Mike wrote: Governments are made up of people. Your post left you open to the question, what do you think is the difference between governments and corporations, as far as being invested with moral qualities? Point of reference: Citizens United. –in response to Gospel According to Democrats: Woman, Behold Thy Government Program!
Dear Comrade Mike,
Neither governments nor corporations are moral. Morality is distinctly a human quality. I think when Romney talked about corporations being people, he meant “made up of people,” not actual human beings.
But that distinction doesn’t mean that corporations can’t have standing in law or in politics. It just means that we should recognize in both governments and in corporations their inability to be moral. They will always act in their own selfish best interest, even if that best interest sometimes looks like it has a moral objective.
We see this in “green” marketing. Do corporations care about “green” because of the altruistic benefit it can give to others? Or do they see “green” as a marketing tool?
Behind “green” marketing is a series of balance sheet and cash flow calculations that, once they come out on the negative side of the ledger, will determine whether “green” marketing is a short-term thing or something that’s a long-term trend.
Take for example autos, which in the late 1970s and early 1980s were all about mile per gallon. As the price of oil went down relative to inflation, automakers stopped caring about miles per gallon and started selling amenities instead. Now that oil is more expensive automakers will care again about miles per gallon.
Human beings are different, in the sense that they have the ability to innately know the difference between right and wrong.
CS Lewis believed that it was this ability to understand the moral absolutes that was the most compelling proof of the existence of God.
Liberals believe that governments are moral and corporations are immoral. Conservatives know that both are amoral.
Jerome49 wrote: With the clarity of hindsight one can see that the Obama administration has manufactured an issue where none previously existed. Beginning with the George Stephanopolis questioning of Mitt Romney as to whether he believed that states had the right to forbid birth control. Romney said that birth control was not an issue and that it should be left alone, Stephanopolis continued begging the question until the audience began booing him –in response to Gospel According to Democrats: Woman, Behold Thy Government Program!
Recommended
Dear Jerome,
Exactly right.
The campaign Democrats- mostly Obama- will put on will be a constant challenge to change the subject from the economy to anything that is more polarizing.
The more red meat they can show to conservatives, the better Obama will think things are going.
To the extent that Romney doesn’t fit that “red meat” conservative mold, he probably is the most electable of candidates from that perspective. He’s shown himself to be a pretty disciplined campaigner, content to stay on topic and be boring as long as voters continue to think about the economy.
Conservatives will hate this, but the election is supposed to come down to who can best “manage” the economy. Romney wins that debate as long as he doesn’t make any serious mistakes.
Snarkasterous1 wrote: As a conservative, results-driven individual, I find it necessary to point out the FACT that women, as a whole, have long tended to vote more left than do men. MANY, MANY sources document this. Here's one (picked nearly at random from a simple Google search): http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/voters/documents/GGPresVote.pdf –in response to Gospel According to Democrats: Woman, Behold Thy Government Program!
Dear Snark,
Yes, that’s quite true. But being true doesn’t mean that it has to be forever.
I think that there is a burgeoning women’s conservative movement out there that is teaming with ideas, candidates and issues.
Frankly, the Tea Party in my opinion gets its “go” from women.
That’s one of the reasons why the left is so afraid of strong conservative women like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. That’s also why the left has to come up with these faux issues like birth control.
Truth is it’s easier – and cheaper- for an underage girl to get birth control than to buy cigarettes. Just smoking half a pack per day is more expensive than the “pill.”
TwFox wrote: If anyone should recuse himself, it is justice C.Thomas for conflict of interest with regards the Afordable Care Act. His wife, Virginia, rceived $1.6 million from conservative anti-health care reform groupe between 1997 and 2011.Incredibly, Justice failed to report this incomefor years. She stands to earn millions more if Thomas kills the Affordable Care Act. Any other judge in America would have to recuse themselves or be recused for such a conflict.- in response to Court Tells Obama: Eat Your Own Darn Peas
Dear Comrade Fox,
Ha, ha! The Heritage Foundation described as a “conservative anti-health care reform groupe?” Yeah right.
What about all those Republican Congress-people? Are they a “conservative anti-health care reform groupe?”
The fact that Virginia Thomas got paid by a conservative think-tank doesn’t really mean anything, unless of course you think “conservative” anything is bad.
What about Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Her husband was counsel in DC for Fried Frank until 2009. According to their site: “We have strong practices in corporate transactions as well as in securities regulation and enforcement, antitrust, tax, intellectual property and technology, commercial litigation, government contracts, arbitration and alternative dispute resolution, and white-collar crime and internal investigations.”
Do you think any of those matters came before the court?
Ken2375 wrote: For the sake of our nation. If he is presented with a second term as King, he will probably get a chance to appoint one more Supreme Justice of the ilk of the last two. - in response to Court Tells Obama: Eat Your Own Darn Peas
Dear Ken,
Yes. This is the one thing that we have to prevent. Vote, organize and vote.
DoctorRoy wrote: Aww Geek there is nothing wrong with a little class warfare. You gotta shake 'em up from time to time. Let them know you are there. - in response to Court Tells Obama: Eat Your Own Darn Peas
Dear Comrade Doctor,
Yeah, that class warfare thing has really worked out in Chicago for you hasn’t it? That’s why Jesse Jackson’s Operation Push, the Rainbow Coalition, Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic and anti- American Nation of Islam all make hay in Democrat-controlled Chicago.
You know when I was growing up there, Chicago was considered one of the most segregated of all big cities in the country.
I’m sorry to say that despite all of your class warfare- hint, because of it- it still is.
You and your class warfare friends are cancer on the face of our nation Roy.
SentinelForLiberty wrote: Many rural American residents, including farmers and ranchers, lived without electricity into at least the 1930s. Do you think if well windmills had power generation capabilities to supply the house, they would have done it? Of course! Those who could used wind to water stock and small gardens.- in response to Word to Obama: Solar Still Sucks
Dear Sentinel,
Yes, the problem with wind generation is that it is unreliable. That’s an inconvenience on a rural 1930s farm when the only thing you power are a few lights and a radio. But when deployed at scale, to power even a small city of 5,000, it becomes a much bigger problem.
FlammingMulticulturalist wrote: It seems to be that subsidies to wind, solar and other alternative energies (still dwarfed as late as 2010 by subsidies to big oil) are more like attempts to level the playing field. - in response to Word to Obama: Solar Still Sucks
Dear Comrade Flamming,
Thanks for playing, but again you are wrong.
According to David Kreutzer, the Senior Policy Analyst in Energy Economics and Climate Change at The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis, the government subsidizes about 40 percent of the wholesale cost of wind power at 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour while government subsidies for oil come in at about 60 cents per barrel. If government subsidies for oil were the same as for wind power, it would come out to $50 per barrel.
I’m all for getting rid of oil subsidies, as I have stated many times previously. But the subsidies for oil come out to less than $4 billion according to Heritage. Obama, just in the Department of Energy’s Green Loan program, committed over $34 billion in 2011.
Obama included about $7 billion for clean energy in his 2013 budget.
ModMark wrote: I agree with Mr. Ransom, solar sucks and just built wind turbines. Electric from wind turbines cost $97/Mwh, it is cheaper than advance coal technologies ($109/Mwh). - in response to Word to Obama: Solar Still Sucks
Dear Comrade Mark,
The UK relied on wind to make up for the closure of coal and nuclear power plants and they are going to face a severe shortage of power in the next several years.
“Even more damaging, however, will be the way this massive investment diverts resources away from the replacement of the coal-fired and nuclear power stations which are due for closure in coming years,” writes Christopher Booker in the Telegraph, “threatening to leave a shortfall in our national electricity supply of nearly 40 per cent. If we are to keep our lights on and our economy running, we need – as the CBI warned in a damning report on Friday – urgently to spend some £200 billion on power supply.”
As David Kreutzer in the link to Heritage I included above, proponents of wind power can’t argue on behalf of a 40 percent subsidy and then claim that wind is the cheapest power source know to man.
If it works so great, then let it compete without the subsidy.
Brightontop wrote: Volt sold a record 2,289 units in March, employees will be coming back to work a week early. “We received note of it yesterday,” LaForest added, “It was widely rumored that GM would put a week back onto the schedule, but now it’s confirmed. It’s very good news.” - in response to It Runs in the Family: Volt’s Cousin, Chevy Cruze, Investigated for Fires
Dear Comrade Bright,
That’s funny because just five days ago they added an extra week of furlough to the Volt assembly line for the normal summer: GM adds week to Volt plant's usual summer closure.
Two days later they announce “Hurray! We are coming back a week early.”
Perhaps when GM starts telling the truth about something, we’ll stop thinking that they are lying about everything.
But considering they are billions in the hole with taxpayers, I think the burden of proof is on them, not the rest of us.
JMWinPR wrote: I thought Pagans were motorcycle club? - in response to It Runs in the Family: Volt’s Cousin, Chevy Cruze, Investigated for Fires
Dear JM,
Ha!
Quiet Reason wrote: Give Ransom credit for linking to an article that praises the Volt. One of the people coming to its defense is Bob Lutz, former exec VP at GM and staunch conservative (he thinks AGW is bull). He notes that "the loony right has its jaws sunk into the Volt with all the stupid determination of a terrier who has locked his teeth into the mailman’s butt. And with the same result: painful, but without any useful purpose." - in response to It Runs in the Family: Volt’s Cousin, Chevy Cruze, Investigated for Fires
Dear Comrade Quiet,
Gosh, I thought you left for good. Glad to see you are back.
Describing Bill O’Reilly as part of the “loony right” hardly qualifies Lutz as a “staunch” conservative. He may vote Romney, but that doesn’t mean he’s conservative.
He also fails to address the fundamental point though- you know, besides his obvious bias as the designer of the Volt.
Of course they had an electric vehicle on the drawing board. Duh. No one says they didn’t.
What we object to is the fact that the federal government has been subsidizing a car that makes no economic sense. Without federal money this car would not be on the road.
Great, it won awards for design. Wonderful.
But selling cars at a profit and winning awards are two different things.
The space shuttle was very innovative. But without a federal subsidy I can’t afford to fly the space shuttle to work and back every day.
So does that mean I get a subsidy because the space shuttle is innovative?
And he’s dead wrong about one thing for sure: Our purpose is very useful. If we can stop the federal government from squandering money on projects like the Volt and let the marketplace do their proper job, the country would be better off.
Can you imagine any other company getting away with marketing a product that stores enough energy to kill a man, and not having a plan to deal with that, as GM CEO Dan Akerson recently admitted about their lack of first responder plans?
Substitute the name GM with Bank of America and then tell me how quickly the Justice Department would be looking at the case.
Truth001 wrote: Ransom get over it Green energy is the future. Every other country in the world has embraced it Why not the good old USA. I am tried of being held hostage by fossil fuel cost. - in response to It Runs in the Family: Volt’s Cousin, Chevy Cruze, Investigated for Fires
Dear Comrade Pravda,
Countries once embraced fascism and communism too.
Anne Lindbergh, wife of the famous aviator, called fascism and communism “the wave of the future.” Lincoln Steffens, the journalist, after a tour of the Soviet Union declared of communism “I have seen the future, and it works!”
Thing is, being held hostage to fossil fuels has made the US the most dynamic economy in the world, just as clinging to our Republic made us the arsenal of Democracy when the tide against fascism and communism had to be stemmed.
Give me a call when green energy stops being the energy of the future.
That’s it for this week,
V/r,
JR
"Like" me on Facebook and you'll get sneak peaks of columns and, as an added bonus, I will never raise your taxes. Send me email and I just might mention you on Sunday.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member