NPR talks about Senate Hearings

Go George !

Listening to NPR on the way in this morning.

"Bipartisanship is NOT when everyone does everything you want them to. If we're going to do this, let's do this right !"

The NPR commentators statement of "Ohio may lose over 70,000 jobs, but should be able to get into wind generator manufacturing and solar panel manufacturing" REALLY pissed me off. That's the same kind of BS argument Wal Mart gives when they move into a small town and say "Well, the mom and pop stores can get into selling handicrafts and stuff like that".

My company USED to make Wind Generator motors. Guess what ? Our competitor's whole business moved to Mexico, and we couldn't compete, so we had to get out of the business.

If you believed the news reports "green" jobs are sweeping the nation. What is really happening on the ground is quite different. Here in PA the biggest job prospects are in the newly discovered natural gas deposits. Gov. Rendell just gave the industry a huge tax break. Is it on front pages? No. They are too busy reporting on geothermal.

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The argument against protecting the environment is always the same - $$$.

Strangely, Kerry expresses it well -

"Are there some costs? Yes, sir, there are some costs," Kerry said. He added that while an array of studies show restricting greenhouse gases will lead to higher energy prices, "none of them factor in the cost of doing nothing."

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Makk-

If you read the article, you'll note that Voinovich did not object, in principle, to doing something. He just wants to make sure that the pain is somehow equalized. As it stands the Rust Belt is gonna take it in the shorts. Again.

The air is as clean as it has ever been. People see it breath it and feel it. Any wonder concern for the environment always ends up dead last in every poll? People outside the Kerry circle just don't get excited about "greenhouse" gases.

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UM, 'cleaning up the air' has actually net contributed to the greenhouse affect.
(has helped breathing, though)

>>He just wants to make sure that the pain is somehow equalized

He's doing his job as a congressman but -

the idea is completely farcical. we shouldn't protect industries that haven't kept themselves competitive.

where's the republican taking that side?

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we shouldn't protect industries from gov't subsidized competition ?

This logic fails me: Citing how clean the air is now as a reason for not taking pro-active action on the environment in the future. How do you think that air got as clean as it is now? Corporate good will?

makk.... again. it's not about protecting industries, it's about protecting JOBS. Congress wants to kill certain industries. Therefore it's up to Congress to find a way to employ those people... uh. VOTERS.

We're a democracy. Try telling people that they're going to lose their livelihoods and have no hope of ever getting another job unless they get in their flivvers and do an Okie migration. The voters ain't gonna go for it.This is the issue that Voinovich is addressing. He's basically saying - "You Democrats are going to screw Ohio. Find a way to do this without screwing Ohio. Oh, and me."

What about all the people who lost their livelihoods when the automobile replaced the horse? Should the government have forced us to use buggies so that they would remain employed?

Putting band-aids all over current industries so that people don't lose their jobs is not a solution. If the anti-"green" gang would stop fighting the concept and begin giving input and taking action on improving legislation and helping to maintain/replace jobs they'd be doing their constituents a gigantic favor.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2009 11:08AM by $tevie.

>>it's not about protecting industries, it's about protecting JOBS

jobs in a particular industry.

they can deny what it is, but that doesn't mean its not true.

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Um, until Ford dreamed up ( and for quite a while after) the assembly line, the buggy carriage manufacturers actually made cars on a rather local level.

For the last 3 4 administrations the economy has been propped up with ever larger poles, mostl;y 'service sector' jobs. That all helped with the last collapse.
Turn around and make the same patches.

American companiees being bought up by foreign investors needing to park oil profits somewhere isn't helping, either.

And people are making money being green on an individual level. That doesn't change my point. Stop fighting it, accept that we have to do something about the environment, and set the good minds to work on it.

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billb
UM, 'cleaning up the air' has actually net contributed to the greenhouse affect.
(has helped breathing, though)

Unadulterated rubbish.

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"Man is a little germ that lives on an unimportant rock ball that revolves about a small star at the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy... ...I am absolutely amazed to discover myself on this rock ball rotating around a spherical fire. It’s a very odd situation. And the more I look at things I cannot get rid of the feeling that existence is quite weird." - Alan W. Watts

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$tevie
What about all the people who lost their livelihoods when the automobile replaced the horse? Should the government have forced us to use buggies so that they would remain employed?

The difference is nobody had to prop up the auto industry. You did not have to have cash for buggies program to convince people that cars are better than buggies. Neither did people have any trouble recognizing that oil heating beats hauling coal ashes from their furnaces.

Show me a green job that can stand on its own and I'll go for it. The fact is they cannot exists without the force and coercion of the Federal government.

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$tevie
What about all the people who lost their livelihoods when the automobile replaced the horse? Should the government have forced us to use buggies so that they would remain employed?

Putting band-aids all over current industries so that people don't lose their jobs is not a solution. If the anti-"green" gang would stop fighting the concept and begin giving input and taking action on improving legislation and helping to maintain/replace jobs they'd be doing their constituents a gigantic favor.

Wasn't there a story/song about failing buggy whip factories? I remember something along that vein...

=wr=

>>The difference is nobody had to prop up the auto industry.

Shows what you know.

The auto industry was propped up by the real estate industry. Can't sell a house in the suburbs if you can't get there. Don't need a car if you can get everything you need in your local environment.

At any rate, nothing happens in isolation. The reason why green companies are being "propped up" is because a price is being put on the environment.

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The personal automobile industry was enabled by public road-building programs financed by taxes.

The "government OR capitalism" dichotomy is a false choice.

particulates , Davester.
Fairly well documented.
Not gases.

Do some "professional" research.

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Acer
The personal automobile industry was enabled by public road-building programs financed by taxes.

The "government OR capitalism" dichotomy is a false choice.

You can spin it every which way. The fact is when people saw a motorized vehicle with a cab next to a horse and buggy that they had to clean up after and feed it hay nobody needed to see federal highway dollars to be convinced the car is the better choice.

The green tech we have now is like Frankenstein. Step out of the lab and it dies.

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billb
particulates , Davester.
Fairly well documented.
Not gases.

Do some "professional" research.

Coal and oil sulfates , if you want to be picky.

Sulfate aerosols from burning of coal do reflect infrared light, but the magnitude of the effect is small compared to the removal from combustion sources (especially coal) of soot and other compounds that contribute to global warming. Your statement that "cleaning up the air" has actually net contributed to the greenhouse affect (sic)" is bogus unless you have some significant new findings you'd care to contribute.

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"Man is a little germ that lives on an unimportant rock ball that revolves about a small star at the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy... ...I am absolutely amazed to discover myself on this rock ball rotating around a spherical fire. It’s a very odd situation. And the more I look at things I cannot get rid of the feeling that existence is quite weird." - Alan W. Watts

There is no free lunch. Cap and trade just puts a price on something up until now we just ignored the costs of.

A lot of public and private funds had to go into cleaning up the air and water after the age of heavy industry left it fouled. Sure, it was all cheap for 150 years when everybody could belch their fumes and fill drums o'goo for future generations to clean up...but eventually it had to be done, and when it was, it was not cheap.

Pay now or pay later, the expenses cap and trade introduce reflect a real cost we must face.

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Acer
There is no free lunch. Cap and trade

Who is doing the trading? Are we gonna have a whole new generation of Wall Street traders getting rich for cutting deals? Wait! May be they have hand in pushing this. It is clearing up now. It is not about the environment after all.

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Dakota
The air is as clean as it has ever been. People see it breath it and feel it.

Yeah!

Such a clear and steady trend downward in air pollution all across this great nation. We don't need to do anything more than we're already doing.



Those people in Ohio have absolutely no reason to be concerned about air pollution.

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Dakota

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Acer
The personal automobile industry was enabled by public road-building programs financed by taxes.

The "government OR capitalism" dichotomy is a false choice.

You can spin it every which way. The fact is when people saw a motorized vehicle with a cab next to a horse and buggy that they had to clean up after and feed it hay nobody needed to see federal highway dollars to be convinced the car is the better choice.

The green tech we have now is like Frankenstein. Step out of the lab and it dies.

No spin at all. Autos of that era were hardly the reliable machines we use today. I read earlier today that Germany had to subsidize trucks to get their country to move from horse pulled wagons that were the norm in 1911 during the lead-up to WWII. Horses in that era were much more reliable.

Indy 500 race cars were required to carry a mechanic on board until 1937: [www.hickoksports.com]

The national interstate highway system did much to subsidize the auto and trucking industries in the '50s. So had subsidized oil prices throughout the last half of the 20th century.

Dakota, you just do not know what you are typing about.

=wr=

Not to mention what the dismantling of one the country's most efficient rail systems did in Los Angeles, Dakota doesn't know what he doesn't know. He's an absolute idiot, who speaks extemporaneously without a clue as to what he says.

It's not all his fault, when you choose to regurgitate the thoughts of others, you're bound to fcck it up.

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RgrF
Not to mention what the dismantling of one the country's most efficient rail systems did in Los Angeles

I am sorry. I was not around in the 20s like you. How did it happen? GM called in railroad owners and threatened them? Or perhaps people decided they like their cars. And a socialist dictator that you are you must believe that people must be forced into choosing what they don't want , all for the greater good of course. Move over to Havana. That is how they do things over there.

People flock to great products. They don't need to be coerced, pushed or threatened with jail. "Green", at least for now, means it just doesn't work. If it did we had a propeller on every rooftop.

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Doc-
Nice stats. It also doesn't point out that the EPA Air Quality standards have increased significantly in the last 20 years. If you're comparing your performance to a moving target, you'll never win. Show me a stat that points out REAL change.

For example- when I first came to Cleveland in 1977, swimming in Lake Erie was a difficult prospect- the water was clammy and oily, and usually bits of trash and dead fish were common swimming partners. You had to make sure you showered after swimming, and definitely avoid drinking any of the water. Now it's clean and clear Steelhead trout and even Sturgeon have been found swimming up the Cuyahoga River (yes, the famous burning river).

Also, I'm an asthmatic. The air in 1977 gave me problems on bad days, especially when we had a photochemical inversion (smog). Haven't had an artificial air quality asthma attack in over 10 years. Now all that happens is the pollen gets me.


Of course we're talking about CO2, which is not "Air Pollution" the way we all think about it. We all produce CO2 by breathing.

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Dakota

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RgrF
Not to mention what the dismantling of one the country's most efficient rail systems did in Los Angeles

I am sorry. I was not around in the 20s like you. How did it happen? GM called in railroad owners and threatened them?

I don't think I have ever seen someone so proud of their ignorance as you.
Great American street car scandal

I had a neighbor that was a driver on the Key System that was shut down during that period. He was able to get a job as a bus driver for AC Transit.

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"FUNDIT"

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Of course we're talking about CO2, which is not "Air Pollution" the way we all think about it. We all produce CO2 by breathing.

Too much of anything, even a natural thing can be a bad thing, see water intoxication, deer overpopulation, vitamin overdose, Star Trek reruns, etc.

To speak to CO2, your breathing is truly insignificant, especially since it's more of a closed loop/recycle situation. On the other hand, removing hundreds of millions of years worth of carbon that's been sequestered in the ground, burning it and pumping the CO2 byproduct into the air over the space of a hundred years or so is arguably not insignificant.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2009 01:19PM by Acer.

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Dakota

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RgrF
Not to mention what the dismantling of one the country's most efficient rail systems did in Los Angeles

I am sorry. I was not around in the 20s like you. How did it happen? GM called in railroad owners and threatened them? Or perhaps people decided they like their cars. And a socialist dictator that you are you must believe that people must be forced into choosing what they don't want , all for the greater good of course. Move over to Havana. That is how they do things over there.

People flock to great products. They don't need to be coerced, pushed or threatened with jail. "Green", at least for now, means it just doesn't work. If it did we had a propeller on every rooftop.

I'm pretty sure most on this board were not around in the '20s either. I don't remember where I first read about the trolley car debacle in L.A. I do remember reading that the Red Line cars were running reliably to this day...

"People flock to great products."
This explains SUVs? People are vulnerable to marketeers, especially those playing the "safety" card. Remember Explorers and their single vehicle rollover accidents?

Does "great products" explain Microsoft's market share? Methinks you have been licking the bottom of the Kool-Aid™ package.

=wr=

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wave rider

This explains SUVs? People are vulnerable to marketeers,

Another variation of people are stupid so they have to be led by the nose for their own good.

You'll see how resentful people are of this line of thinking next Tuesday.

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Dakota

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wave rider

This explains SUVs? People are vulnerable to marketeers,

Another variation of people are stupid so they have to be led by the nose for their own good.

You'll see how resentful people are of this line of thinking next Tuesday.

I NEVER said that people are stupid. YOU are the one saying it. Own it.

I would encourage everyone, including you, to think for yourself. Do the work/research necessary to have informed opinions.

=wr=

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Dakota
GM called in railroad owners and threatened them?

So, this and the mention of the Key System got me poking around, and lookie what I found:

From Wikipedia

The Key System's famed commuter train system was dismantled in 1958 after many years of declining ridership as well as the effort by National City Lines, a General Motors affiliate which had bought up the system in the late 1940s to petition the public utility board to abandon the last rail lines. In 1949, a Federal Court convicted General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others of criminally conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to their subsidiary transit companies throughout the U.S.

In this instance, the answer to Dakota's question is a de facto yes.

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Acer

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Dakota
GM called in railroad owners and threatened them?

So, this and the mention of the Key System got me poking around, and lookie what I found:

From Wikipedia

The Key System's famed commuter train system was dismantled in 1958 after many years of declining ridership as well as the effort by National City Lines, a General Motors affiliate which had bought up the system in the late 1940s to petition the public utility board to abandon the last rail lines. In 1949, a Federal Court convicted General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others of criminally conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to their subsidiary transit companies throughout the U.S.

In this instance, the answer to Dakota's question is a de facto yes.

To summarize for Dakota:
GM bought up and dismantled trolley track via a daughter corporation in order to hasten the obsolescence of light rail.
Please acknowledge.

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Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.

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Black

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Acer

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Dakota
GM called in railroad owners and threatened them?

So, this and the mention of the Key System got me poking around, and lookie what I found:

From Wikipedia

The Key System's famed commuter train system was dismantled in 1958 after many years of declining ridership as well as the effort by National City Lines, a General Motors affiliate which had bought up the system in the late 1940s to petition the public utility board to abandon the last rail lines. In 1949, a Federal Court convicted General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others of criminally conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to their subsidiary transit companies throughout the U.S.

In this instance, the answer to Dakota's question is a de facto yes.

To summarize for Dakota:
GM bought up and dismantled trolley track via a daughter corporation in order to hasten the obsolescence of light rail.
Please acknowledge.

And provided sweetheart deals to sell the operating companies buses built by GMC.

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JoeH

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Black

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Acer

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Dakota
GM called in railroad owners and threatened them?

So, this and the mention of the Key System got me poking around, and lookie what I found:

From Wikipedia

The Key System's famed commuter train system was dismantled in 1958 after many years of declining ridership as well as the effort by National City Lines, a General Motors affiliate which had bought up the system in the late 1940s to petition the public utility board to abandon the last rail lines. In 1949, a Federal Court convicted General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others of criminally conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to their subsidiary transit companies throughout the U.S.

In this instance, the answer to Dakota's question is a de facto yes.

To summarize for Dakota:
GM bought up and dismantled trolley track via a daughter corporation in order to hasten the obsolescence of light rail.
Please acknowledge.

And provided sweetheart deals to sell the operating companies buses built by GMC.

Trying to keep it bite-sized, help me out here.

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Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.

Just adding my bite-sized piece of information to yours. Perhaps if we feed it to him slowly enough he will get the idea? Or his head might explode.