Letters to the Editor
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@NewLeft
"scientific credentials" are highly overrated as they are just as stupid and prone to folly, bs and self deception as anyone else.
Tell me how a "universe" with an apparent radius of 14.5 billion light years, which supposedly "big banged" to expand and be created, could be only 14.5 billion years old, yet that is what MORONS with "scientific credentials" say with great authority and certainty?
How about the guy with the Nobel Prize who thinks that Africans are genetically not as smart as white folks who has just found out that he has African genetic material in his genome?
How about every "expert" in the war on drugs or the psychiatric profession?
The big problem is that those who rule do so by deception and when that doesn't work violence and not trusting the authorities concerning anything is now a prudent thing.
I think that global warming is real, but I also believed that Saddam Hussein might have had some WMD to use against our invading troops and guess what - the credentialed authorites lied to us.
The also lie about all the high school, workplace, church and mall shootings because they know exactly what is causing these incidents but they would rather make money selling those drugs than telling the truth.
No one can be certain about the future, but we can all be certain that they will lie to us.
Then they will put the blame on us.
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Are You Arguing That America Is Simply To Incompetent To Be Both Clean And Productive?
"We want to be better than China. Not as backward as."
We also don't want China to overpower the US as a major economic power in the world, which would give them greater influence all over the world.
So if we raise the government standards for industrial emissions -- that would automatically make that company totally incapable of competing with China?
There are some things we will never we able to beat other countries at.
We don't use slave labor. China does.
We don't use child labor. Rural China does (as do many other countries).
We have (currently, at least) higher environmental standards than China does.
Yet you seem to be arguing that in order to "compete" with China on price we must adopt their lower standards?
True, we could make slightly cheaper products if we reduced our environmental laws to China's level. We could make those products even cheaper if we lowered our wage laws and worker safety laws.
All of Europe could also do that too.
And yet they don't.
And it seems the Euro is kicking our ass.
There is much more to our economy (and the gloabl economy) than the price of a lead-filled toxic Chinese toy.
We're not going to "beat" China by dumbing ourselves down to their rock bottom standards.
It is possible to have lower pollution, higher worker standards and better products without going bankrupt -- regardless of what the wild eyes Conservative Prophets tell us.
"My God! You can't force us to pay overtime! That would bankrupt the country!"
"Oh no! You can't eliminate child labor! That will surely bankrupt the country!"
"Oh no! You can't force a company reduce it's levels of toxic emissions! That will bankrupt the country!"
We've heard all the Conservative hysteria and fear mongering before. And they've been wrong every single time. This time is no different. It is possible to have a clean America without the world ending.
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Humans don't respond until catrastrophes are already on them
In many ways, slow-moving catastrophes with long unfolding times are the worst for the human species - because the human brain is not materially equipped to deal with them.
This was first pointed out some years ago by Robert Ornstein in his book, 'New World - New Mind' - observing that evolution designed the brain to react to instant or readily perceived real threats - say like a saber tooth tiger sitting on the outcrop over there.
Slow, unfolding threats aren't registered, or at least not as urgently as the forest fire or saber tooth or whatever. As Ornstein observed, the tendency of the brain is to procrastinate when dealing with them.
This is tragic because all the data disclose that procrastination is a recipe for our extinction. As Carl Sagan pointed out in a CNN interview with Ted Turner in 1989 (still have it on videotape) when temperature increases veer toward the 6 C level, then we are talking about catastrophic climatic changes and he specifically named the "runaway Greenhouse effect".
As people familiar with his Ph.D. thesis may know, this is what he used to explained the transformation of Venus to a planet hot enough to melt lead - despite the fact Venus' orbit is not that much closer to the Sun compared to Earth (0.7 AU vs. 1.0 AU)
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re: Again, Business ONLY Responds To Government. Consumers (Especially In the Earely 1900's!) Had No Influence
Anonymous,
"Back when there were NO labor laws of any kind (and monopolies were perfectly legal) consumers had no influence.
Why? The main reason was there was no where else to go if you didn't like a company. Don't like the absuive labor practices of Company A? Too bad. Company B, C, D all the way through Z all engaged in indentical labor practices. So how was a laborer or a consumer going to boycott a company and go somewhere else if they all engaged in union busting?"
And granted that is correct...but to say NOW that the consumer has no influence is illogical.
"Also, the idea that there was a "middle class" in the early 1900's is ridiculous (a quick look at Wikipedia will straighten you out on that point). There was no disposable income wherein large groups of consumers could "pick" where they were going to go with all their extra cash. PLUS -- there were no laws that required companies to inform consumers of what they did. There was no way to know anything about a company unless they told you -- and prior to government laws being inacted these companies could LIE to consumers without any consequence."
Ok...so you are now making my argument that consumers NOW have the ability to influence where they spend their dollars due to the global economy.
"So this theory that between 1890-1930 workers and consumers were putting "pressure" on Corporate America is just bullshit.
It was government and government alone."
So who put pressure on government to do this? The consumer. However, I digress...NOW the consumer has sufficient pressure ability to change what a business does.