deceptions abound, gotcha politics in the daily news cycle is extreme in its charges and claims as opponents attempt to set the framework of the green debate (e.g., no planes, no cars, no cows, no hamburgers, etc. etc.) Although absurd, and even comical as these claims are, the targeted audiences pick up the refrain and buy into the lines of attack. Smirk, they're coming for your cows and 'they' are gonna take away your hamburgers... Hurry, no time to wait, run to your computer and send out the Twitter memes!

• Merchants of Doubt at work ... Money in politics, big spending, deals and secrets with profound impacts.

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