I agree with the old line Republicans1, why should we pay for the indulgences and abuses of others? Now that “corporations are people too” according to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision2 they should be treated like people.
Regular people are charged more and more for garbage collection according to rising disposal costs.
Regular people pay for higher food costs because of destructive climate changes3.
Regular people pay taxes on gas to maintain roads and bridges.
Regular people pay the price for the housing crises and speculative banking practices.
Regular people pay the increasing health care costs for emergency room health care.
Almost everywhere you look regular people are considered responsible for increasing costs no matter who caused the increase.
If corporations are destroying the environment with climate change and increasing disasters, why shouldn’t they pay for it? Why should we pay for it? I suggest that we let oil companies make all the oil they want in whatever way they want too. I think we should have a national budget cost for typical historical, environmental damage including the cost of living and inflation. If the cost of environmental disasters exceed that budget, the oil companies, the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, etc. should be taxed to pay the additional recovery costs from these disasters. If the disasters are cyclical as these folks claim, when the costs go down they should be rebated the additional taxes proportional to what they paid in. Why should the burden get put solely on those that use gasoline with higher gasoline taxes? The “corporations that are people too” need to pay for the costs they incur. This logic used to be en vogue in Republican circles with Mitt and friends in something called “cap and trade” but became illogical when certain high positioned Democrats took up the cause.
If corporations too big to fail go under they need to pay the cost for economic recovery not charge it to the national debt. They should probably have insurance policies, just like regular folks do, to cover their costs in case they go under and can’t pay for their economic damages. Why should the Federal Reserve bail out the big guys and let regular folks go belly up on their houses4?
Banks and insurance companies need to be able to pay for risky investments and policy holder damages in case their bets don’t pay off. Why should regular folks pay for their maladies? Why should they get to charge it off to the national debt5? As recent history has shown, we get “cherry picked” with effectively “catastrophic” homeowners, health insurance and car insurance that we cannot use unless we want to get dropped or pay higher premiums.
Health care companies make great profits. The reason they do is because they are partly subsidized by the taxpayer for emergency room health care, Medicare and Medicaid6. Why are their profit margins covered while our health care costs go up? Why should taxpayers pick up the cost for corporations that do not pay their employees a livable wage? Why should we pay for food stamps and health care while these corporations pad their pockets with profits at our expense? Again, Mitt and friends found a logical alternative to this only later to be loudly decried on the right as “Obama-care”.
War hawks should sign up to pay for their wars from their political parties contributions and wealthy donors if they are hell bent on stating wars7. Why should I pay for a war I never wanted and have to live with the consequences of my lost family members. I think good ‘ol Republican boys that are gun-ho ought to be the first ones on the front line.
Let everyone that wants a gun get one but if the gun gets used to kill someone the gun owner and the company that made the guns ought to pay all costs and damages associated with their destruction. They should also pay for higher law enforcement costs. We should have VERY stiff fines and prison sentences for those that do not lock up their guns and keep them out of the hands of unlicensed gun owners.8
These folks need to pull their own weight and quit relying on the corporate welfare, nanny state to keep bailing them out. Many of these additional costs fall on the backs of regular folks. Why can’t these predominately Republican folks live up to their own professed ideology? They complain about the nanny state when it comes to others while sponging off the nanny state in understated or re-stated ways when it comes to them.
It seems to me that folks are all too happy to profess a Republican ideology9 when it comes to other folks but when it comes to them they become, shall we say, covert Democrats. Of course, they do not process it that way. They have all kinds of ways to rationalize their hypocrisy10. They call it ‘free market’, environmental liberal lie of climate change, Democratic nannies, politician Social Security robbers, “I get the Medicare I already paid for”, Medicaid bleeding heart liberals, etc11. They have many ways to rationalize their implicit Democratic concerns about themselves in terms of good ‘ol Republican values.
If the free market really is the best way to distribute goods and reward risk-takers12, the burden should rest on the risk takers not on folks that never took the risk. Why can’t we have a free market that really works as it is professed to work. Reward and punishment need to fall on the backs of the ones that take the risks and reap the rewards. If it does not then we have the dreaded nanny state albeit under the guise of blaming others for their failures.
As I have previously pointed out13, many conservative have enlarged amygdales. The evolutionary ancient amygdale is the fear center of the brain. It is highly functional for fight or flight. Unfortunately, it cares little about consistency and contradiction. That part has to do with the anterior cingulated cortex, a more recent evolutionary innovation. Our future will not rest on fear, deception, and brute power to uphold insane, contradictory and hypocritical ideologies but on compromise, error correction, and critical thinking. We need to hold ourselves and others to the same standard, whatever it may be, and not find ways to propagate our advantage at the cost of those that had nothing to do with us, our failures and our risks. Isn’t this a ‘conservative’ value?
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1 See Conservatism and Liberalism: A Historical Perspective
See The Question of Conservatism
2 See Money is Free Speech?
3 See The Ryan Plan: Part 3
4 See Latest Observations on the Housing and Economic Crisis
5 See Myths Exposed: President Obama is Responsible for Historic U.S. Federal Debt and Spending Levels
6 See FAQs on Health Care Reform
See Health Care in Louisiana and Massachusetts-Bobby Jindal and Bill Cassidy
See Mitt and Friends
7 See Wars Started by Republicans Including Vietnam
See A Case for Bashing the Democrats
See Why We Still Sacrifice Our Young
See War on Terrorism
See Nearly Every Member of Congress Voted for Intervention in Iraq?
See Freedom Handout
8 See How to make gun control work…
9 See The Great Lie: The Great Depression and Recessions of the United States
See Poor Rich Folks
See A vote against Big Government is a vote for Big Business
10 See The Fox and the Hen House
11 See Problems with Medicare and Medicaid
12 See Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School and Regulation
13 See The Conservative and Liberal Brain