Crapitalism by Jason Mattera

Author:Jason Mattera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Threshold Editions

17 Tom Steyer

Really, what we’re trying to do is to make a point that people who make good decisions on this should be rewarded, and people should be aware that if they do the wrong thing, the American voters are watching and they will be punished.

—Thomas Steyer

In early April 2013, about one hundred guests gathered at the home of hedge fund manager and climate change activist Tom Steyer. Steyer’s home, located in San Francisco’s wealthy Sea Cliff neighborhood, overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge. 1 The real estate website Zillow.com lists the property as being worth nearly $6 million. Steyer’s palace serves as a pep rally of sorts for his fellow activists. It’s also hosted an Obama fundraiser.

After Steyer’s wife, Kat, entertained everyone with a song (this is how rich people do things; I will write you a check, Mr. President, after you listen to my wife croon), Tom introduced the guest of honor.

“He is doing everything he can on the issues that we care about,” Steyer said. “He has political limitations . . . so we really have an obligation to help him. We are like role players in basketball. And we have the great star gunner who has to take the star shot . . . we have the best left-handed shameless gunner in the world.” 2

But the president hadn’t been scoring as many points for the climate change activists as the rest of the team would have liked. He tried to explain why, noting “the politics of this are tough”:

Because if you haven’t seen a raise in a decade; if your house is still twenty-five thousand, thirty thousand dollars under water; if you’re just happy that you’ve still got that factory job that is powered by cheap energy; if every time you go to fill up your old car because you can’t afford to buy a new one, and you certainly can’t afford to buy a Prius, you’re spending forty bucks that you don’t have, which means that you may not be able to save for retirement. . . . You may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but it’s probably not rising to your No. 1 concern. 3

Obama told the folks in the room they would need to balance their concern for the planet with “a genuine, passionate concern about middle class families” and explain to those few peasants that he is “working just as hard for them as we are for an environmental agenda. And that’s going to take some work.” 4

Steyer, however, is committed to doing something about “global warming.” But his concern has as much to do with the way that agenda helps his own family as with how it might help the planet. And he is anything but middle class.

Referencing the influential conservative Koch brothers, Steyer said, “I completely disagree, because what they’re doing is standing up for ideas that they profit from. We think we’re representing the vast bulk of citizens of the United States. We’re not representing our pockets.”

Like the idea that human activity is causing the temperature of the planets to rise, that’s a lie.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.