Disaster Capitalism is the Republican Plan

Disaster Capitalism = Predatory Capitalism = The Republican Plan.

This is the Republican ideal. It’s their goal. It’s the reason they like government to “get out of the way”. So their friends in the private sector can loot the vulnerable. This isn’t to say private business is all predatory, but lack of oversight and the chaos of unpreparedness tends to declare open season on victims of disaster.

This long read from Naomi Klein is worth sharing

The Right loves unpreparedness because it strips the vulnerable of all defenses and sets them up for profiteers to prey on.The Right, the GOP, and Wall Street see disasters as a profit opportunity. That’s why they see government as the enemy.

The Intercept describes how Houston was intentionally left unprepared

Republicans––not all of Republicans but certainly the leadership and the dominant wing of the party––see problems as an opportunity to exploit the vulnerable for profit.

There are also disasters that unfold more slowly and broadly and don’t need a giant storm to monetize. Our unfair system of housing in this country is a disaster that’s been in place for a hundred years. It was put in place by Jim Crow laws in the South, and by Jim Crow members of Congress who dominated federal rules and regulations. The racists used to dominate the Democratic Party until Humphrey and LBJ drove them out in the 50s and 60s. Those racists were welcomed with open arms by Nixon’s Southern Strategy, and the Republican Party has been White Folks Central ever since… with the occasional person of color included for decoration.

Predatory mortgage contracts designed to fleece people of color have come back because of bigotry in this Republican Congress and Republican dominated state legislatures:

Chuck Collins writes about how unfair housing enriches the few Loan sharking is back, thanks to this Republican president and this Republican congress.

The Stink of the New Republican Revolution

From The Nation: the powerful who deplore working class people who aren’t working are the ones who are getting rid of the jobs those people used to rely on.

The last time jobs went away was in the 30s, and FDR created the New Deal to help save working people from disaster. Now Newt Gingrich is bragging how Trump and the Republicans are planning to rip out everything FDR put in place. Reported by ThinkProgress.

Paul Ryan, the pious, serious-looking Republican who rules Congress is the guy who will take the big knife to the safety net. What do you call someone who benefits from a program and then takes it away from other people who need it? Hypocrite. Yeah, Ryan is a class-A hypocrite. He plans to take away Social Security from working people but he grew up on Social Security benefits. The whole hypocritical story reported by Alternet.

Republicans find working people useful for gaining power but are happy to ditch them when it’s convenient–––and they find it’s always convenient to ditch working people. In this time of Christian devotion they seem to think Jesus preferred rich people and disliked the poor. I’m not sure which part of the New Testament this is drawn from but it certainly shapes all of GOP policy––Praise God! The New Republic summarizes the Republican Revised Standard Version of the New Testament.

Notice the bad smell coming from North Carolina? Is it the hog industry’s vast lakes of pig poop or is it the politics? The politics do stink in NC. The Republicans redrew the voting districts to confine majority Democrats into a permanent legislative minority. A ghetto project if there ever was one. But this year a Democrat defeated the Republican for the governorship. The legi answered by stripping the governor’s office of its staff and its powers. PeeeeeeYeeewwwww. A lot of the Republicans’ power (and money) comes from the hog industry. Maybe the pig should replace the noble elephant. Of course the pig is much nobler than what we are seeing in this failed state.

Bill Moyers on the stink of North Carolina's hog-manure Republicanism.

SLATE on the Republican coup in NC.

Meanwhile, in another failed state, Wisconsin…. Republican governor Scott Walker, the college dropout who is busily turning the University of Wisconsin from a premier university into a second rate one, is now reshaping all state bureaus and departments so all their information conforms to his belief that climate change is a Chinese hoax, and the environment does best when we fill the air and water with industrial waste.

UrbanMilwaukee on the Republican censoring of the state environmental scientists.