On the coming elections
In my 2016 annual Christmas letter to my friends I suggested that the election of Donald Trump and the UK decision to exit the European Union (Brexit) had more to do with wealth inequality, which back then and still now keeps increasing over these last 40 years.
When 1 percent of the population has more wealth than 99 percent of the population, as revealed by such as Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and others, the anger of ordinary workers with pay raises that have reduced them to poverty is understandable.
Both political parties are now trying to fix this social injustice: Democratic presidential candidates offer various job proposals, Trump grants actual tax rebates ($12,000 as a standard rebate for all). Most of you realize that tax rebates won’t solve the wealth inequality problem even though it hopes to influence the presidential election.
But when we turn to the state elections, here the issue becomes climate change. In Virginia, the use of coal and gas energy to produce electricity is more profitable to private utilities, like Dominion and Appalachian Power, then relying on solar and wind energy. Those corporations own their fossil energy sources.
Thus, Dominion Energy has controlled what bills get passed and what are jettisoned by the General Assembly down at Richmond. Climate change in the past has been treated as bogus or not serious by Dominion’s supporters in the legislature and their sponsored ALEX law team churned out bills sent to numerous other state legislatures to stick with fossil fuel. (See Ivy Main who covers only energy bills viewed by our General Assembly every year, and who writes a marvelous blog about her energy concerns regarding fossil fuel: https://powerforthepeople.com).
Climate change, however, has finally been viewed by the common citizen as a dangerous threat to their lives as well as to their property. Continuing floods, fires due to drought, and violent storms make the increasing CO 2 emissions into a growing danger. Even school children visit our governments now to protest their massacres and future lives because corporate profit controls these governments at both federal and state levels.
Whether it’s the NRA or private utilities, profit should not be made into an ultimate value as Wall Street claims. Indeed Wall Street believes that corporations should be running our government, not people, and they now do. Fortunately, women seem to understand their children’s needs much better according to our last Virginia elections. The rest of us should follow their lead in both coming elections.