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Does it get any better?

C

CustomSarge

Guest
As an unabashedly staunch fiscal conservative (albeit social liberal), I couldn't have dreamed an outcome as occured. Four more at the top, 4(?) more in the Senate, 6(?) more in the House, and for Thick Sweet Frosting, Mr (obstructionist) Dashelle goes HOME. I'll take flames for this, but (as Billy Pilgrim said) So It Goes.... (for 4+ years).... <<<)))
 
AMEN!

For four years the Dems have acted as if they had the mandate. Now that Bush really does they warn him to compromise. Yeah, right!
 
Sarge ...

I hate to be the one to break it to ya, but you can end up on the doghouse for instigating a thread like this! :dunno

Rick (I've been in it so often in my life it feels like home) in AL
 
OH NO!!

Chill... everything will be fine. Really. Go for a nice ride... The sky isn't falling, the boogie man is not going to get you.
 

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I hope he addresses issues that arent popular to do in Washington, like getting rid of the IRS, privitizing SSI, and a few others that should be addressed. I don't know about you, but the industry that gets kids on SSI because the parents want the money pisses me off. I want to have the money there when I am an old fart, I dont want it going to someone who is using that system instead of welfare since it's reform.

I am sure that the millions of visitors to that 5 million acre swamp known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will be disappointed to see the wells there. Doesnt it have even more visitors than Yosemite?
 
I don't agree with 100% of what this guy said, but it is a good start...

Second Term, Second Chance

Saturday, November 06, 2004

By Radley Balko
President Bush is now the first president since his father in 1988 to win the majority of the popular vote. Both houses of Congress are now under Republican control. With this decisive victory, Bush no longer has to fight the ÔÇ£selected, not electedÔÇØ rhetoric of 2000, nor does he have to worry about a divided Senate or his own re-election.
So what should a second Bush term look like? The president's own campaign promises would be a good place to start. During the campaign, President Bush said heÔÇÖd like to move America more toward an ÔÇ£ownership societyÔÇØÔÇöa society that values individualism, private enterprise, and personal responsibility over state paternalism. He said he trusts the American people more than he trusts Washington when it comes to deciding how best to spend their money.

Now is the time to prove his commitment to these ideals, because these were not the themes or results of his first termÔÇö which was disastrous in terms of promoting ÔÇ£ownership societyÔÇØ ideals. Bush and the Republican Congress doled out political favors, grew government like no administration in 40 years, and expanded the role of the regulatory state. ItÔÇÖs time to roll back the influence of government in our lives.

However, should the president make good on his 2004 campaign promises, he could establish for himself a Reaganesque legacy as a president who values freedom, responsibility and civil society over politics, power, and party control.

HereÔÇÖs what President Bush should do in a second term:

1. Reform Social Security.
President Bush promised to push Congress to give Americans ownership over their Social Security taxes in his first term, but backed off when the issue became politically perilous. Reforming Social Security is both a practical issue and a moral one.

2. Reform the tax code.
The federal tax code is over 17,000 pages long, and nearly impossible to understand or comply with. The Tax Foundation estimates that by 2007, Americans will spend $350 billion hiring accountants and actuaries and purchasing software, just to comply with federal tax laws.
President Bush should push for an alternative tax scheme ÔÇô preferably a sales tax. At the very least, he and the Congress should simplify the tax code, end the corporate income tax, and end paycheck withholding. When Americans are forced to write one big check to the IRS each April, itÔÇÖll be much easier to rein in the growth of government.

3. Make government more transparent.

The Clinton administration was one of the most secretive in history; the Bush administration has been more secretive still. Huge swaths of government documents previously open to the public now routinely are classified. Government can only be truly accountable to the people when the people know what the government is doing.

Bush should invite an outside panel of experts to evaluate the way his administration classifies documents, with an eye toward making all but the most sensitive of national security information available to the public.


4. Free political speech.
Bush said in his first campaign that he believed efforts to restrict political speech and political donations during federal campaigns violated the First Amendment. He then signed those same restrictions into law. He has now hinted that he may support a ban on advertisements by 527 organizations, too.
Bush should return to his original instincts. In fact, he should move to deregulate the campaign process. Our government is increasingly prohibiting its citizens from criticizing government officials in the days leading up to Election Day ÔÇô the day when we pass judgment on them.
Bush should move to repeal campaign finance laws, and allow American citizens to speak freely about our political process, and to use as big a megaphone as they can afford.

5. Leave sick people alone.
ItÔÇÖs unlikely, but this could be BushÔÇÖs ÔÇ£Nixon goes to ChinaÔÇØ issue. ItÔÇÖs difficult to understand how a ÔÇ£compassionate conservativeÔÇØ could get so caught up in drug war hysteria that heÔÇÖd deny suffering people the right to seek relief wherever they might find it.
IÔÇÖm referring specifically to the Justice DepartmentÔÇÖs war on medicinal marijuana and on prescription painkillers.

BushÔÇÖs drug war credentials could enable him to sell his fellow conservatives on the idea that itÔÇÖs immoral to deny suffering people access to the drugs that might alleviate their symptoms ÔÇö out of allegiance to the drug war.

6. Sunset every law.
We have too many laws. Every one of them in some way puts restrictions on our freedom. Forcing Congress to re-vote on each law would both ensure that the laws on the books are up-to-date and appropriate as well as give Congress less time to pass new ones.

HereÔÇÖs hoping that weÔÇÖll look back and find that President Bush spent his second term using his reelection, control over Congress and the skills and talents of his subordinates in ways that limited the role of government in our lives instead of expanding it, as happened in his first term.


Radley Balko maintains a Weblog at: www.TheAgitator.com.
 
I think we should have to write our tax checks on Nov 1. I bet that would change the campaigns quite a bit, don't you?
 
The one aspect of this thread that rings true is that W was a social liberal (during his partying days) As far as being the best thing since sliced bread to happen to the country I guess that depends on if you like clean air, clean water and unspoiled places. If you have invested for decades into social security, if you are a not a captain of industry or if you resent unreasonable search and seizure then the prospect of another 4 years of Bush may not look so rosey. A victory of 51% to 48% does not really translate to a mandate (unless you are one of the 19% of Americans who think they are in the top 1% of those who get the lion's share of tax cuts).
We can agree on the best pulse rate for a terrorist (0) and on the fact that BMW makes the best bikes. The rest is open to debate
 
As for why

I can only blame it on giddy excitement. But with control comes responsibility. 3% isn't a whale of a mandate, but better than previous. I just hope he does what he promised on SSI, IRS & others, but stay out of ANWR. This term holds the potential to move forward instead of wrangle. If this gets me in the doghouse, I can take it. <<<)))
 
Color me Cynical

Color me cynical but I think that in 18 months when the new presidential campaign fires up, the same problems will be being discussed. Both parties and their candidates are far more concerned with getting elected for election's sake than they are interested in making the tough decisions that are needed to actually solve the problems faced by the country.
 
I would sincerly ask anyone who apposses drilling in ANWR to not fall under the spell of the hyper-militant econut crowd. Remember the cries of "the world will come to an end and all the animals will die" when they built the pipeline? None of it came to pass. There have been spills, there have been accidents, but the animals are a bit more resilent than we like to admit. Why is it that the people of Alaska are in favor of the drilling? Do you know that the area of proposed drilling is only a minute fraction of the area of ANWR? Did you know that ANWR is bigger than Mass, NewJersey, Hawaii, Conn and Delaware..COMBINED?!? The area of drilling is minute. As a percentage I've heard it described as comparable to a postage stamp on a basketball court... Hardly the clearcut, death and destruction that the enviro-nuts would like you to believe.

RW
 
gambrinus said:
Why is it that the people of Alaska are in favor of the drilling?
Maybe because nearly the entire population of Alaska is nowhere near the place? Maybe because the people of Alaska get paid (off) for having oil drilling in their state? Just like the Indian tribes get paid for having casinos on their land.

Do you know that the area of proposed drilling is only a minute fraction of the area of ANWR?
But it happens to be in the flat plains where the migratory herds travel.

Did you know that ANWR is bigger than Mass, NewJersey, Hawaii, Conn and Delaware..COMBINED?!?
Hmmm, sounds smaller than San Bernardino county. I think you forgot Rhode Island while you were at it.

If we're going to talk numbers, do you realize that the likely amount of oil available in ANWR represents less than 1% of the oil we import? And that even if we started drilling last year, it wouldn't reach that kind of output for another decade? It will have essentially zero effect on oil prices and availability.

If the Feds would instead ratchet up the CAFE standards just a bit, we could save far more oil than ANWR could ever produce, and thereby really become far less dependent on our "friends", the Saudis.

If you're more inclined to market solutions, creating a carbon trading market would do the same thing. That would actually be better, because it would also encompass coal burning.

Yes, once again, the devil is in the details, but nobody cares much about details. Pesky little things.
 
The BIG answer is a combination of savings AND further exploration. The fact remains that ANWR is nothing short of HUGE and the drilling area is very very limited and inhabited only part of the year by caribou.


RW
 
gambrinus said:
The BIG answer is a combination of savings AND further exploration. The fact remains that ANWR is nothing short of HUGE and the drilling area is very very limited and inhabited only part of the year by caribou.


RW
Beg to differ. The big picture is that ANWR is tiny relative to our use and even tinier relative to any of the big producers. It will be very expensive to access and slow to develop. And the area that the oil companies want to intensely develop is exactly where the animals go in the summer.

We could instead immediately begin reducing oil use by moving the CAFE numbers up by just 2 or 3 mpg, or not touching them but including light trucks into the automobile category.

Relying on increasing oil usage in the future is a fool's bet anyway. China is suddenly importing huge quantities of it and will be doing so at an increasing rate, which will serve to drive up the competition for oil and therefore, the cost. The sooner we get the oil monkey off our backs, the better our economy will look, and the more free we will be in the world.

For an example of how to do this, we could much more quickly build wind farms to replace our reliance on oil in areas other than automotive use, again reducing our reliance on imports. (If/when we move to hydrogen as an automotive fuel, this will be even better, because more intermittent winds can be used to create the fuel and store the energy for distribution.)

The US has a tremendous natural resource in wind (and I'm not just talking about what eminates from Washington DC). It's free to access, and at the current level of development, it's comparable to coal in cost and cheaper than using oil or natural gas.

And in case you think I'm full of wind, you can see that I've put my money where my mouth is by installing solar panels. (The wind is much too variable where I am.) I haven't paid the utility a dime for power in 3 years, and have essentially a fixed price contract for electricity at just over $0.11/kwh for the next 11 years. After that -- and I think it not unreasonable that the system should run a lot longer as the panels have a 25 year warranty -- my electricity is free.
 
Re: Solar Cost

GS Tom said:
Darryl, how much does a typical home power system cost to install?
The bottom line is that it's expensive. As I said, I look at my system as a fixed price purchase of 14 years of electricity -- which I paid for all at once.

Typical panels are about 10 sq. ft. and produce 150W peak (expect to actually see 20% less in the real world). They cost several hundred dollars each. You also need an inverter, to convert the DC power the panel generates into AC. You will lose an additional 6-8% of your generated power here, though inverter technology is improving. Typical units are capable of handling 2500W of power. An inverter costs a couple thousand dollars. Then you have to spend on the racks to hold the panels, and costs associated with this construction and the electrician's time to install the system.

The other side is that some states offer some kind of subsidy for installing such a system. California will give you a huge rebate ($4/installed watt capacity the last time I looked) and also provides for a tax credit. Together these cut half the actual price from the cost of my system (this subsidy is included in my estimation of my cost for electricity.)

Solar power is great because it's essentially nonpolluting and emits no greenhouse gases. It's quiet and clean.

But it's not very efficient and therefore is expensive to install and takes up a lot of space. It's definitely not for everyone.

California and many other states allow for "net metering", which means you can install panels that provide energy during the day, when you probably don't need it, which "spins your meter backwards". (In other words, the utility buys your excess energy at retail prices.) Then, in the morning and in the evening, when the panels don't generate and you're at home using electricity, the meter moves forward again. Essentially, this treats the grid as a giant, perfect battery.

Most net metering laws don't allow you to actually make any money from the utility, so you can only spin your meter back to zero. There are other details that can help or hurt your individual results.

To find out how big a system you need, you need to collect a year's worth of your power bills and see how much electricity you're using. Then you can start to think about a system that meets these needs.

By far, the cheapest way to save money on power is to change your incandescent bulbs out for compact flourescents. This will probably save you 20% in electricity costs.
 
The discussion was ANWR and the propossed energy exploration on American soil. NOT your commendable instalatin of solar panels etc. Does your BMW run on electricity? Didn't think so. Until it does, we'll still need to focus on continued exploration AND conservation

"Beg to differ. The big picture is that ANWR is tiny relative to our use and even tinier relative to any of the big producers."

- You must be from Texas if you can call 19 MILLION acres small with a straight face.

"It will be very expensive to access and slow to develop."

- As compared to WHAT exactly? More ocean drilling? More Arab oil? Don't just say higher CAFE standards.. Conservation will only go so far in a developing world with an exploding population.

"And the area that the oil companies want to intensely develop is exactly where the animals go in the summer."

-Caribou!! Tasty, deliciously tender caribou, which by the way are a nomadic herd animal that wanders over THOUSANDS of miles.... This is NOT the sole breeding ground of some nearly extinct critter. There are MILLIONS of caribou...tasty, deliciously tender caribou, that wander across most of northern Alaska.

" China is suddenly importing huge quantities of it and will be doing so at an increasing rate, which will serve to drive up the competition for oil and therefore, the cost. The sooner we get the oil monkey off our backs, the better our economy will look, and the more free we will be in the world."

- You make my argument for further exploration on OUR OWN SOIL.

"For an example of how to do this, we could much more quickly build wind farms to replace our reliance on oil in areas other than automotive use, again reducing our reliance on imports."

- Wind as an ELECTRICITY generation source is fine, as a secondary source. It's increased use would do little to nothing to affect our use of oil. It would however have a minimal effect on the use of coal, which is domestically mined and remains the #1 source of commercially generated electricity.


" (If/when we move to hydrogen as an automotive fuel, this will be even better, because more intermittent winds can be used to create the fuel and store the energy for distribution.)"

- Why do people forget that Hydrogen, while plentiful in the universe, is NOT something that you just pull out of the air and pop into your car and zoom off into the sunset? HYdrogen has to be PRODUCED. I'm NOT knocking hydrogen, but some people want to forget that it takes massive amounts of energy to produce that hydrogen that you can put in your car. Enter our friend, Mr. Coal burning to produce electricity that will power that hydrogen plant.

" The US has a tremendous natural resource in wind (and I'm not just talking about what eminates from Washington DC). It's free to access, and at the current level of development, it's comparable to coal in cost and cheaper than using oil or natural gas. "

-The reality is that it take HUGE wind farms, banks of hundreds of huge windmills to produce this energy. Where will these be placed? Some windy mountain top? oooops that's a scenic mountain and the Sierra Club is a bit touchy about things like windmills on pretty mountains. I'm sure that there are places where they could be placed,but the amount of energy produced will never be more than a blip in the big picture.

Conservation combined with nuke generated electricity producing hydrogen is the future that I see...

Cheers

RW
 
gambrinus said:
The discussion was ANWR and the propossed energy exploration on American soil. NOT your commendable instalatin of solar panels etc. Does your BMW run on electricity? Didn't think so. Until it does, we'll still need to focus on continued exploration AND conservation
Ooo, touchy, touchy. One third of the oil we import goes to things besides transportation. If we can reduce our oil usage for transportation and change to another form of energy for non-transportation, then you can drive your SUV around that much longer.

"Beg to differ. The big picture is that ANWR is tiny relative to our use and even tinier relative to any of the big producers."

- You must be from Texas if you can call 19 MILLION acres small with a straight face.
Actually, I'm from California. I CAN say that 19M acres is not that big, and here's why I say it: it's in a remote part of Alaska, a state that could be split in half and produce two states bigger than Texas.

"It will be very expensive to access and slow to develop."

- As compared to WHAT exactly? More ocean drilling? More Arab oil? Don't just say higher CAFE standards.. Conservation will only go so far in a developing world with an exploding population.
Conservation has ALREADY gone quite far; even under the current CAFE standards, cars are more than twice as efficient as they were when CAFE started in the 70s. Hybrids seem to offer a way to make them twice as efficient again.

Why is it that it's worth spending a huge amount of money and trashing any possible bit of the environment to explore for the last drop of black gold, when there are a large variety of alternatives that are cheaper and cleaner, and really do free us from the tyranny of foreign governments?

"And the area that the oil companies want to intensely develop is exactly where the animals go in the summer."

-Caribou!! Tasty, deliciously tender caribou, which by the way are a nomadic herd animal that wanders over THOUSANDS of miles.... This is NOT the sole breeding ground of some nearly extinct critter. There are MILLIONS of caribou...tasty, deliciously tender caribou, that wander across most of northern Alaska.
Yes, nice tasty caribou, thousands of miles from any population center. Why is it that there are deer tags going unused here in the lower 48? I personally enjoy vennison, but nobody's seriously harvesting it here. Are you really serious about converting the country to caribou meat?

Again, this is just cover for developing any oil stock, regardless of price or feasibility. It's pissing in the wind.

To get back to the actual environmental issue, it's not just the caribou. There are polar and grizzly bears, musk ox, Dall sheep, wolf, arctic fox, and more than 100 species of migratory birds using this land. Many species of marine mammals live adjacent to the coast. The polar bears find dens in coastal plains, and the caribou stop there to calve. The same with many of the birds. They aren't just passing through to another place.

Meanwhile, the Prudhoe Bay operation next door, reports more than one oil spill per day there. Is it really necessary to do this for what totals perhaps a 200 day supply of oil for the US, over its entire expected operating lifetime?

" China is suddenly importing huge quantities of it and will be doing so at an increasing rate, which will serve to drive up the competition for oil and therefore, the cost. The sooner we get the oil monkey off our backs, the better our economy will look, and the more free we will be in the world."

- You make my argument for further exploration on OUR OWN SOIL.
I do NOT make your point for you. It is simply the case that we will never again have enough oil for our own needs. No oil company executive would ever argue such a thing. We have not had enough for our own needs for nearly half a century. Our economy was ruined for a decade when the countries that had the oil decided not to deal with us. It is a matter of national security to stop using so damn much oil here, because we put ourselves at the mercy of the world oil markets.

"For an example of how to do this, we could much more quickly build wind farms to replace our reliance on oil in areas other than automotive use, again reducing our reliance on imports."

- Wind as an ELECTRICITY generation source is fine, as a secondary source. It's increased use would do little to nothing to affect our use of oil. It would however have a minimal effect on the use of coal, which is domestically mined and remains the #1 source of commercially generated electricity.
Oil production is a limited commodity. If we use it for one thing, then it's not available for another. If we save 10% of our imports by not generating electricity with it or heating houses, which is what 1/3 of our imports go for, then it is available for use as gasoline. Since wind is comparable in cost to coal, but much cheaper than oil, it will likely displace oil, not coal.

" (If/when we move to hydrogen as an automotive fuel, this will be even better, because more intermittent winds can be used to create the fuel and store the energy for distribution.)"

- Why do people forget that Hydrogen, while plentiful in the universe, is NOT something that you just pull out of the air and pop into your car and zoom off into the sunset? HYdrogen has to be PRODUCED. I'm NOT knocking hydrogen, but some people want to forget that it takes massive amounts of energy to produce that hydrogen that you can put in your car. Enter our friend, Mr. Coal burning to produce electricity that will power that hydrogen plant.
Did you miss the "If/when" part in my statement above? The great thing about hydrogen is that it can be produced nearly anywhere, like in the southwest where there are tremendous solar heat resources. It's a means of storing energy, perhaps intermittent sources of energy, and smoothing out the provision of that energy.

Really, the bigger problem with hydrogen is distribution. I hope there will be a technological answer to this, but it isn't clear yet what that might be.

" The US has a tremendous natural resource in wind (and I'm not just talking about what eminates from Washington DC). It's free to access, and at the current level of development, it's comparable to coal in cost and cheaper than using oil or natural gas. "

-The reality is that it take HUGE wind farms, banks of hundreds of huge windmills to produce this energy. Where will these be placed? Some windy mountain top? oooops that's a scenic mountain and the Sierra Club is a bit touchy about things like windmills on pretty mountains. I'm sure that there are places where they could be placed,but the amount of energy produced will never be more than a blip in the big picture.
Actually, the prairies have huge potential. Their winds are more even and constant, which is what windpower needs. There are a number of farmers who are allowing windmills to be erected over their fields, to gain another source of income.

I would be deceiving you if I didn't include the ocean shores as another excellent location for windmills. And it's quite true that few people want to see them along the shore, as evidenced by the ongoing fight over a windmill farm off the coast of Nantucket.

But with a single party controlling the federal government, it wouldn't be hard to simplify the path necessary for such things, if the government were really interested in developing new, stable, enduring energy sources. I wonder why it is that the bloated, pork-filled energy bill that couldn't get passed last year has almost nothing in it for developing windpower, and everything about developing oil, "clean coal", and nuclear (excuse me, nucewler) energy?

I'll tell you why I think that's so: there's a low barrier to entry to windpower, and the big energy companies will never own the source. They don't like it because they won't be able to control it. That's bad for profits. You may well see a different reason, but I believe that this follows Occam's Razor (the simplest answer is the best) better than any other.

Conservation combined with nuke generated electricity producing hydrogen is the future that I see...
If you see conservation as a part of the solution, why should it be eventual, when we can easily be doing a few small things now? Do you really think that making the car manufacturers average 2 or 3 mpg more is going to kill their business?

I won't bother going into why nuclear energy is not going to get restarted, other than to say that the population is frightened to death of it.
 
Darryl, I'm with you.

I didn't have the time to look up the details you found, Darryl, but I agree with what you've stated, and have read those same statistics regarding the potential value of drilling in the ANWR. I have also read that the oil would only last about 10 years.
Increasing CAFE standards, and promoting alternative fuels seems like a much more sensible way to spend our energy (oooh, bad pun!). Anyway, thanks for taking the time to state the other side of the argument.
 
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