Are you scientifically literate?

[GenSeneca]

What recourse do we have with runamuk corporations?

They go out of business and/or everyone involved with illegal activities is hauled off to jail, or sued, or both. What more recourse do you want, public executions?

The government is of the people, for the people, and by the people.

Except, of course, for the "people" who dare to disagree with the current government policies, right?

According to your next sentence, those "people" are against the "people"

If you are against the government, then you are against the people.

Oh Hugo, your totalitarianism cracks me up!

I'm adding that quote to my collection...

So there is no room for dissent in the Progressive World of Next Tuesday?

What a shock...

The only people who have any say in a corporation are the stockholders (and the government, which is as it should be).

Government shouldn't have any say in the function of a corporation... Government's only legitimate role is to protect individual rights. Outside of that is has no legitimate role interfering with corporations.

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini

Gee, where have I seen that sentiment before?

I believe that the only real solutions will take a partnership between government and industry.

Il' Duce agrees!

 

[GenSeneca]

"If the valley of the drums can occur in a regulated market, what do you think corporations would do in an unregulated market?"

Well, considering the government would be limited to one job and one job only, protecting our individual rights, I'd say the government would do a pretty bang up job at quickly stopping such illegal acts, minimizing the impact, and holding the guilty parties responsible.

After all, government would no longer be distracted from it's only legitimate function, it wouldn't be busy doing a thousand other jobs that have do nothing to protecting our rights... Such as running banks, car companies, insurance companies, etc.

Do you think government is too incompetent to do that one job and do it well?

If so, then you need to explain why our government when tasked with a thousand jobs is competent to meet all of it's obligations but the same government when tasked with just one job is not.

 

[PLC1]

Blame PLC1, he's the one that came up with it.

And a very good and descriptive term it is!

 

[orogenicman]

No, because the Constitution clearly spells out where that power lies.



Energy access is a natural security issue, I don't dispute that, but you are not going to run a military on solar/wind power any time in the near future. You have already attacked nuclear power, but what else do you have in mind to power an aircraft carrier/nuclear submarine etc? Wind?

Am I to assume that without government, nothing would ever get done in this country? That seems to be an underlying point in your argument.

Why can't the free market develop alternative energy and make it viable? if they did, they could sell it to the military and make a killing... fact is, they are unable to do it and it is not yet practical... legislating change does not make it suddenly practical either.

Hydrogen is a very good energy source, is it not? Whether or not you like it, we are going to run out of fossil fuels in the future. Something has to take its place. My view is that it won't be one thing, but a combination.

Look, I'm not saying that the government is the answer to all our dreams. No one is saying that. All I am saying is that we have to start thinking 10,
20, even 30 years down the road, because these solutions are not easy and are going to take time and a lot of investment both from the private sector and from the government. And YES it is going to have to take government assistence to make it happen, whether or not you or I like it.

 

[orogenicman]

So no utilities would not exist in the absence of government? In many cases, the largest investments in utilities are coming from the private sector, not the government.

Where do you think the rural energy co-ops came from? Ever hear of the TVA? The government made it happen. You can thank both Truman and Ike.

 

[orogenicman]

The claim I heard, which I assume you meant to make was that Exxon paid no federal income tax in 2009... which came from a Forbes story which was later corrected.

That said, citing "revenue and income" when discussing an income tax bill would be irrelevant, since a company does not pay income tax on their "revenue", but rather their "profit." For things like sales tax that would change, but you get the idea.

Actually, according to Exxon's own report, they paid out about 15 billion in income taxes, although on whose income it did not say.

 

[orogenicman]

Much of the government is not actually elected, but rather appointed, or they are career bureaucrats.



The stockholders can.



Everyone to buys products from a corporation has a say in that corporation. If you dislike how they are conducting business, stop buying the product, and you bet there will be a change at the top when profits decline.

1) And those bureaucrats conduct their business according to laws mandated by our elected representatives. They still work for the American people.

2) And we all know that the only item of interest to stockholders is the bottom line.

3) Tell that to the people who live and work near the valley of the drums or any other hazardous waste site. Do you realize how many hazardous waste sites there are in this country?

 

[orogenicman]

Well, considering the government would be limited to one job and one job only, protecting our individual rights, I'd say the government would do a pretty bang up job at quickly stopping such illegal acts, minimizing the impact, and holding the guilty parties responsible.

After all, government would no longer be distracted from it's only legitimate function, it wouldn't be busy doing a thousand other jobs that have do nothing to protecting our rights... Such as running banks, car companies, insurance companies, etc.

Do you think government is too incompetent to do that one job and do it well?

If so, then you need to explain why our government when tasked with a thousand jobs is competent to meet all of it's obligations but the same government when tasked with just one job is not.

And exactly how is the government going to protect our rights in an unregulated economy? The government has many legitimate purposes, as spelled out in our Constitution and our congressional laws and international treaties. You do realize, of course, that Article 1 Section 8 of The U.S. Constitution gives the government, ampong other duties, the authority to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"


Right?

 

[GenSeneca]

And exactly how is the government going to protect our rights in an unregulated economy?

Government doesn't regulate your life, so what's stopping you from violating your neighbors rights? Police, Laws, and Courts.

The government has many legitimate purposes, as spelled out in our Constitution

Government has only one legitimate purpose as spelled out in our Declaration of Independence, to secure (protect) our rights... But since you, a Progressive (and therefore an expert on the Constitution ), brought it up...

Where exactly is the section of the constitution that says it's the responsibility of taxpayers to subsidize alternative energy?

 

[orogenicman]

Government doesn't regulate your life, so what's stopping you from violating your neighbors rights? Police, Laws, and Courts.

Government has only one legitimate purpose as spelled out in our Declaration of Independence, to secure (protect) our rights... But since you, a Progressive (and therefore an expert on the Constitution ), brought it up...

Where exactly is the section of the constitution that says it's the responsibility of taxpayers to subsidize alternative energy?

Absolutely, the government does regulate my life just as it does your and everyone elses. Do you need a license to drive a car? Yes. Why? Because it is a privledge, not a right. The government influences nearly ever aspect of our lives, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Even the voltage that comes into your house has a government standard behind it. The grass seed you spread on your lawn has a government standard, dude. The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the medicines you take are all regulated by the government for your protection. And they wouldn't have to do this if the market was so moral and upstanding that it could be trusted to police itself. The fact is that time and time again the free market has shown the world that it cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and that is because in any free market, the only bottom line that is important is the profit margin.

I listed the relevant article of the Constitution. If you are having trouble comprehending any of its meaning, I'd be happy to assist. Oh, and dude, the Declaration of Independence is NOT the law of the land. The Constitution is.

 

[Gipper]

Where do you think the rural energy co-ops came from? Ever hear of the TVA? The government made it happen. You can thank both Truman and Ike.

Once again your grasp of history comes into question. The TVA was chartered in 1933 by Congress. Any idea who was president then??? Let me give you a hint...it was progressives most admired president (excepting the current one of course).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

The TVA was a huge mistake. But, progressives are unaware of this due to their mental condition....

We can gain particular perspective by reflecting on the experience of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's most ambitious infrastructure program, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

It was heralded as a program to build dams that would control floods, facilitate navigation, lift people out of poverty, and help America recover from the Great Depression. Yet the reality is that the TVA probably flooded more land than it protected; much of the navigation it has facilitated involves barges of coal for coal-fired power plants; people receiving TVA-subsidized electricity have increasingly lagged behind neighbors who did not; and the TVA's impact on the Great Depression was negligible. The TVA morphed into America's biggest monopoly, dominating an 80,000 square mile region with 8.8 million people—for all practical purposes, it is a bureaucratic kingdom subject to neither public nor private controls.

As a remedy for the Great Depression, the TVA didn't work. It created no new wealth and, through taxation, transferred resources from the 98 percent of Americans who didn't live in the Tennessee Valley to the two percent who did. Any spending that happened in the Tennessee Valley therefore was offset by the spending that didn't happen elsewhere. Those taxes reduced net incomes.

Much like any other complex public works project, it took an inordinate amount of time to build the TVA. Only three TVA dams were completed during the 1930s. The dams themselves were small—with less than one-twentieth the power-generating capacity of big western dams like Grand Coulee. Although the building process provided work for engineers and skilled construction workers—who earned above-average incomes—the dams simply came too late to have much impact on most people in the Tennessee Valley during the Great Depression.
http://reason.com/archives/2009/03/02/how-big-government-infrastruct

And, the greatest president since Washington was fired by GE for criticizing the TVA...which of course was another costly boondoggle like all big government programs, but alas liberals and progressives NEVER EVER LEARN!!!

Then-movie star Ronald Reagan had moved to television as the host and a frequent performer for General Electric Theater during 1954. Reagan was later fired by General Electric in 1962 in response to his publicly referring to the TVA (TVA being a major customer for GE turbines) as one of the problems of "big government".[22] Reagan would subsequently reiterate his points at the 1964 Republican National Convention, in his speech "A Time for Choosing":[23]

One such considered above criticism, sacred as motherhood, is TVA. This program started as a flood control project; the Tennessee Valley was periodically ravaged by destructive floods. The Army Engineers set out to solve this problem. They said that it was possible that once in 500 years there could be a total capacity flood that would inundate some 600,000 acres (2,400 km2). Well, the engineers fixed that. They made a permanent lake which inundated a million acres (4,000 km²). This solved the problem of floods, but the annual interest on the TVA debt is five times as great as the annual flood damage they sought to correct. Of course, you will point out that TVA gets electric power from the impounded waters, and this is true, but today 85 percent of TVA's electricity is generated in coal burning steam plants. Now perhaps you'll charge that I'm overlooking the navigable waterway that was created, providing cheap barge traffic, but the bulk of the freight barged on that waterway is coal being shipped to the TVA steam plants, and the cost of maintaining that channel each year would pay for shipping all of the coal by rail, and there would be money left over.[citation needed]

The publicity Reagan gained in part from this speech paved the way for his election as Governor of California in 1966.[24]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority#Controversies

 

[orogenicman]

Once again your grasp of history comes into question. The TVA was chartered in 1933 by Congress. Any idea who was president then??? Let me give you a hint...it was progressives most admired president (excepting the current one of course).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

The TVA was a huge mistake. But, progressives are unaware of this due to their mental condition....




And, the greatest president since Washington was fired by GE for criticizing the TVA...which of course was another costly boondoggle like all big government programs, but alas liberals and progressives NEVER EVER LEARN!!!

My mistake. Yes the TVA and many of the co-ops were created starting in the 1930s. Others were created later, such as the ones I was remembering from the 1950s and 1960s. But to hear your right wing web site tell it, these co-ops have been an unmitigated disaster for all involved, which, of course, is pure unabridged right wingnut fiction.

And for a pro-fossil fule rightwinger to complain about coal barges, well, that's just too funny.

 

[Gipper]

My mistake. Yes the TVA and many of the co-ops were created starting in the 1930s. Others were created later, such as the ones I was remembering from the 1950s and 1960s. But to hear your right wing web site tell it, these co-ops have been an unmitigated disaster for all involved, which, of course, is pure unabridged right wingnut fiction.

And for a pro-fossil fule rightwinger to complain about coal barges, well, that's just too funny.

Well there it is. The truth, when presented to you, is to be ignored and condemned. That is what I love about liberals. They truly believe huge government projects are effective. They are so easily deceived.

We have just about completed production of the first edition of the Little Green Pill which will reduce your CO2 emissions. Can I count on you for an order of say 10,000 pills? You will need to take about 100 per day for it to work. The cost is only $1 per pill, but just think about it...you will save the planet!!! Please do your part and don't forget we only accept cash.

 

[orogenicman]

Well there it is. The truth, when presented to you, is to be ignored and condemned. That is what I love about liberals. They truly believe huge government projects are effective. They are so easily deceived.

We have just about completed production of the first edition of the Little Green Pill which will reduce your CO2 emissions. Can I count on you for an order of say 10,000 pills? You will need to take about 100 per day for it to work. The cost is only $1 per pill, but just think about it...you will save the planet!!! Please do your part and don't forget we only accept cash.

What do you actually know about the TVA other than what you've read on some rightwing blog? Yes, the TVA was slow to start up. So what? The TVA and the COE together built the Kentucky and Barkley Lakes in a region that had NO electricity, and was even more impoverished than much of Appalachia. Those lakes are world class freshwater fisheries, contain one of the largest wildlife preserves in the midwest, and brought thousands of industrial and other jobs into the region. The TVA brought electricity to millions of people who private industry considered it to be too costly to bring it to. So much for your "free market is the only answer" argument.

Not that you'll every acknowledge it but our nuclear weapons program gots its first nuclear material from a TVA plant, a plant that in its heyday during the war, employed thousands of people. You can smirk all you want, but I seriously doubt the people who gained employment from the existence of the TVA are smirking.

 

[GenSeneca]

The government influences nearly ever aspect of our lives, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Influence is not the same thing as regulation... You know what else isn't a bad thing, liberty.

And of course that's heavily regulated by government. As Lenin said, “It is true that liberty is precious - so precious that it must be rationed”

The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the medicines you take are all regulated by the government for your protection.

Everything you named is a product that is regulated by the government. I know very well products are regulated...

In what ways does government regulate your LIFE (not the products you buy but your LIFE)?

I listed the relevant article of the Constitution.

So... Where exactly is the section of the constitution that says it's the responsibility of taxpayers to subsidize alternative energy?