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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (22351)	7/29/2010 12:36:15 PM
From: Brumar89	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Sure you are, that's why you keep claiming people who don't want a complete cradle to grave nanny state really want to live in a "Haiti". If you keep using that metaphor, you have to live with it. I'm "pretending" that cutting services has consequences, most times bad consequences. That is extremely debatable. We'd be better off without a federal Dept of Education or a federal Dept of Energy, for example. The things that government does didn't happen by accident ... there was a perceived need. Yes, big government proponents lied to the public that there was a need. They told people the oil companies were gouging the public to earn windfall profits back in the '70's ( and Congressmen summoned oil company CEO's to appear in front of them and be shouted at for show), for example, so they founded a DOE (1977) and the very first year the annual budget of the DOE exceeded the annual profits of the US entire oil sector. No we don't need the federal government to do everything it does. We don't need the government to mandate handicapped access to lifeguard stations to choose a recent example I saw in the news. Frankly, we could do w/o all handicapped access mandates. We could do without federal and state energy mandates ..... let the free market set prices and people will figure out how to conserve on their own.

To: Road Walker who wrote (22351)	8/12/2010 12:18:54 AM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

The things that government does didn't happen by accident ... there was a perceived need. Yes they don't happen by accident. Often they happen because some special interest wants it back scratched and to hell with how it effects everyone else. Or there was a perceived need, that wasn't real, or a real need that was temporary, or a long term need that isn't addressed well by the government program and might even be made worse by it. None of which means the government doesn't do a lot of good. Its hard not to do good when your spending trillions of dollars. But it trying to do so much is bad for the country on multiple levels, one of which is it takes resources and attention away from where government has a serious and important mission and can accomplish something. If you try to do, or even just regulate, almost everything, your unlikely to do a good job at most of it.

To: Road Walker who wrote (22351)	8/12/2010 12:47:14 AM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Again, government as the enemy of the public interest and the friend of established business By: Timothy P. Carney Examiner Columnist 08/06/10 4:37 PM EDT Did you hear about the guy who got arrested after a government sting operation revealed he was giving free rides to folks who were drinking to keep them from drunk driving? Earlier today, I tried to tease some broader points out of the regulatory shut-down of a 7-year-old's lemonade stand in Oregon. While writing about the tendency of licensing laws to hurt the public and protect special interests, I was thinking about one story of an undercover cop who stood around looking stranded until someone picked her up. When, after first refusing, the driver accepted $5 gas money from the cop, he was busted for illegally operating a cab. Today, via Reason.com again, we get another awful story of cab industry protectionism making it illegal to be a decent person: Some guy's friend gets killed by a drunk driver and he decides to do something about it. He starts a service to keep drunks off the road by offering free rides home.... Local taxi companies are not amused.... Jonathon Schoenakase has been arrested twice in "sting operations," all for the want of a $10 license. Barney Frank likes to say that "government" is just the name for "the things we choose to do together." That pleasant description somehow doesn't ring true here. washingtonexaminer.com