Do Ryan's family ties to natural gas concern you?
"People will look into the connection with his father-in-law who is pretty heavily into natural gas and several people have raised the issue of fracking and his support of that," Bice said about Daniel Little, Ryan's father-in-law, who owns interests in four companies that lease land for mining and drilling by energy companies.
So we care? Should we care?Nope. I'm sure the “connection" is overblown anyway by some small time editor/writer, in order to get noticed. Leasing land....so what?
If it was leased for wind energy, would you care about the hundreds of migrating birds being killed by wind turbines?All I have to say is...DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!!!!!!!
Drill baby drill is the true generational theft. When our kids and grandkids ask us why we decimated the environment they would inherit from us, our only honest response can be, "we didn't want to stop consuming, and we wanted our cheap material goods at whatever cost we could get them."
No, what I will tell them is that we wanted to use the resources the land gave us, but we had people who would rather see us live like cavemen than use them.
I just got done with a project to turned a diesel bus into an all electric vehicle. It was a huge success and it is getting a lot of attention and unlike other electric vehicles in the market, it represents a true cost savings over a diesel burner. Mind you, we're not green weenies. We're capitalist pigs who saw an opportunity and capitalized.
Additionally, unlike the competition, we did it on our own nickel.... not a government dime. We set out to create a viable alternative and may have just struck pay dirt.
Once we received the necessary material, we completed the project with a team of five in nine days (albeit very long ones).
Unfortunately we had to team with the Chinese to get the technology. They can afford to build it. No one here can. Among the advantages they have is they can burn a whole lot of coal.
Yep, the Chinese are using today's technology to power the production of tomorrows solutions. We on the other hand are at a constipated stand still as we wait for a perpetual motion machine.
Sooner~ Decimated the environment?
Your Government has mandated that we use a certain amount of our FOOD to burn in our engines. Not only does this make the fuel burn faster, and with less efficiency and more bio hazard, but it's just plan dumb. The Obama admin is set on bio/ renewable fuels to such and extent, that they continue to screw us in the long run with their half tail ideas of backing an industry with a measly half billion. The wannabe may be able to rile a crowd when surrounded by sheep, in but he is missing on more than one cylinder in the real world.
The government doesn’t invent or make anything! The people do! Obama likes to give the credit to the government for the internet without Bill Gates and friends, roads without the construction men, and government programs without taxes taken from US! Business owners payed for the roads that lead to their doors.
Obama is no JFK, and America is not full of the American exceptionalism that it once was. Until we get the current way of thinking out of Washington, we will never get out of the corner we painted ourselves into. If you blindly or fully pick one end of the spectrum you are part of the problem.
We are talking natural gas here! We have accomplished so much in the 21st century, why do you think we can’t safely harness this natural energy? Just because we haven't cared enough in the past to do so, doesn’t mean that we can’t accomplish the task today.
Democrats will inflate and tax us till we are slaves and puppets, and the republicans will leave us to fend for ourselves after taking everything they want for themselves and their friends.
I apologize for the tangents of ideas, but they are related.
Right On! We have enough here to see us through the at least 50 years of exponential growth in usage and international sales, making us trillions in trade and income to take care of our debt and grandchildren!! By that time, if we could get some new blood in the government, we could be flying around like the jetsons or star track.
Oh how they have dampened our true spirits!
I don't really understand this interest in digging deeper into the candidates, whether it's Romney's tax returns, Ryan's financial and corporate interests, or Obama's birth certificate. Is there really any mystery to any of these men? Obama has been on the job for four years. That's more than enough material to evaluate him on. Ryan and Romney represent the standard Republican agenda and whether we evaluate that agenda or the work history of either of them, we will find that they side with corporate and financial interests over regular people and the environment every single time. If elected that is exactly what they will do.
As far as energy and oil goes, I don't think it matters. Line up the energy policies of Bush, Obama, and Romney and I'm not sure you'd be able to tell the difference. The fossil fuel companies have trillions of dollars of product on the books. There's no way they are going to easily give that up to anyone. I don't think we'll really get serious about Climate Change until Neanderthals start to spontaneously combust (even then I doubt they'll believe it and of course it will be too late).
Yes, but it shouldn't.
Government should have VERY limited involvement in the market place. If its involvement were limited, there would be very little opportunity to legislative abuse.There didn't seem to be much concern among Obama supporters for the millions awarded to Obama fund raisers and bundlers, like the Democrats running Solyndra and others.
<shrug> I don't typically fault Obama supporters for that. Its in line with their whole philosophy.
Markets are to be managed.
Economies should be engineered.
Inequities should be righted by those who know better, by stealing from those who did nothing.
People should be protected from Happy Meal toys.
When you get right down to it, they have little faith in the collective exercise of individual freedom. Historically and globally speaking, theirs not an unusual position.
The notion that a man is his own ruler IS an unusual position.
Unfortunately, those of us on the right who claim to ascribe to it have sold it out.
We nominated Romney. Mind you, I'll be enthusiastically voting for the turkey as my desire to fire the unabashed commie/socialist/pinko slime occupying the White House is REAL high.
Yeah, the government should stay out of regulating the greedy business people who will do anything to make money - pollute, raid, steal, etc. Were you in an underground cave or something over the last few years? We just went through - and are still going through - a major financial crisis due to deregulation of banks and investments.
And here I thought it was because the government long ago insinuated itself into the mortgage markets and dictated that they provide extremely high risk type loans to high risk people. No Doc/Low Doc loans, sub prime loans, B & C lenders, no ratio/no income loans were all products of government regulations, FHA programs, Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac changes. There were also pressure brought to bare on mortgage lenders by the Justice Department to loan to people who were not credit worthy but were minorities. Minority status became enough to get certain loans.
It is considerably more complicated than any liberal is willing to accept and the biggest culprit was not the companies doing everything they could to mitigate the risk of the terrible loans the government created a secondary market for but the government and its quasi-governmental bankers at Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac(whose officers, by the way, received big bonuses at the height of the mortgage debacle).If you want to label people, be my guest. But while you're gushing facts, look into the banking laws that were put in place right after the Depression, and were removed about ten years ago.
And yes, George's beautifully messed up sub prime loans had their own horrible effect on the economy.In both cases, the banks had a hand in crafting those laws. Heck, they even had a hand in crafting Dodd Frank.
Don't believe me? Pool your assets with a bunch of pals and try to create a bank.
There's a reason lobbyists are paid really really well and that's because they do a real good job.Nobody said they didn't. Corruption between government and big business is the problem, not government itself. Without any regulation, we'd end up with a worse situation.
Without excessive regulation we would have far more diversity and competition in banking. As I said, you should be able to open a bank. You can't. You never will. You're locked out.
You'll never build a car. You're locked out of that one too.
You'll never manufacture drugs. The big boys shut the door.
You'll never build an oil refinery. The winners have already been picked.
Keep in mind, the laws necessary to stop this recent collapse were already in place. Not surprisingly, government did not do its job. In response, they grabbed more power (just as they did after failing to do their job after 9/11).
That's what government does. It creates laws and spends money. It rarely does an effective job of helping anyone.
You want salvation. You're it. I'm it. We're our own salvation.
I with the founders on this one... a man is perfectly capable of governing himself. We don't need no stinking protection. We need a playing field that allows us to fight back.
Nope... I wasn't in a cave... hey but thanks for the half witted attempt at an insult.
Unfortunately though, far too many do live in caves. Corporations exist to make a profit and they are involved in government precisely because its profitable.
They are involved in government to get the competitive edge over competition.
They are involved in government to get special consideration when it comes to things like Health Care Laws.
They are involved in government so that they can help form regulatory systems that make it difficult for competition to enter the Market Place.
Separation of Market and State is our only salvation.So government is the issue? Gee, sounds to me like the chuminess between big business and government is the issue. So get rid of the government? Speaking of half-witted, that's not a very intelligent solution. Then big business wouldn't have any controls to stop their behavior. The fox would have total control over the chicken coop.
What we need is not less government, but changes in the lobbying regulations and the revolving-door buddy system that allows our legislators to work as lobbyists and to work for businesses that are heavily involved in lobbying and government contracts.Less government is exactly what we need and I mean WAY less.
You want to combat the evil abuse of capitalism and I don't blame you. The free market is the best way for us to defend ourselves against those evils. Pure and simple.
A proper free market removes obstacles to market entry. It doesn't establish them with legislation sponsored by big businesses with a vested interest in seeing the doors shut behind them.
A proper free market doesn't recognize that ridiculous notion of corporate person hood, but instead holds men personally accountable for their actions. Stealing on Wall Street should have no less a consequence than robbing a liquor store.
A proper free market does not weaken contract enforcement or debt collection, but instead holds every man accountable... up and down the food chain.
A proper free market does not have a government choosing solar cells over other forms of energy while giving away truly remarkable energy developments like Lithium Titanate batteries to the Chinese.
Simply put, your notion of more government involvement in business in order to reduce the interaction of government and business is not only silly, but a strategy that has been tried several times without success.Your notion of a "proper free market" can never happen, just as no form of pure political or economic strategy can occur. People don't operate that way.
By-the-way, so far you've called me both half-witted and silly. Are you unable to disagree without calling people who don't think the same way you do names? If so, let's not discuss this any more, because I'm not interested in being judged so unkindly just because I disagree with someone.I don't know you. You're probably the nicest person on the planet, but you opened your salvo with me by saying..
"Were you in an underground cave or something over the last few years?"
In my neck of the woods, that's akin to calling me ignorant.
That you would snivel because I chose to respond with a cutting rhetorical style is very amusing. Especially since your particular whine is misread of what was communicated to you. Your person wasn't being attacked. Your own rhetorical style and your political solutions were.
Your ATTEMPT to insult me, was indeed half witted. Especially since you don't know me from Adam and have no idea how well informed I may be about the topic being discussed.
More, your NOTION that the way to dismantle an oligarchy by further entrenching the conditions that create oligarchies is indeed silly. Ah shucks, its beyond silly. Its dangerously dumb.
Now... back to the topic..
You're right. There is no pure political system or economic strategy. That's why those things that I espoused are commonly referred to as principles or ideals.
However being principles or ideals, the idea is to move towards them and not away from them. Indeed, the direction that you advocate moves us away from very strong and just principles and ideas.
While that could be necessary, I think we need a stronger justification than "people don't operate that way".
The opposition to the colonial rebels had a similar things to say.My question about you being in a cave was justified by your obviously out-of-touch position. I don't have to know you from Adam to see that your POSITION is ignorant and unrealistic. You are asking that capitalism be unbridled by regulation, as if it's some kind of ideal that will resolve its own problems. You seem to also be totally ignorant of human greed and unfairness toward others in a race for possessions and wealth. While that position would be acceptable if we lived in a Utopian society, in the REAL world it's, to use your words, "silly. Ah shucks, its beyond silly. Its dangerously dumb."
As we obviously do not believe that the other person has a realistic point of view about this topic, I for one am done discussing it.LOL! No sir/madam. The delicious irony is that it was and is YOUR ignorance that's been revealed here.
Mine is a VERY classically liberal argument that is not utopian by any stretch of the imagination. That you're unaware of this is far more indicative of your ignorance than mine.
I suggest putting Rutherford, Locke, Smith and the Federalist Papers on your reading list. Heck, event the DOL will get you moving the right direction. You'll find that their philosophy is rooted in the knowledge that man is in fact greedy and unfair. You'll find that they emphatically believed that the decentralization of power was the best defense against this kind of greed.
Finally you do need to learn something about capitalism. ALL economic systems have capitalism. ALL OF THEM. Heck, even the soviet system had capitalists. They we were normally black market cronies who were protected by the "people's" government. The Chinese have capitalism as well. The capitalists are hand picked by the government, as is increasingly the case here.
FREE MARKET capitalism differs from those forms of capitalism significantly. I invite you to go discover what that means. The "ignorant" thinkers that I referred to you are a start.
Oddly, it's your side of the spectrum that likes to think of themselves as progressive. Its not progressive at all. Historically speaking, the notion that centralized elite powers are necessary to "help" and "guide" the ignorant masses is far more pervasive.Well said. Most people do not truely understand free market capitalism. It is not the "crony capitalism" or big business capitalism that we have seen here in the US for the past 100+ years.
I don't know if it is not understanding free market capitalism so much as it is not understanding or agreeing with the notion that the government has to be completely hands off. For a market to be free, it has to be free form government authority AND corporate authority. A lot of people, me included, just don't see how a free market self-regulates itself to prevent the coalescence of corporate power interests. Removing the government from a market which already has such corporate power interests seems backwards since that just allows them to be even more exploitive. Even Adam Smith talked about the government needing to prevent things like monopolies. This seems like a legitimate concern and if it is, how do you solve it?
In my opinion, 'free market' and oversight aren't mutually exclusive.
Government can fulfill the role of helping the market to remain free.
For instance, a large company with a monopoly, could drive down their own prices if a serious competitor came along, to where the competitor wouldn't have a chance to make a profit. The monopoly would lose money in the meantime, but when the competition is gone, it can resume gouging people as the only provider.
That is a barrier to a free market, where new ideas and products have the same opportunity as established ones.
The problem is when the government gets involved in ways that are strictly non-free.
Setting price floors or price ceilings, for example, is anti-free market.So it is kind of like the difference between a referee calling penalties to ensure fair play versus a referee running on the field and sucker-punching a player?
I have to admit my impression of free marketeers is that they don't even want a referee at all--as in no government involvement in the market at all even in an oversight role. Do you consider your position an anomaly? Or perhaps free marketeers are, in general, not very good at expressing the distinction? Or perhaps I have simply not paid close enough attention to the subtle distinction when it is presented?That's exactly the difference
Honestly, I don't really know. I don't identify with labels, because there never is a 'central definition' for that label. I'm sure there are free marketeers who want no involvement, and those who realize that some is required.Thanks. The comments of you and CapnFatz have been very helpful.
I personally believe there is a whole lot of confusion about free market capitalism and I think that confusion is shared by the majority of those on the right and the left.
With respect to your observation about Smith, you're absolutely correct and the observation highlights the fact that we free market capitalists are NOT market anarchists. In fact, strong contractual law and its enforcement along with personal accountability for the powerful (which we don't have) are necessary ingredients to a successful free market system. Of course, the devil is always in the details and there are places where many of the most ardent free market folks will disagree.
However, such disagreement or ambiguity is not an argument against free market principles and ideals. IF those principles are true and correct, we have a right to be VERY concerned about where we're at and how much further in the wrong direction the government wants to take us.
In fact, it further entrenches the coalesced powers you're concerned about with NO way to them dethrone save a complete revolution that simply replaces them with another set of pals.
A free market on the other hand, does not free the moguls to reek havoc. Rather it frees the rest of us to fight back.
Mind you, dethroning the magnates is not an easy task under a free market. Its just possible and quite frankly I'll take possible over impossible any day of the week.If I'm reading you correctly, you believe that such an overthrow is "possible."
Not likely. Not easy. But possible.
But, to achieve a revolution such as you are describing, we the people would need to unseat the fat cats, both those inside government (who are not policing their private sector charges effectively) and the moguls running amok.
Sounds like the Occupy Movement meets Tea Party.
So first we would need to get people at polar ends of the spectrum to agree on the problem.
Then we would have to put our trust into a free market that no one has ever experienced.
And don't forget, there can be no take-aways. Americans are all for change. But NIMBA (Not In MY Bank Account!)The distinction between free market capitalist and market anarchist is actually pretty enlightening. I am sure not recognizing that is in part due to my own complicity, but at the same time I imagine there are some free market proponents who don't do a very good job making that distinction clear. It is unfortunate because it probably leads to a lot of unnecessary "the government is evil," "no they are not" arguments. A lot of people probably agree more than they realize. For instance the ideas of "strong contractual law" and "accountability for the powerful" both seem like ideas that a lot of people, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, could get behind.
Anyway, I guess I am getting a bit off topic. I appreciate the comments.
No wonder most people don't understand it.
Most of us are less than 100 years old, so have only experienced a bastardized and in its only way "forced" form of capitalism.
I don't know of a family on the planet that doesn't have ties to "natural gas".
- JaxsonRaineposted 12 years ago
0Every politician, unless he is the last remaining member of his family line, and has no personal investments, and doesn't have a business, or an old job, or friends, or a past...
is going to have ties to something.
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