Can and trade: reality or fear mongering?

[thx1138]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KJyx0aK-fA&NR=1 & http://www.prisonplanet.com/bureaucrats-will-carry-out-mandatory-home-inspections-under-climate-bill.html & http://www.prisonplanet.com/banksters-love-cap-and-trade.html & http://www.prisonplanet.com/george-hunt-unced-earth-summit-1992-population-reduction-cap-and-trade-scam.html

[thx1138]

OOPS: make that CAP and trade.

[The Hierophant]

There is a right way and a wrong way to do Cap & Trade. In the past, Governments have charged money for "Carbon Credits", which inevitably leads to a game of companies buying them from eachother, and that has become a problem.

If, instead of charging money for the credits, the Government gives them away for free, as needed, but only has a limited amount to give out every year, then the companies won't try to sell them because the supply is limited.

[techi]

I think we are soon going to be paying mini-bar prices for our electricity. And all the profits are going to be captured by middlemen traders/speculators.

Welcome to Al Gore's Cap&Trade plantation. Yeee Haw!

[MarkD]

If this bill passes then we are going to notice the cost of everything go up tremendously with no end in sight. If you want to see what the result will be then head over to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office website and you can see first hand what the cost of fuel, energy will run. It's truly shocking especially when the Obama Administration surpessed a report last week from the EPA reporting we have been cooling not warming.

If passed Cap and Trade will break this countries back.

[hippifried]

I notice a trend in the crypto-conservative whine. The dire consequences that are predicted are usually just a description of what's already going on.

We've been doing cap & trade for decades. Almost all the big stacks around the country are fitted with scrubbers now. That's why nobody's talking about acid rain anymore. That was the fix. It worked. Now we're going after the other chemical compounds, in more sources.

We're already paying minibar prices. Every time you deregulate monopolies, the price goes up. What's new? The "market" can't control monopolies because there's no competition. If your light bill is too high, what're you gonna do? Call the other power company?

[techi]

I notice a trend in the crypto-conservative whine. The dire consequences that are predicted are usually just a description of what's already going on.

We've been doing cap & trade for decades. Almost all the big stacks around the country are fitted with scrubbers now. That's why nobody's talking about acid rain anymore. That was the fix. It worked. Now we're going after the other chemical compounds, in more sources.

We're already paying minibar prices. Every time you deregulate monopolies, the price goes up. What's new? The "market" can't control monopolies because there's no competition. If your light bill is too high, what're you gonna do? Call the other power company?

Uh, what's a crypto-conservative? Is that like a neocon, closet conservative or maybe just stupid rednecks? I tried wiki... no luck.

How is putting scrubbers on smoke stacks the same as Cap&Trade? My beef with Cap&Trade is that it opens yet another door for middleman speculators in our markets. I'd prefer a straight up federal tax on oil&coal... then at least the money goes to the government instead of directly to a middleman(Al Gore).

I agree that the deregulating of our monopolies has been insane. Governments may be poor money managers but cartels and monopolies are outright rapists.

Personally I don't believe that man made global warming is anywhere near as pronounced as Al Gore states it to be. I believe that the solar activity from the sun is by far and away the dominant driver of earth temperature.

That said, I'm all for increasing the cost of coal&oil. Coal is one of the dirtiest energy source immaginable. Even "clean coal" is gonna put a lot of crap into the air. Oil is dirty too and besides... oil comes from crazy unstable countries that I'd rather not be sending US Dollars to.

[techi]

If you want to see what the result will be then head over to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office website and you can see first hand what the cost of fuel, energy will run. It's truly shocking especially when the Obama Administration surpessed a report last week from the EPA reporting we have been cooling not warming.



Yeah, it's gotta be pretty embarrasing for our politicians to be pushing a global warming agenda when the earth has been cooling over the last decade. Fortunatly politicians are a shameless lot.

[Rogers]

If you want to see what the result will be then head over to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office website and you can see first hand what the cost of fuel, energy will run. It's truly shocking especially when the Obama Administration surpessed a report last week from the EPA reporting we have been cooling not warming.



Yeah, it's gotta be pretty embarrasing for our politicians to be pushing a global warming agenda when the earth has been cooling over the last decade. Fortunatly politicians are a shameless lot.

Oh noes, not this again!

It really is very simple. If the world wasn't warming long-term glaciers and sea-ice would not be retreating.

New NASA Satellite Survey Reveals Dramatic Arctic Sea Ice Thinning
July 07, 2009
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-107

Asides from the sun, our planet's trajectory around it, and greenhouse gases, our climate is effected by oceanic systems such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. We are currently at the top of the A.M.O.'s 70 year cycle.

Next decade 'may see no warming'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7376301.stm

Climate of suspicion
Global warming is a fact whatever its deniers - encouraged by a cool year - have to say
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/07/climatechange

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
http://www.intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?a=127

[hippifried]

[quote=hippifried]I notice a trend in the crypto-conservative whine. The dire consequences that are predicted are usually just a description of what's already going on.

We've been doing cap & trade for decades. Almost all the big stacks around the country are fitted with scrubbers now. That's why nobody's talking about acid rain anymore. That was the fix. It worked. Now we're going after the other chemical compounds, in more sources.

We're already paying minibar prices. Every time you deregulate monopolies, the price goes up. What's new? The "market" can't control monopolies because there's no competition. If your light bill is too high, what're you gonna do? Call the other power company?


Uh, what's a crypto-conservative? Is that like a neocon, closet conservative or maybe just stupid rednecks? I tried wiki... no luck.I can't make heads or tails of those labels. "Crypto" is a prefix meaning false. Like "faux", "ersatz", or "pseudo".


How is putting scrubbers on smoke stacks the same as Cap&Trade? My beef with Cap&Trade is that it opens yet another door for middleman speculators in our markets. I'd prefer a straight up federal tax on oil&coal... then at least the money goes to the government instead of directly to a middleman(Al Gore)."Cap & trade" is just a carrot & stick approach to bring industries into compliance with government regulations. That's the approach that was used to goad the smokestack industries into scrubbing out the particulates & capturing the sulpheric acid. By the time all was said & done, the scrubbers paid for themselves with the byproducts & the caps went away. Now we're going after the rest of the polutants. There's no reason that the emmissions from fossil fuel burning can't be recaptured & recycled into something that pays. There's already prototypes.


I agree that the deregulating of our monopolies has been insane. Governments may be poor money managers but cartels and monopolies are outright rapists.Everybody wants to corner their respective markets. That's why we have regulation & anti-trust laws.


Personally I don't believe that man made global warming is anywhere near as pronounced as Al Gore states it to be. I believe that the solar activity from the sun is by far and away the dominant driver of earth temperature.That was the attitude toward acid rain too. The withering fields & peeling paint around the stacks said different. So the stacks went higher. That was supposed to dissipate the smoke, & it worked to get it out of the localiaties of the stacks. Then the distant forests started dying. Oops! Now it's all crossing state & international lines & therefore becomes a federal problem. Global warming is a long term problem. We're speeding up the natural climatic processes. We don't need to fix the air. We just need to stop messing it up. It's all about solar warming & changes to the relative density of the atmosphere that blocks or amplifies the solar radiation either &/or both ways. The earth is a self-cleaning system if it's not overwhelmed.


That said, I'm all for increasing the cost of coal&oil. Coal is one of the dirtiest energy source immaginable. Even "clean coal" is gonna put a lot of crap into the air. Oil is dirty too and besides... oil comes from crazy unstable countries that I'd rather not be sending US Dollars to.I don't think costs need to be artificially increased. That's going to happen anyway in our mad dash to burn up as much fuel as possible in as short a time as possible. Ooga booga, the fire god has spoken & EXXON is his prophet. We just need to act as smart as we are & quit being sheep.

[The Hierophant]

"Crypto" is a prefix meaning false. Like "faux", "ersatz", or "pseudo".


Nope. Crypto, from the Greek kruptos, means hidden or secret.

Example: Cryptography - Hidden Writing

I also have never heard term "crypto-conservative."[/i]

[techi]

Oh noes, not this again!

It really is very simple. If the world wasn't warming long-term glaciers and sea-ice would not be retreating.


I live on the coast and I can tell you that I've seen no visible change in sealevel over the last 15 years. If we've had drastic melting of ice then shouldn't there already be a drastic change in sea level? Where's the flooding?

Ice in the arctic has shrunk in recent years but guess what? Ice in the antarctic has grown. What does all this prove? Not a thing either way.

In it's history, the earth has been both much warmer and much cooler than it is today. Al Gore and his hockey stick shaped graph showing impending doom in the next 20 years is simply not serious science.

There's no shortage of junk science and slanted reports out there that both "prove" and "disprove" the man made global warming catastrophy. The entire issue has become politicised to the point of absurdity.

So how do we tell if the Man Made Global Warming Catastrophy is legit or bs? I'd suggest doing it the same way that you defend in basketball, ignore headbobs and pumpfakes... keep track of the dribblers feet. Al Gore is Man Made Global Warmings greatest spokesperson and yet he is a complete energy hog in his personal life. If Al Gore really thought the sky was falling then his energy bills wouldn't be 20 times the national average. That's right, 20 times the average wasteful energy hog American family.

Keep in mind that Al Gore's plantation in the Nashville, not a particularly demanding place in terms of winter home heating.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1544135/Al-Gore-faces-truth-about-his-own-energy-use.html
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_it_true_that_al_gores_mansion.html
http://www.economistblog.com/2008/06/20/al-gore-energy-hog-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do/
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/story?id=2906888&page=1

[techi]

"Crypto" is a prefix meaning false. Like "faux", "ersatz", or "pseudo".


Nope. Crypto, from the Greek kruptos, means hidden or secret.

Example: Cryptography - Hidden Writing

I also have never heard term "crypto-conservative."[/i]

Hmmm, so that would make a crypto-conservative a closet conservative. Thanks! :D

[techi]

That said, I'm all for increasing the cost of coal&oil. Coal is one of the dirtiest energy source immaginable. Even "clean coal" is gonna put a lot of crap into the air. Oil is dirty too and besides... oil comes from crazy unstable countries that I'd rather not be sending US Dollars to.I don't think costs need to be artificially increased. That's going to happen anyway in our mad dash to burn up as much fuel as possible in as short a time as possible. Ooga booga, the fire god has spoken & EXXON is his prophet. We just need to act as smart as we are & quit being sheep.

Wait, I'm confused by your statement: " mad dash to burn up as much fuel as possible in as short a time as possible"

Isn't that one thing Cap&Trade is supposedly going to avoid? Isn't the idea to artificially limit supply?

If anyone was really serious about carbon emissions they'd have us switch to nuclear energy and build proper light-rail commuter networks in all cities and surrounding suburbs.

I still think Cap&Trade is a scam.

[Rogers]

Oh noes, not this again!

It really is very simple. If the world wasn't warming long-term glaciers and sea-ice would not be retreating.


I live on the coast and I can tell you that I've seen no visible change in sealevel over the last 15 years. If we've had drastic melting of ice then shouldn't there already be a drastic change in sea level? Where's the flooding?

*sigh*
Sea-level has only risen a few centimeters in the last 15 years. Only melting ice on land will affect sea-level, not ice already on the sea.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise_png


Ice in the arctic has shrunk in recent years but guess what? Ice in the antarctic has grown. What does all this prove? Not a thing either way.

There has been some cooling of the central Antarctic, but this has been exaggerated. This cooling has been strongly tied to the hole in the ozone layer. Ozone is also a greenhouse gas. This cooling has therefore been man-made and will end when the ozone layer closes again. This further backs the idea of man-made global warming as CO2 is a much stronger greenhouse gas than ozone is.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7228/full/nature07669.html
http://faculty.washington.edu/steig/nature09data/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica_cooling_controversy


In it's history, the earth has been both much warmer and much cooler than it is today. Al Gore and his hockey stick shaped graph showing impending doom in the next 20 years is simply not serious science.

Yes, the earth has indeed been hotter. It used to be a fireball at one time. But that doesn't mean that it's not warming right now, and that man isn't to blame for it. The "hockey stick" wasn't found by Al Gore and has been backed up by numerous subsequent studies.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Holocene_Temperature_Variations_Rev_png


There's no shortage of junk science and slanted reports out there that both "prove" and "disprove" the man made global warming catastrophy. The entire issue has become politicised to the point of absurdity.

So how do we tell if the Man Made Global Warming Catastrophy is legit or bs? I'd suggest doing it the same way that you defend in basketball, ignore headbobs and pumpfakes... keep track of the dribblers feet. Al Gore is Man Made Global Warmings greatest spokesperson and yet he is a complete energy hog in his personal life. If Al Gore really thought the sky was falling then his energy bills wouldn't be 20 times the national average. That's right, 20 times the average wasteful energy hog American family.

Keep in mind that Al Gore's plantation in the Nashville, not a particularly demanding place in terms of winter home heating.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1544135/Al-Gore-faces-truth-about-his-own-energy-use.html
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_it_true_that_al_gores_mansion.html
http://www.economistblog.com/2008/06/20/al-gore-energy-hog-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do/
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/story?id=2906888&page=1

Indeed, climate change has become heavily politicized. You've proved that yourself by bringing up Al Gore. Al Gore is NOT a scientist.

[techi]

Al Gore is NOT a scientist.

Yes, in this debate we have politicians acting like scientists and scientists acting like politicians. Sigh.

You are right, Al Gore is no scientist. Yet he was the star witness at the congressional hearings on Cap&Trade. And based on his behavior I'm certain that Al Gore himself does not believe the doom&gloom that he speaks regarding man made global warming. If working closely with all the climate change scientists hasn't convinced Al Gore then why should we believe it either?

[hippifried]

Wait, I'm confused by your statement:Apparently.


Isn't that one thing Cap&Trade is supposedly going to avoid? Isn't the idea to artificially limit supply?No. It's about raising efficiency standards & shrinking the carbon footprint per barrel of oil or ton of coal.


If anyone was really serious about carbon emissions they'd have us switch to nuclear energy and build proper light-rail commuter networks in all cities and surrounding suburbs.Yeah that's fine too, but remember that you could triple the price of fossil fuel & nuclear power would still be the most expensive to produce.


I still think Cap&Trade is a scam.Maybe if you knew what it was... You won't find out from blogs.

[techi]

I still think Cap&Trade is a scam.Maybe if you knew what it was... You won't find out from blogs.

Tradable carbon emission allowances, the government is to reduce the total allowances over time.

Apparently you don't think that speculators are going to worm thier way into the trading process. Or mebbe don't care.

[techi]

Isn't that one thing Cap&Trade is supposedly going to avoid? Isn't the idea to artificially limit supply?No. It's about raising efficiency standards & shrinking the carbon footprint per barrel of oil or ton of coal.


I think a clean coal carbon solution is a pipedream, I don't believe they can roll it out on a large scale in a cost effective manner. On the other hand there are viable technologies to improve the energy captured per ton of coal burned. So basically we'd be talking about getting more out of a given quantity of fuel. At that point a straight up tax per ton of coal works just fine... no need for a new cap&trade cottage industry.

Same goes for oil. We're looking at improving the mpg not the carbon emissions per gallon.

[techi]

If anyone was really serious about carbon emissions they'd have us switch to nuclear energy and build proper light-rail commuter networks in all cities and surrounding suburbs.Yeah that's fine too, but remember that you could triple the price of fossil fuel & nuclear power would still be the most expensive to produce.


Over 3 times as expensive? Compared to what? Carbon neutral fossil fuel solutions that don't even exist?

And if you price oil, add in the Trillions that's being squandered in middle east military adventures.

France gets about 85% of it's electricity from nuclear power and they've been doing just fine.

[hippifried]

Reality check:

Cap & trade isn't about fuel supply at all, let alone a limitation on it.

We're not going to stop burning fossil fuels anytime in the near future. Maybe not the in the forseeable future at all. It's not just power generation. It's cars. Millions of them on the road this second, just in the US. People still heat their homes & cook with it.

This isn't France. The government doesn't supply our utilities. Personally, I like the French system, but it can't work with a free market grid, & Americans are still hung up in cold war rhetoric to the point that a socialized power grid isn't going to happen.

When you burn fossil fuels, there's going to be emmissions. The trick is to recapture those emmissions, reprocess them, & resell the products created from that process. There's already working prototypes that separate chemical compounds & make organic agricultural fertilizers. The current scrubbers recapture sulpheric acid & the flyash that carries it. Both are resold for a multitude of purposes, & flyash has been a boon to the cement industry. The possibilities are practically endless. It's just a matter of dragging corporate America, kicking & screaming if necessary, into the modern world.

Will speculators be getting involved in trading the caps? Of course they will. This is America. Welcome to the world of capitalism.

[Rogers]

Al Gore is NOT a scientist.

Yes, in this debate we have politicians acting like scientists and scientists acting like politicians. Sigh.

You are right, Al Gore is no scientist. Yet he was the star witness at the congressional hearings on Cap&Trade. And based on his behavior I'm certain that Al Gore himself does not believe the doom&gloom that he speaks regarding man made global warming. If working closely with all the climate change scientists hasn't convinced Al Gore then why should we believe it either?

Ermm, most climate change scientists aren't full of doom and gloom about things. Scientists are generally practical optimists. What they are saying is that there is potentially a big problem ahead which we should not ignore. The quicker you take action against any kind of damage being done to a complex system, e.g. disease, the less damage there will inevitably be. And I've got to say it one more time: Al Gore is NOT a scientist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

I agree with you on nuclear energy unfortunately, though carbon capture and storage looks promising. But we should have spent some of the billions we've spent on Iraq making controlled fusion work now.

[techi]

On a side note, T. Boone Pickens just annouced that he's shelving plans to build the world's largest wind farm.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/08/pickens.wind.farm/index.html

I never thought wind was gonna be a large part of the energy mix but some people certainly had high hopes for it.

Parts of NYC have decent public transport(subway), we need more of that and in more cities. That doesn't eliminate the car problem but it does make it much smaller.

Al Gore is not a scientist!!! :lol:

[hippifried]

Al Gore is not a scientist!!! No, but he's done his homework. This has been one of his passions for a long time, & you don't have to be a pro to know a subject.

[techi]

Al Gore is not a scientist!!! No, but he's done his homework. This has been one of his passions for a long time, & you don't have to be a pro to know a subject.

Hmm, his two main passions seem to be global warming and personally using ungodly amounts of energy at his home. You don't have to be a pro to turn the lights off before you go to sleep! :wink:

Al Gore is not a scientist!!!

[hippifried]

Sure he is. Science isn't just chemicals & numbers. There's organizational sciences too, among others. He's the pro. Nobody's ever brought more people together on a single issue in such a short amount of time. By putting himself in the spotlight & keeping the organization loose, he becomes the only visible target for the naysayers. No matter what you or anyone else says about or does to Al Gore, it doesn't affect the organization at all, & there's no other lightning rod. There's no attacking the science itself because the only face is Al Gore, & as you say: "Al Gore is not a scientist!!!"

[Rogers]

Al Gore is not a scientist!!! No, but he's done his homework. This has been one of his passions for a long time, & you don't have to be a pro to know a subject.

Hmm, his two main passions seem to be global warming and personally using ungodly amounts of energy at his home. You don't have to be a pro to turn the lights off before you go to sleep! :wink:

Al Gore is not a scientist!!!


The entire issue has become politicised to the point of absurdity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmt_vLZS1mg

[Rogers]

Sure he is. Science isn't just chemicals & numbers. There's organizational sciences too, among others. He's the pro. Nobody's ever brought more people together on a single issue in such a short amount of time. By putting himself in the spotlight & keeping the organization loose, he becomes the only visible target for the naysayers. No matter what you or anyone else says about or does to Al Gore, it doesn't affect the organization at all, & there's no other lightning rod. There's no attacking the science itself because the only face is Al Gore, & as you say: "Al Gore is not a scientist!!!"

"The usual oil industry flacks and dogmatic skeptics have surfaced to denounce Al Gore's global warming movie. But climate scientists say that, basically, he got it right."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/10/truths/

The lag between temperature and CO2. (Gore’s got it right.)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/

[hippifried]

It's been studied to death. The Gaia principles are well known & universally accepted, except when inconvenient & money can be made from trying claim otherwise. The simplistic junk science is geared to the gullible illiterate who open the window & say "Hey, there's no global warming! It's snowing outside." Remember the Reagan statement that the biggest polluters are all those trees that breath. I don't remember the exact wording, but that was the gist. Trees = CO2 = baaaad. He managed to weasel out of it by making an even more stupid comment a couple of days later while his staff worked on the spin.

I think the biggest problem today is that we've seen so much stupid that we've grown to expect & sometimes even admire it. Sarah Palin is still beloved by a large group & Rush still has his audience. America broke out of its memetic trance & voted for intellect. Let's see if we can hang onto the trend for a while. The short-sighted tunnel vision has grown tiresome, at least for the time being. We'll see how long focus on the future hols up.

[techi]

I think the biggest problem today is that we've seen so much stupid that we've grown to expect & sometimes even admire it. Sarah Palin is still beloved by a large group & Rush still has his audience. America broke out of its memetic trance & voted for intellect. Let's see if we can hang onto the trend for a while. The short-sighted tunnel vision has grown tiresome, at least for the time being. We'll see how long focus on the future hols up.

Well, I would certainly hope that Rush and Palin's fan base have diminished after 8 horrible years of Bush. We certainly did vote for intellect but it's entirely unclear to me that that is what we've received.

When you talk about large scale, base load, low carbon footprint energy sources, only one technology is currently developed enough to be used on a large scale. That's nuclear energy technology. Yet we are not actively pushing for the construction of nuclear plants, instead we are pussyfooting around with technologies that are not currently ready. And it's not yet clear that they ever will be ready.

I hear arguments that we cannot use nuclear because we are not France and because it's three times as expensive. That's not "intellect", that's Coal and Oil industry scare propaganda that might as well come out of the mouth of Rush Limbaugh.

[techi]

Will speculators be getting involved in trading the caps? Of course they will. This is America. Welcome to the world of capitalism.

And you accept that crap? You know, FDR did much to fix our broken country by putting restrictions on speculators and related Wallstreet crazies. Cracking down on "anything goes" capitalism when it proves to be harmful is VERY American.

[q1a2z3]

What you all forget is once a few of these politicians are confronted by voters with pitchforks and torches (see Frankenstein) they will repeal these laws... or their replacements will repeal these laws. Only moonbats believe in crap and trade.

This is one of the many reasons we have the second amendment in the U.S. Constitution.

[trish]

The second amendment doesn't grant the right to own a pitchfork or a torch. I believe you are actually alluding to the pressure voters apply to office holders, but the second amendment doesn't have much to do with the right to vote either. Only a moonbat would think the second amendment has any relevance to this issue whatsoever.

You may be surprised at how quickly American voters will adjust to an economy once again stabilized by rational regulation.

[hippifried]

Will speculators be getting involved in trading the caps? Of course they will. This is America. Welcome to the world of capitalism.

And you accept that crap? You know, FDR did much to fix our broken country by putting restrictions on speculators and related Wallstreet crazies. Cracking down on "anything goes" capitalism when it proves to be harmful is VERY American.I accept the free market. Speculation has it's place. I haven't seen the final bill or even the draft, so I don't know what regulation will be included. It's cap & TRADE! The whole Idea is to be able to buy out of heavy fines if you need more time than alloted. Those who actively seek to come into compliance with the new guidelines will be in the catbird's seat. The only ones who need to worry are those who want to deliberately stall & flaunt the regs. There are no mom & pop utility companies. They're all regulated monopolies with guaranteed minimum profits. There's no such thing as a smokestack industry on a shoestring budget. This isn't the 1930s anymore.

[techi]

I accept the free market. Speculation has it's place. I haven't seen the final bill or even the draft, so I don't know what regulation will be included. It's cap & TRADE! The whole Idea is to be able to buy out of heavy fines if you need more time than alloted. Those who actively seek to come into compliance with the new guidelines will be in the catbird's seat. The only ones who need to worry are those who want to deliberately stall & flaunt the regs. There are no mom & pop utility companies. They're all regulated monopolies with guaranteed minimum profits. There's no such thing as a smokestack industry on a shoestring budget. This isn't the 1930s anymore.

It's insane to "accept" our current "free market". What is it about our current market that makes it "free"? Is it because it is free of any sense of rules and regulations? Free of any law and order? Pumped full of government bailouts? Or do you just call it a free market because Larry Kudlow says it's a free market?

And you're right, this isn't the 1930's even if it's starting to look like the 1930's in terms of unemployment. But if you're suggesting that our changes in market rules and regulation over the last 40 years constitute progress then you are incorrect.

What we currently have is normally called a mixed economy. When people talk about free markets they are usually talking about one of two things:
1) markets free of government interference and intervention
2) markets free of rent seeking parasites

Cap&Trade doesn't fit definition 1 because it's very nature is government interference in the form of artificial supply limitation.

Cap&Trade won't fit definition 2 either because the middlemen traders/speculators most certainly are rent seeking parasites

A perfect mini-example of free market would be an economy where "working gals" are in complete control of where they work, when they work, how long they work, what type of advertizing and security they hire and how much they charge.

As soon as a ruthless pimp enters the scene the free market is destroyed in a number of ways. He might act like a rent seeking parasite taking a involuntarily large cut of the gals earnings, he might regulate the supply of gals working on a given street corner, he might set the prices that they have to work for etc....

Personally I'm for a market without ruthless pimps&speculators but I'm not hostile to wise government regulations.

[Rogers]

...pitchforks and torches (see Frankenstein)...

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
That pretty much sums up your level of intellect, queer1assed2zealot3, and the level your politics appeals too. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Rabble Rabble Rabble
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/153618

[techi]

Commerce Secretary: Americans ‘Need to Pay’ for Chinese Emissions
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/07/17/commerce-secretary-americans-need-to-pay-for-chinese-emissions/

The Idea that the US taxpayer should directly pay for Chinese carbon emissions is complete crap. Paying indirectly thru carbon tariffs on imports sure.. that's fine but China hates that.

Dean Baker explains things pretty clearly:

Suppose we decided that we wanted to discourage the consumption of alcohol so that we taxed all alcohol products manufactured in the United States. Then, realizing that people will simply switch to buying untaxed alcohol produced overseas, we start taxing alcohol that is imported from countries that don't put their own tax on the manufacture of alcohol products. Are we putting sanctions on countries that don't tax their own production of alcohol?

According to the NYT we are. The NYT told readers that a House bill to restrict greenhouse gas emissions "would impose sanctions on countries that did not accept binding emissions cuts." That is a very peculiar way to describe the nature of the carbon import taxes in this bill.

[q1a2z3]

The second amendment doesn't grant the right to own a pitchfork or a torch. I believe you are actually alluding to the pressure voters apply to office holders, but the second amendment doesn't have much to do with the right to vote either. Only a moonbat would think the second amendment has any relevance to this issue whatsoever.

You may be surprised at how quickly American voters will adjust to an economy once again stabilized by rational regulation.


From the perspective of a high tax paying American "rational regulation" is nonsense. Arms are covered in the second amendment. A pitch fork and torch are arms. These fruitcakes in DC better get the idea that they are going to be living in a bunker if they don't stop taxing us to death. The second amendment is misunderstood my moonbats like trish because he does know this great country was brought about by revolution and it's coming again if these clueless politicians don't stop creating more insane programs and vaporware like global warming.

[trish]

Awww poor itty bitty q's paying almost as much in taxes as he did under Reagan. Hope you and your dollies have a nice tea party.

[techi]

Speaking of tea partys. A good number of those people are insane. They are as militantly opposed to defense spending cuts as they are to taxes. Never mind that defense spending is the single biggest place that our government absolutely wastes money.

99% of the US public should be protesting for better public services and smarter government spending rather than lower taxes. The bankers have rigged the game enough that much of any benefit from tax breaks will end up in thier hands pretty quickly. And that's also why wallstreet HATES social security, it's the only damn thing they cannot steal.

Imo, Obama's healthcare plan is screwy. He should have pushed for single payer.

[q1a2z3]

Speaking of tea partys. A good number of those people are insane. They are as militantly opposed to defense spending cuts as they are to taxes. Never mind that defense spending is the single biggest place that our government absolutely wastes money.

99% of the US public should be protesting for better public services and smarter government spending rather than lower taxes. The bankers have rigged the game enough that much of any benefit from tax breaks will end up in thier hands pretty quickly. And that's also why wallstreet HATES social security, it's the only damn thing they cannot steal.

Imo, Obama's healthcare plan is screwy. He should have pushed for single payer.

single payer = moonbat

All government in America should be restricted to 10% of a taxpayer's adjusted income. Assuming that income tax is the way to go. A better solution is a national sales tax and an amendment that forbids income tax. This would force government to live within a boundary and in order to get more money they would have to find ways to make taxpayers more prosperous. obama's new system will create more porch monkeys waiting for that check at the end of the month.

Most non-defense programs should zeroed out like SSI, MC and MCD.
SSI, MC and MCD are Pyramid schemes! They can never work! An amendment is needed to force a sunset on any government regulation, statute, and law when it have been in effect for five years. This would let the idiots in Congress play with themselves instead of fucking the taxpayer.

Minimum wage should be abolished. Illegals would go home. Provide no services for illegals except giving them the property of a moonbat judge who would be against this idea.

The house of representatives should be increased to 6,000. The representatives should meet via the Internet and stay in their district to get information from their constituents. This would prevent the special interest groups from buying all the representatives, like they do now. A representative should be limited to three terms, a senator to one term and the president the existing 2 terms. People could control their representative if he/she/it represented 30,000 people instead of the hugh number they do today.

The members of the Senate should be placed back in control of the state governments to represent the states and to prevent unfunded mandates.
Repeal the 17th amendment.

Taxpayers should buy their own health insurance. Congress should allow medical companies to sell insurance across state lines. Other regulations need to be removed. Just like boob jobs, health care would drop in price if everyone had to shop for it. Real Americans who have no health care could still go to the emergency room. If the emergency room was so expensive like the commander in chimp is always complaining about, hospitals would have created health clinics for the poor a long time ago to reduce costs.

Tea party people suffer from a condition known as REALITY! We know that islam is a cult and needs to be exterminated. The commander in chimp is sucking up to islam.

Bankers are assholes just like bush and obama. Notice how both sucked up to wall street. In a real capitalist country they would let them fail today and let some other company buy their assets tomorrow. The stupid brother's bailout was incompetent.

[techi]

We spend more on defense than the rest of the entire world combined. We could kick any other nations ass with half the money. Hell, we could kick everyones ass at the same time with half the money. US defense spending is a massive waste and misallocation of funds. That's the reality.

Yes, the bailout was criminal but guess what... we are stuck with these crooks and they friggin run the country. Unless you change that fact then everything else you support becomes suicidally insane because the bankers will fucking steal everything. There's basically nothing they can't steal thru massive swings between inflation and deflation.

For example, in the current environment, unregulated health insurers would consolidate into a few large corporations and form a cartel which would extract maximal payments while providing minimal services.

Your idea on changing government is interesting and all but... how realistic do you think it is to ever see that kind of reform?

Personally I think taxes on wages are bad. If anything gets taxed it should be non-wage related. Speculation could be heavily taxed, investment moderately taxed and consumption lightly taxed.

Who's your favorite radio talk show host q1a2z3 ?

[q1a2z3]

1. Dr. Michael Savage

2. Rush Limbaugh

3. Laura Ingrahm

4. Michelle Malkin

If you scare these jokers in DC enough they will start doing what the real people want. How about 10 million people descend on DC all carrying nerf pitch forks and nerf torches. We march to the Congress and the Whitehouse and we bury these representatives in demands for the following:

1. Repeal taxes! Make income and property taxes unconstitutional - need the states to do this. The average American does not understand that a tax on business is a tax on people. Businesses never pay taxes. They increase the cost of the product or service.

2. Implement a consumption tax. You buy stuff you pay a tax on it. Exempt businesses since they pass the tax on to the consumer. Now every business in the world will have an office in America and we will have full employment.

3. Term limits! Three terms/representative, one/senator and two/president. Demand better representation - 1 representative/30,000 people.
Every representative must live in their district and must work over the Internet. Representatives do not get paid, they get no benefits, their only reason to exist is to represent the other 29,999 people who elected them.

4. Out law paid, group lobbyists. This lays the foundation for the "of the people, by the people and for the people." Remember, business would not be paying taxes - they have no representation. Property taxes rob property owners everyday.

Now - if the government we compelled to have a separation of government and state many of obamas and bushes business friends would have died a few months ago and some other business would have cleans up the mess. If you put $10,000.00 in the bank you can't have a guarantee that your money is safe. That is Santa and Easter Bunny dreaming. If the bank invests in ant farms in South America you are screwed! Transparency is the bast way to combat business problems. How many "public" companies are controlled by a single stockholder? Would that company be a good buy? What is a bank invested in? Shouldn't an account holder see the information in order to know its health?

As far as the health insurers are concerned they are not going to have the leverage that the major oil companies have on the price of oil. Health care comes from doctors. If the money spent in DC on regulation was no longer spent and the doctors were free to create business plans and create businesses in a regulation free environment you would have plenty of choices. See a $50/hr doctor for a scraped knee and see the $1000/hr doctor for brain surgery. Consumers will vote with their pocket book. Cosmetic surgery has never been cheaper. I don't see a cartel there.

I am a big time supported of my military. I was hoping they would stage a coup and send obama back to kenya. I love the fact that my carbon footprint is large and America uses 25% of the worlds resources.

[hippifried]

Wow! That's gonna require a really big butterfly net.

[techi]

Uh, q1a2z3, they had massive marches on Washington in the 1960's, and they burnt down Detriot. What did we get? Nixon-Ford-Carter... a decade of failboat politics. If anything our politicians have gotten even worse since that time.

Regarding taxes, not distinguishing between wage income and investment income is a mistake. I agree that taxes on wage income should be eliminated. I do not agree that investment income should be untaxed. I think it's perfectly fair that trust fund babies that never worked a day in thier lives end up paying taxes on thier trust fund gains. You don't want to end up with a society of do-nothing free loaders do you?

As for full employment, fixing the tax system will not fix employment. There are other problems, mainly that other countries dump products in the US at below production costs. They also pay workers almost nothing in Asia.

As for term limits, don't you think that a politician that doesn't get paid and isn't allowed to run for reelection will take as many bribes as humanly possible and totally fuck up the country? I just don't see how your suggestion improves anything.

Everyone wants the damn lobbyists gone from Washington. The trick is how to actually give them the boot. IF you outlaw lobbyists... they'll just re-form as "non-profit" think tanks that actually serve the same purpose.

As for your comments regarding bank insurance, the FDIC is a good institution. Getting rid of the FDIC would be very bad, we'd have bank runs galor just like we used to before the 1930's. JP Morgan was famous for spreading false rumors about other banks that caused bank run panics and wiped out the competition.... total bullshit way to do business. Besides, the FDIC only provides a very limited guarantee, just enough to prevent bank runs. The Federal Reserve on the other hand... personally I think it's power should be returned to Congress.

Company books are cooked and always have been. Even when accounting rules are decent and compliance with the rules is the norm. Accounting may be very boring yet accountants always find a way to be creative. And it's not just accountants, sales managers fudge when sales are actually booked to keep the sales chart looking like a nice smooth upward line for investors.

Most Americans are proud of the men and women that serve in the armed forces. That does not mean that we should set the military budget so high that we bankrupt the nation. We should spend as much money as needed to properly defend the nation but not a penny more.

As for comments on Obama and the military, do you really think a President Biden would be some kind of improvement. lol