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dave's Blog
February 2008
Thursday February 28, 2008
Posted by: racinenativemn at 6:15PM CST on February 28, 2008
"Hillary Clinton's campaign is set to announce later today that she's on track to raise roughly $35 million in the month of February, a huge month by any standard measure of political fundraising and her best of the campaign." Now, "Obama raised $36 million in January, and appears to be on track to surpass that figure this month." So $35 million for Hillary; over $36 million for Obama. We're looking here at $72 million! Where in the hell is this money coming from? We've got a story here that economic growth came to a screeching halt in the first quarter. Was it the first quarter, or adjusted fourth? What did I do with the damn story? It's 0.6%, whatever it is. The economy has come to a screeching halt. It's time to slit our wrists! We're headed to a recession. The point is, whether it's true or not, the American people think we're headed to a recession. The American people are feeling very pessimistic about the overall economy, even though they're robustly optimistic about themselves. I know it's a disconnect. The attitude's the attitude. Now, where in the hell is this money coming from? We got gasoline heading to four bucks a gallon; it's already there in some places. We have people who can't pay their mortgages and are being foreclosed on. We got people now can't afford food because of biofuels and the cost of wheat and the cost of corn. How in the world are people giving $70 million in one month to two Democrats? Where is this money coming from and how come these Democrats out there raising all this money aren't saying, "Don't give the money to me! Keep it for yourself because we're in a recession and you're going to need it to buy gasoline and, food, and you're going to need it to pay your mortgage." Why aren't they saying that? They're begging people for their money, in the midst of all this malaise, supposedly. But I still want to know where it's coming from, because they say it's being raised on the Internet. This is awfully curious to me. You mean to tell me that in the midst of what people think is a failing economy, that they're still running out to give money to Hillary and Barack? Well, they may be. You might have the janitors or the dishwashers in Chinatown. They might be flourishing. That's my point. Where is this coming from? Health care is not a right, it is a privilege. It's a choice. However, the accumulation of wealth, the accumulation of wealth is a right. That is, you have a right to freely earn an income and dispose of it as you wish: purchase food, purchase shelter, if you want to purchase health care, whatever else. And that right comes from God as enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. You know how it goes. You know the drill, the pursuit of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. The right to
Posted by: racinenativemn at 5:50PM CST on February 28, 2008
What we also have in this country are some people who don't want to use their own assets to pay for their own health care. They want someone else to do it. And that brings in a very happy and compliant Democrat Party. It is a matter of individual priorities. Moral obligations, should one choose to assume moral obligations, are actually higher on the list of things than rights. That's why we set up systems to take care of the indigent, because we are a moral people. It is why we have Medicare; it is why we have Medicaid; it is why we have S-CHIP. At least it's why we started them. It's why good people support them. We can get into an argument here of whether these programs are more of the same liberal drivel to create as many dependents as possible, but I think we are a compassionate country, and we are a country that understands our moral obligations to people who can't provide for themselves because of certain things, and those people nobody will argue with, being taken care of and helped. That is precisely why we set up systems to take care of the indigent. It is why we take care of our neighbors. It is why we have our churches engage in the various community actions that they do and, not to mention, there's all kinds of other community organizations that exist for the express purpose of bringing things to poor, indigent people that they don't have and can't have on their own. This is a country of high moral obligation, and we meet those moral obligations at all times. That is why, because we have such a moral obligation, and because we are such a compassionate people, and because we are such a generous people, this is why we try to lower costs and increase competition so that more people can be taken care of well, so that people are not left to fall through the cracks. Now, this doesn't mean that any of this is a right. It is our moral obligation as a society that has us take care of people who otherwise could not afford this. But what has happened is that people who very well could afford it, just as they could afford a plasma TV or a car or what have you, can afford health care and choose not to, they choose in fact for others, their neighbors, fellow citizens, to pay for it, precisely because they have been led to believe that it is their right to have health care. And I would submit to you that the whole notion of having your neighbor pay for what your responsibilities are can be very addictive, once it starts. In a real sense, rights are universal and cannot be created once we have enough wealth to have some people want something else. Rights are the lowest claim and therefore command universal respect. We have to bring back the meaning of words. Privileges and moral obligations are higher than basic human rights, not dragged around by them. Privileges and more obligations are higher than basic human rights. They're not dragged around by them. Human rights do not dictate moral obligations; it's just the exact opposite. Moral obligations manifest themselves in the form of human rights, and so when our moral obligations and our morality is being torn down and the whole concept of doing things for the right reason becomes doing things for the wrong reason, and when people opt out of their own personal responsibility to acquire that which they want with their own assets and shove that on all the rest of us, then we're in trouble, and that's where we are in health care, precisely because we have allowed enough people to believe that health care is their right, not their responsibility. If this is something I shouldn't discuss because it's only going to inflame people and make them hate Republicans and think that we're cold-hearted and cruel, so be it. I'll be glad to talk to any of them and explain how the real compassion, the real big-heartedness exists on our side using the very same argument about moral obligations and the evidence of how we do in this country, without complaint, take care of those who cannot help themselves, and we are eager to do it, because we are a compassionate people. But we also know that no one, no society can sustain itself if everybody in the society is depending on everybody else to pay what they want, or buy what they want. So we're not supposed to use Obama's middle name; we're not supposed to call him a liberal; we are not supposed to talk about health care in the campaign, according to Republican consultants, it's too complicated, and we're not supposed to say that health care is not a right. Pretty soon, as I say, we're not going to be able to say anything, and we won't have to, and the Democrats won't have to, either, because we will have effectively shut ourselves up. Tuesday February 26, 2008
Posted by: racinenativemn at 7:30PM CST on February 26, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — The widespread use of ethanol from corn could result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it would replace because of expected land-use changes, researchers concluded Thursday. The study challenges the rush to biofuels as a response to global warming. The researchers said that past studies showing the benefits of ethanol in combating climate change have not taken into account almost certain changes in land use worldwide if ethanol from corn — and in the future from other feedstocks such as switchgrass — become a prized commodity. "Using good cropland to expand biofuels will probably exacerbate global warming," concludes the study published in Science magazine. The researchers said that farmers under economic pressure to produce biofuels will increasingly "plow up more forest or grasslands," releasing much of the carbon formerly stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fires. Globally, more grasslands and forests will be converted to growing the crops to replace the loss of grains when U.S. farmers convert land to biofuels, the study said. The Renewable Fuels Association, which represents ethanol producers, called the researchers' view of land-use changes "simplistic" and said the study "fails to put the issue in context." "Assigning the blame for rainforest deforestation and grassland conversion to agriculture solely on the renewable fuels industry ignores key factors that play a greater role," said Bob Dinneen, the association's president. There has been a rush to developing biofuels, especially ethanol from corn and cellulosic feedstock such as switchgrass and wood chips, as a substitute for gasoline. President Bush signed energy legislation in December that mandates a six-fold increase in ethanol use as a fuel to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, calling the requirement key to weaning the nation from imported oil. The new "green" fuel, whether made from corn or other feedstocks, has been widely promoted — both in Congress and by the White House — as a key to combating global warming. Burning it produces less carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, than the fossil fuels it will replace. During the recent congressional debate over energy legislation, lawmakers frequently cited estimates that corn-based ethanol produces 20 percent less greenhouse gases in production, transportation and use than gasoline, and that cellulosic ethanol has an even greater benefit of 70 percent less emissions. The study released Thursday by researchers affiliated with Princeton University and a number of other institutions maintains that these analyses "were one-sided" and counted the carbon benefits of using land for biofuels but not the carbon costs of diverting land from its existing uses. "The other studies missed a key factor that everyone agrees should have been included, the land use changes that actually are going to increase greenhouse gas emissions," said Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and lead author of the study. The study said that after taking into account expected worldwide land-use changes, corn-based ethanol, instead of reducing greenhouse gases by 20 percent, will increases it by 93 percent compared to using gasoline over a 30-year period. Biofuels from switchgrass, if they replace croplands and other carbon-absorbing lands, would result in 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers concluded. Not all ethanol would be affected by the land-use changes, the study said. "We should be focusing on our use of biofuels from waste products" such as garbage, which would not result in changes in agricultural land use, Searchinger said in an interview. "And you have to be careful how much you require. Use the right biofuels, but don't require too much too fast. Right now we're making almost exclusively the wrong biofuels." The study included co-authors affiliated with Iowa State University, the Woods Hole Research Center and the Agricultural Conservation Economics. It was supported in part indirectly by a grants from NASA's Terrestrial Ecology Program, and by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Searchinger, in addition to his affiliation with Princeton, is a fellow at the Washington-based German Marshall Fund of the United States. The study prompted a letter Thursday to President Bush and Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress from nearly a dozen scientists who urged them to pursue a policy "that ensures biofuels are not produced on productive forests, grassland or cropland." "Some opportunities remain to produce environmentally beneficial biofuels" while "unsound biofuel policies could sacrifice tens of hundreds of million of acres" of grasslands and forests while increasing global warming, said the scientists, including four members of the National Academy of Sciences. |
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