Your right! Bush kept the Iraq & Afghanistan war off the budget & Obama out it back in when came into office. The GOP counts on America's short memory span, especially around election time. http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/xp-25651
There's another reason the U.S. is completely hosed as far as our nuclear power goes. The pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear forces have basically been in a death grip for decades. The anti-nukes want to get rid of nuclear power plants. The pro-nukers want to build new ones. However, neither of them can actually get what they want. What they can both do, however, is apply political pressure so the other guys don't get what they want. So the pro-nukers can't get new plants built, but they can keep the anti-nukers from having them shut down. Nobody is happy with it and we're all worse off as a result. One thing that annoys me with liberal anti-nukers (including Al Gore) is that nuclear power is one of the few carbon neutral replacements for generating LARGE amounts of energy and putting a dent in our foreign oil consumption. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore puts up a graphic at one point with a pie chart, based on data from a UN report on carbon neutral replacements for fossil fuels. I went and looked at the actual report. It prominently contained nuclear energy. Al Gore left that out. Douchehat.
As a nuclear agnostic, I'm not entirely displeased with this state of affairs. When we DO start building power generation plants again, we'll almost certainly have a better handle on the engineering issues and waste disposal than we had, back when we WERE building them before. And yes; we really ought to have a trash can figured out, before we start generating lots more garbage. Its going to take some unhappy compromises; my guess is something like a Presidential mandate. I do think the longer we can hold off, before jumping gung-ho in, the better off we'll be- because at best it will probably only be a stop-gap for a few generations, until all the "easy Uranium" is dug up. I'd be happier if we're already planning for the replacement for Nukes, when the nuclear economy gets up to steam. Also, the more democratic and stable sub-saharan Africa is when we "go nuclear", the happier everyone will be, all around. Regardless of how hard it is to turn yellowcake into fission bombs, the more U comes up, the more shit will go down.
Iraq was supposed to pay for itself, Afghanistan, AND fatten the Corporations at the trough with Iraqi oil money. We banked on it. It was this singular failure that tanked our economy, and that failure belongs to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Here, you can see representatives of Corporations we all know meet to discuss how to cut up the pie:
Cool! I wanna engage back, but I'm toasted from working all day and getting all wound up on the internets last night. So I will be brief: Mr. Koch, Americans are good people who will tackle any problem and will do right by this world, provided they are given solid, accurate information rather than useless marketing bullshit or feel-good political pap. Please do what you can to protect our triers of fact --our judges, journalists, and scientists. They are our eyes and ears. Many are intimidated, silenced, or slandered by greedy businessmen chasing after short term advantages. Thanks in advance for any assistance you may provide. Sincerely, PB Grebe, MD President and CEO Get This Fucking Bullshit Integrative Medicine Nonsense Out of Mah Sciences!!!!!11!!!1, Inc.
My understanding is that there was also some concern about the effects on jobs of factory automation driven by cheap electricity in the politics of the day - Three Mile Island and the Gas Crunch of the Carter administration are pretty much the marker - we've been stuck since 1977... Personally, I'd like to see nuke plants and true bullet trains happening. And Municipal Monorail.
Seems to me that we have something worked out in Nevada, but people are getting sqeamish about the waste being transported there. I think we can manage all that just fine, and ought to be using that facility.
I guess these questions will seem stupid to some of you but I'll ask anyway because I'm curious to see the responses. It seems relevant here given Koch's commentary. This is not a troll by the way. This is an ongoing conversation and debate among my friends who come from across the political spectrum. It has created some very interesting conversations from all sorts of angles. There are some assumptions my friends have agreed upon as inherent in the questions which are important to point out: 1) corporations exist to make a profit for the owners/shareholders and that is not an evil thing to do, and 2) people will have a wide range of opinions on what it means to be "American" so be clear about what you mean. The questions are intended for that kind of open interpretation. Ok, here we go: Is it un-American for American companies to seek greater profits at the expense of the American worker? Is it un-American for American companies to rely on loopholes and off-shore subsidiaries to avoid tax payments to the American people? Is it permissible for the profit motive of corporations to take priority over a responsibility to the country and system that make such success possible? Does such a responsibility even exist?
You're half right. I hate what you're saying, but I have no opinion about you. The only places hydrogen has proven cost-effective are places with easy access to geothermal power. I also hate nuclear energy, because weaponized or not, the waste will still be a serious environmental hazard for an additional 10,000 years or more. Granted, it would help the cost of tritium for watch dials and watch hands go down, but the cost of nuclear energy far, far outweigh the benefits in the long term. On the East Coast of the United States, I like offshore wind farms and tidal turbines, as I do in the Midwest. In the Southwest, do I really have to say solar? But the solar I like is not the one you're probably imagining. I prefer solar thermal energy, preferably with a design that uses molten salt or another medium to store heat when the sun is not shining; though for home use, I support a dish design such as that by Stirling Energy Systems. The Mountain West is an obvious choice for geothermal power with Yellowstone and the surrounding few thousand square miles being a dormant supervolcano. The West Coast, I see tidal and wind power. And finally, in the Gulf states, I really like tidal turbines fueled by the Gulf Stream. All of this is using technology that is either off the shelf or not far from it. In conjunction with this, however, must come increases in energy efficiency for every appliance. We can and should do more to deal with finite resources. Of course, I want to see a 115 mpg (2L/100 km) 5 adult passenger car and the death of the SUV (partially because I hate SUV drivers; bastards think they own the fucking road), but that's just the start. For the other things we use petroleum products for, plastics, there are currently compostable corn-based and bacteria-based plastics on the market, in use every day. Hydrogen? Storing highly flammable and highly pressurized gas, with no easy means of local manufacture or transport? Do not want!
Wait, someone leaving out any portion of the facts that cast doubt on their own preconceived idea of everything? That doesn't sound like American politics at all.
As much as anything, that's where my worry resides. Given human history on using non-renewable resources, I kind of wonder if we wouldn't hit the "snooze button" on developing renewable energy yet again if we didn't have such an immediate concern over energy.
I am worried the Kochs might be fascists, literally. That worry is based upon what I know of the John Birch Society and the more racist elements of the Tea Party demonstrations that I've seen. I don't want a hereditary aristocracy in America. Bad bad bad. My fears would be assuaged if the boys were more transparent and didn't use paid proxies to promote their political views.
IF Koch is so fucking interested in helping the government to balance its budget he should pay his fucking share of taxes.
Profits have to be made by actually producing something and having a product to sell. Profits made by tax cuts produce nothing. Profits by tax cuts do not create more jobs because nothing of value was manufactured or sold to make that profit. Hence producing no more jobs, in fact it produced less jobs what with all the layoffs because companies made poor investments. Your plan would work in a perfect world but as we all know it's far from perfect. I do agree with your thought that the failing companies should have been allowed to fail. But I do believe that Obama thought that by keeping them from failure that he was stopping the ensuing chaos that would have decimated the dollar and peoples livelihood. If you know your history you will know that this is pretty much the same situation that we were in, in 1929. The Fatcats playing fast and loose with the stock market and our economy based more on paper than actual production. Sound familiar?
I know this will shock everyone, but I'm gonna bite: If one is to interpret being "un-American" as being unpatriotic, then I would say that the patriotic thing to do is seek the best for your entire country, and taking advantage of other Americans doesn't strike me as too patriotic. This could be a loaded question though, as it is probable that some companies do harm while thinking what they do will benefit American workers. In America today, corporations are treated like individual people when it comes to legal rights. If we are going to afford them those rights, I can not see any reason to not hold them to the same standards we would any other American, and Americans caught dodging taxes may likely face prison sentences. If there is a loophole, just as would be the case for loopholes applying to individuals, the government has the right, and perhaps even the obligation to other taxpayers, to close it. Secondly, in the same way you pay taxes where your money is made as you benefit from what those taxes do, companies that take advantage of the infrastructure and security of operating on U.S. soil certainly have as much of a patriotic obligation as anyone to support it through taxes. I think it is natural for the corporations to pull in the direction of profit, and it is naive to assume they will not. Looking out for your own well-being fits well with many American traditions. However, looking out for your own well-being to the detriment of your country only fits with the villains of American traditions. The people who founded this country were rich men who risked their lives and every cent of their fortunes to secure the betterment of the land they considered home; I cannot see how squandering the betterment of the country for the sake of fortunes would fit into that example.
" There are of course government programs that should be eliminated or improved. But we do need a government that is able to educate our children, ensure access to health care for all, move us to a clean energy future, keep the economy working, provide a social safety net, and protect us from corporate predations. We need a government that takes seriously its duty to advance the General Welfare." Indeed. And so long as the most wealthy control our government, this will never occur. So....Anons.....how do we hit the rich where it hurts? Just a muppet wondering aloud while lurking. <g>
We haxor all their monies and jewsgold and buy our own country. Just kidding I would never do or advocate any illegal activities.
Where does the money from those tax cut profits go? Mmm? But I agree that that money won't be reinvested if the business climate is so unstable that no one can know what to invest in. That's what we have now. Your reasoning is suspect. The money that goes to the government will be wasted on some politician's pet pork project of his. That means a net loss for the rest of it. As for letting the companies fail, that is just basic good sense. Everything still exists, the machines, the labor force, but now it can be used in a profitable way rather than sucking up the money in bankruptcy. You say "If I know my history" but there is no consensus on what caused the Great Depression. The Fed loosening money flow until we are sure to have some horrific inflation is not my idea of fun. It always amazes me how everyone sees the surface and and doesn't look underneath. Basic econ says that distortions hurt the market and that the government is the only one that can distort the market. And it also pains me to hear people so easily demonize businessmen and rich people as if that status equates to Bad Person. Every businessman I've known has been a normal sort of human, remarkably like you and me. They are not big bad wolves out to get every penny of yours to hoard in their dens like Scrooge McDuck. It is simply name calling to help convince yourself that They are bad and You are good.
Just wait till the next national elections, then you will see where the profits from tax cuts goes. I predict that whoever gets elected president, they will have spent near a billion dollars to do so. And don't get me started on congressmen and their campaigns and how much they will spend. I know people and have friends who are wealthy. None that are ungodly wealthy but they have more than enough. I've hunted with them, golfed with them, raced with them and they all have a couple of things in common, to them making money is a game and second, they hate to lose. And I can say that when they are playing their game of business, woe to the person who gets in the way of them making their money. I've seen the way they treat their employees and most of them look at the employee as a necessary evil. They could give a shit about their employees well being. Maybe I just hang out with the wrong crowd.
Just think if corporations, unions, special interests groups, individual persons could only donate up to $2000 per political candidate and party what a different world this would be! PLUS if all those billions of dollars thrown into lobbyist, special interest groups, campaigns & WAR went instead to feeding the world's hungry, helping them to become self sufficient & creating jobs to clean the earth what a different world this would be. Just think...
Hemp biodiesel. A long time ago, in another life I was once on a school debate team. Our subject in that heady year of 1979 was alternative fuels vs. oil. One thing I learned then was true. Peak oil in 25-30 years. And here we are. The most impressive alternative options that I extensively researched in my role as researcher for my team were methane from biomass (organic garbage, silage, cow poo, etc) and diesel from biomass (fast growing crops like hemp and bamboo). I have watched for thirty years as everything that could be done wrong was done wrong by people who, acting like junkies on a lost weekend, cared more for immediate profit rather than the actual future 10, 20, 30 years down the road. We are here because our stupid, complicit, greedy so-called 'leaders' decided to prop up moribund assholes like the Kochs and dictators in the ME who would keep the oil flowing like it was 1999 instead of financing real research into alternative fuels. Fuck the Kochs and their ilk. They could have invested in the future years ago and been an heroes. But they didn't and they and their ilk will be Darwinned out: either by smarter, more far-seeing apes or by destroying themseves and the effin planet and being replaced (as we all will be in that scenario) by a million different sub-species of the common cockroach.
I wish you'd spare us all your expert economic advice. I like u better when you're fightin' teh Cult.
Have you met the Evil Dwarf, David Miscavige? No Disney Villains? REALLY? Okay, more like low budget Hanna Barbera. He's poorly drawn... TO THE DARK SIDE!
Well for petes sake, duh! If you grow food, people expect it to be affordable. Clearly, fuel isn't in the same category as food crops. Didn't the Bush family invest in a lot of land in Brazil a few years back when the biofuel craze was beginning for real?
don't much care what you like. I am not any more impressed with your economics than you are with mine. And at least mine has 200 years of abundance behind it.
Kids, please. Play nice. One thing I like about this board is that we have chanology in common. We always knew we were all different, but played well nonetheless. We are a diverse and internatonal community here, and I think our evolving conversation about politics, if freed from reliance upon top-down pronouncement and based in real numbers and research could lead to some amazing 'out of the box' results. Be patient and listen. Beware of absolutes. And most of all, have humility and compassion. Cults of any sort are defined by that feeling of superiority over those stupid *wogs* in the general population. This is teething pains.
Are the flags meant as some sort of comment about outwardly progressive organizations claiming to promote brotherhood and defend the masses against the rich and powerful (Jews) while actually subverting dissent, securing hegemony and using the people they are supposed to protect as drones for personal gain?
THAT is my point. Reprocess the waste into plutonium and turn it back into fuel. Currently, the US doesn't do this because plutonium is already at a weaponized state, unlike the uranium used in nuclear reactors. Eventually you will have enough fuel that you won't need to rely upon uranium reactors and can stop enriching that. Then you're pretty much set on fuel for....10,000 years? Waste is only waste if we're not willing to go the extra step to make it useful. It can sit and irradiate the desert, or it can provide power to homes across America. As for manufacture and transport of hydrogen? I'd recommend developing a localized infrastructure for synthesis to avoid transporting. I'm not the science whiz, but I am a logistician. There are entire fleets of vehicles that can easily be replaced with hydrogen-based versions and not have to worry about distribution but instead focus on pure local. -Delivery companies, corporate vehicle fleets, and any number of internally owned and operated system of vehicles tends to have a localized fueling point. Replace the vehicles with hydrogen, and replace the fuel point with a hydrogen one. Upgrade the safeguards to compensate for the more volatile nature, and production can be done on-site through synthesis from water. Yes, it takes more energy but that's why I say build the nuclear power plants. Power becomes a factor of time rather than fuel. You can now eliminate thousands and thousands of fossil fuel based cars from teh road and give a jump start to improving hydrogen and other green energy fuels. And you can still have biodiesel for commercial cars, but with a reduced demand on the overall system by using hydrogen for the private fleets. Ergo, easier to implement an entire overall switch. Just my proposal.
Why don't you make a Youtube titled "Leave businessmen alone!!" You need to keep in mind what is called the "primary purpose." It's not about businessmen being "evil" or people being "good" -- nice try at oversimplification and straw man. It's about the natural outcome of the corporations' primary purpose: to increase shareholders' equity. Read again: "to increase shareholders' equity". Raising shareholders' equity is quite a narrow interest when compared to society's interests. That is why corporations should GTFO of politics and stick to produce what they produce as efficiently as possible while abiding to rules and regulations put in place which are there to protect the larger public interests. The people's interests supersede corporations' interests. People have the ability to care, and do care about far in the future. A sustainable economy is key for future generations to thrive, instead of having them clean the fugly mess left over by lack of concerns and vision from earlier generations. Corporations don't care about this stuff. It's the next balance sheet, or the one in five year. Corporations are the last place I look for caring about anything else than their own narrow interests. You should actually wonder how nice and caring people keep doing not nice and uncaring stuff when they act on behalf of corporations. A top economist once said: "In neoclassical economics ... the market comes to substitute for the functions of the state [Koch-Walker lol]. But without the state, the concept of the public interest disappears from the theory. Markets, by definition, serve only private interests. And the project of neoliberal reform becomes one of making the markets serve private interests more completely or more efficiently, rather than the attempt to define and serve the broader public interest." It expresses in quite a concise way the current state of affairs, I can't even see how an intellectually honest person (unlikely a corporate spokesperson speaking on behalf of its employer) could disagree with this.
You're obviously a card-carrying member of the Projectionists Union. And here I thought you didn't like unions...
I remember saying WTF? to that... Little George can't even manage a baseball team... Almost as much WTFed when people acted like his being the governor of Texas was some kind of experience. The office has been so stripped of powers that the gov can't even pardon criminals, and can only ask for one 30 day stay of execution and demand an investigation.
