(can of worms alert) Globe hasn't warmed in the last 16 years 76

[beej67]

Worth a read. One significance of the article to me is the 'skeptic' isn't a loon, she's the head of the EAS department at Georgia Tech.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[GrandpaDave]

Cajun... You need to head to the UP of Michigan.
Global Warming has not arrived there yet.

Those folks have to wait until August. Then it gets cold in September

 

[JohnRBaker]

One Yooper says to the other, "Hey Toivo, vaat you gunna do dis summer?"

He answers, "If'n it comes on da weekend, I'm gunna go fishin."

[DISCLAIMER] I spent six years in the UP attending engineering school and my brother still lives there.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[GrandpaDave]

John R... Yes, Michigan Tech. can get colder than a witche's @#%&.
My niece started out in Chem Engr up there in the UP but decided to
transfer to Biology since she thought there were too many nerds in
engineering. But like most young ladies she got her MRS degree.

I left Michigan in the early 60s and have not looked back!

 

[zdas04]

We could balance the budget in two years if we did EITHER of:
[ol 1]
[li]Abolish corporate tax. Corporate tax is revenue negative. That is right, the government gets LESS total revenue because of corporate tax. What do corporations do with their money? They can pay dividends (which are taxable to individuals). They can increase spending (which has a X6 multiplier in the economy while taxes have a X4 multiplier). They can make capital improvements (which also has a X6 multiplier). An absence of taxes (not zero tax, but not even any forms to complete) would attract businesses from all over the world and rapidly grow the economy. Why is this impossible? Because the Congress uses tax incentives and disincentives to stand in for policy and they won't relinquish that control [/li]
[li]Reduce the federal government back to the roles that it is ALLOWED to by the Constitution. For example, education happens when an individual teacher ignites a spark in the mind of an individual student. This is very much a retail operation. The Federal Government has zero role in it. State governments should have a very minor role. County/city governments should have a major role. Abolish the Department of Education. Same with heath care. Abolish Health and Human Services. Same with Department of Energy. When you ask every department in the Federal Government to justify their existence based on explicit grants of power in the Constitution then the lion's share of them simply go away as Unconstitutional. Let states an d municipalities figure out how (and if) they are going to provide "necessary" services. If your community decides to use your (local) tax dollars for something you abhor, you can either get active in local politics and eliminate it or move. That seems to me to be the American way. Today state and local politics are a stupid side show most of the time. [/li]
[/ol]

Either one of these would balance the Federal Budget in the second year. Neither is going to happen.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[JohnRBaker]

Neither is going to happen.

Thank God!!!!

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[zdas04]

That was a lot of exclamation points. I've seen that kind of passion for keeping the Unconstitutional bits of the Federal Government, I don't understand it, but at lest I've seen it before. But I've never seen that kind of passion for retaining the useless corporate income tax. Do you want to explain where that much feeling comes from on a purely economic issue?

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[GrandpaDave]

D. Simpson, PE... You have a broken record.
Do you want to repeat that several more times?
That might help you get your message across.
It must seem like you are talking to a wall...

A journalist assigned to the Jerusalem bureau has an apartment overlooking the Western Wall.
Every day when she looks out, she sees an old bearded Jewish man praying vigorously. She
was certain he would be a good interview subject.

The journalist goes down to the Wall, and introduces herself to the old man. She asks,
"You come every day to the Wall. Sir, how long have you done that and what are you praying for?"

The old man replies, "I have come here to pray every day for 25 years. In the morning, I pray
for world peace and for the brotherhood of man.

“I go home have a cup of tea, and I come back and pray for the eradication of illness
and disease from the earth.

“And very, very important, I pray for peace and understanding between the Israelis
and Palestinians."

The journalist is impressed. "How does it make you feel to come here every day for 25
years and pray for these wonderful things?" she asks.

The old man replies, calmly, "Like I'm talking to a F***ing wall."

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, I'm willing to give up corporate income taxes if we go back to the original definition of what corporations were intended to be and how they were to conduct their affairs as understood by our Founding Fathers. The fact is that American coporations are what they are today as the result of fraud perpetrated on the American people by the Supreme Court reporter who knowingly mistated the opinions in one of the first court cases to rule on corporate "personhood", 'Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad'. This fraudulently misdocumented case has been sited in courts dealing with corporate rights and behavior for over 100 years, including the infamous 'Citizens United' case:

http://www.feasta.org/documents/review2/unequal_protection.htm

http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2012/01/did-justice-roberts-commit-perjury

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[zdas04]

A point we can totally agree on. That case represents a low point in the history of the Supreme Court. A corporation is simply a contract. A contract cannot have morals, goals, wants, or needs, it is just a piece of paper. To try to assign "personhood" to a piece of paper is truly obscene.

As to the other, when the South lost the War of Northern Aggression the country irrevocably turned against the idea of limiting the scope of the Federal Government, probably for all time. I'd be happy with just eliminating the redundancy (e.g., why did the Treasury Department have the ability and authority to authorize two rappers to go to Cuba without approval of the State Department? Probably because Treasury has it's own version of many State Department Functions. Getting rid of those redundancies would save serious money over the short term).

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[beej67]

Sweet.

Finally got our first War of Northern Aggression reference. You know the thread's juicy then.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[TenPenny]

Based on what we see happening, any reduction in corporate income taxes would generally be directly paid to the CEO as bonus money, and not used for anything else.

 

[rconnor]

Where to begin...

Corporate Taxes:
The single largest fallacy regarding removing corporate taxes is that the money would be effectively and ethically redistributed into the local economy. TenPenny brings up a good point that a large some of this would go directly to CEO salaries. In fact, this is already happening. The salary difference between shop floor workers and the average CEO raised from 39 to 1 in the 1960’s to over 1000 to 1. Another area where an influx of spare change would go is to buying up market share. Local industries would be crushed by larger corporations and the competitive market would dwindle. You also mention that it would attract companies to open businesses in the US; where do you think the money is going then? Back to the home country of the company.

The ethics and actions of an organization are predicated on who they are responsible to. Corporations are responsible to the board and investors; at the end of the day, they are charged to increase profits, pure and simple. In fact they are LEGALLY obligated to maximize profits, as per Ford v Dodge (where Ford wanted to increase wages of line workers but Dodge, a primary share holder, sued the company saying it would decrease his dividends). Corporations must hold the well being of their shareholders above the well being of the community as a whole or its employees. So to argue that giving corporations more power and flexibility will lead to the betterment of the country is flawed.

Education:
I’m a huge advocate for education reform; I believe that there are intrinsic issues with our current education system. However, I do not agree that the solution is less/no/more localized oversight. I already argue that the nationalistic approach to education is an issue, as it is divisive in nature and prone to enforcing and exacerbating an “us vs them” prejudice. Further reducing this to state or county levels would heighten the issue of local bias. How long do you think it would take for Texas to start teaching creationism?

I agree that good teachers are handcuffed to an overly stringent and very lacking curriculum. However, I feel that some oversight over what is being taught is important. The solution lies with revolutionizing the curriculum, not abolishing it.

Social Safety Nets:
My biggest issue is the utter dismissal of social safety net programs. There’s an appalling mentality that those whom are in need of these programs are lazy free loaders, that if they worked harder they could pull themselves out of their situation. This mentality is predominately shared by educated, well-off, white males; a group that really knows, first hand, about social injustice, prejudice and discrimination (/sarcasm). I hope this isn’t the mentality shared by posters here but the “get rid of taxes and solve our problem” mentality seems to suggest this.

These programs are essential to support the less privileged in our society. Ignoring the basic human empathy necessary to understand why, on a humanitarian level, these programs are important, there are economic benefits to them as well. The poverty cycle leads to increased crime and violence (= increased jail costs), lack of employment opportunity/employability (= less “value” returned to the society) and health issues (= more health care costs). These programs help pull people out of the poverty cycle so they can become productive, educated, healthy and happy members of society. To not understand the importance of these programs is depressing, yet not entirely surprising.

It’s also no surprise that the people that are against the theory of CAGW are also usually those against social safety net programs. Both are cases where people are unwilling to prescribe to a cause that will take from them and not, directly or immediately, benefit them. They will respond by saying that neither effort is justified or effective, despite countless research showing the opposite, but this is just cognitive dissonance kicking in.

 

[2dye4]

rconner,

Well put and worthy of 5 stars.

 

[cranky108]

First, why is the goverment stealing my divendend?
Taxes on corporations are nothing but a way for goverment to hide the real tax on people (because corporations are not people they don't pay taxes).

Why do I choose a privite school for my child?
Because the goverment schools are so full of fraud, and mandates from crack pots.

If the goverment schools are so good, why can't these people find jobs instead of welfare?
Because no amount of goverment rules will make them work right, and teach what the students need. Bad schools make unemployable people.

Schools should compeat for the students, and the bad schools should disappear. The free loaders all came from goverment schools, which don't teach life skills, but darwin they claim is important.

There are trade schools, and loans available, so you can't tell me that at least some of these people aren't free loaders (Maybe they are so involved in the underground economy, that they can't report there income).

 

[zdas04]

TenPenny,
A star for a sound byte, just think what you would have gotten for an entire thought? Exxon/Mobil paid upwards of $6 billion in federal taxes in 2012. I don't think that a board of directors (made up of stakeholders in the company) could raise the CEO salary more than 4 orders of magnitude and keep their jobs. More likely the company would pay most of the windfall into dividends since they probably don't have projects in the queue to use it. I know that this is unimportant to you since you obviously live in a 500 sq ft loft without TV, telephone, or internet (why pay for internet when the Library is free) and drive a bicycle so that you can maximize your level of giving to the deserving poor.

RConnor,
[Money] "would go back to the home country of the company" Really I don't know of any entity in the world that would rather pay 50% corporate taxes that many European countries demand instead of zero. If the U.S. eliminated corporate taxes you would see a flood of international companies moving their basic registration to the U.S. As to mergers and takeovers and ending up with one big company, I think that is why the anti-trust statutes exist. If the FTC does its job, that doesn't happen. Their willingness to do their job seems a bit limited right now, but that is because we are getting what Congress expects of them.

No economic model that includes people can be other than flawed. To me it is a very simple choice between "will corporations do a better job of using capital efficiently" or "will government do a better job of using capital efficiently"? To me the answer to that question is clear.

Both of my sons went through the public school system. Neither one of them was required to take Civics and only know about the make up of government because my wife is an adamant Constitutionalist and she made sure that they were grounded in an understanding of the law of the land. None of their friends have a clue as to the assigned powers of the branches of government. That is an example of the results of the Federal Government trying to homogenize curricula across the country. Bureaucrats do not add value to this discussion and an "overhaul of the education system" will not improve education. In my Granddaughter's last school (in Texas by the way) there were 2 Principals and 6 Vice-Principals. Each had an assigned role to supervise a different facet of the Federal mandates. That looks to be out of control to me.

Why does every statement have to end with an ad hominin attack? "People who oppose AGW are against a social safety net", what an outrageous simplification. I very much want the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT out of the business of providing any kind of safety net. Wholesale programs have proven to be ineffective and full of fraud and corruption. These functions need to reside at the lowest level that can provide them. Services provided by an individual church have been very effective. Some city wide programs have worked well. A few state programs have been beneficial. No Federal program has done more good than harm. The problem today is that so much money goes into the Federal system to be doled out based on murky formulas that have more to do with punishing the people who don't suck up to the administrator than with helping the poor that there is not enough money left over for small entities to be able to keep their doors open.

Saying that the Federal Government needs to go back to the limits and constraints clearly described in the Constitution is not the same as saying that "survival of the fittest" should be the only law of the land. The reason for the organization of our government is to allow space for regional and individual differences. The current implementation of that system is trying to force homogenization. It is not legal. It is not in the interests of the country. It is not right.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[cranky108]

From a song "You don't know the difference, as you put on the yoke".

 

[SomptingGuy]

"Schools should compeat for the students, and the bad schools should disappear. The free loaders all came from goverment schools, which don't teach life skills, but darwin they claim is important."

Hmm, plenty of grammatical errors in a rant about public schools. Interesting. I wonder whether cranky108 went to one of the better private schools?

BTW: "compete", "government", "freeloaders", "Darwin".

- Steve

 

[TenPenny]

My dearest shoe of the mule:

"TenPenny,
A star for a sound byte, just think what you would have gotten for an entire thought? Exxon/Mobil paid upwards of $6 billion in federal taxes in 2012. I don't think that a board of directors (made up of stakeholders in the company) could raise the CEO salary more than 4 orders of magnitude and keep their jobs. More likely the company would pay most of the windfall into dividends since they probably don't have projects in the queue to use it. I know that this is unimportant to you since you obviously live in a 500 sq ft loft without TV, telephone, or internet (why pay for internet when the Library is free) and drive a bicycle so that you can maximize your level of giving to the deserving poor."

and


"Why does every statement have to end with an ad hominin attack?"

Indeed, indeed. I wonder about that myself.

Might I suggest you invest in a mirror?

 

[TomDOT]

TenPenny, the raw amount of taxes paid is half the story. "Exxon/Mobil paid upwards of $6 billion in federal taxes in 2012 on upwards of $45 billion in reported profits"

 

[Brad1979]

FYI ... Exxon Mobil executive salaries over the last 5 years.