A fifth column is a clandestine group of people who undermine a larger group, such as a nation, from within.  If the Republicans aren’t a true fifth column they’re doing a very good job of undermining America’s economic future nevertheless.

Take, for example, our energy policies.  The US Senate, in a procedural vote unique to the Senate that requires 60 votes to do just about anything, failed to gain the 60 vote majority needed to eliminate billions of annual subsidies to Big Oil.  Fifty one Senators voted to eliminate the subsidies, a majority, but only two Republicans voted with the majority.  This is ridiculous.  Big Oil needs subsidies like we need another hole in our heads.

From an article in the New York Times:

Despite pleading by Mr. Obama, the Senate on Thursday could not produce the 60 votes necessary to pass a bill eliminating $2.5 billion a year of these subsidies. This is a minuscule amount for an industry whose top three companies in the United States alone earned more than $80 billion in profits last year. Nevertheless, in the days leading up to the vote, the American Petroleum Institute spent several million dollars on an ad campaign calling the bill “another bad idea from Washington — higher taxes that could lead to higher prices.”

If you want a snapshot of what’s really wrong with our political system, the article points it out:

In the last year, the industry spent more than $146 million lobbying Congress. In Thursday’s vote, senators who voted to preserve the tax breaks received more than four times as much as those who voted against.

Apparently Big Oil is making good use of its taxpayer subsidies.  Nothing like funding a huge propaganda machine that can gear up on a moment’s notice to tell the American public what’s good for them.

Money has always talked in Congress. Now industry allies are aiming at voters. The American Energy Alliance, a Washington-based group that does not disclose its financial sources, on Thursday began an ad campaign in eight states with competitive Congressional races.

Voters in Michigan, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado will hear a 30-second spot peddling the industry’s misleading arguments against the Obama administration’s energy policies — including the fiction that those policies have led to higher gas prices: “Since Obama became president,” it says in part, “gas prices have nearly doubled. Obama opposed exploring for energy in Alaska. He gave millions of dollars to Solyndra, which then went bankrupt. And he blocked the Keystone pipeline, so we will all pay more at the pump.”

Four sentences, four misrepresentations. Gas prices, tied to the world market, would have gone up no matter who was president. Mr. Obama has not ruled out further leasing in Alaskan waters. Solyndra, a solar panel maker, is the only big failure in a broader program aimed at encouraging nascent energy technologies. The Keystone XL oil pipeline has nothing to do with gas prices now and, even if built, would have only a marginal effect.

All this comes as President Obama, working with countries around the world, ratchets up sanctions against Iran in a diplomatic effort to get that country to open up its nuclear power program to inspection.  Among the efforts is Obama’s influence to increase production in petroleum around the world while cutting Iran’s production out of the system.  The fact is, it’s working.   Another New York Times news article explains the effort and its risks.

Beezer here.  Face it folks, we’re going to be bought and sold as long as we continue to swallow this swill.  Big oil is once again successfully protecting its subsidies and fighting anything the government might do to encourage competition from nascent industries like solar, wind, geothermal, conservation etc. etc.  Even mature industries that could compete right now, such as natural gas, can’t get enough Republican votes to push pro-gas transportation now stalled in the House. 

Republicans in Congress were just barely able to extend for 90 days funding of nationally important transportation projects.  The only conclusion is that the GOP has become, collectively, a fifth column traitor against our future economic health.

From the Economist:

The Treasury has just published a white paper full of reasons to favour additional investment. Even if you are sceptical of the utility of fiscal stimulus qua stimulus, now seems like a very good time to undertake much more investment than normal. As the Treasury paper points out, very low interest rates and high unemployment mean that the odds of crowding out private spending and investment are much lower than normal. Cheaper than normal capital and labour also imply that taxpayers will receive a better deal on spending than would typically be the case. The cost-benefit calculus on infrastructure investment has shifted toward doing more of it, or at least squeezing more expected investment into the present period. Other research, like the new Brookings paper by Brad DeLong and Larry Summers, also indicates that the bar for greater investment should be lower. Given the potential that unemployment will become increasingly persistent as time goes on, the value of government spending that reduces joblessness—even temporarily—is higher than may be appreciated. Any projects that seemed like good ideas in general, and there are a lot of them, look like really, really good ideas now.

And yet Congress has struggled mightily to keep even existing spending going. The nation’s primary transportation-funding law expired in 2009. Normally a wholesale replacement or reauthorisation would follow that expiration; Congress has instead repeatedly extended the old law while bickering over how to come up with money to replace the increasingly meagre take from the nation’s petrol tax. The latest extension is set to expire, and legislators are arguing over what to do next. They might extend the measure again—for 60 to 90 days. Or they might stonewall themselves into a temporary shutdown of all federally funded projects.

Inaction is absurd and embarrassing, especially since funding is the primary (though not the only) source of disagreement and the costs of borrowing and unemployment (and the likelihood of a decent return on infrastructure investment) indicate that just borrowing the money to spend on new roads and rails would be a reasonable course of action. If ever there should have been a policy so obviously sensible as to attract bipartisan support, more money for infrastructure was it. Right now, when it comes to partisan politics, sensibility’s got nothing to do with it.

Beezer here.  How else to figure it?  Big oligopolies in Banking, Fossil Energy, Agriculture and Health Insurance are funding Super PACs which daily bombard us with propaganda about how they still need subsidies and protections against competition.  Tea Partiers and Libertarians are so disgusted with our government’s inability to help ‘We the People,’ they’ve paradoxically joined forces with the oligopolies–the very forces that bribe our government to insure our government serves the wealthy oligopolies instead of the general population.