Let's talk some politics here #3

[Mike]

jashley said:

Does anyone remember that Jimmy Carter started and funded an alternative energy program when he was president. Unfortunately the great conservative god Ronald Reagan defunded and demolished this program as soon as he took office. If people would have listened to Pres. Carter we would probably have no dependence on fossil fuels by now or at least be well on the way to solving the problem. I do think the bio-diesel solution to this problem has great promise. The hardware changes for a diesel engine are minimal. As a matter of fact your diesel Mercedes will run on corn oil stock, but a few small modifications are recommended. Not only could this quickly lesson our need for foreign oil but it would give a boost to our farmers and industry. But you would be stepping on big oil's toes, so let's see what happens.

Peace
j

Yes I do remember President Carter's alternative energy research programs. To make this even more of a bummer understand that Ray-Gun actually served several purposes with his "heroism". Not only did he sooth the fears of his "Wall Street Oil Buddies" (I personally lost my independent oil & gas company in West Texas because of Mr. Reagan...but that's another story..), but the funds from President Carter's research was diverted to development of the B1-B Bomber and "Star Wars".

Now...for $283,000,000.00 per plane the B1-B turned out to be COMPLETELY unreliable. Initially there were plans for 90 of them. I think there are 60 left after crashes and cannibalism of the unable to fly lemons. My son and I watched one crash in West Texas!
Example: After 20 years of existence it has seen battle once. When we went into Afghanistan after 9-11, 3 were sent from Dyess AFB over there for support. 1 had to ditch in the Atlantic on the way. 1 landed crippled and had to be overhauled so it could make it back to the USA. And 1 made 1 bombing sorte and landed. That's a pretty expensive bombing run!!!

And...the $38,000,000,000.00 that was spent on Star Wars which was a hoax, and didn't even exist, just seems to have gotten...lost.

So, instead of being able to tell the Saudi's, the Carlyle Group, and the aforementioned "Wall Street Oilmen" to go fly a kite when it comes to supporting their decadently lavish lifestyles...we get a bunch of rusting crap for air support in battle and a funny hoax from Mr. Reagan.

And BTW, Willie Nelson bought a brand new Diesel Mercedes and drove it straight from the dealer and filled it up with Bio Diesel. Not a problem!
He did say tho that when he got home he pulled into the garage and passed out with the motor still running. When he woke up "he was hungry and smelled like French Fries." ;D

hello...anybody there? Tough crowd tonight.

[Mike]

featphoto said:

mike said:

$4 million
When these variable annuities mature in 2007 they will bring him a safe $900,000.00 annually in interest.

I have to ask if there's one too many zeros here ... 4 million generating 900k in interest is a 22.5% return ...

I think I have all of my zeros correct. Maybe if you know the right people? The article is from 2002.

www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2002/02/enron_insure.html

Once the annuities reach maturity in February 2007, Kenneth and Linda Lay will be guaranteed monthly payments of $43,023 and $32,643, respectively, for life.

"I know of no case where the amounts are that substantial," says Gideon Rothschild, a partner in the New York City law firm of Moses & Singer, who specializes in estate planning and asset protection for high-net-worth individuals.

[Mike]

Uh oh...because of snow storms in the Northeast the cost of natural gas is $15.04 per BTU, compared to $6.04 a year ago. ;D
I may be wrong here but...doesn't it snow just about every year in the Northeast?
Natural Gas is not refined on the gulf coast, and the largest natural gas field in the world has been discovered here around Fort Worth.

Some old lady on TV being interviewed said she was taking money out of her savings to pay her heating bill. That's very wrong!!! Another gun to our heads!

Somebody else bitch now, I'm going to the "restoration pan".

[Rollin' Mark]

mike said:

I may be wrong here but...doesn't it snow just about every year in the Northeast?

Uh, I can vouch for THAT also, 8 inches at my house today.
(Keep it clean Bill L).

[Mike]

Well at least it's the makings of a good ski base.

We've been sliding around on the ice here this week, and 9' temps. Texans trying to drive on ice is not a pretty site!

[BillL]

Uh, I can vouch for THAT also, 8 inches at my house today.
(Keep it clean Bill L).

Regardless of whether you require my shovel or, uh, other assistance I must respectfully decline. ;D

Bill L

[BillL]

What's the over-under on Lieberman getting a call to join Bush's cabinet? Maybe in place of Rumsfeld? I say there's a solid chance.

Bill L

[Mike]

Rummy says no. The AP says probably, so it's anybody's guess. Lieberman is a little too "subordinate" for my vote, and Rummy is just a well paid figure head anyway the way I see it. Same as Lieberman would be except with the illusion of Dubya reaching across the aisle.

Now if Cheney was getting retired....

[jashley]

Scott,

The reason I used bio-diesel as an example of alternative energy sources (Mike touched on this) is that it is available TODAY. Whenever anyone brings alt. energy into a debate the opponents always try to make alt. energy sound like something remotely possible in a distant future but there are alternatives to petro fuels now. I do believe that we should not stop investigating and developing more "outside the box" methods but if we can break the stranglehold that the petroleum companies have on our fuel needs, using currently available technology, alternative research should finally make the advances that we should have been making for the last 35 years.

How Ronald Reagan has become the President God is a mystery to me also. When he took office the deficit was 800 billion and when he left it was over 3 Trillion. He spent less money on education and more on war every year he was in office. As detailed so well by Mike above he demolished the alt energy program. The division between rich and poor greatly increased while he was president. He continued to fund the taliban in Afghanistan long after the Russians went home. We are still paying for this idiot's lack of foresight today.

I say Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller should go ahead and become the republicans they want to be.

BillL

I feel the evidence is in and there are only two possible answers to explain pre war intelligence. Either the administration was genuinely fooled by some of the shoddiest intelligence in history which means they are collectively as dumb as a bag of hammers and are so incompetent they should be removed from office. Or they deliberately lied and the cost so far is the lives of 2100 of our children and these war mongers should be tried for treason. Is there any other explanation for the facts we have now?

Truth has a time element. Just because something is true in 1998, or 1888, does not mean it is true in 2002 or vice versa. Remember this as you listen to the WMD debate. It might help separate the bull from the sh*t.

Peace
j

[Rollin' Mark]

jashley said:

Scott,

The reason I used bio-diesel as an example of alternative energy sources (Mike touched on this) is that it is available TODAY.

I was in New Hampshire 2 weeks ago with my friends' Diesel pickup. I needed to stop for fuel, and the station I stopped at was offering Bio-Diesel as an alternative.
This was the first time I actually saw it being sold.
I didn't buy it because it wasn't my truck and I didn't know how my friend would feel about running it.
However, I was tempted.
One problem though, it was 10 cents a gallon more than regular diesel. Perhaps if it becomes more popular, the price will come down?
Or will that cause the price to go up?

[Scott Hays]

Here's how the "free market" economy really works in this country (remember, we have escalated to the so-called world economy, so gratuitous tales of the success of small business and personal inventiveness don't hold much hope against the corporate giants) ... alt forms of energy will never see the light of day until the major corporations (petroleum and auto, in particular ... but all connected tiers of the monopoly system, like steel and parts manufacturing)have solid control of most -- if not all -- distribution and sales.

Please note, as Example A, the so-called development of the gas-electric hybrid engine. Hybrid technology has been in existence for quite a long time, but it wasn't until a couple of Japanese automakers began to show a little success with the sales of a couple of bad science-fiction designed models that other automakers began to join the fray. Honda put the engine in one of its existing models (the Civic), and suddenly the cars became "popular". Were enough manufactured? No! Did other automakers retool to meet the clear demand? No. Just what have the other automakers (and the Japanese innovators, themselves) actually done with the technology now that it has proven sellable? They have put the hybrid engine into V-6 motors and SUVs in order to sell performance rather than efficiency!

In a true "free market" economy, the American auto industry deserves any belly-up "downturn" it has earned owing to bad management decisions and greedy self-satisfaction with its performance. Go to any other country on the planet that manufactures its own automobiles and tell me what you see. Well, I'll save you the trouble ... you see weensy little toy cars that are nothing more than motorcycles (actually, motorbikes, or even lawnmowers). With the noted exception of the luxury sedans (and their spinoffs), European and Asian automakers build for narrow roads, high congestion, and fuel efficiency. Only this country idiotically builds for prestige, and consciously markets it. Only in this country does a combined corporate monopoly collude with its champions within the so-called "objective press" in order to create a false need (how many cities tore up their mass-transit systems beginning in the 1940s to replace them with "more efficient" and more "liberating" freeway and road systems because of collusion between the automakers, oil industry and the press)?

Instead, these really really bad businessmen (all proclaimed by everyone who can't see the naked emperor) bully their way to the top of the heap by paying off subordinates with lucrative contracts, buy up the competition and/or drive it out of business, or even resort to gangster-style strategies when all else fails. And, when faced with abject failure, they finally negate their contractual obligations with their employees (by forcing renegogiation of labor contracts through threatened bankruptcy and loss of jobs, or actually entering into bankruptcy -- an act made almost impossible for individuals, by the way, by a Congress bought and paid for by corporate largesse) and eliminate/reduce pensions and retirement nest-eggs. Of course, retirement packages and other benefits for the CEOs and members of the Board of Directors, mind you, are not reduced or eliminated ... nor are benefits to the investors of the corrupt system, who continue to be coddled by the same Congress with promises of massive tax breaks on said investments and dividends arising from them ... no, the profiteers make zero sacrifices in the restructuring of their "companies". In fact, the identified criminals use the system to secure their futures ... as Mike points out in reminding us of the fate of poor old Ken Lay.

Please note the well-orchestrated editorial accompaniments to this tune of "woe-is-us" by the usual right wing suspects in the media ... we are told over and over by the George Wills' and the Fox Factory that we can't compete against the Chinese who offer no such labor incentives to their employees and who will run us off the globe economically unless we end the era of corporate medical and health benefits (but at the same time make cuts to government sponsored medical and retirement packages because we need "small" government).

Continuing the rant ... those Chinese "competitors". Let's see ... where to start. Benzene spill from a huge petrochemical plant in the northwest that turns off the water to all the people living there for over a week, hushed up because the river flows to Russia and we don't want the unhappy outcome of Russia becoming angry at us poisoning its people. Hmmm ... who is helping China build the plant, and what role does weak environmental oversight or regulation have to do with the investment? Or, a city in the Southeast is basically being levelled in order to erect massive communications towers (with financing, advice and shared profits from American investors), and the locals protest only to mowed down by machine gun fire. Let's see ... the right wing media in this country warns us that we must fear China because it graduates 700,000 engineers to our 70,000. Is this good? Is this a sign that China out-educates us in the modern world? Or could it be because China is a brutal dictatorship and can force people to do what it wants?

Am I the only person that sees the writing on the wall, here? Do we not see that the only way we can remain "competitive" with ourselves (since it is the very same corporations and corporate money at work in the old-fashioned world of geo-politics and international boundaries) is to eliminate all or most "benefits" to the working class and return to a time when you were lucky to have a job and to earn anything at all, so shut up and put in your ten hours and be happy. To make this happen, of course, we have to eliminate trade unions (or co-opt them into the system) and rewrite our basic assumptions and laws and police behaviors to accomodate a more repressive system. It's happening! We are dictated to by fear, we live in a climate of fear. The media and the politicians (all of them, as far as I can tell) cater to and build up this fear.

They may blatantly lie to us, but that is not necessary. They just have to put the fear out there ... manipulation of the information to reflect one side of an issue, total fabrications that are later rescinded ... but never forgotten (how many Americans, for example, still believe there was a direct link between Osama bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein? ... or how many Americans actually believe the Sun goes around the Earth -- a slightly different topic, but related to fear and ignorance) ... questions asked for a purpose. It doesn't take much to frighten people, especially when there is so much to fear!

[Scott Hays]

On the issue of energy and global efforts to reign in the oil companies, how about the Montreal Conference on Global Warming? You know, the one in which our astute leaders weasel-worded their way through the obvious contempt and incredulity of the rest of the world ... first we wouldn't participate in any global discussions of the Kyoto Protocol, then we would (maybe) participate in non-binding discussions, then we would definitely participate, and now we will only participate in the non-binding discussions. Every other leader of every other industrialized nation has come to accept the notion that the planet has heated up 1.8 degrees in the last 100 years and that carbon emissions from manufacturing and transportation have at least contributed to that change. Except us. The rest of the world has decided to go ahead without us, hoping that the groundswell of supporting opinion from the people of the United States (ha ha, they think we live in a democracy!) will force -- if not this Administration, then maybe the next -- the U.S. to the table.

I know there is a minority on this list who does not accept the overwhelming evidence that the planet is indeed getting warmer and that carbon emissions have at least something to do with it ... but the size of that minority just took a much bigger hit.

The full story (at least, one "objective" newspaper's account of it) can be found at

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/10/AR2005121001405.html

[Scott Hays]

Too much time on my hands for a Sunday ... I got so caught up in my anti-automaker rant that I forgot to make the most important point I wanted to make (besides reneging on contractual agreements in the so-called "free market" system that obviously cares little about integrity) ... when these really badly managed corporations do go belly up and file for bankruptcy, how many of them also ask for (and receive) a bail-out from a Congress that tells everyone else they are on their own and that "socialism" is an evil?

Socialism is evil only when it affects the common man.

The ironic thing here ... and this comes from a recently retired teacher who left the field because of the way education is changing in this country ... these very same business executives who supposedly drive their own companies into the ground (actually, they don't ... they just transfer the money to a different category and think the shell game works -- because it DOES ... but that is another story, isn't it?) are the very same assholes who are trying to privatize education and make it operate like a business.

[BillL]

Scott, I'm setting aside the rest of your comments until I have time to fully read them and think about it. However, you said:

Socialism is evil only when it affects the common man.

I'm sure some of you won't believe this, but I couldn't disagree more. Socialism, on paper is a fantastic idea. Add the human element and it's a recipe for chaos. There is nothing that encourages mediocrity or apathy more than the Socialist/Communist belief. If it were possible to impliment such a society, one would have sprung up and lasted. While the Representitive Republic is incredibly flawed, I see nothing else out there that is as strong as ours. Just my opinion, of course.

Oh yeah, everything is worse when it hits the common man. What's the old line?...if your neighbor losses his job it's a reccesion, but if you lose yours it's a depression?

Bill L

[Scott Hays]

Sorry to disagree, Bill ... but our nation is a socialist nation and -- at least according to most observers -- it is somewhat successful. As I suggested, however, the socialism only exists for one segment of the population. It is not egalitarian ... the very notion of "trickle-down", by definition, can not be egalitarian. Some people are more equal than others.

Congress has come to exist to pass laws that benefit the corporate world. In fact, most legislative bodies in this country have the same purpose. Folks are elected to office through the contributions made to their campaigns by competing elements of the corporate world (including the major labor unions and other special interest groups with a major stake in the corporate establishment) ... there are differences of opinion within the corporate world, so we see the facade of those differences in the policies and platforms of those seeking political office ... but the bottom line is that we live in a corporate state of national socialism. What benefits Chevron (or GM) benefits everyone else.