"Global warming or not, improving air quality and energy efficiency -- both likely side-effects of attempts at greenhouse-gas reduction -- are good things."
This is true, but you forget that these things come at a cost and that increasing energy efficieny happens at a decreasing rate. Thus, once past the low hanging fruit, you quickly end up driving inflation basically (assuming that everyone follows the rules.) If there was no cost to higher efficiency then we would all be doing it willingly now because we would save more $$$ than it costs. The other problem is that CO2 is much harder to reduce than other pollutants (which you can just "scrub out" or use "cleaner" technology (Since any fossil fuel consumption will produce it).
Even if we adopted strict anti-CO2 regs, how much effect would we actually have on global climate change? Would the effect be so small as to almost be unnoticeable? Or would we single handedly reverse the trend? If we have a relatively small effect on climate changes, then it would be a huge waste of our limited resources trying to "fix" the climate when we should be trying to adapt to it. Of course, if it is easier for us to control the climate than to "adapt", then it would be wise to do so.
The thing is, there certainly IS evidence that at least a significant portion of the proven surface warming (we only have a couple decades of atmospheric data) is strongly correlated with natural phenomenon, it also seems to be correlated with human CO2 output after the start of the industrial revolution.
Look, there certainly is a correlation, both between human CO2 output and non-human effects on global climate. The problem is that due to measurement error, model specification, and the size of our data pool, it makes it very hard to come up with accurate estimates of the exact magnitute that each variable has on our climate. Thus, without solid information, the level of uncertainty makes it very hard to make any real solid recommendations about policy. Policy positions are more about politics (and economics?) than science.
(Well most public choice is about politics. Scientists are more qualifed than most of us to tell us the consequences of our actions, but they have no more "moral authority" than we do when it comes to making tradeoffs between multiple alternatives. The minute they imply that they do, they are imposing their values on the public.)
Married women (30-65) tend to vote more Republican and more more likely to be "prolife". Single women of that age group are much more likely to be "prochoice" and vote for Democrats. Of course the numbers fluxuate with different candidates, but that is the general lay of the land.
It was Democrats from the South, not Republicans who passed Jim Crow laws and voted against the Civil Rights Acts. Democrats didn't loose the south until the 1990s. The 14-16th Ammendments were supposed to make blacks equal under the law and were passed post-civil-war, not during the 1960s. The reason Democrats get credit for black civil rights is because a Democratic president signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act (with heavy opposition from many in his own party.) (It never would have passed without the support of the minority party in congress (republicans)).
That definition of "conservative" and "liberal" you offered is more like a standary dictionary definition of the words. However, they have a different meaning when used in a political context. To say progressives or liberals are (always or usually) for change and conservatives are for the status-quo is simpleminded pap. They both want different kinds of change. Very rarely is either group perfectly happy with the status-quo. They both want change, just different kinds of change.
You many not like what either of them want, and sometime the opposition will fight for the status-quo because they view it as being better than the change that is being proposed. But I highly doubt that either side would think of theirself as defenders of the status-quo.
The disc makers can choose to use anyone they want, but the PLAYERS have to support all of them to be compliant with the standard. Which is $$$ to MS, even if no one chooses to use WMV 9 on their discs, it makes the format easier for MS to sell.
I'm going to quote from Brian Caplan on economic literacy.
"a blanket anti-market bias...In the minds of public, prices apparently go up when businesses suddenly start to feel greedier. Economists, in contrast, expect businesses to be greedy year-in, year-out; but depending on market conditions, greed may call for prices to go up, go down, or stay the same..."
And if you don't think risk effects investment behavior, then I have a bridge to sell you in AZ.
Ignoring the conflicting problem of patents and a "free market" with lots of competiton for a second, "no profit" in a free market doesn't mean no accounting profit, it means no ECONOMIC profit. Which is a whole different thing. PLEASE, it's not any more greedy than any other company. That's why I made the comment about risk.
Second, I'm sick of the "billions of dollars in profit" screed. That doesn't tell me anything unless you know the amount invested and the relative risk of that investment, which is something that many people (outside of the finance and economics professions) don't seem to understand.
It's not about where the companies are silly, it's that they can take advantage of selling into the US market. Would they be profitable if they could only sell to the Canadian's and Europeans with "single payer" coverage? Thats the question.
It becomes very hard to "convince" them to do anything.
You can't have it both ways, Europe wants the US to take the lead on all the military/peacekeeping stuff, but then when the US doesn't do everything exactly and only how THEY want it, then not only do they disagree, but the motives are called into question, (eg War for Oil, Bush=Hilter, US=imperialist, etc). If it were simply a matter of respectful disagreement, that would be one thing, but actively working AGAINST them (and for Hussein) is a whole nother song, chapter, and verse.
Saddam (or members of his regieme most certainly hosted and met with high level AQ officials. What the report DOES say is that Saddam had no direct connections to the 9-11 attack in particular or to Osama himself. But he certainly did have some AQ connections.
care to tell me exactly what is and isn't reasonable??
There is a concept called risk/return, the more risky the investment, the higher your average returns need to be to offset the risk of large losses. Drug research is a much more risky business than something like retail, hotels, or even most IT, thus you would EXPECT it to be much more profitable than most industries? I don't seem how being "more profitable than average" automatically makes them unethical.
Your statement is only true if you thing that US prices could be lowered without any change to the prices in other places (or a corresponding drop in drug research and approval).
In reality, most of the "single payer" systems are able to squeeze prices out of the drug companies that are just above the marginal cost of the drug (cause selling just above that is better than nothing at all, especially since the fixed costs have already been incurred.) Basically, rich countries, (the US in particular) end up paying for almost all of the upfront investment/risk. While the rest of the world is able to dump that burden off on the US. (However generic drugs are cheeper in the US than almost any other place.)
Basically, you have a case of increasing monopsony (as an "Adverse selection effect" makes the drugs more and more expensive to those not covered by large group purchasers, which leads to more and more people covered by larger and larger groups ), which is just as "bad" from an economic perspective as monopolies are.
Sure it helps when the "insurgent" or whomever is an Irate Iraqi, but some of them aren't. The are a large number (50%?) of the "resistance" are really just jihadists from neighboring countries that are there to "kill the infidels". The Iraqi's don't want them there, not even many of the native Iraqi insurgents.
Of course all the funding may not have anything to do with the fact that they are surrounded by countries and people the want to "drive the Jews into the sea" and "kill all the Jews." Now why would Isreal take an aggressive posture with them, I mean why can't you get along with your neighbor whose explicit goal is to kill you. They (many/most of the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors) don't JUST WANT a Palestinian state, they want Isreal gone.
That's the problem, and no amount of negotiation will change that underlying fact, until most of the region accept the legitimacy of Israel to exist you will never have peace. How can you negotiate with someone that wants you dead and gone? There isn't anything to give!
Sure your point is true... if you only look at the ratio. But is that ratio going up because more civilians are suffering casualties, or because US troop casualties have fallen. The truth is that both have fallen over time, but the casualties to US troops were even lower, especially given the "less capable" enemy they faced.
Recheck your income stats. It's pretty skewed, but I think you might be off (if only a little). The top 20% own 90-95% of the wealth in the US IIRC. But you might want to check me on that one.
with you on NCLB. The federal government really ought to get out of the k12 education business completely. WHY are they needed there to begin with. This is one issue that really would be better handled by states.
Insurance isn't just a problem for small town doctors, it's an issue for anyone that practices in a "risky" medical field and/or is in a state that DOES NOT cap non-economic damages. Some states (like CA) that cap those damages have MI rates less than half or a quarter of other states. So it does matter. Of course it doesn't solve all the problems, but it certainly is a significant part of the problem, if not the largest one.
I fail to see another logical way to interpret it. There's a tenet of Constitutional construction that all the words in there, are in there for a reason and you must interpret them in a way that's meaningful. If the "right... to keep and bear arms" wasn't modified by the need to maintain a militia, then why was the militia clause attached to it?
One, the word militia doesn't mean today what it ment then. It was literally all able bodied citizens. Many of the founders opposed the creation of a permanent army because they feared that it would be used for "domestic purposes."
Secondly, as to the "why was it included" statement. If they HAD ment to restrict the right to bear arms to a specific group, then why say that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"? Why not say the right of the militia, or the right of the military? And why would they put this in the bill of rights? The BoR is specifically ment to enumerate the rights of individuals and limit the power of the federal government over them. Your interpretation would put the 2nd ammendment totally out of character with the rest of the BoR. If the right is not for individuals, then who is it for, and why did they feel the need to enumerate it? Were they afraid that someone was going to take the military's weapons away from them?
Ok, lets take these one by one
He promotes gross fiscal irresponsibility and ballooning debt. That's not conservative.
Balloning the debt for what though. Thats just a gross generalization. And you certainly can't blame Bush for all the pork in the budget (no line item veto).
He promotes nation building and continual warfare. That's not conservative.>
You aren't addressing the issue here, just making a broad statement again. Is it ever "conservative" to go to war? When is it liberal to go to war? How would YOU define conservative and liberal?
He has supported erosion of civil liberties and violations of due process against American citizens. That's not conservative.
Again, which civil liberties violations?
He supports what is effectively amnesty for illegal aliens. That's not conservative.
No, you have that one plainly wrong. What Bush is doing is trying to make it so that illegals DON'T HAVE TO BE illegal if they want to come to the US and work. He's trying to make it easy for them to have a legal, documented guest worker status. He isn't going to wave his wand and make them all citizens, or let undocumented people that are here off the hook, he wants them to be required to document themselves.
He supports corporate welfare through huge increases in agriculture subsidies. That's not conservative.
AGREED:)
I guess my problem with your statements is mostly that they are vague generalizations without any real specifics. You don't really define your terms. That makes it real hard for me to agree with anything you have said.
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This is true, but you forget that these things come at a cost and that increasing energy efficieny happens at a decreasing rate. Thus, once past the low hanging fruit, you quickly end up driving inflation basically (assuming that everyone follows the rules.) If there was no cost to higher efficiency then we would all be doing it willingly now because we would save more $$$ than it costs. The other problem is that CO2 is much harder to reduce than other pollutants (which you can just "scrub out" or use "cleaner" technology (Since any fossil fuel consumption will produce it).
The thing is, there certainly IS evidence that at least a significant portion of the proven surface warming (we only have a couple decades of atmospheric data) is strongly correlated with natural phenomenon, it also seems to be correlated with human CO2 output after the start of the industrial revolution.
Look, there certainly is a correlation, both between human CO2 output and non-human effects on global climate. The problem is that due to measurement error, model specification, and the size of our data pool, it makes it very hard to come up with accurate estimates of the exact magnitute that each variable has on our climate. Thus, without solid information, the level of uncertainty makes it very hard to make any real solid recommendations about policy. Policy positions are more about politics (and economics?) than science.
(Well most public choice is about politics. Scientists are more qualifed than most of us to tell us the consequences of our actions, but they have no more "moral authority" than we do when it comes to making tradeoffs between multiple alternatives. The minute they imply that they do, they are imposing their values on the public.)
Married women (30-65) tend to vote more Republican and more more likely to be "prolife". Single women of that age group are much more likely to be "prochoice" and vote for Democrats. Of course the numbers fluxuate with different candidates, but that is the general lay of the land.
It was Democrats from the South, not Republicans who passed Jim Crow laws and voted against the Civil Rights Acts. Democrats didn't loose the south until the 1990s. The 14-16th Ammendments were supposed to make blacks equal under the law and were passed post-civil-war, not during the 1960s. The reason Democrats get credit for black civil rights is because a Democratic president signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act (with heavy opposition from many in his own party.) (It never would have passed without the support of the minority party in congress (republicans)).
I thought that BIND 9 was actually pretty good in the security department. At least it seems to be much better than 8 or 4. Or am I wrong?
You many not like what either of them want, and sometime the opposition will fight for the status-quo because they view it as being better than the change that is being proposed. But I highly doubt that either side would think of theirself as defenders of the status-quo.
I dunno if i'd call McCain a conservative. He's really more of a populist now. Dazzled by the big lights and attention. It happens to the best of us.
The disc makers can choose to use anyone they want, but the PLAYERS have to support all of them to be compliant with the standard. Which is $$$ to MS, even if no one chooses to use WMV 9 on their discs, it makes the format easier for MS to sell.
MPEG 4 was based in part on some of Apple's "native Quicktime" codecs/formats IIRC.
"a blanket anti-market bias...In the minds of public, prices apparently go up when businesses suddenly start to feel greedier. Economists, in contrast, expect businesses to be greedy year-in, year-out; but depending on market conditions, greed may call for prices to go up, go down, or stay the same..."
And if you don't think risk effects investment behavior, then I have a bridge to sell you in AZ.
Second, I'm sick of the "billions of dollars in profit" screed. That doesn't tell me anything unless you know the amount invested and the relative risk of that investment, which is something that many people (outside of the finance and economics professions) don't seem to understand.
Investing 101 would tell you that it's all about RISK. Research intensity has little to do with it.
It's not about where the companies are silly, it's that they can take advantage of selling into the US market. Would they be profitable if they could only sell to the Canadian's and Europeans with "single payer" coverage? Thats the question.
It becomes very hard to "convince" them to do anything. You can't have it both ways, Europe wants the US to take the lead on all the military/peacekeeping stuff, but then when the US doesn't do everything exactly and only how THEY want it, then not only do they disagree, but the motives are called into question, (eg War for Oil, Bush=Hilter, US=imperialist, etc). If it were simply a matter of respectful disagreement, that would be one thing, but actively working AGAINST them (and for Hussein) is a whole nother song, chapter, and verse.
Saddam (or members of his regieme most certainly hosted and met with high level AQ officials. What the report DOES say is that Saddam had no direct connections to the 9-11 attack in particular or to Osama himself. But he certainly did have some AQ connections.
care to tell me exactly what is and isn't reasonable?? There is a concept called risk/return, the more risky the investment, the higher your average returns need to be to offset the risk of large losses. Drug research is a much more risky business than something like retail, hotels, or even most IT, thus you would EXPECT it to be much more profitable than most industries? I don't seem how being "more profitable than average" automatically makes them unethical.
In reality, most of the "single payer" systems are able to squeeze prices out of the drug companies that are just above the marginal cost of the drug (cause selling just above that is better than nothing at all, especially since the fixed costs have already been incurred.) Basically, rich countries, (the US in particular) end up paying for almost all of the upfront investment/risk. While the rest of the world is able to dump that burden off on the US. (However generic drugs are cheeper in the US than almost any other place.)
Basically, you have a case of increasing monopsony (as an "Adverse selection effect" makes the drugs more and more expensive to those not covered by large group purchasers, which leads to more and more people covered by larger and larger groups ), which is just as "bad" from an economic perspective as monopolies are.
Sure it helps when the "insurgent" or whomever is an Irate Iraqi, but some of them aren't. The are a large number (50%?) of the "resistance" are really just jihadists from neighboring countries that are there to "kill the infidels". The Iraqi's don't want them there, not even many of the native Iraqi insurgents.
That's the problem, and no amount of negotiation will change that underlying fact, until most of the region accept the legitimacy of Israel to exist you will never have peace. How can you negotiate with someone that wants you dead and gone? There isn't anything to give!
Sure your point is true... if you only look at the ratio. But is that ratio going up because more civilians are suffering casualties, or because US troop casualties have fallen. The truth is that both have fallen over time, but the casualties to US troops were even lower, especially given the "less capable" enemy they faced.
Recheck your income stats. It's pretty skewed, but I think you might be off (if only a little). The top 20% own 90-95% of the wealth in the US IIRC. But you might want to check me on that one.
Insurance isn't just a problem for small town doctors, it's an issue for anyone that practices in a "risky" medical field and/or is in a state that DOES NOT cap non-economic damages. Some states (like CA) that cap those damages have MI rates less than half or a quarter of other states. So it does matter. Of course it doesn't solve all the problems, but it certainly is a significant part of the problem, if not the largest one.
No no, it's viriiii for four...:)
One, the word militia doesn't mean today what it ment then. It was literally all able bodied citizens. Many of the founders opposed the creation of a permanent army because they feared that it would be used for "domestic purposes."
Secondly, as to the "why was it included" statement. If they HAD ment to restrict the right to bear arms to a specific group, then why say that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"? Why not say the right of the militia, or the right of the military? And why would they put this in the bill of rights? The BoR is specifically ment to enumerate the rights of individuals and limit the power of the federal government over them. Your interpretation would put the 2nd ammendment totally out of character with the rest of the BoR. If the right is not for individuals, then who is it for, and why did they feel the need to enumerate it? Were they afraid that someone was going to take the military's weapons away from them?
Ok, lets take these one by one He promotes gross fiscal irresponsibility and ballooning debt. That's not conservative. Balloning the debt for what though. Thats just a gross generalization. And you certainly can't blame Bush for all the pork in the budget (no line item veto). He promotes nation building and continual warfare. That's not conservative.> You aren't addressing the issue here, just making a broad statement again. Is it ever "conservative" to go to war? When is it liberal to go to war? How would YOU define conservative and liberal? He has supported erosion of civil liberties and violations of due process against American citizens. That's not conservative. Again, which civil liberties violations? He supports what is effectively amnesty for illegal aliens. That's not conservative. No, you have that one plainly wrong. What Bush is doing is trying to make it so that illegals DON'T HAVE TO BE illegal if they want to come to the US and work. He's trying to make it easy for them to have a legal, documented guest worker status. He isn't going to wave his wand and make them all citizens, or let undocumented people that are here off the hook, he wants them to be required to document themselves. He supports corporate welfare through huge increases in agriculture subsidies. That's not conservative. AGREED :)
I guess my problem with your statements is mostly that they are vague generalizations without any real specifics. You don't really define your terms. That makes it real hard for me to agree with anything you have said.