Oil is the lifeblood of our civilization. He better damn well care about it.
Don’t you understand the problem with that? Alternative fuels aren’t just a dream; technologies like fuel cells are already becoming practical. GM and Honda were just talking the other day about how they want to take fuel cells beyond the car prototypes and into the home. We have fuel cell laptops that will be available for purchase early next year.
I’m not suggesting a sudden and drastic shift. But don’t you see that by lessening our dependency on petroleum products we can solve so many of our problems? We can reduce pollution, the dwindling petroleum problem and solve the terrorism issue all by reducing our reliance on oil.
Yes even terrorism can be reduced with shifting away from our dependency on oil. Do you remember those stupid commercials saying “Buy drugs, support terrorists!”? These thugs aren’t getting their funding through drugs, they get their money through the oil we buy from the Middle East. Right now they are thugs with a big stick. Take away the oil leverage that OPEC has on the world and they become thugs without the stick. I know this is an oversimplification, but do you really think that taking away their primary source of income wouldn’t be a good thing? We get roughly 60% of our nation’s oil from countries that are considered politically unstable—this is a dangerous addiction we need to break.
He would have just had the sanctions lifted, if all he wanted was oil.
Are you forgetting that Iraq was very close friends with the US during the 70’s? Heck, the UN even gave Saddam an award for the improvements he made in Iraq! The problem was that after he invaded Iran, the US realized that he was a dictator that we could no longer control. That is precicely what this was about; Saddam was a liability to the US and there was no politically correct way that we could lift the sanctions while he was still murdering and oppressing Iraq’s population that were Sunni and Kurdish. It was fine when he was still the benevolent dictator, but once the government of the US started telling us that he was evil and explained all the atrocities he commited, it would have been hard for us to welcome him back with open arms wouldn’t it?
Wouldn't have gone through the Senate anyway. Be realistic.
I won’t disagree with that, but at least Bush could have TRIED to work with the proposal. By pulling out the way he did he set an example that the environment wasn’t his chief concern.
Source.
http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/ ... da2003.pdf
I would highly recommend that you read this report. This is an up-to-date report on reducing US dependency on oil and, among other things, it gives a nice outline of the policies that have been implemented by the Bush administration that are stunting the development of fuel cell technologies as well as other alternative fuels.
The simple fact here is this is no longer a technology issue, it is a incentive issue. Why should the car companies spend billions on switching their engine technologies and why should the oil distribution companies spend billions on upgrades to their distribution process? These are businesses and they need financial incentives to justify these actions. The technology is available NOW and the success of cars like the Toyota Prius and Honda’s hybrid cars proves that people like the choice. I’m not saying everything is going to change tomorrow, but we need to get the ball rolling right?
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-08-28/s_7857.asp
This link describes the recent easing of restrictions on coal power plants I was referring to.
The estate tax is devastating to small business and does not generate much federal revenue. There is no reason for it to exist.
Furthermore, the estate tax is set to be repealed in 2010. But by then (or soon after), the Democrats will have come back into power, and the estate tax repeal will be one of the first things to go.
Now it’s your turn to provide a source. What are you basing this idea that the estate tax doesn’t generate much Federal revenue? And it hurts small businesses? If you are referring to that statement Bush made about farmers, it is a total crock of shit. Certain business’ have exemptions to estate tax and for farmers it can go as high as 8 million dollars.
The estate tax exists for a very good reason, whether you agree with the reason or not (and some people have very valid reasons for disagreeing). It is to prevent massed wealth to accumulate within small groups of upper class people and for that money to remain for generations. Ever hear of the Rockefellers?
The rich are the ones with the means to invest in new projects and create jobs. They also pay a proportionally larger amount of the taxes than do other groups, so naturally they receive larger tax breaks.
I’m aware of the fact that the rich pay a great deal more taxes than the poor. But through the tax breaks, Bush has given money back to the people that need it the
least and cut social programs for people who need it the
most.
As for the rich being the driving force behind the economy, I can only say that I think you are looking at it from the wrong direction. I come from a wealthy family and for them, the important part was always about making life better for those in America that needed it. When the government takes away an after school program or cuts medicare, it doesn’t affect them. It affects the people who actually need the program. I know this doesn’t really answer your question, but the point I’m trying to make is that the purpose of the government is to help the most amount of people in this country, not the least.
You're not serious, are you? Hoover pushed some gigantic tax hikes and tariffs through Congress when the Great Depression hit, when what he should have done was cut taxes (something even the Keynesians agree with). Likewise, we would probably be in even worse shape without the tax cuts than we are now, and the budget would have grown even more extensively. Prove your assertion that some relatively tiny tax cuts are responsible for the current recession.
You’re going from one extreme to another. Sure, tax increases hurt the economy during Hoover’s time and they would hurt it now as well. This hardly disproves my point.
Think of it this way, people in the country get a few hundred bucks for a tax refund and the government loses a big chunk of the “surplus” they were supposed to have and instead just drives us deeper into the red (not the Bush administrations fault). So people are left with a few hundred bucks in their pocket, but is that really going to stimulate the economy? How about instead we could have taken that money and spent it towards creating more government jobs and state supported programs? Wouldn’t that stimulate the economy more than a bonus check for most of the middle class?
Because it did. If you haven't noticed, the market has been recovering.
First you say that they are relatively tiny tax cuts, then you say that they have been helping to restore the economy?
Putting that aside for a sec, I think it is a little early to be talking about economic recovery. We’ve been seeing some decent indicators lately, but unemployement is still at the highest it has been in decades, and we are seeing more and more jobs getting transferred overseas as companies are trying desperately to cut cost. A few points gained on the Dow and Nasdaq is hardly what I’d call a recovery.
I DO think that the economy is on the road to recovery, I just think it has little to do with Bush’s economic policies.
France, the USSR, and China.
That's hardly an argument for not taking the Hussein regime out. If anything, it strengthens the case, since it makes us partially responsible for it.
Like I said above, I wasn’t referring to the actual hardware but that our spending on overseas oil has helped line the pockets of dictators like Saddam. You didn’t think there was only one in the Middle East did you?
