Politics
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- Written by Michael Z Williamson
http://www.reuters.com/
justiceserved wrote:
Republicans rolling back 100 years of workers’ rights one at a time. Soon right to work laws will eliminate minimum wage, 40 hour workweek & overtime will be gone, and of course they want to eliminate the EPA & OSHA. Now if we cut laws that govern business, cut back on SS & Medicare we can continue our slide into third world status which Corporate Republicanism favors! Thank God we’ll still have our guns for the next revolution.
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Is that a threat of violence from a Dem? Funny how that happens whenever they don't like how the legislative process works.
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And a followup:
http://www.reuters.com/
Nuclear is by far the stupidest way to get energy, waste that is dangerous, hard to store, potential terrorist bomb, and all on an earth that will keep changing, destroying one plant at a time or worse yet-old obsolete plants will continue to meltdown!
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And a reply:
justiceserved: Coal puts out more radiation than nuclear per power produced, due to uranium and thorium particles. The number of people killed in coal accidents exceeds that killed in nuclear accidents, not even accounting for acid rain, stripmining damage to the ecosystem, and CO2.
Wasn't it you ranting about labor debates returning us to the 1800s? Yet here you are endorsing 1800s technology, and the labor and filth that goes with it.
And nuclear waste is easy to get rid of. It's been done for 60 years. The best way is to recycle it as fuel for two to three generations of power, and minimize what's left--it has less energy than the starting fuel, by definition.
Why don't you try putting away the lefticle papers and reading something above a 4th grade level?
Solar only works in sunny environments. Wind is horrifically inefficient and damages weather patterns. So either you accept nuclear power, or you get a pedal generator to power your intarweb.
I swear you people disgust me. It's "big oil," "big pharma," "big finance," and now "big nuclear." Why don't you all cut up your credit cards, throw away your prescriptions, shut off your computers and go live in the trees? The rest of us have a future to attend to.
- Details
- Written by Michael Z Williamson
Parable: 100 guys with shovels came over to my yard and dug a swimming pool. This demonstrates the value of labor.
Except it was my neighbor who wanted the pool, and those shovels were built by a capitalist corporation.
This undirected labor was valueless. In fact, it was worse than valueless. I now have to fix a hole, and someone is out the cost of shovels.
The capitalist who purchases the shovels, provides the blueprints, lines, marks, supervisors, and arranges the contract for the pool in the first place has more investment in the project than all the labor combined. Their investment is a few hours time. His investment is more time, more resources, more money, and development.
Therefore, yes, in fact, he is entitled to the majority of the proceeds.
The laborers can demonstrate the value of labor by going to the desert, digging holes with their hands, and waiting for prospective buyers to want to come along and line them with concrete to make pools out of them. Good luck with that.
Alternately, they must develop a source of contracts, materials and capital investment, thus becoming capitalists.
TL;DR: Marx was a @#$ing moron.
- Details
- Written by Michael Z Williamson
Walter Weinig
The issues with the BP well could just as easily have occurred at 500 ft water as they did at 8000 - the problems weren't related to how deep the water was. However, they would have been easier to control in only 500 ft of water. Face it - BP wouldn't have been drilling there if the resource wasn't economical to develop at that location. That's capitalism in action.
NPR, PBS, USPS might not be viable as private enterprises. But I reject the notion that the only things worthwhile are those that make a profit. There's a lot more to their programming (NPR, PBS) than news and political commentary. And I don't think the American public really wants to pay FedEx or UPS rates every time they send a letter, pay a bill, or send a birthday card to Grandma.
There are numerous magazine articles from the 1960s, where the Corps warned that the levees could not withstand a direct hit from a significant hurricane. They proposed a control dam on Lake Pontchartrain, that would have stopped the exact problem NOLA encountered. It was, in fact, the early ecosimps who protested it would be bad for the aquaculture of the lake, and demanded more levees instead. These articles are archived online in several places, if you wish to avail yourself of the resource. PopSci had one, that I recall as did several others.
As an aside, in the 1980s it was Greenpeace who came up with the brilliant idea of painting baby harp seals with pink paint to "protect" them from hunting. The paint solvents destroyed the oil in their fur so more of them froze, and made them very visible to the polar bear--the reason the seals are white in the first place.
The way to do good things for the environment is to listen to the econuts and do exactly the opposite.
No, that spill could not have happened at 500 feet, because that type of rig, drill and connection is not used at 500 feet. 500 foot wells are a very mature technology, and well-managed. And by your own argument, if they'd had the type of problem that those wells do have, shutting them down is much easier, which once again make the problem much less significant.
Feel free to stop using that oil, however.
FedEx is prohibited by law from competing with USPS on domestic mail, and is even required to send local express packages to the hub for sorting, and then must return them--leaving them at the local station is deemed "unfair" by the USG. They still manage to deliver overnight at competitive rates with USPS, and do so faster (9PM deadline vs noon-2). Which begs the question--what could they do if it WAS a free market, where they were allowed to compete for profit and out of pocket, with a taxpayer subsidized system with the law stacked in its favor?
BP deserves blame for that disaster, but so does the agency of your vaunted government that signed off on the rig, and the ecosimps who wouldn't allow a more profitable, safe, economic and practical rig closer to shore, and then had the audacity to whine about the result, while making much use of that oil.
I could bring up the hypocrisy of simultaneously demanding cheap oil, but less use, with more regs but less expense, etc.
You also make the mistake of assuming that because I'm attacking the hypocritical logical failure of MoreOn's ad (it is. Just because people are copying it does not mean it wasn't designed in the ad department of a multimillion dollar operation with a profit motive and an ax to grind), that I blindly support their opposition.
I just want their position, arguments, and counterproposals to be logical and reasonable, rather than ranting stupidity.
- Details
- Written by Michael Z Williamson
Since it probably isn't visible, it says, "Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpapyer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither...pass it on."
Alrighty, then. That's quite a laundry list. So, let's start at the beginning:
Remember when teachers
Paid by taxes.
public employees
Paid by taxes.
Planned Parenthood
Supported in part by taxes, and a 501(c)3 that pays no taxes.
NPR and PBS
Supported in part by taxes, and federal corporations that pay no taxes, but whine for tax-deductible donations.
crashed the stock market
I keep bearing from the left about how morally wrong the stock market is, and how it just leads to concentration of wealth and short-sighted marketing. So I sense hypocrisy.
wiped out half of our 401Ks
Aren't these the same groups that complain about 401Ks being unfair and elitist?
took trillions in taxpapyer funded bailouts
Well, it's taken years, but the above groups HAVE had at least billions if not trillions of taxpayer funds. So it seems to be the scale and efficiency of the business world they're complaining about, yet again.
spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico
By passing ridiculous, unscientific "eco" and "green" laws that meant oil wells couldn't operate in shallow water using proven technology, but had to move to the edge of the continental shelf and push to the limits to get oil that these same people use in their SUVs, airliners and plastic packaging? Yes, I do.
gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
As above, yes, I do.
Yeah, me neither...pass it on.
You know, maybe if you smoke a little less dope, your memory and reason will return.
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