We responded to the embargo by exploring for oil in south America and third world countries we could reasonable control because the alternative energy was too expensive and inefficient. Climate change, despite it's hijacking to politically solve some of the problems created there, is something rooted deeper the political rhetoric that will persist long after we find other sources of oil.
The biggest reason we are not off oil now or further along is because the rules changed in the 1980's and the universities using federal monies for scientific research can get patents along with some of the people working on the technology. This kind of put alternative energy in much the same boat as LCD displays in which no much was done with it until the patents ran out because the cost of licenses were more then oil. Now we are in the same boat, licensing and several other factors like living wages and so on are making it too expensive for competitive use. Once the patents expire this time, there will be a lot more development improving existing properties.
The trend for oil prices is up currently, you have a point that if alternatives start to make a difference, those prices will fall. Keep in mind that the limit on patent duration as time increase approaches infinity ( from all I see ).
I don't entirely disagree with this. Oil will fall in price as it is replaced. This will make our harder to get at and exploit sources that much less economical in the future. But what you are not considering is that we cannot explore our way out of or wait out the hostilities with climate change like we did the embargo. Whether climate change is real or not or man made, an inevitable truth is that it will persist, claims and the fears derived from it will persist, and it will drive alternative energy research and advancements that will eventually make oil less economical then traditional sources of energy. Eventually, it will reach a point where it costs more to pump the oil for energy use and it will be relegated to chemicals like plastics (if a replacement for that isn't found first).
Also, the patents aren't the parts increasing in time.. I think your looking at copyright and trademarks. Patents currently carry a 20 year term with an extension someone can file for adding 10 or 20 years. And that's if some enterprising politician doesn't create an exception for whatever device saves us from whatever fear and scare concern we are subject to at the time.
I've always been told it was a salt mine. There are a lot of them in the area of the country. However, I do not know it was a salt mine for sure and only posted the first article I found on it. It very well could be a concrete vault and looks like it was with a second search on the topic.
I agree, it is important for the reasons you mentioned.
Ahh.. But Carter only had an embargo pushing the need to get off oil. Now we have this scary, you are all going to die climate change driving it. Instead of it being an experiment in space age technology under carter to deal with mean oil producing nations who didn't want to sell it to us, we are dealing with the Stephen King like monster in the dark waiting to sneak up and steal your children in much worse ways then the boogerman.
Oil will lose it's value. It will lose it quickly too. This is because alternative energy will become cheaper in not more then 20-30 years. We saw an upsurge in solar and wind development when the patents from the carter experiment ran out, we will see another when the current crop disappears.
It is inevitable that the costs of alternative energy will fall. It is inevitable that other discoveries aiding this will happen. Patents have a far lower time span than the useful oil supplies will. Science doesn't stop just so you can make a dollar 1000 or more years from now. The global warming scare is not going to go away. Most governments even if they pay it lip service, see it as a way to increase control over a population with carbon taxes to fund otherwise unattainable or unmaintainable pet projects, with fines and penalties to assert authority. To force investments into third world countries (kyoto).
Every single time our nation has had a booming economy since 1920, it had cheap energy preceding it and every time that economy slowed, it had high energy costs before it's collapse. Shouldn't we be in charge of our own destiny and take advantage of our own supplies as world demand increases?
Your right, it is 100. I thought I wrote 2 senators for 50 states but didn't.
However, I don't think your idea of more representation would work. First, the senate is supposed to represent the states not the people in the states. That is the entire purpose of the house of representatives. It sort of muddles the situation when we directly elect senators instead of having the states appoint them but that's the idea behind the government, representation is the state, the people, and a president to temper them. The entire idea was to limit the federal government unless there was a large agreement of the states and the people. Just adding people would defeat that completely. It wasn't until recently that everyone thought the federal government should be doing something every minute in office.
as for your redistricting. I also think it's a bust. For one, its simply unattainable to do. You will always have waving line districts simply because population growth and migration does not line up into a nice little neat box. Most of the crap that is called gerrymandering is this problem being worked out with reality.
And for voting in neighboring districts, what's the use of having someone represent you if outsiders can defeat their election? You idea of nutcase could be other's idea of sane and rational. What you are trying to do is get everyone in politics that you don't agree with hamstrung so that they cannot represent their constituents. It defeats the entire purpose of representation. It's even worse then the current game of idiot stacking where anyone in most states can switch parties and vote in a primary then attempt to get the worst possible candidate to win the primary just so they don't stand a chance at winning the general election. I had people who claimed they were doing it and tried to get me to do it in the last several elections. These same people got pissed when the republicans kept calling them thinking they were republican voters because they voted in the republican primaries.
Obama got plenty accomplished when he had a super majority. In fact, that was one of the reasons why the republicans took the house in 2010. How is having a third party president with no support in congress at all going to be any better? How it would be worse is that both parties would work together to defeat the third party anomaly.
Obama got plenty done his first two years in office. Just because it wasn't what you wanted or that democrats thought some of it was too extreme and wouldn't support his agenda doesn't counter what I have said. In fact, it sort of empowered it. Here you have a sitting president with all the support in the world and still couldn't get what you claim he wanted to do done. Do you realistically think any third party president without any party members in congress would be any better?
I never did get the wait until everyone else runs out argument.
Eventually, the costs of alternatives like wind and solar will go down (patents and licensing fees will expire, manufacturing materials and costs will lessen with time and mature processing techniques plus increased efficiencies). There will be other discoveries where we can store energy better or extract it from interesting materials or processes not in use today (I like the idea of making hydrogen peroxide then using it to power low temp steam turbines in much the same way compressed air is being used by the storage need is much lower and not geographically limited). This will lead to less demand on oil thereby making the price remain cheaper. There is a somewhat strong global initiative to replace oil because of climate change fears (whether true or not) and we aren't to far from being able to if we didn't care about other things like growing food.
It will be like saving that pound of really good meat for a special day and forgetting it can spoil. Or maybe it's more like those guys who built a time capsule out of an old salt mine and placed a car and other items so they would be in mint condition and valuable when they opened it after 50 just to find a water source infiltrated the cavern and they were all rust.
I say use it, use it now. Get our energy security within the US, spend money on developing alternatives and we won't have to spend on our military to procure and protect foreign supplies and we won't have to swallow out pride and play nice with brutal dictators trying to ensure that oil flows our direction, Because if we save that botle of milk long enough, it won't be worth drinking.
I don't think it matters if it lessens the ability to generate revenue from the authorized broadcasts.
When I listen to a game on the radio, its all background noise until the commentator sounds excited, then I pay attention because something interesting just happened and they will repeat it. So for me, yes it could replace it. But if it makes the revenue from the radio or tv covering it worth less, its still a problem.
I think the issue here is that a print reporter essentially becomes a broadcast journalist when tweeting the game play by play. The make royalty from the authorized broadcasts of the game and want people watching/listening to those instead of following tweets in near real time to which they get no income from.
The news sources won't skip the games because the readers/viewers/customers will look for the information if they do not carry it. Its essentially sending customers to the competition where they might like something and stay.
Not really. A lot of that tax cost is in implementing federal mandates that are largely rammed down the throats by the blue states. Most of it would disappear and is only there because they know if the cost isn't picked up to some degree, the mandate would be ignored or challenged on the 10th amendment grounds..
I don't think most voters knew she was gay. It wasn't used as a campaign weapon and I've heard several Wisconsin residents tell me they had no clue until they were bragging about it after she won. I'm not sure it has much meaning at all.
There will be loads of money to fund them. All they have to do is tax everyone making over 250k a year (the rich) and take the money spent on unfunded wars and convert it to medicare or social security.. I mean that's why they put the wars on budget- so they could continue spending the money when it is no longer needed for the wars. That is some they couldn't do when it was off budget emergency spending. It would have been counted as new spending and congress would have to show how it would be funded either by increased revenues or cuts to existing spending elsewhere. Now it appears that we will spend it forever instead of on a war(s).
I do not think that having a powerless figurehead as president that congress will likely buck at any chance would do anything you laid out. It would show how utterly powerless the presidency is if it does not have a backing in congress. In fact, that's probably the biggest reason third parties cannot get elected at all now anyways. We have 50 senators and 435 some representatives- not to mention state and local governments and if they cannot get elected there, they won't be elected in the one race where everyone is voting instead of just a percentage of the country.
Third parties are a lot like Christian denominations anyways. Not to say they are ultra religious or anything, they agree with the majority of the religion (one of the major political parties) but strongly disagree on a few things making them a different denominations. Last time I checked, there were over 3000 specific Christian denomination. So third parties generally agree with 80% or so of the two big parties and if the disagreement portions aren't common enough err popular enough, no one with half a clue will bother with them. Especially when they concentrate their advertisement on the differences. Most independents who get elected that I can think of are one of the big party candidates who for whatever reason went party shopping (think Lieberman).
Wrong, they have no chance of winning because everyone who knows how the presidency works knows they will not be able to do anything. A third party president has no support in congress to create legislation, so unless you are supporting something they already want to do, a third party president is basically screwed or not needed. Sure, they can veto a bill they don't like, but congress seems to be keen on uniting to defeat the parties that appose them so I doubt there would be a problem overriding the veto unless it was extremely biased legislation..
You might be confusing your state government with the federal government. The president is limited to a max of ten years. Two 4 year terms he can be elected and up to 2 years of another president's term the he finished serving. At 2 years and one day, he can only serve as president by being elected once.
lol.. you as this thread title states. The power is regulated by the governments and outside of using generators (which hey are highly regulated too) in limited situations, there is absolutely nothing that private parties could do. The gas problems are due to using generators and the lack of functioning infrastructure. The distribution of gas is highly regulated as well as is the storage and dispensing of it.
All the third party greed would do is take the existing resources and the funds necessary to gain more. it would be worse. why don't you try looking at the real situation instead of relying on whatever fiction exists in you mind. Do you really think you can go into these areas and set up a gas station or electric utility network?.. you make me laugh.
Most of the federal programs only get the states to do things they normally wouldn't. That's why the argument about who pays and who takes is pointless.
As for the military, every state already has a guard program and recently, it has been used more to support the US military then the states. But the US wouldn't withdraw military support. We wouldn't want something like Cuba happening in a country bordered by land.
Of course someone should point out that while an asset, those states aren't owned by the US. They are owned by themselves and joined a Union of other states specifically for certain benefits like protection from aggressors.
I suggest the only think remarkable here is your ability to know about them. This happens all the time and will happen in the future too. The difference is in you knowing about it.
Slashdot Mirror
We responded to the embargo by exploring for oil in south America and third world countries we could reasonable control because the alternative energy was too expensive and inefficient. Climate change, despite it's hijacking to politically solve some of the problems created there, is something rooted deeper the political rhetoric that will persist long after we find other sources of oil.
The biggest reason we are not off oil now or further along is because the rules changed in the 1980's and the universities using federal monies for scientific research can get patents along with some of the people working on the technology. This kind of put alternative energy in much the same boat as LCD displays in which no much was done with it until the patents ran out because the cost of licenses were more then oil. Now we are in the same boat, licensing and several other factors like living wages and so on are making it too expensive for competitive use. Once the patents expire this time, there will be a lot more development improving existing properties.
I don't entirely disagree with this. Oil will fall in price as it is replaced. This will make our harder to get at and exploit sources that much less economical in the future. But what you are not considering is that we cannot explore our way out of or wait out the hostilities with climate change like we did the embargo. Whether climate change is real or not or man made, an inevitable truth is that it will persist, claims and the fears derived from it will persist, and it will drive alternative energy research and advancements that will eventually make oil less economical then traditional sources of energy. Eventually, it will reach a point where it costs more to pump the oil for energy use and it will be relegated to chemicals like plastics (if a replacement for that isn't found first).
Also, the patents aren't the parts increasing in time.. I think your looking at copyright and trademarks. Patents currently carry a 20 year term with an extension someone can file for adding 10 or 20 years. And that's if some enterprising politician doesn't create an exception for whatever device saves us from whatever fear and scare concern we are subject to at the time.
I've always been told it was a salt mine. There are a lot of them in the area of the country. However, I do not know it was a salt mine for sure and only posted the first article I found on it. It very well could be a concrete vault and looks like it was with a second search on the topic.
I agree, it is important for the reasons you mentioned.
Ahh.. But Carter only had an embargo pushing the need to get off oil. Now we have this scary, you are all going to die climate change driving it. Instead of it being an experiment in space age technology under carter to deal with mean oil producing nations who didn't want to sell it to us, we are dealing with the Stephen King like monster in the dark waiting to sneak up and steal your children in much worse ways then the boogerman.
Oil will lose it's value. It will lose it quickly too. This is because alternative energy will become cheaper in not more then 20-30 years. We saw an upsurge in solar and wind development when the patents from the carter experiment ran out, we will see another when the current crop disappears.
It is inevitable that the costs of alternative energy will fall. It is inevitable that other discoveries aiding this will happen. Patents have a far lower time span than the useful oil supplies will. Science doesn't stop just so you can make a dollar 1000 or more years from now. The global warming scare is not going to go away. Most governments even if they pay it lip service, see it as a way to increase control over a population with carbon taxes to fund otherwise unattainable or unmaintainable pet projects, with fines and penalties to assert authority. To force investments into third world countries (kyoto).
Every single time our nation has had a booming economy since 1920, it had cheap energy preceding it and every time that economy slowed, it had high energy costs before it's collapse. Shouldn't we be in charge of our own destiny and take advantage of our own supplies as world demand increases?
Your right, it is 100. I thought I wrote 2 senators for 50 states but didn't.
However, I don't think your idea of more representation would work. First, the senate is supposed to represent the states not the people in the states. That is the entire purpose of the house of representatives. It sort of muddles the situation when we directly elect senators instead of having the states appoint them but that's the idea behind the government, representation is the state, the people, and a president to temper them. The entire idea was to limit the federal government unless there was a large agreement of the states and the people. Just adding people would defeat that completely. It wasn't until recently that everyone thought the federal government should be doing something every minute in office.
as for your redistricting. I also think it's a bust. For one, its simply unattainable to do. You will always have waving line districts simply because population growth and migration does not line up into a nice little neat box. Most of the crap that is called gerrymandering is this problem being worked out with reality.
And for voting in neighboring districts, what's the use of having someone represent you if outsiders can defeat their election? You idea of nutcase could be other's idea of sane and rational. What you are trying to do is get everyone in politics that you don't agree with hamstrung so that they cannot represent their constituents. It defeats the entire purpose of representation. It's even worse then the current game of idiot stacking where anyone in most states can switch parties and vote in a primary then attempt to get the worst possible candidate to win the primary just so they don't stand a chance at winning the general election. I had people who claimed they were doing it and tried to get me to do it in the last several elections. These same people got pissed when the republicans kept calling them thinking they were republican voters because they voted in the republican primaries.
Obama got plenty accomplished when he had a super majority. In fact, that was one of the reasons why the republicans took the house in 2010. How is having a third party president with no support in congress at all going to be any better? How it would be worse is that both parties would work together to defeat the third party anomaly.
Obama got plenty done his first two years in office. Just because it wasn't what you wanted or that democrats thought some of it was too extreme and wouldn't support his agenda doesn't counter what I have said. In fact, it sort of empowered it. Here you have a sitting president with all the support in the world and still couldn't get what you claim he wanted to do done. Do you realistically think any third party president without any party members in congress would be any better?
doesn't need to sound excited if it's covering the same information in real time.
According to this site, we have enough oil for 200 years
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2012/03/13/exposing-the-2-percent-oil-reserves-myth/
And yes, I understand it's biased, but I haven't found anything refuting it.
I never did get the wait until everyone else runs out argument.
Eventually, the costs of alternatives like wind and solar will go down (patents and licensing fees will expire, manufacturing materials and costs will lessen with time and mature processing techniques plus increased efficiencies). There will be other discoveries where we can store energy better or extract it from interesting materials or processes not in use today (I like the idea of making hydrogen peroxide then using it to power low temp steam turbines in much the same way compressed air is being used by the storage need is much lower and not geographically limited). This will lead to less demand on oil thereby making the price remain cheaper. There is a somewhat strong global initiative to replace oil because of climate change fears (whether true or not) and we aren't to far from being able to if we didn't care about other things like growing food.
It will be like saving that pound of really good meat for a special day and forgetting it can spoil. Or maybe it's more like those guys who built a time capsule out of an old salt mine and placed a car and other items so they would be in mint condition and valuable when they opened it after 50 just to find a water source infiltrated the cavern and they were all rust.
I say use it, use it now. Get our energy security within the US, spend money on developing alternatives and we won't have to spend on our military to procure and protect foreign supplies and we won't have to swallow out pride and play nice with brutal dictators trying to ensure that oil flows our direction, Because if we save that botle of milk long enough, it won't be worth drinking.
I don't think it matters if it lessens the ability to generate revenue from the authorized broadcasts.
When I listen to a game on the radio, its all background noise until the commentator sounds excited, then I pay attention because something interesting just happened and they will repeat it. So for me, yes it could replace it. But if it makes the revenue from the radio or tv covering it worth less, its still a problem.
I think the issue here is that a print reporter essentially becomes a broadcast journalist when tweeting the game play by play. The make royalty from the authorized broadcasts of the game and want people watching/listening to those instead of following tweets in near real time to which they get no income from.
The news sources won't skip the games because the readers/viewers/customers will look for the information if they do not carry it. Its essentially sending customers to the competition where they might like something and stay.
Not really. A lot of that tax cost is in implementing federal mandates that are largely rammed down the throats by the blue states. Most of it would disappear and is only there because they know if the cost isn't picked up to some degree, the mandate would be ignored or challenged on the 10th amendment grounds..
I don't think most voters knew she was gay. It wasn't used as a campaign weapon and I've heard several Wisconsin residents tell me they had no clue until they were bragging about it after she won. I'm not sure it has much meaning at all.
There will be loads of money to fund them. All they have to do is tax everyone making over 250k a year (the rich) and take the money spent on unfunded wars and convert it to medicare or social security.. I mean that's why they put the wars on budget- so they could continue spending the money when it is no longer needed for the wars. That is some they couldn't do when it was off budget emergency spending. It would have been counted as new spending and congress would have to show how it would be funded either by increased revenues or cuts to existing spending elsewhere. Now it appears that we will spend it forever instead of on a war(s).
I do not think that having a powerless figurehead as president that congress will likely buck at any chance would do anything you laid out. It would show how utterly powerless the presidency is if it does not have a backing in congress. In fact, that's probably the biggest reason third parties cannot get elected at all now anyways. We have 50 senators and 435 some representatives- not to mention state and local governments and if they cannot get elected there, they won't be elected in the one race where everyone is voting instead of just a percentage of the country.
Third parties are a lot like Christian denominations anyways. Not to say they are ultra religious or anything, they agree with the majority of the religion (one of the major political parties) but strongly disagree on a few things making them a different denominations. Last time I checked, there were over 3000 specific Christian denomination. So third parties generally agree with 80% or so of the two big parties and if the disagreement portions aren't common enough err popular enough, no one with half a clue will bother with them. Especially when they concentrate their advertisement on the differences. Most independents who get elected that I can think of are one of the big party candidates who for whatever reason went party shopping (think Lieberman).
Wrong, they have no chance of winning because everyone who knows how the presidency works knows they will not be able to do anything. A third party president has no support in congress to create legislation, so unless you are supporting something they already want to do, a third party president is basically screwed or not needed. Sure, they can veto a bill they don't like, but congress seems to be keen on uniting to defeat the parties that appose them so I doubt there would be a problem overriding the veto unless it was extremely biased legislation..
You might be confusing your state government with the federal government. The president is limited to a max of ten years. Two 4 year terms he can be elected and up to 2 years of another president's term the he finished serving. At 2 years and one day, he can only serve as president by being elected once.
Can we sue Canada or something for violating this law and making people look foolish?
I'm not sure what the subsidizes a country spends on its own energy has to do with a foreign country subsidizing another country's energy.
lol.. you as this thread title states. The power is regulated by the governments and outside of using generators (which hey are highly regulated too) in limited situations, there is absolutely nothing that private parties could do. The gas problems are due to using generators and the lack of functioning infrastructure. The distribution of gas is highly regulated as well as is the storage and dispensing of it.
All the third party greed would do is take the existing resources and the funds necessary to gain more. it would be worse. why don't you try looking at the real situation instead of relying on whatever fiction exists in you mind. Do you really think you can go into these areas and set up a gas station or electric utility network?.. you make me laugh.
Most of the federal programs only get the states to do things they normally wouldn't. That's why the argument about who pays and who takes is pointless.
As for the military, every state already has a guard program and recently, it has been used more to support the US military then the states. But the US wouldn't withdraw military support. We wouldn't want something like Cuba happening in a country bordered by land.
Of course someone should point out that while an asset, those states aren't owned by the US. They are owned by themselves and joined a Union of other states specifically for certain benefits like protection from aggressors.
I suggest the only think remarkable here is your ability to know about them. This happens all the time and will happen in the future too. The difference is in you knowing about it.
Please tell me exactly how greed would have made it any different. If anything, it would have made it worse.