it is only logical for funds to be collected from all oil consumers to help with recovery efforts.
Fixed that for you. Any such fee will simply be passed along to the customers of the oil companies, i.e: you and me. We wind up paying for it in the end regardless of what you do.
As if there was no alternative between drilling for as much oil as we can get our hands on and living in sub-saharan conditions.
Do you have an alternative that could replace oil tomorrow? Keep in mind that oil isn't just used as a fuel. It's also used as a lubricant, fertilizer, plastics, blah, blah, blah. What do you suppose happens to civilization if you remove fossil fuel derived fertilizers from the agricultural sector? What happens to modern medicine without plastic?
I think it's important that we work on alternatives to oil as an energy source but that's never going to happen as long as our politicians use events like this as photo-ops to brandish their "tough on big [boogieman of the day]" credentials.
As always, the profit is funneled to the corps, mostly bypassing taxation
You realize that taxing corporations is effectively the same as taxing individuals, right? I don't understand why this basic economic truth is so hard for people to understand. Taxes are just a cost of doing business for a corporation, a cost that will be passed along to their customers.
Shakrai was implying that the free market will take care of things
I said no such thing, don't put words into my mouth.
BP will shoulder the entire cost of the cleanup
False. I only said that the cost of the cleanup was as yet unknown and that it was premature to assume that BP couldn't cover it without going bankrupt.
He was also making a false dichotomy by claiming that we either pay the cost of having spills, or have no energy, which is bullshit.
No, I said that society comes with an environmental cost. The only thing that's bullshit here is your lies about my previous remarks.
the only industry that would be impacted is transportation based on heavy fuels like jet fuel and diesel and those also have alternatives.
You do realize that virtually every other industry depends on the transportation sector to move goods around, right? How do you think your food makes it from the fields to the cities? Scotty, beam me up?
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact?
You are welcome to try the alternative of not living in an energy intensive society if that would better suit your needs. I hear that sub-Saharan Africa is wonderful this time of year.
If BP were forced to shoulder the entire cost of this mistake, they would go bankrupt.
Got a citation for that or are you just making assumptions?
If you and I lived next to each other, and I ran a pipe from my toilet into your yard, you would be pretty pissed off, wouldn't you?
Bad analogy, because that implies a deliberate decision was made to cause this oil spill. A better analogy would be that your sewer pipe fails for whatever reason and floods my yard with shit. In that instance I would expect you to clean up the mess and fix the pipe -- actions that are well under way in the Gulf of Mexico.
Don't these people even think about risk mitigation?
They did. They had a blowout valve in place that was supposed to kill the oil flow. It failed. Not something that has ever happened before and not something that could have been predicted.
We could conduct offshore drilling for the next hundred years and probably not see another failure via this route.
What's wrong with offshore drilling? Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident. No human enterprise ever attempted managed to get underway without mistakes. The important thing here is to learn what went wrong and take steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again in the future.
For better or worse human civilization can not exist without environmental impact. The knee-jerk reaction to this unfortunate incident by certain politicians is disappointing to say the least.
If this concrete dealy doesn't work, what other options do they have?
My understanding is that the only other option is to drill a relief well. Unfortunately it will take months before they have the equipment and logistics in place to do that.
I'd like to know how this dome is supposed to work in rough seas. The oil is going to be contained within the dome and brought to a surface ship. What happens when that surface ship can't maintain position due to inclement weather? Hurricane season starts in another few weeks....
However that doesn't exactly seem a better solution.
Sure it is. If you don't like what your school is teaching, move the kids to a better one. It's harder to do that nowadays because you don't get any credit for the monies that would have been spent on your kids in public school if you opt to take them elsewhere.
Note that this was by no means the end of their efforts as can be seen in Texas.
For better or worse they have the right to try and advance their agenda in this country.
You brought it up by saying they have no real power!
Which they don't, as evidenced by the fact that they can't make progress on their most important issue (abortion on demand). In any case the religious right is only one part of the GOP coalition.
Wtf does that have to do with democrats and gun control???
The thread is about the suckitude of both major political parties. Some have claimed that the Republicans are worse because the religious right seeks to impose itself upon the rest of us at the expense of our civil rights. It's rather one-sided to condemn the GOP for this while giving the Democrats a pass for similar behaviors, isn't it?
I'm sorry but I can't get that worked up about it. My first inclination when you mentioned the evolution wars was to retort that it wouldn't be an issue if Government wasn't so heavily involved in education. But even with the current status quo the creationists are losing more often than they win. Recall the events in PA a few years ago. Even without the involvement of the Federal court the local population voted out the school board members that were pushing the creationist agenda. This is in rural PA -- not a bastion of liberal/secular thought by any means.
Besides, why the focus on the religious right? The Democratic Party has their own share of extremists that want to trample on your rights. The gun control folks come to mind....
They're federal government vehicles and as such they're exempt from state traffic laws, including stopping for a school bus loading/unloading children.
I call bullshit. Federal employees aren't exempt from the laws of the state that they happen to be working in. I think your wife is misinformed.
I was on the privatization wagon until GWB started to "privatize" our armed forces
GWB didn't privatize the armed forces. Contractors were used to fill the roles that DoD lacked the manpower to fill because of the post Cold War draw down of the American military. The proper thing to do would have been to institute a military draft to provide DoD with the required manpower. The downside to this is that we'd have to justify our foreign policy to the American people and nobody on either side of the aisle wants to do that....
FedEx/UPS on the other hand discriminate base on your shipping volume and profitability.
Why is this a bad thing? If you mail one package a year and ask them to come to your location to pick it up it doubtless costs them more than someone who regularly mails packages.
There is a reason why USPS looses money year after year
Above market wages?
However, where else can you mail something for $0.44 to anywhere in the US
Why is that a good thing? If I walk into my post office and "mail" something to a PO box contained within that same post office it ought to cost less than mailing something to Alaska or Hawaii.
No, the Christian whackjobs have no real power. They couldn't even keep Terri Schiavo from being taken off life support. They can't even end abortion on demand.
OTOH on environmental issues Nixon was downright liberal compared to today's Republicans.
Nixon was starting off with a society that condoned companies disposing of hazardous chemicals by dumping them in the river. Modern GOP'ers are starting off with a society that requires nine years, several lawsuits and 200 different state and federal governmental agencies to approve a wind farm project....
It is America's Taliban - go watch Jesus Camp and tell me otherwise.
Wake me up when the Jesus people have police power and publicly stone people that disagree with their orthodoxy. Wake me up when they dynamite ancient archaeological treasures. Wake me up when they harbor like minded foreign extremists that use the United States as a base of operations for a global terrorist network.
You'll be worth talking to when you mature enough to realize that the Executive is only 1/3 of the Federal Government and only 1/2 of the part that decides how much money is going to be spent.
And Democrats of the last 50~ years are way better with money than Republicans so think of another meme.
No, Democrats of the last 50~ years suck just as much as Republicans of the last 50~ years. The only exception happened during the 90s, when the two parties were too busy trying to drag each other down to spend money we don't have. Outside of that window neither party has ever been willing to live within our means and stop running up the national credit card.
Slashdot Mirror
When that turkey baster can actually produce sperm
The penis doesn't produce sperm either, so what you'd really need is a pair of testicles attached to your turkey baster.... ;)
So long as there aren't any requirements that porn must use .xxx then this isn't a problem. Most porn sites will use both.
Which kind of invalidates the argument that we should approve .xxx because it will make filtering porn easier.....
Oil should just go away already
So I guess you don't like plastics or food (fertilizer) either?
it is only logical for funds to be collected from all oil consumers to help with recovery efforts.
Fixed that for you. Any such fee will simply be passed along to the customers of the oil companies, i.e: you and me. We wind up paying for it in the end regardless of what you do.
As if there was no alternative between drilling for as much oil as we can get our hands on and living in sub-saharan conditions.
Do you have an alternative that could replace oil tomorrow? Keep in mind that oil isn't just used as a fuel. It's also used as a lubricant, fertilizer, plastics, blah, blah, blah. What do you suppose happens to civilization if you remove fossil fuel derived fertilizers from the agricultural sector? What happens to modern medicine without plastic?
I think it's important that we work on alternatives to oil as an energy source but that's never going to happen as long as our politicians use events like this as photo-ops to brandish their "tough on big [boogieman of the day]" credentials.
As always, the profit is funneled to the corps, mostly bypassing taxation
You realize that taxing corporations is effectively the same as taxing individuals, right? I don't understand why this basic economic truth is so hard for people to understand. Taxes are just a cost of doing business for a corporation, a cost that will be passed along to their customers.
Shakrai was implying that the free market will take care of things
I said no such thing, don't put words into my mouth.
BP will shoulder the entire cost of the cleanup
False. I only said that the cost of the cleanup was as yet unknown and that it was premature to assume that BP couldn't cover it without going bankrupt.
He was also making a false dichotomy by claiming that we either pay the cost of having spills, or have no energy, which is bullshit.
No, I said that society comes with an environmental cost. The only thing that's bullshit here is your lies about my previous remarks.
the only industry that would be impacted is transportation based on heavy fuels like jet fuel and diesel and those also have alternatives.
You do realize that virtually every other industry depends on the transportation sector to move goods around, right? How do you think your food makes it from the fields to the cities? Scotty, beam me up?
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact?
You are welcome to try the alternative of not living in an energy intensive society if that would better suit your needs. I hear that sub-Saharan Africa is wonderful this time of year.
If BP were forced to shoulder the entire cost of this mistake, they would go bankrupt.
Got a citation for that or are you just making assumptions?
If you and I lived next to each other, and I ran a pipe from my toilet into your yard, you would be pretty pissed off, wouldn't you?
Bad analogy, because that implies a deliberate decision was made to cause this oil spill. A better analogy would be that your sewer pipe fails for whatever reason and floods my yard with shit. In that instance I would expect you to clean up the mess and fix the pipe -- actions that are well under way in the Gulf of Mexico.
Don't these people even think about risk mitigation?
They did. They had a blowout valve in place that was supposed to kill the oil flow. It failed. Not something that has ever happened before and not something that could have been predicted.
We could conduct offshore drilling for the next hundred years and probably not see another failure via this route.
But look on the bright side. Jersey Shore can now have crude oil wrestling!
Apparently you are not smarter than a 5th grader, at least with regards to geography.... ;)
Figure out who to sue and how.
This is America. That's easy. Everybody.
What's wrong with offshore drilling? Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident. No human enterprise ever attempted managed to get underway without mistakes. The important thing here is to learn what went wrong and take steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again in the future.
For better or worse human civilization can not exist without environmental impact. The knee-jerk reaction to this unfortunate incident by certain politicians is disappointing to say the least.
If this concrete dealy doesn't work, what other options do they have?
My understanding is that the only other option is to drill a relief well. Unfortunately it will take months before they have the equipment and logistics in place to do that.
I'd like to know how this dome is supposed to work in rough seas. The oil is going to be contained within the dome and brought to a surface ship. What happens when that surface ship can't maintain position due to inclement weather? Hurricane season starts in another few weeks....
However that doesn't exactly seem a better solution.
Sure it is. If you don't like what your school is teaching, move the kids to a better one. It's harder to do that nowadays because you don't get any credit for the monies that would have been spent on your kids in public school if you opt to take them elsewhere.
Note that this was by no means the end of their efforts as can be seen in Texas.
For better or worse they have the right to try and advance their agenda in this country.
You brought it up by saying they have no real power!
Which they don't, as evidenced by the fact that they can't make progress on their most important issue (abortion on demand). In any case the religious right is only one part of the GOP coalition.
Wtf does that have to do with democrats and gun control???
The thread is about the suckitude of both major political parties. Some have claimed that the Republicans are worse because the religious right seeks to impose itself upon the rest of us at the expense of our civil rights. It's rather one-sided to condemn the GOP for this while giving the Democrats a pass for similar behaviors, isn't it?
I'm sorry but I can't get that worked up about it. My first inclination when you mentioned the evolution wars was to retort that it wouldn't be an issue if Government wasn't so heavily involved in education. But even with the current status quo the creationists are losing more often than they win. Recall the events in PA a few years ago. Even without the involvement of the Federal court the local population voted out the school board members that were pushing the creationist agenda. This is in rural PA -- not a bastion of liberal/secular thought by any means.
Besides, why the focus on the religious right? The Democratic Party has their own share of extremists that want to trample on your rights. The gun control folks come to mind....
/^From:.*Anonymous Coward/h:j
DHL pulled out of the American market. UPS and Fedex are prohibited by Federal law from delivering "non-urgent" parcels.
They're federal government vehicles and as such they're exempt from state traffic laws, including stopping for a school bus loading/unloading children.
I call bullshit. Federal employees aren't exempt from the laws of the state that they happen to be working in. I think your wife is misinformed.
I was on the privatization wagon until GWB started to "privatize" our armed forces
GWB didn't privatize the armed forces. Contractors were used to fill the roles that DoD lacked the manpower to fill because of the post Cold War draw down of the American military. The proper thing to do would have been to institute a military draft to provide DoD with the required manpower. The downside to this is that we'd have to justify our foreign policy to the American people and nobody on either side of the aisle wants to do that....
FedEx/UPS on the other hand discriminate base on your shipping volume and profitability.
Why is this a bad thing? If you mail one package a year and ask them to come to your location to pick it up it doubtless costs them more than someone who regularly mails packages.
There is a reason why USPS looses money year after year
Above market wages?
However, where else can you mail something for $0.44 to anywhere in the US
Why is that a good thing? If I walk into my post office and "mail" something to a PO box contained within that same post office it ought to cost less than mailing something to Alaska or Hawaii.
Although my wallet disagrees, the government is definitely non-profit.
I guess that depends on which shareholder you are. Middle class citizen? Non-profit. Defense contractor or person who gets the EITC? Profit!
No, the Christian whackjobs have no real power. They couldn't even keep Terri Schiavo from being taken off life support. They can't even end abortion on demand.
OTOH on environmental issues Nixon was downright liberal compared to today's Republicans.
Nixon was starting off with a society that condoned companies disposing of hazardous chemicals by dumping them in the river. Modern GOP'ers are starting off with a society that requires nine years, several lawsuits and 200 different state and federal governmental agencies to approve a wind farm project....
It is America's Taliban - go watch Jesus Camp and tell me otherwise.
Wake me up when the Jesus people have police power and publicly stone people that disagree with their orthodoxy. Wake me up when they dynamite ancient archaeological treasures. Wake me up when they harbor like minded foreign extremists that use the United States as a base of operations for a global terrorist network.
Until then it's just bullshit moral equivalence.
You'll be worth talking to when you mature enough to realize that the Executive is only 1/3 of the Federal Government and only 1/2 of the part that decides how much money is going to be spent.
And Democrats of the last 50~ years are way better with money than Republicans so think of another meme.
No, Democrats of the last 50~ years suck just as much as Republicans of the last 50~ years. The only exception happened during the 90s, when the two parties were too busy trying to drag each other down to spend money we don't have. Outside of that window neither party has ever been willing to live within our means and stop running up the national credit card.