It seems that climate advocate Bill McKibben has jumped the shark. As evident on the 350.org website, it is no longer about climate in any way shape or form, of course, based on past behavior, it probably never was. Just have a look at some of the recent pronouncements from the 350.org website:
and from two days ago…
Listen to what McKibben and some of his fellow protestors have to say:
But even our own Willis Eschenbach thinks the XL pipeline issue is ridiculous, because there is really only one question: Where will the oil be burned?
I think this image sums up this farce pretty well:
I wonder what corporate airline Bill McKibben uses to jet around the world to speak of the evils of CO2 and corporations?
The only thing missing from the picture (though it is likely in there somewhere) is Apple Corporation, purveyor of (in my opinion, highly overpriced) computers which have an almost fanatical following in some circles.Now before you launch into an automatic Mac-vs-PC war, please read why I’m pointing this out.
Apple is company number one (according to Bloomberg) in growth and revenue, and #1 in tech (according to NYT) but the same people who complain about Wall Street, think nothing of getting fleeced by Apple for a computer you can buy for about a third of the price elsewhere.
While everyone is free to choose what computer works best for them, I find that lack of labeling of Apple as a “greedy corporation” very ironic, particularly in light of the worker abuse, child labor problems and environmental problems left in the wake of the manufacturing of Apple’s products in China. It is doubly ironic that some of the loudest and most acidic voices about climate and greed, are Apple product users, and raise not a peep about such problems. Apple gets a pass, probably because the Goreacle endorses the company and sits on its board.
But that’s a side issue, especially when one of the most intelligent and reasonable persons I know, WUWT author Willis Eschenbach, is a Mac user. I only point out Apple Corporation in this context because the occupy protesters and climate activists don’t see the very profitable and ethically/ecologically questionable Apple Corporation as being in the same class of evil corporations they protest for the very same reasons.
The real issue with “occupy” is the lack of rational thought and direction by this “movement”. Even the MSM and some university newspapers are noticing this. For example, watch this video from “occupyAtlanta”. They are actually proud of making a civil rights leader leave.
And in case you were wondering about the political angle, be sure to recite the Marxist chant:
The mindless droning has spread to Seattle:
They may as well be chanting Imhotep Imhotep! Imhotep!!
There’s a name for people like this: useful idiots.
No one should overlook the fact that most of these people have an evenly balanced view on life:
A chip on each shoulder.
One of spite and one of envy.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA?rel=0&w=420&h=315%5D
Say’s a lot about modern greenery that I would rather support the thieving, swindling banksters.
Poverty explained [sorry about the buffering].
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The kernel of truth in McKibben’s quote is that corporations are “occupying the offices of our government, and the cloakrooms of our legislators” and are rewarded with “more loophole and tax breaks and subsidies and contracts”.
This is substantially true, but is surely the effect of too much government action, not too little.
The more a government regulates business, and the more public money it disburses, the more energy and resources large corporations will invest into lobbying, and the more wealth will flow to those with an inside track to those in power.
The whole CAGW ramp is contructed out of such regulations, subsidies and contracts.
The OWS crowd should rather be campaigning for smaller government.
This is why scientists should stick with science and not creating public policy.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/08/somebody-had-to-say-it/
I would have somewhat less contempt for you if you guys didn’t claim to be representing the majority of Americans. Do you really believe you represent 99% of us? If you do, you need to expand your social circle.
It’s an effect of our insane corporate tax laws. One quick test to see how well people understand the economy ask – Do corporations (any business, really) really pay taxes? Or do they merely collect taxes from their customers?
The only reason GE paid no taxes last year was because they carried forward a huge loss from the year before.
Income averaging, something that many people with highly variable incomes do as well.
Torgeir Hansson says:
October 9, 2011 at 1:58 pm
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So the solution to the problem of politics, is to make sure that only people you agree with are allowed to be heard?
As long as corporations have to pay federal taxes and abide by federal regulations, they have as much right to try and influence the political process as does anyone else.
The problem is not that the wrong people have influence, it’s that the govt tries to do too much.
As PJ O’Rouke once wrote, “When govt controls buying and selling, the first thing bought and sold will be politicians.”
I think many folks in the US are suffering from Protest Envy Syndrome. They’re protesting in Egypt, protesting in Libya, protesting in Syria, protesting in Greece, etc. etc. “Why are we protesting? Because we can’t allow a Protest Gap.” /sarc
3×2 says:
October 10, 2011 at 3:13 am
Say’s a lot about modern greenery that I would rather support the thieving, swindling banksters.
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But the greens are just puppets of the ” thieving, swindling banksters.”
Did you forget the “Danish text” at Hopenhagen, a draft that hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank? (When the draft was leaked it trashed the meeting.)
Or that more than 22,000 people in Uganda were evicted, and one boy burned to death, to make way for New Forests Company’s carbon offset eucalyptus plantations. A company where Al Gore is president and the World Bank, and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC are investors?
Or that UK’s Ex Prime Minister Tony Blair is now a “Consultant” to JP Morgan?
This may be the crux of it (addressing the Occupados and a cadre of persistent ‘NWO conspiracy believers’); a critical lack of education on matters financial and political …
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Blade says on October 10, 2011 at 12:51 am …
Well laid out, Blade; sharp, cutting, through to the bone. I see now why they call you Blade.
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David says:
October 9, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Corporations are people. If you want to complain about the collusion of govt and corporations, go ahead. But recognize that the nexus of this cooperation is the fact that govt controls everything in this country. The result of this is that corporations, out of self defense have to spend money to influence govt. If you want to get rid of this problem, the only method that will work is to reduce the power of govt to the point where govt influence is no longer worth buying. If you think that locking everyone who you disagree with out of the political process will solve the problem, you are wrong. That will only make the problem worlse.
Mods, permit perhaps one last post by me on this note and I will then desist further …
There is something I have always wanted to ask the conspiratorial-inclined, out in public and before all the world to see. The question goes like this:
Who ‘approved’ of the Matt Drudges, the Bill Gates, the Steve Jobs (RIP), the Michael Dells, the Bill Hewlett and Dave Packards, the Warren Buffets (and even the Rockefellers who moved to North America in 1723) of the world to gain wealth and using your logos, ‘control of our government’ (as they are, by def ‘rich and powerful’)?
And please, no mindless populist pablum about ‘the Rockefellers this …’ ad nauseum.
Follow up question: If they could do it, why can’t you? You ‘seem’ possibly what might be termed ‘bright’, not entirely uninformed, yet, perhaps ‘poor as a church-mouse’ and sore about it judging from the grousing …
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Sean Hill says:
October 9, 2011 at 5:01 pm
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If there are 6 independant news media, plus thousands of radio stations, plus tens of thousands of independant blogs, the collusion on the part of the media is impossible.
Does all corruption come from govt? Of course not. The problem is that govt is the only agency that can prevent it’s customers from patronizing another server. If I get po’d at CNN, I can watch Fox, or vice versa. If I get po’d at D.C, can I patronize another govt? Not without getting charged with treason.
Sun Spot says:
October 9, 2011 at 5:02 pm
1% does not control 90% of the wealth, nowhere close. It’s closer to 20%. Even if it did. So what? As long as they don’t use force or fraud to accumulate their wealth, how much money they have is nobody’s business.
“The beef is with companies who work the system to their favor through lobbying efforts, government subsidies and handouts, manipulation of the legal (especially patent) system.”
Why not blame govt for handing out other people’s money or for passing regulations that benefit one company to the exclusion of others?
Why is it always the fault of the corporations, and them alone?
The problem is that we allowed govt to have to much power, and those in govt office then sell that power to make themselves rich.
“No, my solution is to strengthen and enforce rules that have been in place and make licensing more accessible.”
Why is it, that for so many on the left, the answer to every problem, is to give more power to govt?
As you admit, the rules we have don’t work. What makes you believe that adding another layer of rules, on top of the rules that failed, this time, will finally work?
As Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, expecting different results.”
“Time to grow up, there’s more to life than money and a job.”
In my experience, most of the people who say things like this, have neither.
“partly due to the fact that a heaping of fat and sugar mixed with wood pulp is now more affordable than buying and cooking real food.”
Like most everything else that you believe, this too is a lie.
The truth is that processed foods cost a lot more than do unprocessed or raw foods.
Haven’t the time to get through this fascinating thread at the moment, but a word on Apple:
I’ve been a steadfast Mac user since 1987. We had an IBM PC-XT in the office where I worked; I could not for the life of me fathom what was going on in the thing, which had to be accessed with arcane white-letter commands on a green screen.
Then in 1987 a new employee insisted on a Macintosh SE. She knew a ‘Mac designer’ who could do layouts and typography on the screen, without pasteboards and Linotronic typesetters. Even a used SE at that time was quite expensive, but we got one, with a 20 MB hard drive. It was a revelation to me; the Graphical User Interface opened the door to the computer with the GUI’s desktop metaphor, on which one could see the various drives and their hierarchical contents. I never looked back.
Yes Apple has always built in high profit margins to their products, and yes you have been able to do pretty much the same things on PCs since Windows 95 (a direct steal of the Mac’s System 7). But to me, as to many others, the high production standards that the late, lamented Steve Jobs insisted on, the uncompromising unity of form and function, made the Macintosh my first choice.
I agree with Anthony that the anti-business, inchoate Marxists of the current demonstrations are laughably hypocritical as they parade with their Macs, iPhones, iPads, and similar devices made by Samsung, Motorola, Toshiba, etc., etc. Do they imagine that the Soviet-like state they would get if we abolished capitalism would bother providing them with such toys? Methinks none of them have thought even that far ahead, if any are even capable of thought. ‘Useful idiots’ always leave the thinking to others.
/Mr Lynn
James Sexton says:
October 9, 2011 at 11:30 pm
R. Gates says:
October 9, 2011 at 11:09 pm
James Sexton says:
October 9, 2011 at 10:30 pm
And guess what, no matter what that inflated body of overly self-important and corporately controlled individuals says (aka The Supreme Court), Corporations are not people.
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Agreed
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James,
“Corporations are not people” is potentially very misleading.
Of the 27.5 million corporations in America, just over 6 million have a payroll. The rest are “people” who are using the “corporation” as a legal entity – partially for tax reasons (dividends and capital gains are taxed at lower rates than income) and partially for legal reasons (limited personal liability). Many of the self-employed are in fact corporations.
Further, of the 6 million employer firms (corporations running a payroll), 4.6 million of them employ fewer than 10 people. The vast majority of these corporations have less than $500,000 in annual revenue. So in many respects corporations are in fact people.
Take this into consideration when you are asking for changes to corporate tax rates, for example. A move to a flat tax and away from lower taxes through dividend and capital gains will hurt many more people than just the fat cats R. Gates is singling out.
In Canada we give preferential tax treatment to small companies based on their taxable income. I believe the limit is $450,000 in taxable income before the rate increases (I think from 16% to 18% and it increases a few more times as taxable income goes up to a maximum 22%, although thanks to Stephen Harper the rate is dropping every year).
Many of these small corporations are start-up ventures or family operations trying to grow a business.
Isn’t there a parable about the brain being jealous of the heart so it commands the lungs to stop sending the heart oxygen? Try taking the money supply out of America and see what happens.