Actually it was Jesse Unruh, California House Speaker in the 60’s, but the description is universal.
I think the underlying criticism of Barton isn’t so much that he is bought and paid for by BP (or that teh Republicans are bought and paid for by BP), I don’t believe that for a minute. My criticism of Barton (and the Republican party) is that they will do and say anything to criticize Obama. They are so convinced that teh Country is better off with the Republicans in power that they are (at least for the time being) republicans first and Americans second.
How do these entrepreneurs expect to profit?
I think there are a lot of people who have read everything from “road to serfdom” to atlas shrugged and still think libertarianism is unworkable. Whatever system we have now at least it has proven itself to work in the past, libertarian principles have never worked in the real world, they never will because it is too much like communism in that it requires a world full of true believers.
On whose dime?
Actually, I am finding it fairly easy to pigeonhole you. Oh, you maverick you.
These funds used to enjoy quite a bit of support from the tort reform crowd (after all why let lawyers extract 33% of the award for open and shut cases). The problem is that Obama is stealing some of their best ideas without attribution, its theft of political intellectual property.
Oh so you heard about Alvin Greene too?
Its not an American affliction, its a “we don’t want to give Obama credit for anything” affliction.
That was one of Clinton’s major sins, as well, although, like with Obama, their hatred of him predated the idea-sniping.
You have to assume a lot of things to reach the conclusion that anything illegal happened and you have to start making stuff up to reach unconstitutional.
You do realize that the goverment is not administering this trust fund don’t you?
Did you miss the aprt about giving obama credit?
Its pretty public to be extortion but since you claim its extortion I assume you have some link where BP talks about how they were extorted. Right?
Have you heard of alternative dispute resolution and the 9/11 fund?
Yeah so isn’t it nice we can take claims administration off of BP’s plate?
Do you have any diea how long it took to resolve teh claims from Exxon Valdez? Do you know how many palintffs were involved in taht case? Do you know how many we are likley to have in this case?
Worse actually. Communism would just have required people to act like ants instead of people in order to work as advertised. Libertarianism not only requires a world of true believers, it requires those true believers to be superhuman; for each of them to be able to duplicate the job of multiple government agencies all by themselves.
Are you under the impression that the free market always operates to the benefit of society? Or do you even think it matters that the free market be harnessed to benefit society?
I dunno, what if someone wants to concrete mix into the gulf and just pave it over, oil problem solved.
It not freedom they don’t trust.
Have you heard about the melamine in the milk in China…and the penalty for doing this wasn’t just losing customers it was the death penalty in two cases… and they still did it. Its not to say that all businessmen are murderers and thieves (my family are almost all entrepreneurs) but having responsible rational regulations in place prevents a lot of bad outcomes while preventing a few good ones.
No you’re wrong. Most entrepreneurs really just want to make money and tehre is nothing wrong with that, there is no reason to lionize them.
Do you know how far we are from grid parity? Do you know how far we were from grid parity before we subsidized solar and wind technology? the “free market” does not generally recognize a long enough time horizon to invest in the basic research that is necessary to close that sort of gap. The reason oil is so powerful is because oil is a very portable and has a high BTU::weight ratio. Nothing else really comes close otherwise we would be using THAT to fuel our cars. Coal has a very low direct cost/BTU (similar to nuclear but with much lower startup investment and much higher externalities). The free market is not going to naturally fix the energy problem until the energy problem gets a LOT worse (think $10+/gallon gasoline, Europe already has gasoline in that range for a while now and noone has come up with a better alternative).
Of course they are the free markets, you are engaging in true scottsman type stuff.
Cite please.
I am pretty sure taht this is a mischaracterization.
But whatever it was it was illegal and unconstitutional?
Short of Obama’s ability to pardon people, he is not supposed to have very much influence in who gets indicted, I know a LOT of people at DOJ and they take their independence seriously (especially since the whole thing with how Bush improperly tried to influence DOJ).
wait, you are guessing that they threatened but its clear that they did somethign illegal?
The federal government doesn’t have squat. Its not part of the revenue, its not part of the budget. It is adminsitered independently and by people who have done this sort of thing before.
Of course. Participation in the fund is not going to be mandatory, it is not an exclusive remedy.
Where did you get this nonsense from? You ever hear of alternative dispute resolution?
Well with the internet and all we can use things like chatboard and ebay feedback scores to figure out which unlicensed doctor to use and which uninspected baby food to use. Of course it might be hard for doctors and baby food companies that have not developed a reputation yet but… ooh look shiny.
Hmmmm.
I see it’s been more than 24 hours since jrodefeld posted; I was still kind of hoping he’d try and reply to the questions I asked him in post #69.
He needs to get his talking points from Rush Limbaugh first.