Letters to the Editor
New Deal Democrat
Published Letters: 210 Editor's Choice: 43
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Tired of the Gore hagiography
[Read the article: An inconvenient truth about venture capital]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Now you've done it, Andrew. You've actually suggested that Al Gore might not be the Second Coming and that, like most other mortals, he might be motivated by things other than altruism.
Maybe Kleiner-Perkins will genuinely help environmental causes; maybe it won't. One thing it has to do, however, as a business, is to make money. One of the great fallacies of our era is that we can have risk-free and pain-free social change if we leave it all up to "the market". Yes, the market will find magical solutions that will allow us to continue our patterns of consumption and energy usage if only we believe!
Environmental issues tend to make hypocrites of us all - no less Gore, who personally uses more energy than several hundred if not thousand people in the developing world. By all means, let's invest in green-friendly technologies. Curious, though, isn't it, how common-sense ideas like conservation, reducing consumption (yes, that means buying less stuff), and the big bugaboo - population control - languish?
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@Pyrian
[Read the article: An inconvenient truth about venture capital]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The market for carbon offsets is an unregulated wild west. Any claims that anyone makes that they're offsetting their carbon use have to be investigated and thoroughly vetted. Blithely assuming that such claims are true is the mark of someone who is uneducated about the topic. The last I heard, Gore wouldn't even release a detailed energy audit.
So you really believe that Gore will go after consumer culture? This is the root of many of our environmental problems. I don't recall his picking very many fights with large corporations, either as Vice President or a presidential candidate. Where is your evidence?
Finally, when did Gore or any other significant U.S. political leader advocate population control - not just for those other people, but for the U.S.? Seriously, when has that happened?
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Population control is not a dirty word
[Read the article: America's water war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To the posters who believe any discussion of population control is frivolous, mean or stupid, my question is: what's your solution? Do you really believe that human beings can simply keep expanding our population forever? If resources are finite, how can that possibly work?
Granted, this is a long-term solution to what may very well become a short-term or near-term problem: water shortages. But does that mean all discussion of it should be dismissed?
I would submit that anyone who considers himself/herself a concerned citizen when it comes to environmental issues simply cannot take population control off the table, yet that's exactly what often happens. People who are rabid about finding "solutions" to global warming will clam up anytime anyone brings up the obvious: that any increases in efficiency or any savings brought about by conservation will simply disappear in the face of humans' ever-increasing numbers. There will be no net gain.
I'd be among the first to say that it will be no easy task to encourage people to have fewer children, as there are numerous cultural and religious taboos that such concepts violate. Still, wouldn't it be a good thing if the government encouraged people to be thoughtful about their reproduction? How, exactly, is that worse than people dying of starvation and drought?
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Joe Klein's motivations
[Read the article: Joe Klein: Both factually false and stuck in the 1980s]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn, I think you're being generous to Klein and his ilk by essentially attributing their thickheadedness to their being stuck in a past paradigm.
While that may very well be a valid explanation, what I'm wondering is: where do these people get their money? In other words, it's at least fair to speculate about their personal investments in telecommunications firms or other companies that are entwined in the military-industrial complex. That would explain a lot about why these people are so willing to dissemble and prevaricate on the FISA issue. In the absence of any data, I can understand why you wouldn't do that in a post, but I wonder if there's any public information available that would shed light on this.
A related question would be whether Time-Warner, Inc. has an interest in the FISA fight. I don't know the extent of their business, but it's obviously a media firm and might possibly have some exposure if all the facts of warrantless wiretapping come to light.
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El Baradei's conversations with the Iranians
[Read the article: Our serious foreign policy geniuses strike again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Has the administration released any excerpts of its recordings of El Baradei speaking with the Iranians?
I can only assume that the substance of those conversations was so technical and detailed that it would be meaningless to a lay person. However, I'm surprised that the neocons haven't at least found a snippet that they could take out of context to "prove" that El Baradei is in league with Iran.
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Shapiro's pie in the sky liberalism
[Read the article: American politics in bad faith]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, Walter, it would be really great if we lived in a world where people weren't subject to summary judgment just because they were Mormon, or Catholic, or Baptist, or Zoroastrian, for that matter.
But we don't live in that world, and the fact is that the religious right (in the broadest sense of the term, which would include most practicing Mormons) has been on a jihad since the 1970s to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, where only Christians - or, more specifically, certain right-wing varieties thereof - would be allowed to fully participate in public life and enjoy the rights the Constitution promises to all.
Given the danger to our republic from these profoundly irrational people, who are contemptuous of humane values and seek only to promote and propagate themselves, I really couldn't give a rip about whether or not Romney is brought down specifically by his Mormonism or not. This is right-on-right violence, and as far as I'm concerned, those of us who aren't part of the cult should enjoy the spectacle. This is just payback, after all.
There are real problems in the world that could use our attention - poverty, the environment, and civil rights just to name a few. Why should anyone spend a single minute pondering the difficulties - the unspeakable pain - of being a rich, white chicken hawk like Mitt Romney? I'm sure he wouldn't return the favor.