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.
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“Useful idiots” – Lenin used that for people who actually seemed to pave the way in the West for a Bolshevik takeover. These seem to be rather useless idiots.
BTW: The “Occupy Wall St.” farce is slowly becoming a story in the media here in Germany. However, if you were to compare the OCW to the Tea Party over here, you would cause a hissy fit across the board – because according to the German MSM, OCW represents all that is noble, fine, etc. about America (civil rights, Woodstock, etc., ad nauseam), while the Tea Party is painted in the blackest colors possible – rednecks, idiots, “white trash” (they have actually used that expression on occasion). And unfortunately Germans have a tendency to believe EVERYTHING the MSM feed them.
(P.S. I’m rather of a mind to quote Blade at 12:51 at length in the office. I love to give them hissy fits.)
Dave Springer writes, “Reasonable intelligent people don’t have a history of serious drug abuse, incarceration, and institutionalization for mental problems. Those are things that reasonable intelligent people manage to avoid.”
Consider the likes of Jim Hansen,
oh wait…
There’s a name for people like this: useful idiots.
No, you should have written it thusly:
There’s a name for people like this: idiots.
I’m not seeing much of anything useful about them.
The 2008 financial crisis and the Bush/Obama recession are both direct results of government. The Clinton Justice Department threatened to sue lenders who didn’t give mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them. Fannie and Freddie told the banks not to worry, so the loans would be guaranteed by the federal government. The Federal Reserve made it easy and cheap to borrow money. All this was done with Congressional oversight.
The 2008 banking crisis would not have happened without these policies.
R. Gates: Holy Cow! I can not believe I actual agree with one of your posts. Very insightful. Green Vampire indeed!
When talking with my wife’s younger siblings and cousins (20ish years old) these attitudes are the norm. They have no concept of reality (working to earn money to buy what they want), but rage about how unfair everything is. After complaining about how Royal Dutch Shell is giving everyone in Kenya cancer, they say how they don’t want a used car, they want a nice shiny new fast car. HELLO! Do these people even listen to themselves? I do not think they are self aware. I would like to know what these people’s parents all did to make them so messed up so that I can avoid that with my kids.
DTarris says:
I would hope that as the objectives of the protesters are refined, so will the message.
Then doesn’t it bother you a little, DT, that they’re obviously still stuck on working to repeat dumb ass slogans, such as “We are the 99” and learning to say “Yes” and “No” according to prompt?
Get over it DT, it’s a mob, and you know it. That’s its “message”: beware, “I am Legion”, “the incohate 99%”, the wilding Id’s destructor of itself and all in its path.
Your mob is the pre-Enlightenment Evolutionary Throwback or Dead End, Communism’s all purpose tool as well as the manifestation of its own empty, greedy, parasitic soul.
Here’s a simple message which you and your mob not only will never learn, but to which you will continue to automatically react as though Vampires to Holy Water: Communism never works!
Is it really any surprise by now, DT, that Communism produces the same State of Affairs it claims to oppose, The Master-Slave Society?
Indeed, just how did Communism ever expect to escape its own “History is Class Warfare” physical mechanism or law, especially when it and your mob are only talking about themselves to themselves via their completely internally confabulated self-serving Stereotypes!
DT, you only hope that Joni Michell’s “star maker machinery” shows up to save your mob’s “face”. But it’s too late and not possible for that to happen anyway. Susan Sarandon tried, and the mob rejected her. The arch Capitalist Michael Moore, the “1%”, will again only make money off you and try to parasatise what’s left of your self for his own self’s aggrandizement. The Democrats will only make you useful idiots or set you up in their perfected Inner City Ghettos.
Short story, DT, instead of blaming everyone else, you need to save your own damn soul.
It’s the Double Latte’ party!
‘Mega Fail’
-Total classic!
sok-bournemouth, UK
So who are those greedy 1%-ers? Here are a few: Tina Fey, Bill Mahrer, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Steve Jobs (heirs), John Kerry, John McCain, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, the Kochs, JK Rowling, A-Rod, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning, Susan Saradon, Tom Cruise, Paul Krugman, Larry Fink, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, Larry Ellison, Nancy Pelosi, Mitt Romney, Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, and Meg Whitman.
Well, they put the fear of God in me. Particularly Tina Fey. It’s a hard woman behind all those jokes.
For all of you who keep saying “Keep to the climate change issue”, you obviously have not been around here for very long. This is not a climate change blog. Read the caption at the top of your screen
“Commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news by Anthony Watts”
This blog has lots of climate change stuff, but other stuff as well. The first post I read on here was complaining about a Windows feature (dont’ remember what it was). I found this blog by google-ing a Windows issue…
Ah, and I forgot Brad Pitt, Angela Jolie, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, anybody working for Renaissance Capital (except the secretary, who is burdened by high taxes), David Letterman, Jay Leno, that Fallon guy, the late-night-seems-like-he’s-always-drunk-Irish guy. (Is he Irish?).
Well, I don’t know what to say, other than that comedy is clearly a lucrative profession.
In fact, I do know what to say. I hereby challenge Jon Stewart to a “Greedy-Off”. Each of us will give a name of a Greedy 1%-er from the other side of the political divide, one following another, to see who runs out of greedy people first. I will bet the conservatives in fact have fewer greedy people, and I’m willing to duke it out with Jon blow for blow, greedy person for greedy person, until I prove–without a shadow of a doubt–that there are more greedy left wing people than greedy right wing people. Yes, that is my challenge.
Instead of separation of corporations and government (fascism), or separation of church and government, most countries seem to have a separation of the people and government.
It seems to be popular thought on this blog that it’s the fault of the people if they aren’t able to be successful. I would say that it’s a fault of the people that our governments, which are supposed to be representative of the people, have been ignoring the wishes of their employers (the people).
Even in Canada, “we the people” should still prevail, yet it doesn’t. It would seem that government needs to be taken back under the control of the people (yes, if indeed it ever has been), but it needs to be a people who actually know what it takes to run a government. At that point, we can stop blaming the “government” for all the problems, or at least realize that we’re blaming ourselves…
I like to deal with the facts, as some others on this blog claim. The fact is, according to everything that I’ve researched, there is not enough money created when loans occur to pay back both principal and interest – case closed. There’s no amount of hard work that can overcome that basic fact. I do not dispute that creating things, manufacturing, etc is required, real wealth other than just pulling resources from the earth must be created.
How many on this blog have read “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization”? It’s one of many books published that cover the topic of money creation.
If government is to blame, solely according to some, then what is the answer. I’m seeing much complaining here, but I’m missing the solutions being proposed. Please enlighten me, but with facts. I believe the ship is going down, at least for everyone below the bridge, so we need to be getting to at least some attempts to solve whatever problems are perceived…
Or maybe this is just a place to bitch.?
People will always gravitate to where the money is be it Wall St. or the Californian Gold fields. It simply struck me that faced with a choice between Wall St. swindlers and the green movement the swindlers get my vote. An epic failure for “green” if you ask me.
Divide et impera.
Sean Hill says: @ur momisugly October 9, 2011 at 5:13 pm
…..There are some corporations which play fairly, don’t partake in anti-competitive practices,…..”
__________________________________
I agree.
According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses in the USA (under 500 employees) Employ over half of the labor, created more than half of the GNP, generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years. Produce 13 times more patents per employee and are twice as likely to be among the one percent most cited. http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7495/8420
Yet despite anti-monopoly laws, we have seen in recent years a major drive towards monopoly and vertical integration. Also thanks to the corporate raiders leveraged buyouts in the 1980’s we saw many well run, wealthy corporations with no outstanding debt ripped apart and sold because the “Physical Assets” were worth more than the company as a whole. Even if the company did survive it ended up with the wealth of the company transfered to the raider and the corporation left with a staggering financial burden due to the “leveraging”
It is interesting to note that this was also the time when when mutual fund investment hit record highs and investors saw incredible returns.( No doubt thanks to all that corporate raiding) The catch in mutual funds is that the fund directors, and not the owners of the stock do the actual voting of the stock. Section 401(k) of the tax code was also enacted in 1981 and the money is usually placed in a mutual fund.
On January 29, 1989 the New York Times published this. It would seem they got this perdiction correct.
” The 1980’s also saw a wave of giant leveraged buyouts. Mergers, acquisitions and L.B.O.’s, which had accounted for less than 5 percent of the profits of Wall Street brokerage houses in 1978, ballooned into an estimated 50 percent of profits by 1988… THROUGH ALL THIS, THE HISTORIC RELATIONSHIP between product and paper has been turned upside down. Investment bankers no longer think of themselves as working for the corporations with which they do business. These days, corporations seem to exist for the investment bankers…. In fact, investment banks are replacing the publicly held industrial corporations as the largest and most powerful economic institutions in America…. THERE ARE SIGNS THAT A VICIOUS spiral has begun, as each corporate player seeks to improve its standard of living at the expense of another’s.
Corporate raiders transfer to themselves, and other shareholders, part of the income of employees by forcing the latter to agree to lower wages.” http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/magazine/leveraged-buyouts-american-pays-the-price.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Eating the Seed Corn comes to mind. It is why I focus more on the bankers and their lending of fiat currency instead of real wealth although I despise the predatory multi-nationals too.
Blade says:
“Tea Party (actually TEA Party), Taxed Enough Already, are all about fiscal responsibility, limited government and Constitutionalism. This is as pro-American as you can possibly get.”
_____
Sounds nice on paper, but far from the reality of what goes on in Washington D.C., and in most of the State governments as well. It takes millions to get elected, and that money doesn’t come without strings attached. As the TEA party prattles on about “limited Government”, the Corporations who call the shots only smile knowing that means even less money they’ll have to spend either fighting, writing, or avoiding laws when necessary (they call it finding loopholes). It takes a lot of money to get their men and women elected to office, and even more to pay the lobbyists to write the laws. Limited Government will only reduce these overhead expenditures for the corporations who run our government. Why doesn’t the TEA party loudly endorse campaign finance reform or term limitations? Until the umbical cord between big money and our nations lawmakers is severed, the call for Constitutionalism is just an empty platitude as we continue on living in a Plutocracy.
Abraham Linclon summed it up nicely, as even back then he saw it coming. He wrote:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
— U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
So yes Blade, the basic notions of the TEA Party are wonderful, but until they recognize that Big Government and Big Business are now one and the same, the TEA Party ideals are simply empty platitudes.
If anyone doubted the variety of political opinions of the people who read this blog, I think they have ample proof. And thru that the fact that skepticism lives exclusively in no political box, no matter what either side would like to proclaim to reassure themselves of their own superiority.
What part of limited government do you not understand? You can’t have corporatism with limited government. Only government can force mandates upon the public, require you to buy something or limit competition through regulation.
Starbucks can’t make you buy it’s coffee, GE can’t force us to subsidize windmills, ADM can’t pass ethanol subsidies and put tariffs on ethanol imports. Only government can do those things.
Gates, you make it too easy.
The Tea Party [which I am not affiliated with in any way] was founded as a reaction against profligate, wasted, unnecessary spending. I’m with them on that. Where are those ‘shovel ready’ jobs? Where are the new bridges, the military purchases, the filled city potholes? $Trillions wasted and almost nothing to show for it. And now we have to pay it back.
And your Lincoln quote shows that Abe’s worries were groundless after a century and a half. Public employee unions are a MUCH greater threat to the country than profit making companies. And you know what? Companies are not breaking the law [with very few exceptions], or they would be sued and their officers jailed.
If you believe companies are profiting too much, why don’t you just buy their shares? That makes you an owner. Then you can be one of the fat cats, too.
[snip – we aren’t going to discuss that ugly off topic issue, even with /sarc – Anthony]
Part and parcel Anthony, Part and parcel, and directly relevant to Smokey’s contention that they couldn’t have done anything wrong or they would be in jail!
I was in Beijing 15 years ago and I recall the valedictorian of a large Beijing high school discussing the Cultural Revolution’s impact on her parents- a physicist and a mathematics teacher. Her parents lived though the reeducation camps and hard labor in the countryside.
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=68&catid=2&subcatid=6
“Cost of the Cultural Revolution
“The Cultural Revolution was a horrible period in Chinese history. Intellectuals were paraded through streets with dunce caps; Muslims were forced to slaughter pigs; and Tibetan monks were taken from their monasteries and put to work in labor camps. Confucius statues that stood for centuries were labeled as decadent and torn down; priceless Ming vases were shattered; and thousand-year-old Buddhist murals were vandalized beyond repair. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, the People’s Daily ran the headline: “There is Chaos Under Heaven—the Situation Is Excellent.” ”
Schools were closed; houses were invaded; work places became battlegrounds; mini-civil wars broke out throughout the country; and people were turned into the police by their friends, and tortured and killed for reading books in English. Entire families were massacred for being from “bad class” backgrounds.
The violence and chaos drove neighbor against neighbor, destroyed the economy, drove the country to the brink of famine and forced a generation of intellectual to work in the countryside. Nearly every Chinese city dweller today who was alive then knows of a friend or relative that have was beaten, harassed or driven to suicide during the Cultural Revolution. In Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution inspired the Khmer Rouge.
No one knows exactly how many died, but estimates range from hundreds of thousands to 20 million. Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party chief, was quoting as saying that 1 million people died, but his figure apparently excluded deaths that resulted from fighting between Red Guard factions, which most scholars believed resulted in an additional one million deaths. Most of those who died during the Cultural Revolution died from fighting among Red Guard factions and violence caused by the collapse of government and the absence of police authority.”
Here in the USA our form of government doesn’t lend itself to the type of behavior noted above. It does seem to be a good time to reflect on the rights that our constitution and bill of rights provide us from tyranny.
RE: R. Gates says: (October 9, 2011 at 9:14 pm)
“2) Term limitations (2 term maximum, so that we don’t get “career” politicians)”
Imagine how things would be if the politicians decided, as long as this applies to them, why not make it a general rule: Require that everyone has to get a new job and a new employer every eight years. There would be similar pros and cons. Of course, this would not be constitutional at this time, but with a careful, complicated choice of words in the term-limit amendment . . .
Smokey says:
October 10, 2011 at 11:59 am
….Public employee unions are a MUCH greater threat to the country than profit making companies. And you know what? Companies are not breaking the law [with very few exceptions], or they would be sued and their officers jailed…..
_________________________________________________
I agree that the Public employee unions are a major problem. But Companies ARE breaking the law and the US government is HELPING them in an effort to set up the “Problem, Reaction, Solution” scenario.
For example, HACCP was introduced in 1996 removing government food inspectors from the plant floor and allowed food-borne illness to over double in the USA. (Many government testing labs were closed and sample reduced by 90%)
I spent the last few years uncovering and tracking this info and someone was nice enough to put it in a pdf called Shielding the Giant. http://www.whistleblower.org/storage/documents/Shielding_the_Giant_Final_PDF.pdf
The worst part is the media covered the real source of the problem (HACCP) up too and help deflect the blame onto farmers. Now we have a new law that is guaranteed to wipe out a lot of independent farmers AND transfer the liability for contaminated food from the corporate giants to the farmer of their choice. The USDA set up the computers for tracking in Canada and therefore immune to FOI or subpoena.
Wisconsin is the first state to make Animal ID mandatory.
Paul-Martin:Griepentrog on September 3, 2008 reported that the transfer of liability was indeed the case. He attended “quality assurance training required for Badger Vac 45.” And reported “You [the farmer] will be required to cover ALL expenses in the event of contamination…The bottom line is that after 10 years [note the date] of below normal prices here in Wis. because the state allowed Equity Livestock Coop to create a monopoly, our savior has now arrived to burden us with contracts shifting all liability to feeder cattle producers if they can’t prove they are innocent. “ http://nonais.org/2008/09/01/bulletin-board-200809/#comment-1395096
There was even a conference scheduled in 2009 addressing how to pass the blame.
Conference to address food-borne illness litigation
“The conference will cover topics such as aligning damage assessments/expectations with the outcomes from recent resolved litigation; managing an outbreak effectively to minimize shareholder and reputational risk afterwards as quickly as possible; and how to measure and prove actual control of various players in the movement of contaminated food to accurately assess apportionment of liability.
This is a classic example of the Corporate-Government collusion to drive out competitors and set up a oligopoly. Farmers already face a monopsony (one buyer)
Corporations are fine as long as we have competition and not Corporate-Government collusion.