Whom the GOP Serves by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

[Joanne98]

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
February 19, 2009

One of Ronald Reagan’s first acts on his first full day in office, January 21, 1981, was to completely shut down the alternate/renewable energy program that Jimmy Carter established in the late 1970s. At that time, a few scientists were already predicting global warming. However, there was little data and most of the science that was going on was in the realm of hypothesis. What was known for sure at that time was that however much more oil and other fossil fuels were eventually discovered, they would eventually run out. There is only a finite supply of the stuff in the Earth. The only variable is that we don’t know just how much there is or how much it would cost to extract every last ounce of it. At some time, if civilization were to be preserved, other sources of energy would have to be developed. Furthermore, at that time it was know for sure that if all of the petro-chemicals were burned up, much of the stuff of modern life, from plastics to pharmaceuticals, would disappear as well.

So Carter was more likely to be thinking about “peak oil” than he was about global warming when he set up the alternative energy research program and when he had solar panels, pretty primitive ones in those days, installed on the roof of the White House. Of course, those panels went pretty quickly too. But that was of little interest to the powers that put Reagan in office.

After a lifetime as a “B” movie actor, a hawker of cigarettes, and a shill for the AMA when in the mid-1960s it was going after Medicare as meaning the death of American medicine and the imminent arrival of socialism on these shores, Ronald Reagan was given his biggest roles. The first was as the acting (not Acting, unfortunately) Governor of California. Then came the acting (again not Acting) President. (I cannot take credit for the appellation “acting President.” It is the title of a book by Bob Schieffer and Gary Paul Gates that does not treat Reagan too kindly. Yes, indeed that is that Bob Schieffer, who in his old age has morphed into the political equivalent of Casper Milquetoast. My contemporaries will know who that was.) He was given that role by those elements of the U.S. power elite that have dominated the GOP since his election.

On Nov. 8, 1956, after his re-election, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said: “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.” Unfortunately, Eisenhower was wrong.

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/whom-the-gop-serves-by-steven-jonas-md-mph/