No, no it's not. That is actually quite an important and significant connection that is quite intelligent to mention, ignoring it is moronic. If you do any sort of research on these companies and their executive board, you will see a very clear picture that is all too overlooked. Also you mentioned Hitler and thus you lose, sorry, that's the law of debating.

If you had watched the rest, you might of seen the intelligent argument you were looking for. The parts where she exposes the massive gaping problems with Cap & Trade that show a clear intention of making money, not saving the world. You're probably going to say, "Oh they'll definitely iron out those massive oversights that reduce the whole concept to nothing! Of course they will!" but again, knowing the power and influence of the people behind it, the whole point is for those flaws to exist.

>> ^Edgeman2112:
sigh. I thought this would be an intelligent argument. She starts by trashing the people who came up with the idea in a generalist way. Cmon lady.
"This idea is brought to you by a guy at Enron and a guy at Goldman Sachs who brought us the mortgage crisis!"
This is like saying, "This idea is brought to you by a guy who lives in Germany; a country that had Adolf Hitler as its ruler!"
Kirk Cameron should've been the host of the video. No, I didn't watch the rest.

You don't really understand cap and trade do you? Maybe lose the rhetoric and instead try to convey you point with proven examples and science?

Cap and Trade ia another financial shell game. And, she forgot to mention Devil #4: Al Gore. Who will continue to throw fear into everyone's face and fill his pockets with C&T operations.

I was not speaking of the environment. The planet being screwed is not a conspiracy, It is fact. What some of you are missing is the actual fix that the governments (banks) are suggesting to fix the problem.
Cap and trade.

All this "solution" does is allow government (banks) to control who can pollute and who can't. It allows large corporations to make money off of... oh wait, here is a sifted video explaining it:

Your text to link...

A true solution needs to come up. Not some stupid money making "fund" that will not actually help the planet. The media will have you beleive that the government is evil if they vote against this... but in reality they are only preventing another FED money sceme. We can all do our part to save the planet, but do not allow this to go into law, or we will all be sending money into the FED for absolutley no gain. None.

>> ^enoch:
i think burgneil is talking about cap-n-trade and if you look into it...well..seems it will be a new market to exploit but not really deal with the issue of climate change.
maybe im wrong but im SOOO against cap-n-trade.
if you ripped me off,stole my money and ruined my business,why would i ever put you in charge of anything again?
the people who brought you Enron and energy trading?sub-prime mortgages?yep..now they bring us Cap-n-trade.
no thanks.


thanks for the clarification. Cap and Trade on coal plants have been in place in NY for a year and a half, and the general consensus from peers in the scientific community is that they aren't effective enough. I have no opinion of the political aspect because rest assured who ever is doing the speaking has his own agenda and it's almost always a devious one.

I'm one of 3 sifters who stated clearly man-made climate change is a hoax.
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta!

Many economists have problems with the Carbon Trading idea, especially in contrast with a straight CO2 emissions tax.

Even the guys who came up with the idea don't like it:

"I'm skeptical that cap-and-trade is the most effective way to go about regulating carbon," says Mr. Crocker, 73 years old, a retired economist in Centennial, Wyo. He says he prefers an outright tax on emissions because it would be easier to enforce and provide needed flexibility to deal with the problem.

>> ^blankfist:
Surprising that NetRunner and dystopiansocialismtoday haven't voted this video up yet. I guess they haven't seen it yet.


1) These agents of leftist propaganda bullshit (is that redundant?) have no defense against facts;
Obammy == Bush == Antichrist (Might as well be). You get my point.

2) They are so fucking "ga ga" over Obammy, he could look BE Hitler (there is a likeness) and not cause any concern...maybe...

3) The issues regarding Cap and Trade need to be explained much more than making Al Gwhore lots of money.

4) Can someone explain why nancy piglosy reminds of the universal sign for choke?

He's always got an interesting and consistent take, Ventura. Not sure I follow the end bit, though. Are they saying the global warming 'cap and trade' system is some sort of corporate put-on?

Completely disagree with that sentiment if so, and interestingly I think this reflects the failure of the right to have any reasonable position on global warming.

A big part of why the deficit gets so high is a pretty straightforwardly natural thing during a recession.

When unemployment goes up, and the stock market goes down, the government collects less taxes. When people lose their job, lots of people start receiving unemployment, and other government assistance, making costs go up.

There's also a lot of Obama's legislative agenda aimed at fixing the long-term budget picture, like repealing Bush's tax cuts, reforming health care, and cap and trade which can't reasonably be factored into a 2010 budget projection, since we don't know what the specifics are going to be until they pass.

Before I get into a more serious commentary, I just want to point out that blankfist, supposed proponent of Austrian economics, upvoted this comment:

>> ^deedub81:
More about the Merril Lynch investment bankers I met with today:
In short, they felt that we don't need to worry too much about inflation unless a few more things go wrong. As things stand, we shouldn't worry. Because of all the debt that is being absorbed and written off through the bailouts and the slack that has been created in the economy due to the trend toward smaller leveraging raitos, the amount of money that the government is creating is balanced out.

Which leads me to wonder, blankfist, why are you now upvoting someone who's using Keynesian theory to say inflation won't be a problem? You're supposed to declare that the Fed, and everything the government does leads to inevitable ruin!

>> ^deedub81:
I just spent the last 3 hours (I just walked in the door) with Merril Lynch associates and had the whole economic mess explained to me in great detail. I think I get it pretty well now. I'm all good with the whole AIG bailout. I'm clear that the government's hands were pretty well tied there. I'm all for re-instating some of the restrictions that were loosened in the 90's and in 2004.

This is good news. I'm not sure why you believe it when it comes out of Merrill's mouth, since it's government action that stands to directly benefit them, and not the governments' when it said the exact same thing, but I'll try not to look the gift horse of common ground in the mouth.

(I would quibble slightly about the necessity of bailing out AIG vs. bailing out their counterparties, but it's water under the bridge now)

I'm not so sure about bailing out GM, Cap and Trade, Health Care (horrible timing is just one reason), and no help for the small businesses.

I'm not so sure about GM either, but really the "bailout" is just government providing credit for them to go into Chapter 11, rather than having them be forced into Chapter 7. When you look at it that way, it makes a lot more sense. Fewer people lose their jobs, and lots of small businesses that supply/support the auto industry's infrastructure get to keep their businesses as well.

Health care is probably worthy of it's own full-length discussion thread, but here's the short version of why I think it's desperately necessary, and the timing is perfect for it. We pay more per capita for healthcare in this country than any other. However, our healthcare outcomes rank somewhere down below mid-pack for industrialized nations. In countries with a more intrusive government plan for healthcare, people never go bankrupt for the care they receive, and never have an incentive to avoid getting treatment or preventive care. There are lots of different systems out there, and all of them combine government and private programs in varying degrees (including ours). Most of what's different in other countries is that they have made explicit changes to try to keep a lid on costs, and to remove perverse incentives from the system (such as a profit motive for denying care).

The key pillars of the Democratic proposals are a) an employer mandate to provide insurance (small business excluded), b) laws against denying insurance coverage, c) a public option, where essentially the government sells medicare to people under 65. I bolded the word sells, because it will not be taxpayer subsidized. There would be a separate subsidy for people with low incomes, but they are free to purchase a private plan with the subsidy if they so choose.

This is already longer than I wanted, but lastly the reason why it's important now is because if we don't do anything, the costs will just continue to increase, and more and more people will lose their coverage as their employers drop their plans. Also, we have a huge number of people who've lost their jobs, and are unlikely to be able to afford COBRA payments for very long. There's also the problem with medicare and medicaid -- if costs keep rising like they are, we're headed for a huge set of tax increases in the future, or a huge cut in benefits (and no one will want either). If we fix the cost problem, we may have fixed our long-range deficit issues. There's also the matter of Democrats having the House, 60 votes in the Senate, and the White House, and who knows when there will be a better chance to finally get this done.

Cap and trade I'm worried about the timing on. The plan as it is now is very weak though, and most of the carbon "credits" are being given away for free. CBO says the current plan will cost people an average of $175/yr over the next 10 years. That's about the price of mailing a letter a day. In return it will reduce emissions by 20% by 2021. There's a bit of progressive wealth distribution going on in terms of who pays for it, the bottom 20% income group will receive a tax credit which should actually more than offset the costs of the cap.

As for small business, the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act (the cap & trade bill), yours may not get special treatment, but there will be subsidies offered to businesses who will work on clean energy technology (e.g. carbon offsets, wind, solar, battery tech, etc.).

Personally, I think it's a shame we didn't put that in place 30 years ago, and I don't think we can put it off any longer, but the timing will definitely work against it.

Large corporations use auctions and corporate bonds to increase liquid assets, small businesses use credit card and bank loans. Because of the bailouts, large corporations and banks are starting to thaw and we're seeing movement and lending between banks. What we don't see is increased loans and cash flow to the lifeblood of America: small businesses.

Why do you think we aren't seeing that happen?

How can you not see how terrible Obama's timing is? How can he promise that he won't raise taxes on people who make under $250,000/year with all of the government expansion that he's heading up? How can you not see that congress is out of control?

I've already given my answer on timing, and the "out of control" bit too. The problem with the accusation of "expansion of government" coupled with concern about taxes is a bit misplaced. The goal with healthcare is to make it revenue neutral, and stave off large future expansions. Ditto for Cap and trade. We'll see if Obama can keep his tax promise, but remember, us under $250k people have had our taxes go down so far under Obama.

Knowing how this goes, Obama will almost certainly be accused of breaking that promise by 2012 (The "OMG, he raised taxes on cigarettes!!!" is already making the rounds), but I suspect that he's going to bend over backwards to keep it.

I feel like we've got a bunch of ignoramuses and corrupt punks running the show. They act in behalf of the highest bidder. They cheat on their wives, they cheat on their taxes, they lie through their teeth, and they're stealing food right off of my family's table!

So find better politicians and get 'em elected. In the meantime I would suggest that Republicans have Democrats beat on ignorance, corruption, influence peddling, cheating on wives, cheating on taxes, lies, and theft (from us and other nations).

Yes, but you have to agree that the Obama administration AND the Congress are completely missing small business and that they've picked a horrible time to increase the size of government and tighten environmental restrictions!

I just spent the last 3 hours (I just walked in the door) with Merril Lynch associates and had the whole economic mess explained to me in great detail. I think I get it pretty well now. I'm all good with the whole AIG bailout. I'm clear that the government's hands were pretty well tied there. I'm all for re-instating some of the restrictions that were loosened in the 90's and in 2004. I'm not so sure about bailing out GM, Cap and Trade, Health Care (horrible timing is just one reason), and no help for the small businesses.

Large corporations use auctions and corporate bonds to increase liquid assets, small businesses use credit card and bank loans. Because of the bailouts, large corporations and banks are starting to thaw and we're seeing movement and lending between banks. What we don't see is increased loans and cash flow to the lifeblood of America: small businesses.


My fiancee works in a doctor's office. Just today, the doctor saw a young boy whose mother had fake nails and a 'coach' purse. What insurance did she have? You guessed it, MedicAid. Basically, this means I am paying for this lady's fancy clothes and salon visits!!!???

How can you not see how terrible Obama's timing is? How can he promise that he won't raise taxes on people who make under $250,000/year with all of the government expansion that he's heading up? How can you not see that congress is out of control?

I feel like we've got a bunch of ignoramuses and corrupt punks running the show. They act in behalf of the highest bidder. They cheat on their wives, they cheat on their taxes, they lie through their teeth, and they're stealing food right off of my family's table!


>> ^NetRunner:
I'll give a nutshell answer for the moment, and a more in-depth answer when I have time to do this topic proper justice.
The short answer is that only some 10% of the stimulus, aside from the tax cuts, have been put out into the economy, and the economists' equations pretty much said we'd need a $2 trillion stimulus to halt the decline in unemployment from the get-go. Unemployment did go up more than the Obama team predicted in the short run, but I can't recall any of the pro-stimulus economists thinking their prediction was anything but a best-case scenario.
As for the health care plan, the main point of it is to cut costs overall. Part of what makes the 20+ year budget predictions so bleak is the skyrocketing cost of medical care. The CBO recently came back with the scores on a bill with a strong public option, and it showed both a massive increase in the number of people covered as well as cutting the cost by nearly 50%.

So, no matter how long it takes, Obama is going to take credit for the recovery? But, many experts believe that the economy would EVENTUALLY recover without all the bailouts so, is it all just a waste?

And what about this new health care plan? How is that going to help the economy? How is incurring more government debt and increasing government run programs going to help young graduates and small businesses? How is cap and trade going to increase jobs?

What is the Government thinking??? I wish Ron Paul were here!!!


All of a sudden, Congress is paying close attention to Ron Paul.

The feisty congressman from Texas, whose insurgent "Ron Paul Revolution" presidential campaign rankled Republican leaders last year, now has the GOP House leadership on his side -- backing a measure that generated paltry support when he first introduced it 26 years ago.

"In the past, I never got much support, but I think it's the financial crisis obviously that's drawing so much attention to it, and people want to know more about the Federal Reserve."

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/letters-to-the-editor/2009/06/25/ron-paul-and-auditing-the-federal-reserve.html

Whew! That should help. But, we're going to need a lot more than just one guy with common sense in Washington.


Mitt Romney: ""I think [we] have to stand up and make it very, very clear that we run the risk as a nation of having the entire world lose confidence in the currency of the United States and that would lead to something worse than a recession -- that would lead to an extraordinary slowdown globally that would hurt us more than any other."

"When the stimulus bill is wrong, when it wastes money and threatens the viability of our currency long-term, you have to stand up and say 'no.' When a health care plan says we're going to have the government take over health care which is roughly a fifth of our economy, [we] are going to have to say 'no' to that."

"The president's plan makes an enormous error by saying we're going to put government into the insurance business. We got everyone in Massachusetts insured and we did it without putting government into the insurance business. We said instead we're going to help people get private free enterprise kind of insurance they can buy from a number of different companies."

He said the system led to plunging premiums while offering a healthy choice of options for consumers.

"It's working well. We got 440,000 more people insured than when the plan was put in place, it costs less than 2 percent of the state budget -- it's a plan that's working, it's a good model," he said.

Romney also took issue with the climate change bill that passed the House of Representatives last week, saying it was corrupted by special interests.

"It's a lobbyists' delight and as a result it's a lousy piece of legislation. It should not have been passed, it's going to cost the American consumers a lot of money, it's going to cost us a lot of jobs. Yeah we'll create jobs making windmills and solar panels and that's wonderful, but were going to lose a lot of other jobs ... that are creating products that use energy," he said.


Of all the years of wasteful government spending, why now!!!???

I'm in the process of switching health insurance and I just got a quote yesterday. It'll cost me $130 a month to have a HDHP with a $2500.00 Anual deductable and I pay 0% for preventative care. In conjunction with a Health Savings Plan, that's a heck of deal!!! There's nothing wrong with Health insurance! That's less than the combined cost of my cable internet and my mobile phone bill. I don't know the statistics, but I'm willing to bet that most people in this country without health insurance, CHOOSE NOT TO HAVE ANY because they'd rather drive their nice car or have an iPhone or HD TV or whatever.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY? WHY IS IT THAT WE EXPECT EVERYTHING FOR FREE AND ARE WILLING TO LET POLITICIANS DRIVE THE US OF A INTO THE GROUND TO GET IT!?

^ I think you misunderstand my position. I don't see government and free markets as being polar opposites locked in a struggle with one another for dominance, nor do I believe that "freedom" is the exclusive property of one or the other.

My view is more that the two exist in a symbiotic relationship, like the rulebook for football, and the game of football. You can't really have one without the other.

It's certainly possible that rule changes could be detrimental to the sport, but it's also possible rule changes could make the game safer, or more fast-paced, or more compatible with ad-funded television coverage.

To stretch the metaphor to the breaking point, if we're seeing excessive wear and tear on the fields after the game, what should we do? Just leave it up to the teams to curtail their own activity during games, or take it upon themselves to clean up the field without a legal or financial incentive to do so?

All we're talking about is saying that we'd like to add a new metric for measuring damage to the field, and letting each team have a certain amount of damage they can do during the season. Furthermore, we'll let them trade those credits between themselves. If they do damage without a credit, we dock their score for the game, so if they're smart they'll try to get through the season under the limit.

In other words, the idea here is to rely on the market's inventiveness to solve the problem, we're just changing their incentives so it becomes dramatically more likely that they will actually address it.

I say it often, but in a sane world, cap and trade would be the environmental policy conservatives would champion.

Olbyloon must thank his witch doctors for getting one last poke at his Bush voodoo doll.

Yeah, Gingrich is in the pocket of Big Coal but no mention of Al Snore's carbon credit scam corporation or how much the greenvangelicals are lining Dems' socialists' pockets.

Cap and trade? More like Crap and Betrayed!