Again, don't fault me for your specious logic. You're the one who said, "I've seen police states. I've had to pass through checkpoints and answer questions about where I was going, why I was going there and when I plan on being back.". Your definition, not mine. Right. I was speaking of armed checkpoint on freeways, stopping people on their way to work. You brought up border crossings for some reason.
Also, I noticed how you managed to completely sidestep the airport security issue. Don't think I didn't. Flying is not a right. You are free to take the bus, train or drive.
Still, every country secures their airports. Are all countries police states? I noticed how you managed to completely sidestep the airport security issue. Don't think I didn't.
I've seen police states. I've had to pass through checkpoints and answer questions about where I was going, why I was going there and when I plan on being back. The US is not a police state. Really? Crossed the border lately? Flown lately? You're kidding, right? I tried to enter the Super Bowl, but some Gestapo Asshole was at the gate, blocking my way, asking to see my papers!
Strict border control does not make a police state. A state is deemed a police state by how it treats its law abiding CITIZENS, not foreign nationals who wish to enter the country. If border control and airport security is how you judge police states, can you show me a country that is NOT a police state? Is Canada a police state too? France? Japan?
Correct. Telco's do not need to protect my rights. They only need to obey that law, which they didn't do and like everyone else, they should face the consequences of there actions. What law did the Telco's break? Again, they are not legally obligated to protect your rights.
I keep telling you guys to practice your "Heil Bush!". Yet I keep getting mocked and voted/modded down. One of these days I'll be going "I told you so!". I'd mod you down simply for proving Godwins Law.
Bush is not up for reelection, but I wouldn't expect you to know that. So this time next year, we'll all be saying, "I told you so!".
So let me get this straight, you think warrantless wiretapping is a good thing? I think that punishing the telco's for it is a BAD thing. It's not the jobs of the Telco's to protect your rights. That falls to the government. If the government fails, you call on your first amendment rights. If that fails, you move down to the second amendment. If you don't have the stones to do that, then you don't deserve any of your rights at all.
Welcome to the Police State. I know! I had to pass through four armed checkpoints on my way to work today. Two of them searched my trunk... and I don't mean the hatch-back of my car, if you catch my drift. Don't even get me started about the "secret police" that searched my house this morning at 3:00am looking for Obama literature. Thank God I got rid of that! Oh, and I expect I'll get to meet you in the reeducation camp later this week. We all know that you are not allowed to post stuff like that in a police state./sarc off
You really shouldn't make "police state" claims like that. If you think this is a police state, you obviously have no idea what a true police state is. Displaying such an obscene level of ignorance is probably not in your best interest.
I've seen police states. I've had to pass through checkpoints and answer questions about where I was going, why I was going there and when I plan on being back. The US is not a police state.
As to Media Markt, if they wish to sell only the crap from Intel, why shouldn't they be allowed to? Simply because you don't "like" a company (...Microsoft...) doesn't mean in a free market, retailers should not be able to be exclusive. The problem is not that Media Market was selling Intel because they liked them, but because they would get special deals from Intel if they DIDN'T sell AMD. That's what Intel (allegedly) does in markets where AMD might stand a chance.
Think of it as the Walmart strategy. They move into a town and sell everything below what they pay for it. There is no way that the local stores can compete and go out of business. When Walmart is the only game in town, they raise prices and shift those profits to the next town to make up for the new store there that selling below wholesale. Repeat as necessary.
The only problem I see with it is that Intel can only be charged 10%. They have used unfair practices (allegedly) to gain near monopoly status and fund the R&D and production capacity that produces Intel's current line of products. The only fair punishment would be to take at least half of all the proceeds Intel made over the years they were using unfair and illegal practices and give it their competition, plus rights to all IP gained due to those profits. They take the house, cars and boats that were bought with drug-dealer money don't they? What's the difference?
Just an fyi since you mentioned the game: they released a patch to remove the CD check for Supreme Commander just a couple weeks after release. I should have been more specific. I have Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. The error I get when I try to launch the game is "A required security module can not be activated. This program can not be executed." According to WineHQ, a NoCD crack fixes it.
Do you know if there is an official NoDVD patch for Forged Alliance?
Any howto's on how you got these to work? They're pretty much the only games that I still reboot to windows for... War3 just worked with the -opengl switch (wine war3.exe -opengl). I ran the installer and off it went...
C&C3 took a little finagling. First, I needed the NoCD hack. That allowed the game to run, but the cursor would never change. You would mouse over an enemy for example, but the cursor would stay an arrow rather than changing to the "attack" cursor. I found a wine patch that fixed that issue, but it required to me to recompile it into a folder in my home directory and then run it from there:
env WINEPREFIX="/home/archerb/.wine" $HOME/wine-cnc3/bin/wine "C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Command & Conquer 3\CNC3.exe" That runs like a champ, although it is not the latest WINE. The cursor thing is a known issue that will eventually make its way into the GA release of WINE.
I don't own "Supreme Commander". Instead, I bought the stand-alone expansion "Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance". It installed with no problems, but it is still asking for the DVD to be in the drive, even though it is in the drive. I finally found a NoCD hack today, but it's for the 1.0 version and I haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
WineHQ is an excellent resource with some great tips on getting things running. It's where I got most of my information and was lost before finding it.
The benefit to No-CD patches is that it makes it so much easier to play games under WINE on Linux. While I never had an issue with War3, other newer games give me grief such as Supreme Commander and C&C3. Both of these require a No-CD hack to run as neither will recognize the DVD sitting in the drive. (Yes, I do have the CD mapped to WINE D: drive) Removing the CD-In-The-Drive requirement would really take many of the barriers to playing these games under WINE and would open up that 1% of the market that are Linux users!
You're asking people other than you to change their behavior based on your principles?
I'd venture to guess that not having sex if you are infected with AIDS is a pretty universal principle, much in the same way that murder is universally frowned upon.
Not exactly, I bet you that bars can't charge admission for watching the game. Sure, they charge you for beverages but the church event is charging you even if you don't consume anything. The policy appears to be "you can show the game as long as you don't charge people for it" (though you can charge for any ADDITIONAL services you provide). From TFA:
Like other churches, Vienna Presbyterian will not charge admission to view the game, and it will not use the event as a fundraiser.
Well, the bible says that Christians are to obey the laws of whatever land they live in. What kind of pathetically hypocritical Christians are going to break the law and doom themselves to That's not necessarily the case. Jesus said to give to Caesar (the Gov) what belongs to Caesar and give to God, what belongs to God. He was also speaking of taxes at the time.
What I object to is that the issue is that CHURCHES can't do it. This attitude that churches should not have to play by the same rules as everyone else drives me up the wall. The suggestion that the legislature should amend federal law to create ANOTHER carve-out for churches is ridiculous. All this church wants is the same rights and privileges as a bar. So, let's take your statement and replace "church" with "bar" and you'll have what is really going on.
The sad part is that if this church served anything stronger than Communion wine (to people who will be driving home after the game) and charged for it, the NFL would have no problem with them showing the game!
Oh my goodness, those people obviously never watched stargate! They're making replicators! They are swarms of robots that can assume any form. The only way to stop them is for MacGuyver to stick his head in some ancient machine to gain their knowledge. Then he'll develope a super weapon that looks like a BFG3000 that will shoot waves at them causing them to disassociate with each other and fall to the ground like a pile of leggos. But that's only enough to stop a few of them, the REAL solution is to link all the stargates together at once (anyone seen baal?) and then send said 'waves of magical energy' through the one closest to T'ealc.
Someone shoot them before they doom us all!!! ...and even [i]THAT[/i] didn't work (cf. Atlantis) If they only had a deflector dish to reroute those waves through, it just might have worked!!
The difference is that few if any would claim that either frat-boys or geeks are "noble heroes of freedom".
It's not how they act outside their jobs that earn them that name, but their jobs and how they do them. It the fact that soldiers sign up to give their lives in defense of the Constitution. It's the fact that soldiers bust their asses 12-23 hours every day for shitty pay, crappy food, and piss poor living conditions (shared rooms, open showers, you have to clean... really REALLY clean everything yourselves) so that they are ready to do their job. When they say that "a soldier does more before 9:00 am than most people do all day", it's not just a slogan. Geeks work 4-12 hrs a day, and usually get paid pretty well for it. Geeks became geeks because they like geeky stuff and wanted the money. (of course, some soldiers signed up for the college money, but trust me, it's not worth it. Take those extra 8-15 hrs a day you work and get a second job. It will pay much better than the GI Bill!)
So when I see a soldier acting like an asshole at a bar, I understand (I've been there). This guy has probably been in the field for three months, without a "real" shower, digging a hole to shit in, eating T-Rats and MRE's, working 20 hrs a day and spending an hour a night of his "sleep time" pulling radio watch. Why? Because it is what he has to do honor that "defend the Constitution" oath he took. So when he gets a day of leave and gets to go out and blow off some steam, I'll cut him a little slack. Now, if I find out that his MOS is something like finance or other desk job, I'll kick his ass if he acts like an asshole. I mean, thanks for signing up and all, but your desk job does not entitle you to act like an asshole, you REMF!
That's like saying you should yank the fire alarm just because it's there. Militaries exist just in case you really, seriously, undoubtedly need to go to war. They don't sit around as some sort of resource or plaything that you can just send into harm's way for the fuck of it. -- In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. My point was not, "We spent all this money building a military, may as well use it." My point was that people shouldn't bitch about soldiers being placed in harm's way; it's what they do. It is what they are trained to do. Believe it or not, it is what they WANT to do. Now I'm not saying that soldiers long to kill people, but when something breaks out, soldiers are chomping at the bit to be part of it. Nothing sucks more for a soldier to train for years to do a job, and when the time comes, he sits in the barracks while the company on the first floor goes to do that job. (Disclaimer, I was a soldier. I changed companies from A Co, where we were about to start testing on the brand new, super cool M1A2's, back to Bravo, who was going back to Kuwait.)
Now, of course, when you said They don't sit around as some sort of resource or plaything that you can just send into harm's way for the fuck of it. were you speaking of Iraq? I ask because of your sig, "In Repressive Burma...". I would find it odd that you would speak of "repressive Burma" and not realize that Iraq was just as bad or worse than Burma. In Burma, monks were placed under house arrest. In Iraq, Kurdish men women and children were gassed. It reminds of so many of those "Free Tibet" bumper stickers proudly placed next to the "chicken foot" peace sticker. I wonder, how do you free Tibet peacefully? I don't think you can. Just like we tried for 12 years and 17 UN resolutions to peacefully "Free Iraq". That didn't work out too well either. It took the US military about a month to do the same job. The stabilization will take a bit longer, of course, but it will be complete in much less time than it took the UN to fail.
If you want a good picture of these noble heroes you idolize so much, might I suggest you head down to Fort Campbell and walk into any bar on 41A on any given night, or head down to Riverside Drive any weekend to see our brave professionals drunkenly hitting on 16-year-old girls? And how is this different than heading down to 6th Street in Austin Texas and seeing the college frat-boys drunkenly hitting on 16-year-old girls? Or the geeks who are drunkenly downloading pictures of 16-year-old girls and wishing they could hit on them?
For the record, I've been all three (soldier, college student and geek), and I have not hit on 16-year-old girls since I was 17.
I remember back when I was 16, fast food restaurant managers hitting on my 16-year-old girlfriends. It's just how some guys are.
Well speaking as someone outside the US, wouldn't it show greater concern for your troops to not send them out to get shot at? There is a quote I'm familiar with, but I don't know where it came from: The boats are safe in the harbor, but that is not what they are made for.
"not (bad) counting sex, or hemorrhoids, and other unpleasant things...) " WTF!?! Sex... Hemorrhoids....... Unplesasent things... I don't want to know... Maybe he's a catcher and the two are related.
(obligatory: not that there's anything wrong with that...)
Ad Hominem: I'll give you that one.
* Ad Hominem Tu Quoque: This fallacy is committed when it is concluded that a person's claim is false because 1) it is inconsistent with something else a person has said or 2) what a person says is inconsistent with her actions.
-- You committed this logical fallacy when you questioned the validity of Al Gore's position on global warming because of the personal behaviors (that you misrepresent, to boot) of Al Gore Sorry, but that fallacy is wrong in this case. Would you listen to a preacher who is screwing his secretary? Would you listen to a financial consultant who is telling you to "BUY!" when he is selling? Would you believe me that this milk is bad when you see me drinking it? I could list example after example of cases when making Ad Hominem Tu Quoque is valid. Al Gore is one of them. I don't buy into what hypocrites are selling. Practice what you preach!
Besides, the whole global warming argument is based on Slippery Slope, but I figured you should know that, O Master of Fallacies.:-)
No you wouldn't. You'd call him a pot smoking, sandal wearing, socialist, Democrat hippie in a lame attempt to dismiss him. The fact of the matter is that there are people who live like this out there. So by you're own words, why aren't you listening to them? Oh right, you will only listen if it is Al Gore SPECIFICALLY who does this No, I'd pay attention when I see someone with a ton of money live like a pauper to maintain a truly carbon neutral or carbon negative footprint. Right now, he's just a hypocrite and a liar.
Tsunamis, freak heat waves, increasingly extreme weather around the globe... Stop right there. Tsunamis are NOT a result of GW, although this is not the first time I've heard that. Tsunamis are caused by EARTHQUAKES!!! NOW do you see why I don't believe? As for the rest, we've always had heat waves and extreme weather. For that matter, extreme weather is on the decline, but I've heard THAT blamed on GW as well.
When the Pentagon has previously labeled the biggest threat to global stability as climate change, I pay attention and I'm not even an American. So you listen to the Pentagon? Do you listen when they say that active sonar has no effect on marine life? Do you listen when they say that waterboarding is NOT torture? Do you listen when they say that we should be tapping phone lines? Then why would you listen when they talk about GW? Besides, the report said IF GW is a problem, the ramifications could be a threat to global stability. The same could be said for global cooling, plague, famine or whatever.
Secondly, no one appreciates your attempting to set up straw man arguments. As we've already covered, if you 'freedom' is code for national security, I refer back to the Pentagon's own report. If 'freedom' is code for I get to do whatever I want regardless of it's impact on others, then yes, the environment is more important than your unmitigated ability to harm others. First, driving my car, provided I'm safe and sober, does NOT have a negative impact on others. Next, like I've said, the environment is NOT in danger. It's been warmer in the past, it's been cooler in the past. The climate is always changing. If it is not going up, then it's going down. If it were going down, you'd be claiming that global cooling is a result of car exhaust blocking the sun's rays.
Next, after accusing me of straw man, you try to equate driving to toxic waste, burning down my house and killing my kids. THAT is a strawman argument (Pot, meet kettle). Freedom is the topic here. How can it be a strawman if that is the point of this discussion?
Yes, you do have one. Whether it's Al Gore, endangered species, or Alaskan eskimos, you've made it clear that everyone must step aside and allow you access to cheap fuel for as long as it can be sucked out of the ground, all consequences be damned. The porcupine caribou is not an endangered species. They do quite well even with the drilling in Prudoe Bay about 5-15 miles from ANWR.
The point of the GP was that energy should be expensive to encourage conservation. And since the topic renewable energy, I assume that he means "green" and renewable as well. Personally, I think domestic oil should be allowed, but taxed to near the market rate to fund renewable energy research. I should have the same access to energy that Bill Gates has.
Doing whatever you want just for your own needs without thinking of others is pretty much the exact definition of selfish behavior. No, that's the exact definition of freedom. Allowing the government to listen to 100% of our phone calls may stop a terrorist attack, therefor help the common good. Does that mean it's a good thing? How about "Papers Please" checkpoints to ensure that people are not taking unnecessary road trips?
The problem is, someway, somehow, you have to get across to people within the US economy (which I'm also a part of) that energy is not cheap. Gas prices are heavily subsidized by the US government. Externalities such as wars to secure oil reserves and the damage CO2 emissions cause are not factored into the price. The Earth Policy Institute estimates the true price of gas to be around $12-$15/gallon.
I agree with you that taxes directly on the price of gas aren't fair towards the poor, as they're the ones who can barely afford to survive as it is. Therefore, other measures should be taken. Automakers (foreign, domestic, whatever) need to be held to higher fuel mileage standards sooner. Tax benefits should be reduced for unneeded large vehicles (construction companies need an F450, real estate professionals do not need an H2). And so on. I agree with most of that. What I would like to see is for the US to be completely open for oil exploration and drilling. ANWR, for example is the size of South Carolina. The part we want to drill in is the size of a Costco. If it really is a problem, I think the caribou will find a way around it. We are already drilling about 5-15 miles away in Prudoe Bay with no real environmental impact to caribou or anything else. The money that is made from the oil extracted anywhere in the US is heavily taxed to the point where it costs $60-80/barrel to extract instead of the true $30/barrel cost. At the current market rate of $100/barrel, this still allows for plenty of profit as an incentive to explore and extract. This will reduce, although not solve our dependence on foreign sources of oil.
I know that this plan is not acceptable to those who think oil is evil. I don't agree with that, but I understand that our oil reserves are not infinite. So while we disagree with our reasoning, our goals are the same. That's where part II comes in.
The tax money that is earned from domestic oil is poured into R&D for alternative energy sources and conservation methods. As these alternative methods are found, their deployment can be tax subsidized until the price of the new technologies come down.
This way, the need for foreign oil is immediately reduced, conservation and efficiency is increased and alternative energy sources are found, eliminating our need for petroleum as a fuel completely. Everyone wins.
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Still, every country secures their airports. Are all countries police states? I noticed how you managed to completely sidestep the airport security issue. Don't think I didn't.
Strict border control does not make a police state. A state is deemed a police state by how it treats its law abiding CITIZENS, not foreign nationals who wish to enter the country. If border control and airport security is how you judge police states, can you show me a country that is NOT a police state? Is Canada a police state too? France? Japan?
Bush is not up for reelection, but I wouldn't expect you to know that. So this time next year, we'll all be saying, "I told you so!".
You really shouldn't make "police state" claims like that. If you think this is a police state, you obviously have no idea what a true police state is. Displaying such an obscene level of ignorance is probably not in your best interest.
I've seen police states. I've had to pass through checkpoints and answer questions about where I was going, why I was going there and when I plan on being back. The US is not a police state.
Think of it as the Walmart strategy. They move into a town and sell everything below what they pay for it. There is no way that the local stores can compete and go out of business. When Walmart is the only game in town, they raise prices and shift those profits to the next town to make up for the new store there that selling below wholesale. Repeat as necessary.
The only problem I see with it is that Intel can only be charged 10%. They have used unfair practices (allegedly) to gain near monopoly status and fund the R&D and production capacity that produces Intel's current line of products. The only fair punishment would be to take at least half of all the proceeds Intel made over the years they were using unfair and illegal practices and give it their competition, plus rights to all IP gained due to those profits. They take the house, cars and boats that were bought with drug-dealer money don't they? What's the difference?
Do you know if there is an official NoDVD patch for Forged Alliance?
C&C3 took a little finagling. First, I needed the NoCD hack. That allowed the game to run, but the cursor would never change. You would mouse over an enemy for example, but the cursor would stay an arrow rather than changing to the "attack" cursor. I found a wine patch that fixed that issue, but it required to me to recompile it into a folder in my home directory and then run it from there: env WINEPREFIX="/home/archerb/.wine" $HOME/wine-cnc3/bin/wine "C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Command & Conquer 3\CNC3.exe" That runs like a champ, although it is not the latest WINE. The cursor thing is a known issue that will eventually make its way into the GA release of WINE.
I don't own "Supreme Commander". Instead, I bought the stand-alone expansion "Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance". It installed with no problems, but it is still asking for the DVD to be in the drive, even though it is in the drive. I finally found a NoCD hack today, but it's for the 1.0 version and I haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
WineHQ is an excellent resource with some great tips on getting things running. It's where I got most of my information and was lost before finding it.
The benefit to No-CD patches is that it makes it so much easier to play games under WINE on Linux. While I never had an issue with War3, other newer games give me grief such as Supreme Commander and C&C3. Both of these require a No-CD hack to run as neither will recognize the DVD sitting in the drive. (Yes, I do have the CD mapped to WINE D: drive) Removing the CD-In-The-Drive requirement would really take many of the barriers to playing these games under WINE and would open up that 1% of the market that are Linux users!
You're asking people other than you to change their behavior based on your principles?
I'd venture to guess that not having sex if you are infected with AIDS is a pretty universal principle, much in the same way that murder is universally frowned upon.
The sad part is that if this church served anything stronger than Communion wine (to people who will be driving home after the game) and charged for it, the NFL would have no problem with them showing the game!
Someone shoot them before they doom us all!!! ...and even [i]THAT[/i] didn't work (cf. Atlantis) If they only had a deflector dish to reroute those waves through, it just might have worked!!
The difference is that few if any would claim that either frat-boys or geeks are "noble heroes of freedom".
It's not how they act outside their jobs that earn them that name, but their jobs and how they do them. It the fact that soldiers sign up to give their lives in defense of the Constitution. It's the fact that soldiers bust their asses 12-23 hours every day for shitty pay, crappy food, and piss poor living conditions (shared rooms, open showers, you have to clean... really REALLY clean everything yourselves) so that they are ready to do their job. When they say that "a soldier does more before 9:00 am than most people do all day", it's not just a slogan. Geeks work 4-12 hrs a day, and usually get paid pretty well for it. Geeks became geeks because they like geeky stuff and wanted the money. (of course, some soldiers signed up for the college money, but trust me, it's not worth it. Take those extra 8-15 hrs a day you work and get a second job. It will pay much better than the GI Bill!)
So when I see a soldier acting like an asshole at a bar, I understand (I've been there). This guy has probably been in the field for three months, without a "real" shower, digging a hole to shit in, eating T-Rats and MRE's, working 20 hrs a day and spending an hour a night of his "sleep time" pulling radio watch. Why? Because it is what he has to do honor that "defend the Constitution" oath he took. So when he gets a day of leave and gets to go out and blow off some steam, I'll cut him a little slack. Now, if I find out that his MOS is something like finance or other desk job, I'll kick his ass if he acts like an asshole. I mean, thanks for signing up and all, but your desk job does not entitle you to act like an asshole, you REMF!
--
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. My point was not, "We spent all this money building a military, may as well use it." My point was that people shouldn't bitch about soldiers being placed in harm's way; it's what they do. It is what they are trained to do. Believe it or not, it is what they WANT to do. Now I'm not saying that soldiers long to kill people, but when something breaks out, soldiers are chomping at the bit to be part of it. Nothing sucks more for a soldier to train for years to do a job, and when the time comes, he sits in the barracks while the company on the first floor goes to do that job. (Disclaimer, I was a soldier. I changed companies from A Co, where we were about to start testing on the brand new, super cool M1A2's, back to Bravo, who was going back to Kuwait.)
Now, of course, when you said They don't sit around as some sort of resource or plaything that you can just send into harm's way for the fuck of it. were you speaking of Iraq? I ask because of your sig, "In Repressive Burma...". I would find it odd that you would speak of "repressive Burma" and not realize that Iraq was just as bad or worse than Burma. In Burma, monks were placed under house arrest. In Iraq, Kurdish men women and children were gassed. It reminds of so many of those "Free Tibet" bumper stickers proudly placed next to the "chicken foot" peace sticker. I wonder, how do you free Tibet peacefully? I don't think you can. Just like we tried for 12 years and 17 UN resolutions to peacefully "Free Iraq". That didn't work out too well either. It took the US military about a month to do the same job. The stabilization will take a bit longer, of course, but it will be complete in much less time than it took the UN to fail.
For the record, I've been all three (soldier, college student and geek), and I have not hit on 16-year-old girls since I was 17.
I remember back when I was 16, fast food restaurant managers hitting on my 16-year-old girlfriends. It's just how some guys are.
The boats are safe in the harbor, but that is not what they are made for.
(obligatory: not that there's anything wrong with that...)
-- You committed this logical fallacy when you questioned the validity of Al Gore's position on global warming because of the personal behaviors (that you misrepresent, to boot) of Al Gore Sorry, but that fallacy is wrong in this case. Would you listen to a preacher who is screwing his secretary? Would you listen to a financial consultant who is telling you to "BUY!" when he is selling? Would you believe me that this milk is bad when you see me drinking it? I could list example after example of cases when making Ad Hominem Tu Quoque is valid. Al Gore is one of them. I don't buy into what hypocrites are selling. Practice what you preach!
Besides, the whole global warming argument is based on Slippery Slope, but I figured you should know that, O Master of Fallacies.
Next, after accusing me of straw man, you try to equate driving to toxic waste, burning down my house and killing my kids. THAT is a strawman argument (Pot, meet kettle). Freedom is the topic here. How can it be a strawman if that is the point of this discussion?
The point of the GP was that energy should be expensive to encourage conservation. And since the topic renewable energy, I assume that he means "green" and renewable as well. Personally, I think domestic oil should be allowed, but taxed to near the market rate to fund renewable energy research. I should have the same access to energy that Bill Gates has.
I agree with you that taxes directly on the price of gas aren't fair towards the poor, as they're the ones who can barely afford to survive as it is. Therefore, other measures should be taken. Automakers (foreign, domestic, whatever) need to be held to higher fuel mileage standards sooner. Tax benefits should be reduced for unneeded large vehicles (construction companies need an F450, real estate professionals do not need an H2). And so on. I agree with most of that. What I would like to see is for the US to be completely open for oil exploration and drilling. ANWR, for example is the size of South Carolina. The part we want to drill in is the size of a Costco. If it really is a problem, I think the caribou will find a way around it. We are already drilling about 5-15 miles away in Prudoe Bay with no real environmental impact to caribou or anything else. The money that is made from the oil extracted anywhere in the US is heavily taxed to the point where it costs $60-80/barrel to extract instead of the true $30/barrel cost. At the current market rate of $100/barrel, this still allows for plenty of profit as an incentive to explore and extract. This will reduce, although not solve our dependence on foreign sources of oil.
I know that this plan is not acceptable to those who think oil is evil. I don't agree with that, but I understand that our oil reserves are not infinite. So while we disagree with our reasoning, our goals are the same. That's where part II comes in.
The tax money that is earned from domestic oil is poured into R&D for alternative energy sources and conservation methods. As these alternative methods are found, their deployment can be tax subsidized until the price of the new technologies come down.
This way, the need for foreign oil is immediately reduced, conservation and efficiency is increased and alternative energy sources are found, eliminating our need for petroleum as a fuel completely. Everyone wins.
Would this be acceptable to environmentalists?