In the past twenty-four hours, there have been a couple recommended diaries concerning the Cato Institute: "
Judgement Day: The Constitution vs. George W. Bush.....let's get ready to ruuuuuuuuummmmmmmmble!" and "
Cato: taxes must be increased to stop Bush's Big Government.
Some see these Cato Institute positions as triumphal evidence that the tide has turned and now that the Cato Institute is against Bush, impeachment can only be around the corner. The Cato Institute is finally seeing the light, some gush. United together, the Democratic Party and the libertarians, are going to save the country and then save the world, some cheer.
Yea! Rah! Not so fast...
The libertarian propagandists at the Cato Institute may agree Bush should be impeached and the country must pay-as-it-goes, but they still are of the failed mindset of 'free markets and corporations will save the world'.
Case in point, the Cato Institute is wrong about Global Warming. The Cato Institute publishes anti-regulation, pro-corporation claptrap like Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global Warming, "Terminating the Economy," "Warming to Efficiency" where carbon dioxide is the "breath of our civilization" and increasing it is the necessary "cost of economic growth".
The Cato Institute's position matches the stance from another failed political philosophy that of the republican party. The republican party and libertarians at the Cato Institute share these beliefs: environmental regulations are bad because they might hurt the economy which is bad for business and there for you too.
"The issue of global warming, though presented as a matter of scientific certainty, is actually highly controverted," writes Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. George W. Bush agrees: "First of all, there is -- the globe is warming. The fundamental debate: Is it manmade or natural." Then their shared love of this tired rhetorical chant that fighting global warming is bad for the economy "Total economic output would take a huge hit... Within a few more years lost employment could rise above 1.6 million, with several more million jobs at risk in 'vulnerable industries,'" according to Bandow. Bush agrees, "For America, complying with those [Kyoto] mandates would have a negative economic impact, with layoffs of workers and price increases for consumers."
Unfortunately for the Cato Institute, the republicans didn't perfectly carry out the libertarian ideals. The party of big business turned out to be the party of bigger government paid for by tax deferrals. So now by jumping off Bush's republican bandwagon, libertarian Cato Institute is trying to rescue their failed policy ideas from this failed government.
The Cato Institute and many other libertarians still feel 'free markets and businesses will save the world'. Digby writes that libertarians have Nothing To Offer:
One of the things I find most interesting about the global warming debate is that the libertarian view of how to run the world is completely inadequate in the face of such a thing. Not that it stops them from trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, of course.
Last week the "Competitive Enterprise Institute" unveiled a couple of hilarious ads about global warming in which they literally extoll the virtues of carbon monoxide as "life."
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Global warming is a mutual, planetary challenge and the conservatives and wingnut libertarians who see money as freedom can do nothing but put their heads in the sand and pretend it isn't happening. The only question is whether it will kill their bankrupt ideology before their bankrupt ideology kills the planet.
With business, no profit means no motive and no leadership. Corporations are not out to save the world and consumers mostly are not an agent for positive change. The problem with waiting for businesses to save the world is it isn't profitable. If it was, there wouldn't be a problem today with global warming. We all breathe the same air and live on the same planet. There is no profit motivation to improve the world for the collective good. Polluting is cheaper and thus more profitable.
Corporations are concerned about profits, not people or the planet. I believe that only a democratic government of educated, informed citizens will work for the common good. Global warming is just one issue we Democrats and libertarians disagree upon. A few other examples would be privatizing Social Security and public lands, and providing universal, single-payer health care for all Americans.
Democrats should be very wary of these sea change libertarians.