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  1. Re:Governor Appointed on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    Sure, just believe the media hype about the Tea Party.

    I subscribe to freedomworks, newbusters, redstate, "impeach obama", Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Fox News, Limbhaugh, Beck, O'Reilly and Hannity, and probably more (I'm a bit of a junkie), and actually read and analyze the discourse. If by "media type" you mean the media that the grass-roots right-wing produce, then yes I believe it is the real opinions and beliefs of the other subscribers.

    It is mostly incoherent nonsense -- transparently untrue. (It seems a lie doesn't have to have any depth to it, it just has to sound good to the ear of the true believers.) I do this for professional interest -- in cognitive science. How that relates to cognitive science is a very interesting story, but you'll have to wait for my book.

    But sure, you can think of me as an "ideologue" that has been brain-washed by the "liberal media". That has to be true, because you are "right", and fighting the good fight.

    btw, most of the economics profession believes that the Tea Party is out to lunch as well, and that government budgets could be brought under control with modest incremental changes. If the Tea Party were really interested in bringing down debt then we'd already be well on the way, but the debt continues to rise, and the intransigence continues.

    There is a reason why the Tea Party is reviled by most of America and the world. But sure, the problem is with the other guy.

  2. Re:You think that government is apolitical? on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    I worked in both the government and private industry, small and big. Government very similar to a large consulting firm, but quite different from small business. The fundamental difference in government is that there are rules that you follow, and every government department I was in took that seriously. I could go on at length. I used to run my own small consulting business once upon a time (five employees). But I suppose you think the government is all powerful, because that's the "church" you attend. You really do have to study things to understand them in real life.

  3. Re:Governor Appointed on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    Each side has it's crazies, in about equal proportion,

    This is true, except that liberal crazies (and they are CRAZY) do not participate in the political system, where-as conservative crazies are controlling their party since the rise of the tea party.

  4. Re:You think that government is apolitical? on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    Perhaps 17 years of ever increasing CO2, but no statistically significant warming?

    That does falsify some weak hypothesis of AGW, such as monotonically increasing temperatures. There are numerous problems with this line of reasoning... such as cherry-picking the time-range, as well as the measures. if you were an "expert" on the subject, then you'd already be familiar with the counter-arguments. Even at an elementary level, do you know what the different measures I'm talking about could be? I'm going to guess as say you have no idea what I'm talking about, but you still think you're an "expert".

  5. Re:You think that government is apolitical? on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    People who claim that anthropogenic CO2 emissions will cause catastrophic climate change at some unknown point in the future (but soon!), have no necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. Any observation can be explained by their hypothesis - up, down, left, right, more, less, black, white, they're all simply consistent with their hypothesis.

    This same charge is made be creationists. Evolution theorists joke that every fossil discovery creates two new gaps in the fossil record (one on each side), because when you listen to creationists, that's how they carry on. When creationists say that evolution cannot be falsified, and specific examples are _given_, they are _ignored_. Because, every creationists is too wedded to their ignorance, of course.

    There are numerous way to falsify the AGW hypothesis. Richard Muller recently (and famously) tried and failed to do so. Gee, perhaps he's incompetent. In fact perhaps all those career scientists and other academic experts are so incompetent that they don't know that they are incompetent. Or maybe that's you.

    Your argument is typical for what "skeptics" carry on about. Devoid of content, and simply wrong.

  6. Re:You think that government is apolitical? on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    Government can revoke NewsCorp's charter and thus terminate it - lock, stock and barrel.

    According to the rules the government can indeed to that. According to the law, not a chance. See Hayek's distinction between rule and law in the political order. NewsCorp, on the other hand, can and does intimidate politicians.

  7. Re:You think that government is apolitical? on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    Corporations are *created* by governments, and *controlled* by governments - if there's any action against "excess", make no doubt, it's in order to increase government control of private enterprise :)

    Yeah I get it. I just think you're wrong. Like the earth is 10k years old wrong.

  8. Re:And how is this any different... on A Look at the Koch Brothers Dark-Money Network · · Score: 2

    Mmm... how do you square that understanding with the $500 million in rebates that US families just got due to insurers not meeting the MLR guidelines? AFAIK, not-for-profit medical insurers don't have to worry (since they already met the MLR guidelines), but about 20% of insurers _do_. Hence half a billion in rebates due to the provision.

  9. Re:blah blah blah on A Look at the Koch Brothers Dark-Money Network · · Score: 2

    Haha, that defeatist attitude is exactly what will let the Koch brothers walk all over you.

  10. Re:blah blah blah on A Look at the Koch Brothers Dark-Money Network · · Score: 2

    it is just a left VS right battle over who controls the kleptocratic fascist state

    I see this as an intellectually lazy point of view. As someone with some academic understanding of the political system, and following politics and society for decades, all I can say is that I disagree. Citizens United certainly made things much worse, but we are far from kleptocracy. (The GOP information machine is rather kleptocratic as David Frum pointed out, but that's not the entire system.)

  11. Re:And how is this any different... on A Look at the Koch Brothers Dark-Money Network · · Score: 1

    Haha, you have no idea what you're talking about. The crony capitalists have all but broken the unions and clipped most of their influence on the political process. The only people who are looking out for your interests are big business now. Good luck with that.

  12. Re:And how is this any different... on A Look at the Koch Brothers Dark-Money Network · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What we have here are the problems of capitalism combined with the problems of central planning in one system.

    Yay!, Someone who actually understands something about the ACA. Don't forget that insurance companies have to actually spend most of their money on medical treatment, or give their customers a rebate. Hopefully that will bend the cost-curve. (Debatable if that has already happened.) The rest of the world has a much cheaper system, and adding government isn't always the solution, but the USA seems to suffer from an incompetent piece-meal approach, and _could_ do with some clarity. Personally I think most of the regulations should be gutted, but this should be done incrementally to minimise the impact and mitigate mistakes. (Many regulations are extremely important.) This would require co-operation between the GOP and the Dems, and that is a little too much to hope from the party of victimhood.

  13. Re:And how is this any different... on A Look at the Koch Brothers Dark-Money Network · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That is the most twisted pile of crap i've heard in years.

    Sounds like a bad case of cognitive dissonance to me.

  14. Re:Governor Appointed on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    Haha, yeah, we should get rid of government military. I mean, government anything is bogus, right? The Tea Party isn't about opposition to government, it's about opposition to particular government programs, that will create "dependence", and the "dependents" will in turn vote for more "benefits", and exclude the Tea Party from power. It's junk thinking, of course. Most Tea Party members suck on the teat of medicare and social security, and support the military, but for some reason they themselves don't feel the overwhelming desire to vote democrat.

  15. Re:Governor Appointed on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 0

    Wow, you have a quite bizarre notion of the influence of religion over the GOP.

    Under George W, science panels in the government were stacked with evangelical bullpucky. For example, if you want to stop women from having sex (I mean stop abortion _and_contraception) then in the face of modernity, you have to come up with a "scientific" theory for life. You guessed it, I'm taking "Life Begins at Conception". The GOP science denial goes far deeper, of course. Dems deny science for political motives as well; however, the democrat political class are far from the liberal "wacko-birds" and their paranoid fantasies.

  16. Re:Governor Appointed on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So you're saying nobody anywhere ever, other than the government, would fund climate research? That just makes no sense at all.

    The university system is the USA's last beacon of exceptionalism, and is systematically being eroded by turning professors into professional grant writers. Momentum is mostly what is really keeping it going. The public funding of research also supports education of the entire population. Only a radical would propose undoing such a successful system based on some intellectual theory on how societies and economies work. A theory that most academics disagree with. See Hayek's Fatal Conceit.

  17. Re:You think that government is apolitical? on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    if government was limited, and could not tip the economic scales of the market in one direction or another to benefit their cronies

    This is a radical idea, and premised on the notion that government is systemically corrupt, and will /always/ act toward cronism. Interestingly, people who believe this usually read websites that are directly payed for by a handful of crony capitalists. Just one of many ironies in our political system.

    If you look at history, you'll see that the government can be a huge advocate for people against the corporate excess. All the countries which are nice to live in have governments that are about 30% of GDP. There are plenty of countries with smaller governments: all of the 2nd and 3rd world. The USA stands apart in that it has a government that is the size of other OECD countries, (poorly run in comparison), and only collects as much tax revenue as a 2nd world country.

    By nature I am a conservative, which means I'm skeptical of radical ideas. Change should be incremental whenever possible. See Hayek's "Fatal Conceit". Just one more irony of our system.

  18. Re:You think that government is apolitical? on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    You're still clinging to some outdated notion that there's some difference between government and corporations. How quaint.

    There is a difference. These institutions involve people working under different incentive structures. Lawmaking is complex, and includes the ideologies of the actors involved. It's not a purely corrupt process by a long stretch. Read "Private Rights in Public Resources" for a real-life breakdown of lawmaking in process. You got to study these things to work out how things happen in real life.

  19. Re:You think that government is apolitical? on Nebraska Scientists Refuse To Carry Out Climate Change-Denying Study · · Score: 1

    Government is the most powerful entity in our mixed society.

    That's an interesting opinion. Completely wrong, of course. You're fooling yourself if you think any government is more powerful than NewsCorp, to pick one example.

  20. Re: Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope. on Top US Lobbyist Wants Broadband Data Caps · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it is just a knee-jerk whine. A serious person would way the cost benefit between private and public options, and if the private is more expensive, then why would we throw money down the toilet?

  21. Re:How about this... on DHHS Preparing 'Tech Surge' To Fix Remaining Healthcare.gov Issues · · Score: 1

    could care less about paying for someones birth control.

    It's arguably cost neutral.

  22. Re:Government Thinking on DHHS Preparing 'Tech Surge' To Fix Remaining Healthcare.gov Issues · · Score: 1

    How about we address the costs instead of redistributing them?

    Yeah, let's create a marketplace where insurance companies compete on level terms, and also introduce regulations to make sure that people aren't discriminated against for things outside of their control. Then you'd have: the ACA!!!

  23. Re:They didn't think this through on Scientists Say Climate Change Is Damaging Iowa Agriculture · · Score: 1

    I was making two points. First, we shouldn't be playing the "No True Scotsman" game with scientists.

    I never said that a true scientist can not state opinions on policy matters, and neither did the original poster. Got it?

    Second, there are substantial conflicts of interest of those who fund most climate research which isn't being explored.

    Oh year, the old "science is all bought off" argument. If you read Oreskes' book, and actually read some of the references, that should take care of that. Or perhaps your brain will explode. Because the science _must_ be bought off, otherwise think of the implications to the libertarian agenda!!!!

  24. Re:You're an idiot... on Scientists Say Climate Change Is Damaging Iowa Agriculture · · Score: 1

    The book is chock cover-to-cover with the history of oil-industry shilling. Who. What. How. Perhaps I should just type it all out for you.

  25. Re:They didn't think this through on Scientists Say Climate Change Is Damaging Iowa Agriculture · · Score: 1

    Yeah, you're right. Gore took a class with Dr Revelle, but he wasn't trained as a scientist. Point still stands.