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April 30, 2014 06:33 AM UTC
20 Comments
Were any of the CP regulars present at the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday? If so, can you report what Hodge and Steadman were thinking when they voted with the (R) represenatatives to indefinitely postpone this? Why was this bill killed?
Oil and gas health-study bill dies in committee
http://www.ncbr.com/article/20140429/NEWS/140429919
Good for them.
Bad for the rest of us.
+1
If the Dems retain control of the legislature, it'll be back again next session. This is an election year, and any chance the stunt the "LIberals are killing jobs, puppies and freedom with overreach and regulation" is a good thing.
That is a too kind way of putting it, IMO.
I wasn't sure about the puppies.
The rest is correct.
WHy the opposition to learning the effects of development? Why would it be a bad thing to know what the trade-offs are?
The only logic I see for killing it is someone who supports O&G development at any cost and also believes there are really bad consequences to that development.
I don't know about Steadman, but Hodge has sucked up to Big O&G before…I am guessing this has more to do with campaign contributions than anything else…regardless of whatever lame excuse she may offer.
Every now and then, coincidence or synchronicity (if that is how you flow) walks up to me and slaps me in the face to wake me out of my delusions about the American economic and political system. This happened recently with the publishing of two unrelated studies – one about politics in America and the other about capitalism.
The first is a study about how "democracy" us working here in the good, ole US of A – Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page. I really can't restate their conclusions any more succinctly, so let me quote them:
The second study is reported in a major book entitled Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. With his book, Piketty has lobbed a truth bomb that has blown up several decades’ worth of received opinion about the way the economy works in capitalist societies. He makes a powerful, meticulously-argued, data-driven case that financial inequality is a feature of capitalist economies, not a bug. Left to its own devices, wealth tends to become highly concentrated. The only events likely to prevent our society from plunging into a dystopian spiral of inequity are, on the one hand, certain rarely occurring catastrophes, such as war or depression; or, on the other, dramatic government intervention in the economy, in the form of steep taxes on the wealthy.
Put these two studies together, and we – the 90% – are screwed and it will be hard if not impossible to get the government – Democratic or Republican – to do anything to help us.
Yes, I am aware that I am being pessimistic – or is it realistic?
Actually, it's been long known that income inequity is a feature of capitalist economies. We've long talked about winners and losers. As I've often mentioned to conservative friends, the social welfare system is not about creating winners, it's about limiting the level of loss that they system's losers bear to at least the minimum level needed to prevent revolution. Democrats, as we've known them, have largely been invested in policies to limit the depths of loss and the number of losers but, I would argue, have never really been interested in creating a system in which everyone wins, but possibly some win a bit more. It's why I laugh when our center-right president is called a socialist. Neither he, nor the vast majority of other Democrats have ever called into question who should own the means of production.
Piketty's argument takes this understanding and moves it to a new level. Focusing not on earnings but income (which from existing wealth is enormous), on the privledged role of capital over labor (workers of the world unite), and on the disconnection of wealth and the economy that results from policies which the wealthy buy and pay for.
Realistic, I'd say.
While what you say about the known attributes of capitalism is true for those of us on the faaaaar left (and amoung the elites themselves), the entire economic schools of neo-liberalism and neo-classicalism are based upon the opposite premise – that the invisible hand of the markets will keep things in balance. Of course, this nonsense is pure theology and has no basis in fact. (It's like believing in the tooth fairy, a geocentric universe, that the universe was created less than 10,000 years ago, or that there is this old guy, with a white beard sitting on a throne somewhere up in the sky called G-d.) It is nice, though, to have someone do the research and prove the neo-liberals to be the lying, pieces of s*#t they are.
I would suggest that non-socialists, and particularly classical and neoliberal economists actually acknowledge the inequity of capitalism, they simply discount it as unimportant. "Balance" in a market allows for both the very poor and the awesomely wealthy. Adam Smith clearly envisioned an economy in which the benefits accrued in greater abundance to capitalists than to workers, but he also believed that work would always pay sufficiently well to allow workers to achieve a lifestyle above subsistence. That's why I made the distinction between what Piketty is talking about and what I beleive is a shared understanding along the right and left, which simply results in differing interpretation (see Fox "but all the poors haz fridge" meme).
I leave for Eurovision in 2 days!!!! For those of you that watch the shows (I know you will), look for a Colorado flag waving in the standing audience right in front of the stage – that will be me. I'll also be blogging.
Since I'm gone this and next weekend, Duke & Ralphie are responsible for posting the weekend videos. You know the one Duke posts will focus on lots of eye shadow.
I'm in charge? I have a great video picked out. Emjoy Eurovision. Nobody with decent taste in music will.
Well, Ralphie,…Since I don't know how to post videos…you da man.
Classic motown, R&B….you know the recipe.
Some organizations are just idiotic (in the Greenpeace mold).
http://www.stateoftheair.org/2014/states/colorado/
Denver gets a D for 7 "orange" days of ozone!
Who needs 'lungs' anyway? Boulder gets 18. And USDA-ARS study has concluded the ozone levels in our state are negatively affecting our crop yields by approximately 10%. But, hey, damn the torpedos – full steam ahead – and let's keep calling the extraction of this resource "cheap" and "necessary".
Bronco Sundays.