There was no "ability" to filibuster. Even at 41 Republicans, the Democrats could always count on Snowe or Collins or McCain or Specter or one of a few others. You can't filibuster with 38 votes.
There has not been a Republican filibuster in this congressional session. There's no indication there would ever be one. Specter was already a vote of the Democrats on the only bill that came close: the Stimulus Bill.
This makes no difference on filibusters. If you think it does, you haven't been paying attention.
This is "yet another Washington insider declares for the party of government."
I think you misunderstand the current state of drug regulation and class-action lawsuits.
Silicone gel breast implants caused none of the conditions they were blamed for. But there were huge lawsuits and they were taken off the market. Billions of dollars changed hands at the direction of the legal system. It doesn't matter that they harmed no one. The damage is already done and the companies (shareholders, employees, and other individuals) that made them aren't going to get their money back.
This is a bunch of BS. When there is no "right" answer, many different conclusions are logical and reasonable. Life is full of situations with no good answers.
You really think "live with constant pain 24x7" vs. "take a chance on a heart attack or stroke" is a choice with a clear-cut, correct answer? It is not.
Moreover, people who think they can find the "right" choice for every possible situation are dangerous and destructive.
Except none of these arguments matter because patents run out in 20 years.
And they only have "control" when you give it to them in exchange for a benefit. If it's not a good deal, don't buy it.
I don't mindlessly buy into your groupthink. "If you disagree, then you're stupid" tends to be an argument typical of those who promote ideas that are false.
Patents run out in 20 years. What's the problem? We had food before any Monsanto patent. For a lot longer than 20 years.
I think I understand though. Some company might make some money by inventing something that helps people. That's a problem for anti-corporate haters. They'd rather companies not invent and people not be helped. If just one company can be denied a profit, all the damage to human potential and standards of living is worthwhile!
You're holding on to your incandescent bulbs? School teachers will be telling little 7-year-old kids that you want to drown polar bears. What will you say in your defense?
Besides that, it will be illegal to sell incandescent 100-watt bulbs after 2012. You'll be sacrificing what's in your best interest For The Earth. (And why shouldn't you? You're just a human. Who cares about them? You're probably not even a minority.)
Your government knows what you should do. Use the bulbs they tell you. Whatever you do, don't think for yourself. Just obey.
If there were a shortage of wheat, the price would go up. People would then travel long distances to trade for food. Before the price increase, it wasn't worth it. Now it is. The traders bring back food. It is expensive and not the food that the folks were used to, but they are hungry so they eat it. No one starves. I'm not sure I understand what the point is.
You apparently think that on a Monday there will be oil and fuel will cost $3 and then on Tuesday it will all be gone forever. The world doesn't work that way.
The future scarcity of oil and coal is built into the current price. If there is a shortage, people will pay more. If I own oil in the ground, I can either pump it today or wait and pump it later. If the price is going to double next month because we're running out, then I can just sit on my oil and double my money next month. Why wouldn't I? Am I irrational? Maybe I don't want more money? Do you secretly know more about the world's oil supply than the people in the oil business?
If you're right and everyone will run out of oil at a specific time, then you can make some specific oil futures trades with that knowledge. But you haven't done that. Why not? It's because you really don't know.
Your understanding assumes specific people are either stupid, irrational, shortsighted to the point of being irrational, uninformed about their own industry, or willing to take economic losses as part of some grand evil conspiracy to rule the world.
This is not a new argument, you know. It's the same set of talking-points going back many years. They seem to make sense if you don't apply any critical thinking. But everything you say is based on how you know the future and you know what the Right Amount is to put towards The Right Research into The Right Energy sources.
But no one with these talking-points ever uses their Knowledge to trade oil futures and cash in. They never even try it. It's because they don't know. They repeat the words and join the social circle, but they'd never risk their own money on something they haven't thought critically about. They're happy to spend other people's money on it though.
It's from those liars in the coal industry though. What do they know about coal? They're just lying to keep their profits low. It's all a grand conspiracy, I'm sure.
What was the point of that link? So you can say you don't believe it? So you can link to someone else (someone not in the coal industry, with no direct knowledge and no financial incentive to be correct) who does some shallow rhetorical analysis and discovers that coal actually runs out next Thursday at 4:45 AM?
I can't provide empirical evidence for any specific amount of coal. Neither can you. It's all underground, not sitting on a precisely-calibrated scale. Even the guys who study it and are supposed to get it right can only estimate. I'm sure their estimates are imperfect. So what was the point?
When fuels get more scarce, prices increase. In a free market, people start examining substitute fuels that are now competitive at the new price. What's wrong with this again? Why does the world need you to second guess everyone's choices?
Also, why would anyone in the coal or oil industry want to pretend there's plenty when there's actually a shortage? If there's a shortage, they can charge more. Because there are the same number of bidders trying to buy a smaller and smaller supply. Or are you saying you know better than the people in the coal and oil industries?
1. The global warmenist plan to tax energy will make people poorer. When you can afford less energy (or less anything) with the same amount of money, you're poorer. This is true by definition. Please explain how this can be disputed.
2. Please explain how the next 10 or 20 or 100 years of technological advances will make it harder to switch to alternative energies.
3. Forcing people to pay a tax or use inferior products against their will is oppression consistent with tyranny. What if the people disobey? They get rounded up and imprisoned.
If all the global warmenists wanted to do was cut taxes, I'd be in favor. But they want to punish people who use fossil fuels.
You can see the basic facts of that situation, right?
Yes. But there's enough coal for hundreds of years. There's enough oil for hundreds of years too. Oil might start to get expensive. When it does, there are lots of new sources of oil available at higher costs: shale, tar sands, coal gasification, or just oil that's difficult and expensive to drill for.
"Running out" of fossil fuels is a problem for when it happens. Why should we impoverish people now to solve some issue that may happen in 100 years? With 100 years of technological advances, they'll be in a lot better position to solve it when they actually need to.
"Running out" of fossil fuels is also ignorant of economics. You could never "run out". Eventually, fossil fuels will just get expensive until other substitutes are competitive. And the alternative energies will finally have a place. At this future time, it will be because they're the best choice for people, not something clearly worse that people are forced to use by their tyrannical overlords. People will choose them freely when they actually help out.
Free markets allow people to solve these problems in the most cost-effective way at the most cost-effective time. We don't need a government overlord telling us to buy the thing that works best for us. When "alternative energy" works for people at a competitive price, then people will switch to it. Forcing it before that time makes people worse off.
But it makes logical sense to me that if you can build a coal-burning power plant and a plant that generates electricity from ocean wave motion for about the same amount of materials...
But you can't. You might as well ask for energy from magic beans. "If we can get energy from magic beans, what do we need coal for?" Because magic isn't real.
I'm for what works too. Not what "might work" if we charge everyone 5x for electricity. Not what "might work" in 200 years. Not what "might work" if magic were real. If "alternative energy" worked (and was cost-effective in the real world), it wouldn't be called "alternative energy". It would just be called "energy".
BTW: The "alternative energy" crowd plans to win this by forcing everyone to pay a huge tax on their energy. When you artificially raise the prices high enough, alternative energy can finally compete. But everyone who uses energy is poorer. Poorer developing countries develop slower. Poorer people are more prone to premature death. Poorer people can afford less scientific research into disease cures. Poorer people buy less, so the people they buy from can employ fewer workers.
And why wouldn't we just use cheap energy instead of the luxury "alternative energy"? Government force. Governments will force people to act against their own interests. They'll deny people freedom. This is known as tyranny.
To top it all off, we're in danger of slipping into an economic depression. This additional forced impoverishment for The Earth will prolong and deepen the economic downturn. The last depression resulted in WWII.
Why would we want to risk all the possible problems with the global warming remedies without a guarantee that anthropogenic global warming is actually real (and an actual problem)? And why do it in the current economic circumstances, when we can least afford it?
Progress saves lives - and research in alternate energy technologies is progress. Isn't it?
It's a discount form of progress. When denied actual progress, it can act as a poor substitute.
For example:
Coal is very cheap and very abundant. You can burn coal when you need electricity. Solar power is comparatively very expensive. It only works when the sun is out. If I can only afford ten scientific researchers, should I pay them to try to cure cancer, or should I pay them to make solar power a little cheaper (but still much more expensive than coal)?
If you make "progress" and only force people to pay 5x for their electricity instead of 8x, is that really progress? They're still paying $50 for electricity they used to be able to get for $10. It seems like negative "progress".
Progress is when you make things better for people. When you make things worse for people to benefit The Earth, it's hardly "progress".
ALL of those alternative solutions require MORE research and MORE advanced technology, not less.
Which diverts resources from things that actually help people.
We could use our resources to cure cancer, predict earthquakes and tsunamis, and provide cheaper, healthier food to developing nations. Or we could use those resources to replace cheap, reliable electricity-generation from abundant coal with expensive, unreliable electricity generation from solar and wind. Do we want advances that make human life better, or do we owe it to The Earth to make human life worse?
- Prove that forcing people to pay 2x or 10x (or any amount) more for the same energy makes them poorer? - Prove that poorer people have a higher incidence of premature death? - Prove that externally-enforced poverty can lead to wars? - Prove that tyranny can lead to wars? - Prove that poor people have less to spend on disease research than rich people? - Prove that disease research leads to disease cures? - Prove that disease cures save people from dying of those diseases? - Prove that a life spent pursuing the advancement of a false theory is a life wasted? - Prove that poor people have less to spend on technological research than rich people? - Prove that technological research leads to advances? - Prove that developing countries will develop slowly when their energy is very expensive instead of very cheap?
Why is it guaranteed that when things get "quite difficult" it's worse than the difficulties we currently have? Or the difficulties we'll have if we "fix" global warming?
You're promising a worse future if we do something and a better future if we do something else. Why should we believe you can predict these outcomes accurately?
The world's climate and economy and social and political systems are complex. The global warmenists would have you believe they've mastered the understanding of all of them together and can navigate toward the best possible outcome, predicting events and steering a course 20 years in advance. They haven't. They can't.
And in this case, if we follow the consensus and it turns out they're wrong, the consequences of that are what?
- Massive unemployment - greatly increased worldwide poverty - advances in technology not made or delayed by many years - thousands of brilliant scientists wasting their lives in pursuit of nonsense - government tyranny and possible permanent loss of freedom - extreme drops in living standards
potential secondary effects:
- wars (possibly WWII-scale wars) - famine - millions dead from diseases not cured - developing countries halt their progress in developing (or it takes another 50-100 years)
People will die if the global warming "remedies" are put in place. People in poverty have a greater incidence of premature death. Slower development leads to cures not found and deaths not prevented.
Millions of people have died from malaria since DDT was banned. Global warming remedies could be much more destructive.
Progress saves lives. Global warming remedies will cause us to regress.
Slashdot Mirror
There was no "ability" to filibuster. Even at 41 Republicans, the Democrats could always count on Snowe or Collins or McCain or Specter or one of a few others. You can't filibuster with 38 votes.
There has not been a Republican filibuster in this congressional session. There's no indication there would ever be one. Specter was already a vote of the Democrats on the only bill that came close: the Stimulus Bill.
This makes no difference on filibusters. If you think it does, you haven't been paying attention.
This is "yet another Washington insider declares for the party of government."
I think you misunderstand the current state of drug regulation and class-action lawsuits.
Silicone gel breast implants caused none of the conditions they were blamed for. But there were huge lawsuits and they were taken off the market. Billions of dollars changed hands at the direction of the legal system. It doesn't matter that they harmed no one. The damage is already done and the companies (shareholders, employees, and other individuals) that made them aren't going to get their money back.
This is a bunch of BS. When there is no "right" answer, many different conclusions are logical and reasonable. Life is full of situations with no good answers.
You really think "live with constant pain 24x7" vs. "take a chance on a heart attack or stroke" is a choice with a clear-cut, correct answer? It is not.
Moreover, people who think they can find the "right" choice for every possible situation are dangerous and destructive.
Except none of these arguments matter because patents run out in 20 years.
And they only have "control" when you give it to them in exchange for a benefit. If it's not a good deal, don't buy it.
I don't mindlessly buy into your groupthink. "If you disagree, then you're stupid" tends to be an argument typical of those who promote ideas that are false.
Patents run out in 20 years. What's the problem? We had food before any Monsanto patent. For a lot longer than 20 years.
I think I understand though. Some company might make some money by inventing something that helps people. That's a problem for anti-corporate haters. They'd rather companies not invent and people not be helped. If just one company can be denied a profit, all the damage to human potential and standards of living is worthwhile!
But polar bears are cute and the teacher at the government school said you were making all their ice melt and they'd all fall in the water and drown!!
I can just drink soda.
(Note how 7-year-old environmentalist sounds a lot like 27-year-old environmentalist.)
You're holding on to your incandescent bulbs? School teachers will be telling little 7-year-old kids that you want to drown polar bears. What will you say in your defense?
Besides that, it will be illegal to sell incandescent 100-watt bulbs after 2012. You'll be sacrificing what's in your best interest For The Earth. (And why shouldn't you? You're just a human. Who cares about them? You're probably not even a minority.)
Your government knows what you should do. Use the bulbs they tell you. Whatever you do, don't think for yourself. Just obey.
If you find something by the side of the road, take it, and leave a note for the rightful owner, is it stealing if the owner never comes to claim it?
Items that are truly abandoned by their rightful owners can hardly be stolen.
Maybe this will lead Apple to lower their prices a little. That would be great. Cheaper Macs.
It would be one of the worst possible things that could happen to Microsoft though.
If there were a shortage of wheat, the price would go up. People would then travel long distances to trade for food. Before the price increase, it wasn't worth it. Now it is. The traders bring back food. It is expensive and not the food that the folks were used to, but they are hungry so they eat it. No one starves. I'm not sure I understand what the point is.
You apparently think that on a Monday there will be oil and fuel will cost $3 and then on Tuesday it will all be gone forever. The world doesn't work that way.
The future scarcity of oil and coal is built into the current price. If there is a shortage, people will pay more. If I own oil in the ground, I can either pump it today or wait and pump it later. If the price is going to double next month because we're running out, then I can just sit on my oil and double my money next month. Why wouldn't I? Am I irrational? Maybe I don't want more money? Do you secretly know more about the world's oil supply than the people in the oil business?
If you're right and everyone will run out of oil at a specific time, then you can make some specific oil futures trades with that knowledge. But you haven't done that. Why not? It's because you really don't know.
Your understanding assumes specific people are either stupid, irrational, shortsighted to the point of being irrational, uninformed about their own industry, or willing to take economic losses as part of some grand evil conspiracy to rule the world.
This is not a new argument, you know. It's the same set of talking-points going back many years. They seem to make sense if you don't apply any critical thinking. But everything you say is based on how you know the future and you know what the Right Amount is to put towards The Right Research into The Right Energy sources.
But no one with these talking-points ever uses their Knowledge to trade oil futures and cash in. They never even try it. It's because they don't know. They repeat the words and join the social circle, but they'd never risk their own money on something they haven't thought critically about. They're happy to spend other people's money on it though.
---
Here's that link for you:
http://www.clean-coal.info/drupal/secure
It's from those liars in the coal industry though. What do they know about coal? They're just lying to keep their profits low. It's all a grand conspiracy, I'm sure.
What was the point of that link? So you can say you don't believe it? So you can link to someone else (someone not in the coal industry, with no direct knowledge and no financial incentive to be correct) who does some shallow rhetorical analysis and discovers that coal actually runs out next Thursday at 4:45 AM?
I can't provide empirical evidence for any specific amount of coal. Neither can you. It's all underground, not sitting on a precisely-calibrated scale. Even the guys who study it and are supposed to get it right can only estimate. I'm sure their estimates are imperfect. So what was the point?
When fuels get more scarce, prices increase. In a free market, people start examining substitute fuels that are now competitive at the new price. What's wrong with this again? Why does the world need you to second guess everyone's choices?
Also, why would anyone in the coal or oil industry want to pretend there's plenty when there's actually a shortage? If there's a shortage, they can charge more. Because there are the same number of bidders trying to buy a smaller and smaller supply. Or are you saying you know better than the people in the coal and oil industries?
1. The global warmenist plan to tax energy will make people poorer. When you can afford less energy (or less anything) with the same amount of money, you're poorer. This is true by definition. Please explain how this can be disputed.
2. Please explain how the next 10 or 20 or 100 years of technological advances will make it harder to switch to alternative energies.
3. Forcing people to pay a tax or use inferior products against their will is oppression consistent with tyranny. What if the people disobey? They get rounded up and imprisoned.
If all the global warmenists wanted to do was cut taxes, I'd be in favor. But they want to punish people who use fossil fuels.
You can see the basic facts of that situation, right?
Yes. But there's enough coal for hundreds of years. There's enough oil for hundreds of years too. Oil might start to get expensive. When it does, there are lots of new sources of oil available at higher costs: shale, tar sands, coal gasification, or just oil that's difficult and expensive to drill for.
"Running out" of fossil fuels is a problem for when it happens. Why should we impoverish people now to solve some issue that may happen in 100 years? With 100 years of technological advances, they'll be in a lot better position to solve it when they actually need to.
"Running out" of fossil fuels is also ignorant of economics. You could never "run out". Eventually, fossil fuels will just get expensive until other substitutes are competitive. And the alternative energies will finally have a place. At this future time, it will be because they're the best choice for people, not something clearly worse that people are forced to use by their tyrannical overlords. People will choose them freely when they actually help out.
Free markets allow people to solve these problems in the most cost-effective way at the most cost-effective time. We don't need a government overlord telling us to buy the thing that works best for us. When "alternative energy" works for people at a competitive price, then people will switch to it. Forcing it before that time makes people worse off.
But it makes logical sense to me that if you can build a coal-burning power plant and a plant that generates electricity from ocean wave motion for about the same amount of materials...
But you can't. You might as well ask for energy from magic beans. "If we can get energy from magic beans, what do we need coal for?" Because magic isn't real.
I'm for what works too. Not what "might work" if we charge everyone 5x for electricity. Not what "might work" in 200 years. Not what "might work" if magic were real. If "alternative energy" worked (and was cost-effective in the real world), it wouldn't be called "alternative energy". It would just be called "energy".
BTW: The "alternative energy" crowd plans to win this by forcing everyone to pay a huge tax on their energy. When you artificially raise the prices high enough, alternative energy can finally compete. But everyone who uses energy is poorer. Poorer developing countries develop slower. Poorer people are more prone to premature death. Poorer people can afford less scientific research into disease cures. Poorer people buy less, so the people they buy from can employ fewer workers.
And why wouldn't we just use cheap energy instead of the luxury "alternative energy"? Government force. Governments will force people to act against their own interests. They'll deny people freedom. This is known as tyranny.
To top it all off, we're in danger of slipping into an economic depression. This additional forced impoverishment for The Earth will prolong and deepen the economic downturn. The last depression resulted in WWII.
Why would we want to risk all the possible problems with the global warming remedies without a guarantee that anthropogenic global warming is actually real (and an actual problem)? And why do it in the current economic circumstances, when we can least afford it?
Progress saves lives - and research in alternate energy technologies is progress. Isn't it?
It's a discount form of progress. When denied actual progress, it can act as a poor substitute.
For example:
Coal is very cheap and very abundant. You can burn coal when you need electricity. Solar power is comparatively very expensive. It only works when the sun is out. If I can only afford ten scientific researchers, should I pay them to try to cure cancer, or should I pay them to make solar power a little cheaper (but still much more expensive than coal)?
If you make "progress" and only force people to pay 5x for their electricity instead of 8x, is that really progress? They're still paying $50 for electricity they used to be able to get for $10. It seems like negative "progress".
Progress is when you make things better for people. When you make things worse for people to benefit The Earth, it's hardly "progress".
ALL of those alternative solutions require MORE research and MORE advanced technology, not less.
Which diverts resources from things that actually help people.
We could use our resources to cure cancer, predict earthquakes and tsunamis, and provide cheaper, healthier food to developing nations. Or we could use those resources to replace cheap, reliable electricity-generation from abundant coal with expensive, unreliable electricity generation from solar and wind. Do we want advances that make human life better, or do we owe it to The Earth to make human life worse?
We don't have to change the whole system just nudge it over the cliff
You present no evidence for this "cliff". Why should be believe it's on a cliff?
What if it's at the bottom of a bowl? So nudging it one way causes it to go that way and then come back to the bottom of the bowl.
Please prove the "cliff" analogy is more accurate than the "bowl" analogy before we continue the discussion. Thanks.
Prove what?
- Prove that forcing people to pay 2x or 10x (or any amount) more for the same energy makes them poorer?
- Prove that poorer people have a higher incidence of premature death?
- Prove that externally-enforced poverty can lead to wars?
- Prove that tyranny can lead to wars?
- Prove that poor people have less to spend on disease research than rich people?
- Prove that disease research leads to disease cures?
- Prove that disease cures save people from dying of those diseases?
- Prove that a life spent pursuing the advancement of a false theory is a life wasted?
- Prove that poor people have less to spend on technological research than rich people?
- Prove that technological research leads to advances?
- Prove that developing countries will develop slowly when their energy is very expensive instead of very cheap?
Which one of these things is in doubt?
> Millions of people have died from malaria since DDT was banned.
The families of the dead malaria victims might disagree.
And everything is perfect now?
Why is it guaranteed that when things get "quite difficult" it's worse than the difficulties we currently have? Or the difficulties we'll have if we "fix" global warming?
You're promising a worse future if we do something and a better future if we do something else. Why should we believe you can predict these outcomes accurately?
The world's climate and economy and social and political systems are complex. The global warmenists would have you believe they've mastered the understanding of all of them together and can navigate toward the best possible outcome, predicting events and steering a course 20 years in advance. They haven't. They can't.
And in this case, if we follow the consensus and it turns out they're wrong, the consequences of that are what?
- Massive unemployment
- greatly increased worldwide poverty
- advances in technology not made or delayed by many years
- thousands of brilliant scientists wasting their lives in pursuit of nonsense
- government tyranny and possible permanent loss of freedom
- extreme drops in living standards
potential secondary effects:
- wars (possibly WWII-scale wars)
- famine
- millions dead from diseases not cured
- developing countries halt their progress in developing (or it takes another 50-100 years)
People will die if the global warming "remedies" are put in place. People in poverty have a greater incidence of premature death. Slower development leads to cures not found and deaths not prevented.
Millions of people have died from malaria since DDT was banned. Global warming remedies could be much more destructive.
Progress saves lives. Global warming remedies will cause us to regress.
What I want to know is, does any sane person think that overall price deflation isn't terrible for the economy?
It's not insanity. It's ignorance.
Timeline revisions of 2-3 Billion years are now to be expected. A patch will be made available before this becomes an issue in the year 2012000000.
..on my Zune