Can You Say Hypocrites?

Wow. First off, it is just such a copout for him to use job loss as an excuse for his lack of support for taking green measures, because new technologies need to be invented, new equipment manufactured, new products sold and delivered. There are PLENTY of jobs to be created.

Really what he means is that big oil will lose money. But if they turned some of their resources toward green technologies, they could just create new jobs as well.

What would I do with 600 bil?

First - rebuild New Orleans.
Second - Give every person in the country comprehensive health insurance.
Third - rebuild the inner city schools infrastructure, and fund them so those kids have a chance. Also provide adequate funding for the schools in the south.
Fourth - invest in new green technologies
Fifth - purchase paper ballet voting machines for every precinct in the country
Sixth - Provide grants and scholarships for anyone who wants to go to college.
Seventh - support for the arts in every school in the country

Let's see, what does that add up to - maybe 200 bil?

What about paying our troops more than the pittance they receive?
How about restitution for the people of Iraq?

What else am I forgetting?

This is an excellent piece from True Majority (by Ben & Jerry's) addressing this very issue:

DUMP RUSH FROM ARMED SERVICES RADIO:

23,000 SIGNERS:

BTW Here is the link to the Dump Rush petition:

http://ga4.org/campaign/dumprush

Dick, that's an excellent question for Bush to have to answer. If only someone in the media had the stones to ask it.

Just imagine the R&D that the government could have funded, either through grants, tax credits, or favorable tax rules for path-setting companies, if that $100 billion a year that we're squandering in Iraq went instead to developing a next generation energy source.

And had we indeed developed that source, we would have also simultaneously drained the swamp from which our enemies get their financial support.

Of course, we would have jeopardized the position of Dubya's and Cheney's buddies in the oil patch. But true leadership always requires that you to put the good of the whole ahead of the good of your friends - and God forbid these oilmen be forced to diversify, and find a new way to join Bush's economic elite. God forbid that they actually have to work for a living.

Via Carol

What else am I forgetting?

Building our infrastructure of bridges and buildings. Providing business entrepueners real 'help'.

Other than that, I'm with ya all the way.

Hey Ralpheh,

Can you take Rush over to the open thread? I don't think he belongs on here.

Unless that's where you plan to spend your 600 billion bucks.

:o)

Here in Oz we're dragging the chain too. That's because our PM is so besotted with your President that if the US won't sign up to this Global Warming nonsense, then he won't sign us up to it either. It makes me laugh that Bush doesn't even know Howard exists unless he's actually there visiting.

Here, in beautiful Tasmania, we are fighting a gigantic company plus state and federal governments and oppositions who claim to be able to push our beautiful, centuries old, untouched island forests and lakes into the 3rd millenium by chopping down our old growth forests and feeding them into a greedy gigantic Pulp Mill - which intends to use all our water and spew dioxins back into Bass Strait. In so doing it will destroy all the tourism and organic farming and fabulous seafood and and on it goes. In order to line the pockets of a few hypocrites.

Even though this monstrosity has been approved by the Federal and Opposition Environmental hypocrites, the nay sayers will not stop until this vandalism is stopped.

Here is what some experts are saying about the economic hypocracy:

Lennon misleading on mill benefits to the state's economy:
Matthew Denholm The Australian

SENIOR economists have accused the Tasmanian Government of failing to adequately assess the economic impact of the $2billion pulp mill that timber company Gunns wants to build in the state’s north.

In defending his decision to fast-track the controversial project, Premier Paul Lennon has repeatedly warned that, if it falls over, the state will return to the economic “dark days” of the mid-1990s. Mr Lennon has warned of a repeat of the collapse in jobs and investment that followed the failure of the Wesley Vale pulp mill proposal after a community backlash in 1989.

Several senior economists — including Saul Eslake, chief economist with ANZ, Gunns’s banker — have told The Weekend Australian they disagree with the Premier’s claim.

“It is not sound, economic logic,” Mr Eslake said. “The dark days into which Tasmania sank in the 1990s were not primarily a response to Wesley Vale (pulp mill proposal) falling over, but were instead a consequence of the fiscal ineptitude of the Gray government.”

Mr Lennon has also claimed that by adding $6.7billion to economic output over 25 years, the mill would mean “each household is likely to have $870 extra every year to spend”.

University of Tasmania associate professor of economic policy Graeme Wells said this was “palpable nonsense” and “misleading at best”.

More: http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/lennon-misleading-on-mill-benefits/

Ralpheh,
I keep 2 DCP tabs open and switch back and forth between the Open Thread and this one - the On Topic thread. It works easily this way, although no doubt I'll post the wrong post to the wrong place. If you get me.

Source: Raw Story | WCSH 6 News

When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

Read more: http://www.wcsh6.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=71741

This is a test post so if I was supposed to put this somewhere else I'll be figuring that out, given time.

nmp, when I read that today, I just sat there shaking my head. I think individuals in the Guard should be able to take the US government to court for reneging on its promise of education. Frankly, I think by the time Dubya is through all of his court cases he'll be about 105 years old and the only American citizen without Health Cover, because he doesn't believe in it. And there he will be, all alone, in Guantanamo Bay Resort for Failed Dictators.

I'll say "hypocrites" about another thing. Regarding the issue at Oral Roberts U. One of the charges is that the President's wife bought expenses clothes and wrote them off as a tax write off. I'd ask her to think about all the food and shelter her write off has cost others--like our soldiers and their families. I'm sure she wore it once on tv and looked swell, but as far as I'm concerned, on the inside she's quite ugly.

Woz,
Here is the latest - I had heard yesterday that Lieutenant Ehren Watada, who has been stations just south of where I am in Seattle (which would be Ft. Lewis, WA) had received a second court martial.

I didn't know this had happened yesterday!

Bill Simpich: The Whole World Will Be Watching
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100607Z.shtml
San Francisco civil rights attorney Bill Simpich provides a legal analysis
behind the surprise decision Friday afternoon by a federal judge in Tacoma, Washington who granted an emergency stay in the court-martial of 1st Lieutenant Ehren Watada, an Army officer who refused to deploy to Iraq.

As you probably know, Watada rejected the war on legal grounds rather than personal - he researched history of wars and could not find legal grounds for what we were doing. So he is not so much a conscientious objector as a legal questioner.

Carol said:

Hey Ralpheh,

Can you take Rush over to the open thread? I don't think he belongs on here.

Unless that's where you plan to spend your 600 billion bucks.

:o)

@@@@@@@

Well, I thought Rush Limbaugh came under the category of "HUGE HYPOCRITE".