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Obama Proposes 'Meaningful Progress' On Climate Change
astroengine writes "President Barack Obama called for 'meaningful progress' on tackling climate change in his State of the Union speech in Washington, DC on Tuesday night. While acknowledging that 'no single event makes a trend,' the President noted that the United States had been buffeted by extreme weather events that in many cases encapsulated the predictions of climate scientists. 'But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods — all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science — and act before it's too late,' Obama added."
Other significant statements from Obama's speech: 34,000 troops coming back from Afghanistan over the next year; new gun regulations "deserve a vote"; rewards for schools that focus on STEM education; increases in tech research; a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9.00/hr and tie it to inflation; and a proposal to use oil and gas revenues to fund a move away from oil and gas,
I've been reading Slashdot for over 10 years, and there has been politics ever since I remember. Nerds care about this stuff too.
It strikes me that if you just let this man run the country for the remainder of his term without obstruction America could be the country that most people in the world have been told it is. And the whole world would be a better place.
Alternatively you can obstruct him at every turn and show that you are hypocrites that talk democracy and freedom, but are nothing more than corporate shrills doing the bidding of lobbyists, none of which are working for the American people, let alone the world.
And if you won't, for fuck sake let him run another country. Australia would love to have Obama as the leader. People of his mien come once a generation FFS.
Giving a nice speech doesn't really convince me of his intentions after sabotaging Kyoto.
Talk is cheap, and the State of the Union address is about pageantry and blowing hot air, not anything that will actually happen. Come back to me when you have a serious effort, which will probably involve legislation, a budget, an actual agency, probably some grant programs, and other tangible steps. Come back to me when thanks to some serious efforts and funding, we have solar or geothermal or hydro power that could handle the entire energy needs of the US. Come back to me when you have serious conservation efforts that make Americans not the most wasteful people on the planet.
You know, people made fun of Jimmy Carter suggesting things like turning down the thermostat and wearing a sweater, and for installing solar panels on the White House, but he was basically right about the necessary course of action.
I am officially gone from
Now, I'm no economics expert... But aren't minimum wage increases one of the (albeit small) contributors to inflation? And as such, wouldn't tying minimum wage increases to inflation create a circular reference of sorts?
Common Sense (+1)
There was a certain King Canute who went to the beach one day and ordered the tide to stop flowing. I can imagine Obama's ideas and efforts will have exactly the same effect.
Your analogy is terrible. History and other countries have shown that industry and consumers don't give a shit about the environment. And that goes for both capitalistic and socialistic societies. We've shown in the past that government regulation can fix things like CFCs and the pollution of drinking water so what's so batshit insane about proposing we fix this with regulations?
Your analogy would work if King Canute had previously ordered a lake to split in two and it had worked.
While he's at it he should make tornadoes, earthquakes and hurricanes illegal.
I don't know what this is? Some throwback to that bullshit logic about gun control? I guess people are still being murdered so we should revoke all the laws outlawing murders? I mean, when murdering is outlawed then only murderers will have the ability to murder people!
... is this some new parroted right-wing narrative you're getting from Facebook or something?
It's not about controlling the weather. The weather is a symptom of the problem of spewing tons and tons of carbon and greenhouse gases into the air and environment. So he's tackling the root cause of the problem, not making a symptom illegal
My work here is dung.
Do you remember what happened when he actually tried to close it? Congress refused to let it happen. The only way he's going to get the detention camp closed is if he orders the release of all the prisoners.
Because the trend is to turn us into either unemployed, or independent contractors, or temporary workers. An independent contractor can work for lower than minimum wage so the minimum wage doesn't matter when not everyone is paid in wages. Why not minimum income? Why not government guaranteed basic income? Watch this video for more http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sDBF_MbflY
1. Congress has had years to do something about this and has refused to act.
2. The camp is unconstitutional.
3. The camp does more harm than good.
The problem is we have a President who prefers to appear to be a wimpy appeaser of right wing extremists than be an actual liberal.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If we don't need hundreds and thousands of workers as cheap labor, then we don't need to outsource of jobs.
So what are you going to do with the people who can't hold down a high-tech/creative job? They don't magically vanish, and putting them all in prison would be horribly expensive.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I agree, lets also trim government down to the same size as it was then. Oh wait - can't have that, can we?
"Nobody has lost a job in the US because someone else could do the job in another country for less."
Hrmm. Obviously, you've never worked in IT.
I know hundreds of people who were removed from their positions because someone on the other side of the planet could do the same job (actually, they did the job much worse, but apparently that's irrelevant compared to cost) for less than half the price, plus, they aren't being employed as an "employee" so, no health care, matching 401k contributions, or any of that other nonsense that makes a regular employee so expensive.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The definition of tyranny was and remains a government that does not protect the natural rights of its people. The fact that people don't like a government which, like ours, routinely abrogates those rights does not mean that the abrogation is not tyrannical. So just to give one example, the President asserts the right to kill Americans without due process if he deems them to be a terrorist threat, even in America, on the theory that "the battlefield is everywhere." Is that, the utter abrogation of the right to life, not to be taken without due process of law (which doesn't simply mean making a law, or worse a regulation, or worst an executive order), not tyranny? And before you stalk off about this, yes, Bush was tyrannical, too, as witness the Padilla case.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
It should be noted that it was his Democrat buddies that put the kibosh on closing Gitmo.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yeah, god forbid Congress set our tax levels back up to the high rates of the Ronald Reagan era. That Reagan dude was clearly a fucking socialist.
If we can set spending levels there, too, it might just work. But if you're nervous about a 42% cut in federal spending, we could just go back to Clinton-era spending (when they actually came really close to balancing the budget), which would only be a 35% spending cut.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Honestly, I feel like a sucker.
If you believed the math on his tax plan worked, you damn well should feel like a sucker.
The budget was balanced and had a surplus in 1999 and 2000 (I think in 2001 too but I can't find the information). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_United_States_federal_budget and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_federal_budget
Look a little closer. There was a claimed "surplus" for one year, yet there was also an increase in debt. How? Because it was kind of faked.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The budget being balanced wasn't planned. It was an accident caused by the internet bubble, many people selling over priced stocks, and having to pay taxes on the profit.
The housing bubble was an attempt to keep things going, and while it resulted in increased revenues, the continued increases in planned increases, plus the new drug benefit, unfunded wars kept us well in the red during the last decade.
Basically, Regan, Clinton, both Bushes and Obama have all allowed spending to remain out of control as well as all members of Congress who don't actually propose to cut the actual amount of money being spent.
If I were the president, I'd propose a strong evaluation of military spending, keep the CIA, FBI, State Department, and the EPA, and turn almost everything else over to the states. That is, the government would concern itself with international relations and matters between the states, or that spill over state borders, and leave everything else to the states to figure out, especially medicare, social security and education.
There is never a good reason to vote Democrat - OR Republican.
My vote, this time and last, happened to be for the Democrat. But, I wasn't voting "for" the democrat, so much as I was voting "against" the other guy.
Give us some mainstream, centrist choices, who aren't bought and paid for by corporate interests, then I might vote for that choice. Until then, there is no difference between the parties. The single most important issue in America today, is that idiot "War on Terra". Has Obama attempted to have the Patriot Act repealed? Nope. Has he attempted to reign in Homeland Security? Nope. Has he renounced any of the special powers that the Bush administration pushed for? Nope. Has he fought for internet freedom? Well - sorta. Internet freedom was a great thing when the Arab Spring was blooming, but it's no longer a good political tool, so Obama follows Bush's lead now, pushing for more and more control.
The same corporations own both parties, so there is no reason to vote "for" either one.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Yeah, god forbid Congress set our tax levels back up to the high rates of the Ronald Reagan era. That Reagan dude was clearly a fucking socialist.
Tax revenue is more than just marginal tax rates - it also includes deductions. For example, consider the "hey day" of high marginal rates, the late 50s, back when the top marginal rates were 90%+ - and we ran an actual surplus (which has not happened since 1957).
In constant 2011 dollars, federal tax receipts in 1957 were $3200 per person.
Today, with the "much lower" marginal rates, federal tax receipts in 2011 were $6600 per person.
We're collecting over twice the revenue per capita - in constant dollars - now, with huge deficits, versus in 1957 when we had actual surpluses (and paid down the debt). We had many, many more deductions back in the high marginal tax rate days than we do today, allowing for a much lower level of actual taxation (less than 50% effective of what we pay today).
The problem is not - NOT - revenue. It is spending. The Federal Government is spending over 3 TIMES more per capita, in constant dollars, than it did back in those high-marginal rate days. We have a massive spending (and scope of activity) problem, NOT a revenue problem.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The budget was balanced and had a surplus in 1999 and 2000 (I think in 2001 too but I can't find the information). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_United_States_federal_budget and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_federal_budget
The last time we had a REAL surplus (not just something on paper) - a surplus where the Federal Government received more revenue than it spent - was in 1957. Source.
The referenced Wiki pages are for projected, on-budget spending surpluses - not overall. It's like you balance your own personal budget by ignoring your spending on your car, or mortgage interest... Take all Federal spending together, though, and we have not had a real, cash-basis surplus since 1957, in the Eisenhower Administration.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Of course, Bush grew the federal deficit by more than twice what Obama has...
Citation needed. The last Bush deficit - FY2008 - was $461 billion. FY2009 was signed by President Obama and had a $1.4 trillion deficit. Since then, every year (not budget - there hasn't been one for 3+ years) has seen more than $1 trillion in deficit spending. The actual facts are that President Obama more than tripled the worst President Bush deficit - and has seen those deficits hold over his entire first term.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The optimal amount is the amount where spending an additional dollar brings less than a dollar in economic benefits. Only when you can prove we're past that point will you be able to truthfully claim that we have a spending problem.
Your standard of evidence is backward. It's always safer to assume that spending is just consumption, not investment, unless there is evidence to support the position that it produces more in economic benefits (net present value, of course) than it costs. Those who claim that additional spending will result in a positive ROI are the ones with something to prove.
This is an impossible task, of course, as economic benefit is not something you can aggregate and measure across individuals in a non-voluntary system. Voluntary trade may not result in an ideal allocation of resource, but no non-voluntary system can objectively be said to produce a better allocation—just one more in line with the preferences of the few specific individuals in charge.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat