Musk's American Party: A threat or a promise?

Hans Blaster said:

Oh, were making up bills again now with contrived clauses to defend the religious rights of factories to not make woke semiconductors. (Note spelling) You're going to have to prove to me that factories can accept Jesus as their savior first.

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It was a real bill

I was saying as a hypothetical that if he had tossed "And defending the religious freedom of business owners" (which, is just code for "and let business owners discriminate against gays"), Democrats would be right to be skeptical of it and call out his shenanigans in that scenario.

Hans Blaster said:

I forget, why is this a problem?

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Because climate change is a big enough issue that it'll require bipartisan acceptance, and they're quasi holding it hostage by refusing to decouple it from extremely polarizing partisan ideologies thereby making it toxic to a substantial portion of the population.

When proposals/bills/etc... lump in a bunch of ideological "pet projects" for one side or the other, it immediately runs the risk of making half of the public resist it and dig their heels in.

Hans Blaster said:

I see, everyone in Appalachia works in coal or coal related industries and is definitely not Black. I'm beginning to thing you'e never even been there.

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The demographic data doesn't lie

• 3.8% of all coal miners are women, while 96.2% are men.
• The average coal miner age is 40 years old.
• The most common ethnicity of coal miners is White (89.4%), followed by Hispanic or Latino (6.1%), Black or African American (3.8%)

So what I mentioned still applies.

When all of the social justice gets injected, the message that's getting conveyed is:

"We want to replace this sector that's overwhelmingly comprised of white guys and replace it with this other thing, for which we're going to heavily focus our investments, grants, and federal loans toward everyone but white guys"


Why does replacing fossil fuels with solar/wind need to involve "trying to promote racial equity" or "prioritizing everyone but straight white men for public investment" in the new initiatives?


Stuff like this:



"justice must be at the center of federal climate and environmental policy"
"justice must be the central priority of new climate legislation"
"A historic climate bill that prioritizes justice communities while reducing emissions, lowering energy costs, creating jobs, and propelling our nation toward a clean economy"


Hmmm...and here I was thinking that "getting people to replace the dirtier stuff with cleaner options, and getting companies to pollute less"

It would seem as if the "justice stuff" is even more important to them than the stated cause itself.

If they'd said "prioritizes reducing emissions, while taking into account justice", there would've at least been a defense.

But they said they're prioritizing justice (and not only that, making it the "central priority") in their new climate action plans.

For anything calling itself "Climate legislation", "Climate" should be the central focus and priority, every other side-ideology should be secondary at best.


Countries outside the U.S. have had greater success passing and implementing climate legislation when it is focused narrowly on emissions reduction and energy policy, rather than being bundled with broader political or social agendas.

I would suggest reading the study entitled

Neutral and negative effects of policy bundling on support for decarbonization​

Or, if you just want to see the abstract/conclusion of the study:
Decarbonization policies are frequently combined with other policies to increase public support or address societal issues. To investigate the consequences of policy bundling, we conducted a survey experiment with 2,521 adults. We examined the effects of bundling decarbonization with policies favored by liberals (social justice and economic redistribution), broad bipartisan coalitions (infrastructure), and conservatives (pausing EPA regulations) on public support and polarization. Bundling with pausing EPA regulations decreased support and polarization by reducing liberal support without significantly increasing conservative support. Bundling with social justice decreased support while increasing polarization by reducing conservative support without significantly increasing liberal support. Policy bundling thus risks decreasing public support for decarbonization policies by alienating one ideological side of the electorate without gaining support from the other side.

ThatRobGuy said:

It was a real bill

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/11/ted-cruz-senate-faa/

I was saying as a hypothetical that if he had tossed "And defending the religious freedom of business owners" (which, is just code for "and let business owners discriminate against gays"), Democrats would be right to be skeptical of it and call out his shenanigans in that scenario.


Because climate change is a big enough issue that it'll require bipartisan acceptance, and they're quasi holding it hostage by refusing to decouple it from extremely polarizing partisan ideologies thereby making it toxic to a substantial portion of the population.

When proposals/bills/etc... lump in a bunch of ideological "pet projects" for one side or the other, it immediately runs the risk of making half of the public resist it and dig their heels in.

Click to expand...

So it wasn't a fake bill, but a fake section of a bill. But it was the important part of your rhetorical argument against -- as it was the gotcha, whatabout, false equivalency, or whatever you are up to this time -- section of the "bill as presented" that was fake. No dumb games, man.

ThatRobGuy said:

The demographic data doesn't lie

• 3.8% of all coal miners are women, while 96.2% are men.
• The average coal miner age is 40 years old.
• The most common ethnicity of coal miners is White (89.4%), followed by Hispanic or Latino (6.1%), Black or African American (3.8%)

Click to expand...

Did ya not read what I said. I wasn't talking about the demographics of the coal industry, but rather of Appalachia and the fraction of Appalachians who are engaged in coal mining.

ThatRobGuy said:

So what I mentioned still applies.

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It does not.

ThatRobGuy said:

When all of the social justice gets injected, the message that's getting conveyed is:

"We want to replace this sector that's overwhelmingly comprised of white guys and replace it with this other thing, for which we're going to heavily focus our investments, grants, and federal loans toward everyone but white guys"

Click to expand...

Coal mining was dying anyway and was rather destructive to the environment that the people you claim to defend actually live in.

ThatRobGuy said:

Why does replacing fossil fuels with solar/wind need to involve "trying to promote racial equity" or "prioritizing everyone but straight white men for public investment" in the new initiatives?


Stuff like this:

https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.1.22%20Advancing%20Environmental%20Justice%20Report.pdf

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2021/text

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/CN/CN00/CPRT-116-CN00-D001.pdf

"justice must be at the center of federal climate and environmental policy"
"justice must be the central priority of new climate legislation"
"A historic climate bill that prioritizes justice communities while reducing emissions, lowering energy costs, creating jobs, and propelling our nation toward a clean economy"


Hmmm...and here I was thinking that "getting people to replace the dirtier stuff with cleaner options, and getting companies to pollute less"

It would seem as if the "justice stuff" is even more important to them than the stated cause itself.

If they'd said "prioritizes reducing emissions, while taking into account justice", there would've at least been a defense.

But they said they're prioritizing justice (and not only that, making it the "central priority") in their new climate action plans.

For anything calling itself "Climate legislation", "Climate" should be the central focus and priority, every other side-ideology should be secondary at best.


Countries outside the U.S. have had greater success passing and implementing climate legislation when it is focused narrowly on emissions reduction and energy policy, rather than being bundled with broader political or social agendas.

I would suggest reading the study entitled

Neutral and negative effects of policy bundling on support for decarbonization​

Climatic Change

Climatic Change is an international English-language journal which offers an interdisciplinary forum for the scientific exchange on problems related to ...

link.springer.com

Or, if you just want to see the abstract/conclusion of the study:
Decarbonization policies are frequently combined with other policies to increase public support or address societal issues. To investigate the consequences of policy bundling, we conducted a survey experiment with 2,521 adults. We examined the effects of bundling decarbonization with policies favored by liberals (social justice and economic redistribution), broad bipartisan coalitions (infrastructure), and conservatives (pausing EPA regulations) on public support and polarization. Bundling with pausing EPA regulations decreased support and polarization by reducing liberal support without significantly increasing conservative support. Bundling with social justice decreased support while increasing polarization by reducing conservative support without significantly increasing liberal support. Policy bundling thus risks decreasing public support for decarbonization policies by alienating one ideological side of the electorate without gaining support from the other side.

Click to expand...

Since I don't plan to play you little games, why not a new, Musk related question:

Will the party be aligning with the Grok chatbot, now that Grok has gone full Nazi?