As part of his deplorable legacy, one of the last things George W. Bush rushed through in his last days of power was a set of changes in environmental policy that basically gutted protections for endangered organisms. Our new president has been given the power to undo those changes in a recent spending bill.
Obama may now, with the stroke of a pen, rescind the Bush Administration’s last-minute rules that:
forcibly removed global warming from the list of extinction threats to the polar bear (despite scientific opinion that global warming is the bear’s chief extinction threat)
allowed oil and gas drilling in polar bear habitats
eliminated the need to consult with wildlife and marine scientists when allowing mining, building, logging and other destructive projects that might increase extinction threats to endangered species.
Make it so, President Obama.
I’ve almost decided that Obama is a genuinely good person, and is doing his best to work *around* his various constituencies to do good *in spite of* their best efforts. If he took a serious stand on global warming immediately after stem cell research, I think that would just about seal the deal. My fingers are crossed.
The Republican Party : We’re Just Plain Evil!
Obama better start living up to the “getting government back to being trustworthy” pledge.
His use of the singing statement with the new spending bill is not a good sign along with some other hold over Bush policies he’s utilized.
My guess is that the republicans will continue to rant about “who cares about bears, we’re concerned about people” (yeah, right). They made the same stink about the snail-darter in the 80s. Hopefully because Polar Bears are furry and white they will have some emotional appeal to people. (We’ve seen that rational inferences from evidence have no widespread effect, so let’s hope emotional reactions to fuzzy white animals will make a difference).
I wonder how many people realize this is about more than just Polar Bears. They are among the first visible signs of events to come. And the hits keep coming…
It’s about time the President didn’t have the power to add or take away from the endangered species list. It should have specifically scientific criteria, and therefore be a decision made by a group of scientists.
But how do we determine when we might be interfering with nature by preventing the extinction of organisms? Extinction is a necessary component of evolution (according to Darwin).
Why does this sort of thing go with a spending bill?
I would have thought the republicans would have sided with the polar bears on this one, since they’re white.
SplendidMonkey @#6
I would suggest that the key difference is that an induced extinction out of proportion to natural rates is of concern here. There are many just arguments about the role of humans both helping to “save” organisms on the brink of extinction and letting them die off based on your opinion. However, when a single species is conducting itself towards a goal of gluttonous excess of resources, space and political clout, it is simply not a matter of natural background extinctions. Nor is it a tangential evolutionary direction….it is purposeful destruction of a biological community.
But, we need oil, don’t we? Should we really let those organizatins prohibit such needs?
I’m al for working with those organizations to impact natural environs as much as possible, but, why give them so much power?
*hides under desk*
” impact natural environs”
I meant “to LIMIT impact to natural environs”
Some typo.
The President has already issued a memo to that effect last week. We can expect additional changes.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/03/obama_restores_endangered_spec.html?hpid=topnews
Politics, dear Patrick… politics.
Often, the only way to get a measure that is very partisan and / or controversial in nature through Congress is to have it “ride on the coattails” of a bill of extreme significance / importance. In this way, few, if any, of the Senators or Representatives are likely to vote against the bill; it would be near-political-suicide to justify the rejection of some bill of significance because of something that, in the grand scheme of things, is very, very small.
This, I think, is partly the reason why the GOP is trying to make noise about earmarks. They’re trying to make it seem like earmarks are a large proportion of the spending packages, so that they can “justify” their rejection of the bill. The dirty little secret, of course, is that the earmarks are only about 2% of the bill’s outlay, but you won’t hear that very often.
Why the fuck should we be more bothered about endangered polar bears than about serving the energy needs of human civilisation? We should drill in polar bear habitats.
Environmental issues are important, but they are important only when they impact on the lives of current or future human beings, IMO. We certainly should not damage the economy, and risk loss of jobs and soaring energy bils, merely to protect a few polar bears.
Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a comment about AGW, about which I am not qualified to offer an opinion. Rather, it’s a comment about the desirability of spending federal money, and losing valuable resource-extraction opportunities, simply to protect polar bears. This is not, IMO, an acceptable use of government power.
No it isn’t. You can have evolution without extinction.
It’s about time the President didn’t have the power to add or take away from the endangered species list. It should have specifically scientific criteria, and therefore be a decision made by a group of scientists.
Great… so a group of unelected scientists should have absolute authority to make decisions involving large amounts of federal spending, and having a major economic impact, without being answerable to anyone?
IMO, the government should not be engaged in “protecting endangered species” at all. If you want to spend your own money protecting “teh cute fuzzy white bears”, then be my guest. But what the fuck gives you the right to spend the taxpayer’s (coercively-extracted) money, or to prevent businesses from taking all the resource-exploitation opportunities open to them (thereby creating wealth and jobs), merely because you can’t bear the thought of a few animals dying?
@Splendidmonkey: Well, yes extinction is an important part of evolution but there’s no reason why should want a lot of evolution to happen. Also human activity has pushed the rate of extinction up so far past normal levels that the chances of any given species going instinct not being due to humans is pretty damn small; we can more or less safely assume it’s our fault.
Another libertard mucking up a thread. YAWN.
@SplendidMonkey:
we aren’t talking about going to a planet with life and intervening to help save them from natural extinction. we’re talking about changes to biology that are in large part due to OUR existence and the way we live today. Our efforts to save these creatures are not an intervention, but born out of the awareness (of a sadly small fraction of our species) that we are largely responsible for that threat.
If someone litters, you don’t say, “leave it on the ground, it’s the natural order of things”. You pick that shit up.
“No it isn’t. You can have evolution without extinction.”
Well, there has to be some extinction.
There are 14,000 estimated species of ant. Don’t you think at least a few groups are just not going to make it?
Walton. You’re regressing.
Not to mention displaying some significantly myopic views.
As opposed to a small group of uninformed politicians making judgments on things that have much farther reaching consequences than the next election or pandering to big business.
Sure.
Well, let’s just hope YOU never end up as an endangered species then!
(On second thought…)
Walton:
until human kind is responsible enough to somehow offset its own harm to the environment (all green talk aside, I doubt that you can honestly look me in the eye and say “I do no harm to my environment whatsoever”), then spending the taxpayer’s money is the only way to bring about that offset.
You know. Unless you just really don’t care because hey, once you die it’s someone else’s problem. Is that it? :)
Walton,you are a complete idiot. Why should every human pay the social cost of the greed of the power pimps, and thay do whatever the fuck they want where ever they want. The polar bear is worthless? Are you fucking insane? Millions of years of evolution down the pisser so you can have cheap gas. This doesn’t even make sense even in the limited sense of human self-preservation. We should think long and hard before even get rid of the most dangerous bacteria. Even botulism has a use. And the loss of the elephant is just a sad story? Pull your head out of your ass.
Walton:
Your posts in this thread are uncharacteristically intemperate (IOW, what the fuck is a nice boy like you doing using this kind of fucking language?). Is this one of those drunken postings you mentioned in another thread recently?
In any case, I’d point out to you that there’s a difference between making policy (e.g., “We, as a nation, choose to protect species that are threatened with extinction, especially when the threat comes from human activity.”) and implementing policy once it’s been made (e.g., “Our data show that the following species are threatened in the way national policy anticipates, and that they would benefit from the protections the policy prescribes.”). I don’t see any democratic objection to unelected experts performing the latter function; what’s your beef?
You usually seem thoughtful and at least somewhat educable in your L-word-arianism… but in this instance, you’re straying perilously close to the precipice of SfO-style dogmatism and ranting.
Yes, drill baby, drill! Except no. Regardless of whether it’s polar bear habitat or not, human civilization shouldn’t be looking to up the drilling of oil or gas. We have to shake off our reliance from fossil fuels. So it’s wrong to say we would be losing “valuable resource-extraction opportunities”.
Another point more specifically about polar bears: humanity has the capability to generate all the energy it needs, cleanly, cheaply and safely without endangering polar bears needlessly. There is no need to endanger polar bears in our pursuit of resources. Sure, some habitat has to be destroyed in the course of building power stations and other things, so our presence will necessarily affect other animals, but the point is to keep this effect to a minimum. And this is possible definitely. There’s no need to “sacrifice” human wants and needs in order to protect polar bears or other animals, we can have both.
Besides, even if you did have to choose between the two, isn’t the desire to have animals not endangered also a want or need of some people? What about their wants and needs then? Whose wants are more important: those who want to drill, or those who want to protect animals?
And anyway, the fact that there are other animals around, not endangered, isn’t that something that enriches people? I’ve never seen a polar bear in real life, but I’m sure if I do see one, I would be captured by their magic, same as if I saw an elephant or a lion etc. These things have a cultural benefit to humanity, and not every benefit can be measured in monetary or employment value, which culture obviously can’t.
I’d also say that if you accept evolution (which assuredly you must), then philosophically we have no right to harm other animals. I agree with this philosophy, though I’m also a hypocrite, since I eat meat. As Richard Dawkins said, “What I am doing is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm, and it requires a level of social courage which I haven’t yet produced to break out of that. It’s a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery.” So, Walton, you’re a libertarian. Why doesn’t your libertarian attitude extend to animals then?
I guess what ever we do, it is by definition part of the natural order. I would err on the side of protecting species while trying to influence the system to maximize the longevity and quality of life for our species in particular.
Well, well, I see that in my absence Walton hasn’t changed at all. No surprise.
The government has the right to spend taxpayer money on conservation, because in the end it is in the human interest to preserve the ecosystem. The polar bear is just one in a long list of species that will disappear if they don’t, and, simply put, it is an easily avoidable problem. That’s what the fuck gives them the right. Besides, when is the last time you paid taxes in the US? Otherwise, Obama’s actions on this matter shouldn’t raise your hackles, especially not for tax reasons. Unless you make a habit of getting pissed off about other people’s money being spent.
There are plenty of resources untapped already in the US – if you’re talking strictly about oil, there’s milions of acres leased to them that they have simply capped off, and the only reason they haven’t used them is that they’re holding them in reserve. Until they use those, yours is an invalid argument. And if you’re talking about alternative energies, there’s an entire class of energy sources that the corporations haven’t even scratched the damn surface on exploiting.
You still don’t get it. Despite the fact that a great deal of Americans are fully behind these kinds of conservation measures, are you forgetting the fact that if the polar bear disappears due to their habitat’s continued shrinking, that means that our arctic ice cap will be that much closer to being gone as well. And even despite the fact that George Will and other conservatives (what a funny name for that party, BTW) want to misrepresent scientific data to deny it, since 1979 the northern ice cap has lost half-a-million square kilometers, and is showing no signs of slowing down. And if I really need to list the dire environmental consequences of rapidly disappearing sea ice for you, we really don’t need to have this conversation, anyway.
I usually don’t like posting links, but I totally missed this one and thought it was interesting.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/38207
Uh. Considering it is the taxpayers causing most of the problems and considering saving our environment is in the best interest of our taxpayers, I’d say, um, yeah, it’s a necessity.
Do you know what exploitation even means?
And you do realize that, each time a species goes extinct, another species, or multiple species, and the environment where that species lives, is negatively impacted, and that impact directly effects our world which also directly effects humans.
Good gracious. I thought you were all about “personal responsibility”. Oh, until it comes to being responsible for the planet we live on. Then, whatever, let’s just kill everything off, in the name of humanity!!!!!
Walton> So humans have the right to decimate the populations of any other species we choose because we also happen to have the ability? Is this right predicate on whether or not they’re in the way of something useful, or can we simply wipe out species we don’t happen to like? At what point do you realise that we have to live on this planet also, and that there are real consequences for our actions, both climatologically and ecologically… A quick thought experiment for you: What do polar bears eat? Good… now what do those eat? Do we happen to eat that next level of critter also? So what happens if we remove the polar bear from the top of the food chain?
All that aside, we might want to consider not exploiting (or allowing the exploitation) of every natural resource available to us just because it makes things more convenient in the short term… some of us may prefer to live on a planet that hasn’t been paved, strip-mined, drilled, and developed everywhere.
I’d also say that if you accept evolution (which assuredly you must), then philosophically we have no right to harm other animals.
I don’t see how that follows. Acceptance of evolution is acceptance of a state of fact. It doesn’t entail any particular normative beliefs. (Indeed, isn’t that the very type of fallacy – the is-ought confusion – committed by creationists when they try to conflate evolution with social darwinism?)
Fallacy of large numbers.
It’s perfectly possible for 13,999 of those species to not evolve, and for the other species to evolve without any of the others becoming extinct. Where, in the process of natural selection, does it say, “In order for X to evolve, Y has to become extinct”?
Er, I never said anything about scientists deciding how taxes are spent. I said that, if there’s a list somewhere of endangered species, it should be created by scientists. So the scientists decide whether polar bears go on there. Then the politicians (who have obviously been elected) go, “Okay, here’s our budget: we’re gonna give £A to health care, £B to education etc….. and finally we’ll grant £X to a fund to protect endangered species.” Then the scientists come back into the picture and decide how to split the £X, i.e which animals most need help etc. Then of course, some governmental department would then follow through with the protecting of the animals.
So all I’m saying is that if money is going to be spent on endangered species, then the species that have money spent on them should be decided by scientists. It’s the politicians that decide how much money they get given, not which animals get it, in my proposal.
Tangent @ #8:
The fur is white, the skin underneath is black. So there’s your reason.
Walton:
Sacre bleu! I actually agree with you on this: The truth of evolution in no way implies that “philosophically we have no right to harm other animals,” and in fact, I reject that philosophical assertion. (How could I do otherwise, having just moments ago devoured a chicken sandwich?)
But what IST said that I do agree with… and you appear not to… is this:
Further, I think we have the right (and, IMHO, the obligation) to “consider not exploiting … every natural resource available to us” collectively… you know, as a society.
I know words like “us” and “collectively” and “society” are anathema to your ideological fellow travelers, Walton, but what can I say? That’s just how I roll.
Well shit, I agree with Walton. I don’t see how this adds up.
“Where, in the process of natural selection, does it say, “In order for X to evolve, Y has to become extinct”?
”
It says that in chapter 4 in the Origin of Species:
“But we may go further than this; for as new forms are produced, unless we admit that specific forms can go on indefinitely increasing in number, many old forms must become extinct.”
This chapter seems to be talking about the entire ant species (as in my example), but I think it could be applied to individual ant species. So, we still both get partial credit.
Wow, the stench of Randroid droppings is thick in the air today.
Darwin also said that without extinction we would see a continuous blur of species with no discernibly distinct species. It’s quite a thing to imagine. I’m just finishing listening to the audio book – highly recommended!
Posted by: marcus | March 12, 2009 11:44 AM [kill][hide comment]
Thank you sir, may I have another? FTW!
“””but in this instance, you’re straying perilously close to the precipice of SfO-style dogmatism and ranting.”””
It was in fighting the Bush administration’s forest policies that I realized how insane it was to shovel so much power to one central place, then expect the relationship between locals living in a community and the federal government to be a quid pro quo enterprise…
Locals communities get run over by both good and bad federal perogatives. When the federal government thinks it is the end-all to problem solving and control you get lots and lots of really bad governance.
I find it amusing to watch how “relieved” progressives get when Obama overturns an ignorant federal decree, when it is the progressive desire to “control” everything that produced the dislikable decree in the first place.
Progressives give government the big sticks and then cry when they get hit over the head with them.
I say– Why not keep the sticks away from the clowns in Washington and into the hands of locals you can debate with and remove from power if they start to swagger?
Walton, your libertarian views fall off the cliff when it comes to environmental concerns. One “free” nutjobber or factory can ruin it for the whole bunch. The whole collective/individual argument tilts to the collective side when it comes to keeping environments safe from dirty filthy humans.
The trouble is, historically and extant, the federal government gets its “policies” bought and paid for by those who would benefit from the use and destruction of resources.
You have to have a massive amount of money to get in the federal door, which is the arena of those who use and destruct resources the best i.e. the filthy dirty rich bastards…
Walton said: “Environmental issues are important, but they are important only when they impact on the lives of current or future human beings, IMO.”
OK, now maybe you can ‘splain to me how causing one of the most impressive animals on the planet to vanish will have no impact on future human beings. They will never have an opportunity to see these magnificent creatures. And why? Because some twit has to drive a Hummer through rush hour traffic to compensate for his, um, shortcomings?
No, we cannot and should not save every species, but neither should we do irreparable harm to fragile ecosystems. We should not engage in thoghtless destruction because it diminishes US as humans.
Scott from Oregon> hmm.. you seem to enjoy using the O’Reilly “Progressive” strawman without bothering to examine what people actually think. While I agree with your assessment of Walton’s environmental ideals, I think you’ve likely missed the point you made in doing so.
Involving the federal government may indeed cause a mess, and while “progressives”, as you and Bill-O term them, do in fact invite more government, the assumption/hope underlying that invitation is that the policies put in place will be something along the lines of their ideology in the first place… or failing that at least something based on rational thought and reality. Instead, Bush’s nonsensical policy incorporated AGW denial and the best ecological rape in one blanket of stupidity. You might claim that this is where more government leads.. I’d argue that this is where more government headed by neo-con morons leads, with which your closing statements agree. Unforunately, you’ve neglected that deregulating industry leads to exactly the same result, without the chance of some benevolence in office.
“””Bush’s nonsensical policy incorporated AGW denial and the best ecological rape in one blanket of stupidity. You might claim that this is where more government leads.. “””
I DO claim that.
The structure of government is upside down, and the access to government is not representational, but financial.
Local ordinances are just as effective at protecting the environment as sweeping federal decrees.
As it stands now, locals get bulldozed when they try and keep their communities clean and environmentally ecofriendly by federal concerns which are fueled by backroom payola, not local progressiveness.
There is nothing wrong with a “progressive” agenda- I agree with most of the goals of a progressive agenda. Trouble is, the means to achieve those goals gets corrupted EVERY SINGLE TIME by a system that centralizes control, requires cash to change, and is too far removed from the actual problems.
The structure of power is the problem. It is upside down.
SfO> I understand your claim… I just don’t agree that there’s any evidence that local control is any better. Great, I can physically remove whatever fucktard ends up in charge of my area; What do we do about the incompetents that take power in other areas, yet affect us?
@ Bill D> I say enough dumb shit on my own without having that pile of excrement attributed to me… (your first block quote to Walton)
I’ve just been listening to the podcast of Harry Shearer’s Le Show radio show, so I guess it’s time for my own version of The Apologies of the Week:
First, apologies to all for invoking the name of SfO and, apparently, thereby conjuring his presence. “Speak of the devil…,” I suppose; I should’ve been more careful.
Next,
…please forgive me. Somehow in my scrolling up and down looking for references, I managed to confuse myself about who Walton was quoting. Once again, I should’ve been more careful.
Walton iirc you hail from here, the UK, a place which essentially has no wild places left. The dead hand of men is all over these isles, from the gross lack of trees to the presence of introduced species like sheep in pretty well every high place. People who have spent their lives here can’t see this since ‘the outdoors’ is the closes thing to untrammeled nature that they have. Our cousins over the water in North America do have some extensive truly wild places left, especially in Alaska, it also isn’t anywhere nearly as densely settled as the UK so there is plenty of room for all.
Having been brought up in New Zealand* where it is still possible to walk to a place three days walk from a road, what passes for conservation in the UK can seem comical. Preserving an opportunistic assemblage of creatures that have colonised an environment denuded by human agriculture is fiddling while Rome burns. Now sush, the big people are talking.
*A place where a full third of the landmass is in National or Regional parks. By which I mean places you don’t get sheep, or mines or quarries or funicular railways.
Bill D> no worries.. I just didn’t want to lose the smidge of credibility I have here… I should consider thanking you for conjuring SfO.. it’s entertaining. Too many creotards, at least this is a change for me…
No but I sure as hell still want to climb Ben Nevis in the winter. I hear it’s still a little wild.
Oh sorry. Off topic. I couldn’t help.
Maybe the lack of wild spaces helps to explain Walton’s lack of understanding of the subject.
To clarify, and in response to everyone:
I do believe that the state has a legitimate role in protecting and regulating environmental resources, limiting pollution, and other areas of environmental regulation which are of vital importance for human beings. I am not vehemently anti-any-environmental-regulation-whatsoever.
However, I would also point out that our civilisation relies, to a very great extent, on fossil fuels; and reducing the supply of such fuels in any way will therefore have detrimental economic effects, causing people to lose jobs and livelihoods. I happen to believe that human beings are, always and in all cases, infinitely more important than polar bears. And I emphatically do not believe that animals have any “rights”. This doesn’t mean we should abuse them wantonly, but it does mean that the needs of human beings always take precedence over the needs of animals.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that, if the only argument against drilling in Location X is “it will kill a lot of polar bears”, then we should go ahead and dril in location X. I realise that life is rarely this simple, and that there may be a whole host of other reasons, environmental and economic, why it may or may not be a good idea to drill in location X. But the way Professor Myers phrased the original post – “allowed oil and gas drilling in polar bear habitats” – it sounded like he thought that the lives of polar bears should be an important factor in deciding whether or not to drill in a given location. They are not, IMO.
Various posters:
Holydust: …until human kind is responsible enough to somehow offset its own harm to the environment… Our efforts to save these creatures are not an intervention, but born out of the awareness (of a sadly small fraction of our species) that we are largely responsible for that threat… If someone litters, you don’t say, “leave it on the ground, it’s the natural order of things”. You pick that shit up.
Your thinking here appears fundamentally collectivist; you talk of “we”, collectively, as if humankind were a single entity and as if each of us were individually and severally responsible for everyone else’s activities. “We” are not “responsible” for that threat. Individual human beings are responsible for that threat. There is no “we”.
He was, and that’s exactly why your uninformed opinion on this matter isn’t worth a pound of polar bear poo… If killing a number of organism X only affected organism x, I could at least philsophically accept your point, despite disgreeing with it. You might want to have a look at some basic ecology resources before opening your mouth again, because you clearly have no concept of keystone species, interdependence of foodwebs, etc.
I’m not even touching the ideologue tirade at the end…
Perhaps “Walton” is really just a nom de intertoobz for Margaret Thatcher? Hmmm… that might explain quite a lot! Props to the old gal for being so blog-savvy, eh?
(I keeed because I looooove, Walton! ;^) )
Ah, Walton, I see that you are very much “Homo sapiens uber alles!” Thankfully, there are less of you around, and by “you” I mean a collective population of people that put humanity over every other living thing no matter the cost AND you as an individual. Happily, there are less people that think as you do, or else the mess we are in would be infinitely worse. Having such a short sighted opinion would have probably cost us the entirety of our fisheries worldwide (among other things) and we would all be living on soylent green.
Walton, since you don’t even have “when God gave us souls” to go to on this any more, when do you think our ancestors acquired rights (which I understand from reading your posts you hold to be absolute in humans and absolutely non-existent in non-human animals)
Walton wrote (bolding by me):
and
Walton, not only do you contradict yourself, your first quote explains why we can be considered “collectively” responsible. Because we are all “users” of the same civilization!
Walton, since you don’t even have “when God gave us souls” to go to on this any more, when do you think our ancestors acquired rights (which I understand from reading your posts you hold to be absolute in humans and absolutely non-existent in non-human animals)
“Rights” are, of course, in essence a fictional concept; I don’t subscribe to the silly view of some libertarians that there is such a thing as a “natural” or “God-given” right. Rather, they are based on a purely pragmatic principle. I expect other human beings in general to treat me in certain ways: I expect them to respect the integrity of my person and my property, and to refrain from impeding my activities unless such activities trespass on their person or property. The best way of making sure that I receive these rights is by supporting a political and legal system in which such rights are extended to everyone; because if we lived in a society in which I was able to murder or steal from my weaker neighbour in order to get what I wanted, then my stronger neighbour would be able to do the same to me. Thus, rights are a fiction: but a useful one, because just as they protect my weaker neighbour from me, so too they protect me from my stronger neighbour.
This clearly does not apply to animals, because they are not capable of understanding, or complying with, legal and social norms. Even if I respect the “rights” of animals, they are incapable of understanding or respecting my “rights” in return. Thus, there is no good reason why I should wish to extend any “rights” to them.
Walton, you seem to confusing “the collective” for “society”. While Rand despised the “collective”, she was not anti-society. In fact all her ranting about individual rights and the dangers of colectivism was meant to describe what it is that makes it possible for people to live and benefit from an orderly society. And while she is famous for her glorification of “selfishness” it was not the simplistic “anything that makes me feel good is right”. Her definition of “selfish” included rationally considering all the consequences of an action and its ultimate effect on you, not just the immediate gain. Environmental consequences of disrupting an ecosystem to the extent of extincting an entire species can have much further reaching consequences than just the death of that species. To just say “fuck the bears, I need the oil” is to display the kind of irrational selfishness that Rand is often vilified for but never advocated. In fact it is too much like the collectivist argument that my need gives me a right to your “stuff”.
Surely even libertarians are able to understand that after they have used up all the resources in a rather irresponsible way to create wealth and jobs, there will be no more resources. Unless they are prepared to recycle, which I doubt. One wonders what sort of mind would dismiss the wonder and beauty of nature and value dollars higher.
I do realise that we should make use of the resources we have here, but can’t we do it responsibly, like a mature civilisation? If we are as intelligent as we say, perhaps we should show it instead of only bragging about it. We don’t use resources so someone can get rich. We use them because we need them.
Bah I say! let them mine and drill in polar bear habitat. Just make two rules:
1. you’re not allowed to have weapons, and
2. You must dress in a seal suit.
Then let nature take its course.
A good way to demonstrate what taking an species, especially a top predator out of an ecosystem can do is to point to the wiping out of gray wolves in Yellowstone during the 19th century and their reintroduction in the 90’s and what benefits were shown in their reintroduction.
Over populated Elk herds(and other ungulates) were culled to more historically “normal” levels. On top of that, reintroduction of the natural top predator caused the existing ungulate herds to become strong on an individual to individual basis as wolves prey on old, sick or lame elk
Carcases left by wolves helped to provide food for the smaller scavengers.
When this happens the riparian zone regrew much of the vegetation that had been trampled out of existence by Elk and other large mammals over grazing and seeking water from the rivers.
Aspens and cottonwoods regained their historically significant place along streams.
Beavers returned to the park as major contributors to the aquatic ecosystem by provide pools and shade for trout. The return of Aspens was a big cause of this as they are a favored by beaver.
Run off into streams was decreased which helped the fish stocks to rebound as well as aquatic plants.
Coyotes numbers which had exploded into overpopulation in the wolf’s absence were reduced. When Coyotes are reduces rodents and small animals increase which in turn increases the food supply for birds of prey and other predators. Not to mention the benefit to Antelope calves.
And many other effects that brought about rebalancing the ecosystem.
And something Walton may like even more.
Dollars. The wolf reintroduction plan for Yellowstone brought in a serious increase in ecotourism.
Walton I suggest you look up the concept of ‘ecosystem services’ we humans will be unable to live on this planet if there is just us and our domesticated plants and animals. What will make the soil alive? What will clean the water? What will clean the air? What will move the nutrients and minerals around for us? Yours is a zero sum game, it cannot be so except the other way around, few natural environments would care if we humans all died in a plague tomorrow, we would very definitely care if we degraded every environment just because we can.
Anyway the main problem with drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is firstly that the amount of oil is negligible and secondly if we burn even all the oil and gas reserves we know about then we are fucked climate wise.
as always, please assume all typos were put there by a vengful god.
Walton, OK not too bad on the logic. That is going to require some serious bullet-biting if you want to be consistent though. It seems as though you are going to have to deny that the severely mentally handicapped and young children have (even negative) rights.
The last part definitely doesn’t follow as you have written it though.
That “thus” doesn’t hold unless you have assumed that reciprocity is the only conceivable reason to extends rights to a being. This doesn’t hold. It’s perfectly possible to argue that we should collectively bestow rights on a being unable to reciprocate purely because we hold that it’s suffering is a bad thing (on account of our own empathy, if you like) and that social rules should be such as promote utility. (Or any of no doubt dozens of different, defensible reasons)
@Rev: Thanks for fleshing out the thought experiment I proposed for him in an earlier post… I think it was most likely needed.
BigZ:
Yeah, in a strictly Malthusian, resources are finite, space is limited etc etc, sense, but my point still stands, there’s nothing inherent or necessary in evolution that says we must have extinction.
To those who don’t agree with this sentence:
Evolution tells us that all life on Earth is related. It tells us that there is nothing inherently special about human beings. We weren’t “designed”. There is no omnieverything creator granting us control over his creation and all the animals in it. We are no different from the animals. Sure, even without evolution, we know that we are an “animal”, but evolution tells us we are not an animal somehow “above” the other animals. Evolution has no purpose. We evolved by natural selection not into some supreme being, but just into another organism, namely homo sapiens. Sure, we are (on average) smarter than the rest of the animals, but that doesn’t make us special; that is, by definition, elitism. So if there’s nothing special about us, then aren’t all the animals our equals, in the same way 50 odd years ago it was argued that there’s nothing special about your colour to where you should sit on a bus, or how its argued now that there’s nothing special about your sexuality to whether you can marry. Does this not show us we should claim we have no right to harm animals if we also claim we shouldn’t harm people on the basis of race, creed, colour, sexuality, gender, age etc? Does speciesism not count as a wrong? Yes, I know I’m a hypocrite for eating that Quarter pounder earlier, but then that’s why I used that Dawkins quote (which first got me thinking about this subject incidentally), which partly gets across the same sentiment: eating meat is wrong, I can’t justify me eating it without begging the question, but I don’t plan on stopping either. But apart from eating meat, I try to minimize the effects my actions have on the natural world. And I especially don’t want people drilling in polar bear habitats.
Walton also said:
Actually I believe it is you who is more like the creationist in this respect. Let’s line up your arguments next to each other:
Libertarian: “I believe mankind is supreme over the other animals. We are smarter and more able than all other organisms, and therefore we have the right to do whatever we please to them, and the Government has no right to stop us”.
Creationist: “In the Bible, it says God made us in his image on the 6th day, the last of his creatures to be created. That means God thinks we’re special. So we can do what the hell we want, because animals matter less than unborn zygotes.” Granted, there are creationists who take the view that because God made them to guard over the “Garden of Eden”, then they should protect the animals. But not all creationists do.
So isn’t your view very similar to that? Animals aren’t as good as us, so we should be able to exploit their habitat?
Thanks. My Senior thesis (in my major which I’ve not used a bit since graduation) was comparing the Gray Wolf reintroduction program in Yellowstone to the Red Wolf reintroduction program in eastern North Carolina so it makes a lot of sense to me in these situations.
Plus I lived outside Yellowstone for about 10 years so I have a soft spot for it.
It’s really cool stuff, typos or not. :)
How can you say that if animals don’t have rights in your view? Surely if we shouldn’t abuse animals wantonly, then animals have a right not to be abused wantonly?
we would all be living on soylent green
IT’S PEOPLE!!! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!
“”SfO> I understand your claim… I just don’t agree that there’s any evidence that local control is any better. “”
It ISN’T BETTER. But it isn’t any WORSE, either. Except structuring with local dominance ensures that you don’t get the militarism and overseas bloodletting you get when you give large amounts of power to a central state. It also keeps a central source from using “monetary policy” to blow up devestating economic bubbles and limits the tax-liability individuals incur from mismanaged federal “programs”.
So the advantages are less state-sponsored murder and war… less national debt, more responsive (and responsible) tax responsibilities, while the disadvantages are local fucktards taking control of a small community.
What it does is place the responsibility where it belongs. Your community. Your pile of trash or corner of paradise.
Why should, for example, Oregonians have to suffer the bad decisions of a Texas oilman/failure or a preacher-orating Chigago community worker?
There is very little the federal government DOES that can’t be replicated in Oregon by Oregonians.
But Oregonians can’t then go off and kill brown-skinned folks with expensive bombs or end up owing other nations trillions because we can’t seem to say no to much of anything…
Right. But the fact that we’re not “above” the other animals in any cosmic moral sense doesn’t imply that we have “no right to harm other animals.” On the contrary, it implies that we have no less right to harm them than they do to harm us, or each other.
Show me that bears have “no right” to eat salmon, and I’ll think about giving up my sushi. Otherwise, hush up and let me eat.
The right argument (IMHO, of course) for good environmental stewardship is not that Nature has some philosophical right to remain undisturbed that trumps humanity’s right to be, but that it’s counterproductive for us if we foul our own nest. No species has any moral obligation to put the welfare of other species above its own — and your own analysis demonstrates that humans are no different from other animals in this regard — but if we take a wise enough, forward-looking enough view of what’s “good for us,” as humans are (uniquely among animals, I suspect) capable of doing, we can easily see that the distance between “good for us” and “good for the planet/biosphere” is infinitesimal.
I suspect that at some level of first principles, Walton and I actually agree about this… the difference is that he seems to see “we” and “us” as atomized and additive, where I see “us” as a synthetic whole.
Plus which, we also seem to differ on the relative value of polar bears vs. finding more carbon to belch into the atmosphere.
“Great… so a group of unelected scientists should have absolute authority to make decisions involving large amounts of federal spending, and having a major economic impact, without being answerable to anyone?”
Walt, NOTHING in the wording of the post says this at all. The wording “eliminated the need to consult with wildlife and marine scientists…” does not include “follow all mandates from scientists”.
Politicians should not be allowed to make decisions about scientific matters without consulting scientists. We need to do everything we can to prevent this; educating voters is only part of the solution.
There are a lot of extreme views expressed in the comments here on both sides and neither side is, IMO, well-reasoned.
Humans are part of the environment – part of nature – and we will leave a footprint, no question. Whether we have the right to take what we want from the Earth & its creatures is actually irrelevant. We need to be careful for ourselves as much as for other species.
SCIENCE tells us that recklessness and greed in our treatment of the environment affects US, too. When we muck too much with other species – flora or fauna – we muck with a very complex system, the variables of which are not entirely known. Outcomes are unpredictable and often very bad. Global warming is just one example.
Whether we act carefully because we want to ensure that polar bears are around for years to come or because we want to ensure that PEOPLE are around for years to come, we need to act carefully. We can do this and meet our needs.
So the fact that white people aren’t “above” other races (and vice versa) in any cosmic moral sense doesn’t imply that we have “no right to harm other races”? It implies that we have no less right to harm them than they do to harm us, or each other? So you advocate an eye for an eye?
Morally, I say that while I agree that “it implies that we have no less right to harm them than they do to harm us, or each other”, I also believe that both those rights to harm are virtually zero (they never are perfectly zero: self-defence and all that).
I’m not arguing that their rights trump our right to be. I’m saying their right to be is equal to our right to be.
Well, I’m not convinced that “race” has the same sort of objective reality that “species” does; I’ll leave that to the biologists and anthropologists, who know more about these things than I ever will. But stipulating the point for the sake of answering your question, I’d say that so-called white people have no more or less “right” to harm other races than other races have to harm each other.
Throughout most of history, humans have enslaved and oppressed each other, most often based on something like what we now refer to as “race”; sadly, we’re not as fully done with that history as many of us would like to imagine (I was just listening to a fascinating podcast on this topic recently). To the extent that we’re “better than that now,” though, it’s because we’ve matured and developed a more expansive notion of human rights; not because the rights drop down upon us from heaven like the rain.
Yeah, but the “rights” they exercise through their actions include eating each other as they see fit and modifying the environment (the the extent they have the power to do so) apparently without concern for the needs of other species. The fact that we humans behave differently — that we apply some introspection and control on how we use other species or impact the environment — has less to do with a priori morality than with the fact that we’ve figured out it’s smarter to think more broadly about what’s good for us.
It’s not that we have no right to pave paradise or hunt the buffalo to extinction; it’s that we’ve become mature enough, as a species, to think better of it.
Walton #52: “I happen to believe that human beings are, always and in all cases, infinitely more important than polar bears. And I emphatically do not believe that animals have any “rights”. This doesn’t mean we should abuse them wantonly, but it does mean that the needs of human beings always take precedence over the needs of animals.”
That’s funny. Nature doesn’t think so. Nature is indifferent to what you or anyone else believes. Doesn’t give a rat’s ass.
But even within the human cultural sphere, what your braying braggadocio boils down to is a line scratched in sand, daring anybody to step over it in what to you would deem an exhibition of treason against their (largely lunatic and obscenely rapacious) species.
In case you haven’t bothered to notice yet, “WE” are, in fact, ANIMALS and PLANTS and FUNGI and all the other living critters that coexist and have coevolved to produce an intricately balanced ecological system that supports the whole damned thing. Including Walton, esquire.
You off a polar bear, you off a part of ME, fella. That is something I take PERSONALLY.
Then why are you bothering to tell “us” what governmental policies “we” ought to support?
Walton:
Good to hear! I shall await your retraction of the following statement, then, especially the bold/ italic parts:
re: #61
OMG EUGENIX! YOU’RE TRING TO KILL OFF THE WEAK DRILL WORKERS AND BREED THE SURVIVORS AREN’T U?? STEIN WARNED ME!!!!111one[/tongue-in-cheek]
Rev:
“Thanks. My Senior thesis (in my major which I’ve not used a bit since graduation) was comparing the Gray Wolf reintroduction program in Yellowstone to the Red Wolf reintroduction program in eastern North Carolina”
Wow. I wrote my senior thesis (in high school) on the gray wolf reintroduction, and participated in a debate in conservation biology in college about the species status of the red wolf (on the wrong side, as I thought even at the time, but that’s what you get for showing up late to class on the day everyone signs up for these things). What was your major?
Even if those animals happen to be humans Walton?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/24991066/bushs_final_fu/print
Let’s see..
*makes Walton a another glass of Kool Aid using water from stream next to factory farm*
It’s ok Walton, drink it….humans are *special*…it won’t hurt you :)
Re:#13,
So, to hell with democratic principles, just do what’s necessary to get it done because we “know” what the right thing is? I seem to remember hearing something about “change” in the year or so prior to the last election. Then there’s this quote from a webpage I found, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washingtion . . . I’m asking you to believe in yours.” – Barack Obama
There are some things I like that Obama has done, even though I didn’t vote for him. But the things I might have had the
audacitynaivete to hope for, he isn’t delivering. The kind of new politics he was promising, the open and honest government, and ‘post-partisanship’ were supposed to move beyond this sort of thing. He was supposed to push to end the pandering to special interests (card check, anyone?), push earmark reform (sure it’s ‘only’ 2%, but in tough times, that’s still 2% that could be going to something more important), and push to end sneaking things into fraking 1000+ page bills that have nothing to do with the main focus of those bills.The reason that the kind of change he was promising was important always seems to be lost on people. The truth is that neither party’s congressional delegation (particularly their leadership) has truly represented a majority of the voters in living memory. One party or the other manages to take a majority of seats by swinging the non-ideological voters of the opposing party and the independents to their side during a campaign, but then they go back to representing their base once the election is over.
I think many people need to admit, at least to themselves, that the change they really wanted was to have someone on their ‘side’ in the White House so that they could see their desired policies implemented. Changing how Washington works is, at best, second place in importance compared to that. Voting for and cheering on someone who is going to do what you want him/her to do in office is the idea of democracy. But unless things actually do change be prepared for the other side eventually coming back and governing from their base.
You know what you call someone who declares failure after less than three months since Inauguration Day? Republican.
Yes, I do register Republican. It’s the party that most closely matches my views on issues I find important at the federal level, and thus the party whose primaries I want to influence. I don’t consider myself ideological, though. My views are not based on rigid premises that I hold to no matter what other information or arguments I encounter. Rigid ideology only leads to perceiving people with different ideas as ‘the other side.’ Instead of actually engaging them with an open mind, being ideological results in dismissing what ‘those people’ have to say without having to actually think about it.
Instead of dismissing what I said with a snarky comment, why don’t you show me where I’m wrong about Obama? Tell me why the Employee Free Choice Act is actually necessary and fair and not simply a naked attempt by the Democratic leadership to give their union supporters more power? Tell me why it’s not reasonable to think that Obama could have gotten congressional leaders to at least reduce the earmarks in the spending bill in the 4 months since the election. (He was a member of Congress. He had to know what was going on with the bill before his inauguration.)
I have some strong opinions, but not a closed mind. You’d have to earn it, but you could make me rethink my positions if you present me with verifiable facts I didn’t already know and/or make sound arguments using those facts.
I didn’t dismiss what you said because you’re a Republican. I dismissed what you said because it implied that Obama has already failed in doing what he was elected to do. He has tried for bipartisanship, but the GOP has simply dug in their heels, made fun of silly-sounding projects in earmarks (all the while requesting many of the same earmarks for their own consitutency), and simply closed off the notion that Obama could get them to meet him in the middle on anything. He made every attempt in that stimulus bill, even conceding a few points the Republicans pressed for, but they still voted nearly en-masse against the bill, subsequently making a snarky video called ‘Back in the Saddle Again’ to celebrate their “victory.” (And BTW, as has been the case too many times over the past two years, they did not acquire permission to even use that song, and Aerosmith asked them to take it off the video.)
Instead of rushing to declare him a fraud, how about you wait and see what effects his policies actually have on the national predicament, rather than making the assumption that they are misguided and doomed to fail?
Because the Employee Free Choice Act removes many barriers for workforces to unionize, free from bullying by their employers. And don’t spout off about the evil of unions – they help get higher wages, higher safety standards, and better overall conditions. It is quite the canard that raising wages is antithetical to a good capitalist. Henry Ford – someone I’d call quite successful – said:
“A good industrialist makes the best goods possible, paying the highest wages possible, and the lowest price possible.”
The main point of opposition between employees and unions is wages. The only reason Republicans are against the EFCA is because it would cut into employers’ profit margins if employees had an easier time unionizing – if they choose to do so. And no workforce is mandated to unionize under EFCA – it is a stricly voluntary action, and should be allowed to occur if the workforce desires it, free from intimidation or discouragement from employers.
This earmark bullshit is tired and invalid as a critique. When Republican senators take a strong enough stance to eliminate their requests for such earmarks, then, and only then, can they rail against them wholesale. The plain fact is that earmarks, when appropriated properly and judiciously, are beneficial and necessary. Picking earmarks that simply sound silly and deriding them, when there is a very good reason for the spending (i.e. beaver management to prevent unnecessary flooding and infrastructure destruction), is intellectually dishonest and counter-productive.
I don’t agree with a few of the things he has done since in office, but I am by no means ready to make a judgement on his performance based on an amount of time that equals one-sixteenth of his total term.
That certainly sounds like an important project. Which is why I would never pick it because it sounds silly and then deride it. You are assigning to me the tactics and hypocrisy of Republican politicians because I choose to register Republican. This is the “us vs. them” thinking I was talking about that stifles real discussion of issues and instead turns everything into a war of words.
My point, to be clearer, is that Obama talked quite a bit about reforming the earmark process. The problem with earmarks isn’t that they are all bad ideas. The problem is that the methods in which they are inserted into large bills prevents them from receiving real scrutiny and allows them to avoid being voted on independently. This allows ones that are “pork” to slip in with the things that deserve the money. These projects should be allowed to stand or fall on their own merits, with every congressman going on record as voting for or against them. If 8000 such votes is too much, then perhaps Congress can instead turn over the details of such projects to the states and give out block grants instead.
I wasn’t trying to imply that Obama has already failed at doing what he was elected to do, but I am arguing that he hasn’t yet succeeded. I felt the need to point this out and make these arguments due to the common thread running through PZ’s posts about Obama’s actions so far and in the comments to those posts: that a whole new era is in place now that Bush is out and Obama is in. (In in the interests of full disclosure, I voted against W. both times.) To me, this is only true in the sense that we now have someone left of center in the White House rather than someone well to the right. I have yet to see any actual changes to how politics is working.
I’d have more to say, but this is already making me later than I had wanted to be to school. As a teacher, not a student. ;)
This might actually mean something if our government weren’t the world’s biggest polluter…
@Raynfala, JasonTD:
The whole “earmark” thing is bogosity from start to finish. The Republicans are trying to claim that eliminating earmarks is reducing the size of government, but really what eliminating earmarks does is leave more discretionary spending for the executive. It doesn’t alter our tax burden or the deficit one iota. It’s all a big misdirection, getting you to look over here so you don’t notice the real crap they’re doing over there.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for saying this. Earmarks are simply a way of directing federal funds to specific projects; as long as it’s done honestly and transparently, that process is A Feature, Not a Bug™. I’m glad to hear someone pushing back on the ongoing demonization of this process, and of the earmark-funded projects that are vital, but that happen to have easily-mocked titles or summaries (“overhead projector,” anyone?).
BTW, something similar could be said about signing statements: W didn’t invent signing statements (they’ve been in use since James Monroe). What he did was vastly expand the use of signing statements, and pervert their intended purpose in service of his (and Rove’s and Cheney’s) notion of a unitary executive.
Obama’s use of a signing statement does not mean he’s “just like Bush,” because the devil is in the details. In his memo ordering a review of Bush signing statements, Obama clearly indicated not that he intended to abolish siging statements, but that he intended to use them in the more modest, careful way they were used in the pre-W era. Key quotes:
…and…
…and…
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I, for one, find this sort of thoughtful, nuanced weighing of responsibilities (as opposed to a knee-jerk rejection of a predecessor’s “evil” practices) extremely refreshing. Government by grownups, who talk to me like a grownup, is what I’ve beem missing lo, these last 8 years.
Shane Killian @ #88,
Federal funding is hardly some kind of zero sum game where cutting money in one place automatically makes it be spent somewhere else. Reducing earmarks would do nothing to give more discretionary spending to the executive. (Btw, the executive branch only has whatever discretion to spend money that the laws Congress writes allow.)
Bill Dauphin@89,
It is not just Republicans talking about reforming earmarks. Obama used that issue during the campaign himself. While it is repeating a point I had already made, I am not for eliminating earmarks. But I am for reforming the process. The honesty and transparency you mentioned is sorely lacking in the way things work now.
@JasonTD:
If the past several years have taught us one thing, it’s that the government–at least this incarnation of it–is exactly that. The government takes as much as they can in taxes, and “borrows” as much as they can, and spend it. Even in the case where they decide to give us scraps back in the form of a “stimulus check” or “tax refund,” those are actually paid for with more debt money.
But particularly in the case of earmarks, they DO NOT affect the total amount spent in that bill. The same total amount is spent; the earmarks just RESERVE some of those funds for specific projects. The remainder of the money allocated by the bill is discretionary spending.
In short, you could not be more wrong.
Honestly, WHAT THE HELL was Bush’s problem!??!? Who pissed in his cornflakes, seriously? (Cheney?) Was he actively TRYING to be the worst president in US history? Did Cheney make a bet that Bush couldn’t out-do Nixon? Must’ve.
Yea, I am sure you would had said the same about Reagan. Somehow I suspect that histoty will prove you wrong again. Get use to it.
Obama is a joke. Any idiot knows that you do not get out of debt by spending more money that he has ever done before. Let alone, spending more money than anyone in the world has ever spent in the world.
Forget about the dumb earmarks. We do not need any of it. Get out of debt and then, let’s talk about earmarks. It does not take a financial genious to understand this.
Posted by: JasonTD:
Look, you sound reasonable enough, so you should be able to see why the above statement is silly. Of course he hasn’t succeeded yet – he was inaugurated just over 50 days ago. You were expecting him to fulfill all his campaign promises in 50 days? The time for arguing that he hasn’t succeeded is at least three years into his term, if you’re talking about his agenda as a whole. If you want to discuss his individual successes on specific policies, that’s fine, but even then you need to wait at least a year from the date said policies are implemented.
Arguing that he hasn’t succeeded yet is both premature and disingenuous.
forcibly removed global warming from the list of extinction threats to the polar bear (despite scientific opinion that global warming is the bear’s chief extinction threat)
But…but…but…AAAAAAALLLLLL GOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRE!
“But we may go further than this; for as new forms are produced, unless we admit that specific forms can go on indefinitely increasing in number, many old forms must become extinct.”
That says that extinction is necessary for the number of forms not to increase indefinitely, not that it’s necessary for evolution to occur. Duh.
Darwin also said that without extinction we would see a continuous blur of species with no discernibly distinct species.
Darwin believed, wrongly, that traits blend.
It’s astounding how much misunderstanding of evolution there is in this thread.
I have yet to see any actual changes to how politics is working.
You’ll never see it through whatever stupidity-producing filters you have that make you a Republican.
Any idiot knows that you do not get out of debt by spending more money that he has ever done before.
Actually, people who aren’t idiots know that it’s common to borrow money for education, or to build facilities, and then pay it back with interest from the increased production capacity.
Federal funding is hardly some kind of zero sum game where cutting money in one place automatically makes it be spent somewhere else. Reducing earmarks would do nothing to give more discretionary spending to the executive.
What a mindbogglingly stupid statement. Do you have any idea what “zero sum” means? Reducing earmarks most certainly would result in more discretionary spending if the size of the budget isn’t reduced. If what you want is a smaller budget, them make the budget smaller; earmarks are a red herring. (They are also a minute part of this budget, making everything said about them disingenuous — but hey, dishonesty is a requirement for membership in the Republican Party.)
Tell me why it’s not reasonable to think that Obama could have gotten congressional leaders to at least reduce the earmarks in the spending bill in the 4 months since the election.
First, he hasn’t been in office for 4 months, you transparently dishonest jackass. Second, most earmarks come from Republicans, and most of the rest come from blue dog Democrats. What exactly was Obama supposed to do to “have gotten” these folks to act differently? Whatever it is, a reasonable person would take into account the fact that Obama has had a lot on his plate, most of which is far more important than the issue of earmarks — a point made during the election, when that innumerate buffoon McCain was repeatedly called on his grandiose claims about the elimination of earmarks and repeatedly failed to address them. (Hey, anyone remember how ACORN was going to destroy democracy? McCain is an immensely dishonest and intellectually inept person, exceeded only by Sarah Palin and those who voted for them.)
Tell me why the Employee Free Choice Act is actually necessary and fair and not simply a naked attempt by the Democratic leadership to give their union supporters more power?
Burden-shifting fuckwad. You certainly have all the prerequisites for being a Republican.
you could make me rethink my positions if you present me with verifiable facts I didn’t already know and/or make sound arguments using those facts.
Since that hasn’t happened in the past, there’s no reason to think it could happen in the future.
I think many people need to admit, at least to themselves, that the change they really wanted was to have someone on their ‘side’ in the White House so that they could see their desired policies implemented. Changing how Washington works is, at best, second place in importance compared to that.
Given the last eight years, it amounts to the same thing, cretin. I don’t know anyone who voted for Obama who wouldn’t readily “admit” that they wanted their desired policies implemented instead of the garbage that we got from the Republicans.
Am I the only one who thinks nothing’s sacred is truth machine?
Shane Killian @91,
Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding of earmarks. I think that one of the main reasons the issue has been controversial is that same misunderstanding – that earmarks are money spent on top of everything else. Knowing how it actually works does damp down my own dislike of them somewhat.
I still have concerns over the fairness of the process and its ability to withstand lobbying from special interests. In doing some searching over the issue since I read your response this morning, I found this article from a little over a year ago. Since private contractors are actually getting to money to complete many if not most of these projects, earmarking can, at the very least, create the appearance of a quid pro quo for campaign contributions. If earmarks were just a way for congressmen to represent the people of their district and get funding for worthy projects that bureaucrats in the executive departments wouldn’t recognize, then that would be fine. But as it stands, the process just feeds cynicism about powerful politicians scratching each others’ backs.
While earmarks may make up a relatively small percentage of the federal budget, but it’s still real money, so it’s still worth holding our politicians to a high standard.
brokensoldier@94,
Yeah, that wasn’t a very good way to phrase the point I was trying to make. I certainly don’t expect him to fix the economy, implement national health care, or other such things anytime soon, just because he made campaign promises. But there are some things that he should be at least starting to do from Day 1. One of those things were visible efforts to change the culture of Washington.
Obama’s efforts to be “bi-partisan” during the stimulus bill debate didn’t impress me. A lot of rhetoric aimed at the GOP was more along the lines of what a White House aide was quoted as saying, “It’s clear the Republicans who voted against the stimulus represent constituents who will be stunned to learn their member of Congress voted against [saving or] creating 4 million jobs.” The bill was written by congressional Democrats based on the broad outline he proposed. I’m not even sure what compromises were actually made that might have lured Republicans to vote for it. The tax cuts in the plan actually ended up being less than what Obama was promising during his campaign.
Regarding unions:
I’ve been a member of a union twice in my lifetime. When I was a grad student, I was a member of the GAU (Graduate Assistants Union), even though I live in a ‘right-to-work’ state that doesn’t require dues-paying membership to be covered by a bargaining contract. They did a good job of providing a contract that treated us fairly, so I was happy to pay dues to help them continue doing a good job. I was next a member of my district’s teacher union (still in the same state). They also did a good job in negotiating with the district for the best deal possible given budgetary realities.
However, my mother worked as a micro-electronic assembler for many years, and her union did nothing to help her when she developed carpal tunnel syndrome due to the poor ergonomic design of the wire bonding machine she used. I am not reflexively anti-union like most Republicans are. Some are good, some are not.
The problems I have with card-check are these: by doing away with secret ballots, both sides will know who supported the union and who didn’t. Any problems with the current process should be remedied in a way that preserves secret ballots. Also, there is no requirement that anyone be informed of the efforts to collect the cards. Employers could have the very existence of a union sprung on them with no notice, in principle. Secondly, the Act contains a provision that mandates arbitration of a binding contract if one isn’t agreed to in 120 days of the formation of a union. The threat of a strike is all of the leverage a union needs during negotiations if management is being unreasonable. But strikes are a last resort, since they hurt the workers too. This provision would allow a union to not have to strike or even threaten it to get concessions from management for that first contract, since they would automatically get a binding contract out of arbitration.
By the way, my point about the cards being collected in secret: Sometimes, it is not in the best interests of all or even a majority of workers to unionize. Some of the downsides to being unionized include: rigid job descriptions, limits on or lack of merit pay, and the supremacy of seniority for decision-making. One of the problems my mother encountered before she finally had to take disability and leave her job, was that despite her supervisors considering her to be the most knowledgeable and skilled at her position, she didn’t have seniority. So, they encountered resistance from the union when they wanted to have her become a trainer. And despite being more productive than anyone else, she never had any opportunities to earn more money.
Generally, when workers want unions, they are needed. But it should always be a free and informed choice. You’re right that they should be able to make that choice free from intimidation (by anyone, I might add to that). But as for being free from “discouragement” by employers, I think that if employers are the only ones that would give the employees the downsides to unionizing that I mentioned, then they need to be able to make their case. Also, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep up profit margins. That’s kind of the point of running a business. A business needs to remain competitive, and unions don’t always bow to the realities of an industry when they go to the company asking for increased wages and benefits.
nothing’s sacred,
Accusing me of a having a “stupidity-producing” filter for being Republican and calling me a “cretin”, “fuckwad”, and “jackass” doesn’t make you any less wrong on earmarks than I was. Most earmarks came from Republicans only when they were the majority party. The benefit of doing some reading and research after Shane pointed out my mistake was that I saw how it has been customary for quite some time that Congress follows a 60-40 ‘rule’ for earmarks. The majority party gets to allocate 60% of the total going toward earmarks, while the minority party gets 40%. Oh, and yes, I know that Obama hasn’t been in office for 4 months yet. Reread my #84 comment and perhaps you’ll understand why I said 4 months.
Tell me how this even makes sense as a question.
Accusing me of a having a “stupidity-producing” filter for being Republican and calling me a “cretin”, “fuckwad”, and “jackass” doesn’t make you any less wrong on earmarks than I was.
It doesn’t make me the Queen of England either, but then I never claimed it did, dipshit. Whether I’m wrong or not, you’re still all of those things. You might have made a play for being slightly less guilty if you had simply answered the question of what you think Obama should have done, precisely, to change the behavior of … well, Republicans:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/realclearpolitics/republican_earmarks_pork
It’s obvious it was a mistake to respond to you at all, but here goes. If Republicans get 40% of the total earmarks, then the Democrat’s leadership (under pressure from Obama, if he chose to exert any) could limit Republican earmarks by limiting the total. 40% of zero is zero. Do you think that perhaps Republicans won’t give up earmarks unilaterally? That would put them at a disadvantage during campaign time.
Oh, I see. The justification for all of the name calling is that I’m a Republican and not anything else I’ve said. Gotcha.
Interesting idea, SCOM.
I guess this is the way to earn two OMs.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure. It’s a characteristic style.
Like any democratic organizations, they are what the people in them make of them.
Good. It’s not up to them to interfere with workers’ decisions.
This reflects a basic understanding of what unions are. Those are not inherent downsides to unionizing. The bureaucratic “service” model of unions that emerged in the US during the Cold War has long been on its way out. Unions are democratic organizations in which people can participate in making decisions about the wages and working conditions they want, but they still have to fight for them. Make no mistake, though: Unions, with all of their faults, are the only place where people can do so democratically and with any chance of real effectiveness. They are absolutely necessary, and workers recognize this. That’s why the proportion of people who want to join unions is large and rising.
Corporations are in fact required by law to put the botton line above all other considerations. That is why we need organizations and structures both within and outside businesses to protect workers, communities, the environment, etc. Unions are an essential one of these.
yep, that’s the Machine all right.
SC,
You make some good points on the principles of what good unions do, but only one point is in defense of the EFCA:
This is a good point, but I would submit that a company giving workers its perspective on how a union would affect them and the business as a whole (which affects them too) is not ‘interference’.
One of my main points is that ‘card check’ reduces the democratic nature of the process. Proponents argue that it reduces the ability of companies to intimidate workers to vote against a union. Maybe that’s so, but there are already laws in place that are supposed to do that. Also, card check would certainly make it easier for union organizers to apply their own peer-pressure. The secret nature of the ballot process is pretty fundamental to democracy, so that everyone can vote according to their own opinions and conscience. I am very skeptical of anything that would circumvent that.
It depends on the type of job. Some employees have little power on their own to negotiate salaries and working conditions, but others have plenty of power to do so. Ultimately, every employee has the power over their employer to ‘vote’ on their salary and conditions with their feet as they walk to a competitor. That carries a lot of risk for the employee. This is why generally lower-paid positions with workers that are less educated and have fewer options are typically the ones that unionize.
Corporations are owned by their stockholders. They put up the money, and thus the risk, to create the corporation. That is why their interests are the top priority. But you are right that there need to be limits to prevent corporations from acting against the best interests of the larger society. (Especially on things like environmental issues. I don’t know if there are any Republican politicians at all that share my views on the environment.) Unions, too, have their place in providing limits. But just like a company owes its allegiance to its investors above all others, unions owe theirs to the workers above all others. So the question is one of balance. With the right balance between unions and companies everyone wins. I am just arguing that the EFCA pushes the balance too far in the unions’ favor.