Quote from waggie945:
Since when does being PROUD of one of the greatest learning institutions of the United States of America make one ELITIST?
:eek:

Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
We seem to be mixing two issues here. One is the idea that environmentalists don't accept the diminishing returns concept. The other is your concern with diminishing resources. I would be more concerned about the latter if I had not heard it all before in the '70's. We were all going to run out of oil, starve and freeze to death (back then the big worry was global cooling, not warming). Somehow we pulled through. There are more oil reserves now than we knew about then.
You are certainly right that resources get depleted, and that there can be synergy in slowing their use and curtailing the pollution their use and extraction produces. Our political system has not done a very good job of harnessing this synergy. We have other competing values, such as consumer freedom. We also give disproportionate weight to irrational fears generated by activists, such as the fear of nuke power.
Quote from waggie945:
For someone that is only 29 years old, you sure have everything figured out, especially when it pertains to CALIFORNIA.
You relentlessly BASH the Golden State whenever you see an opportunity because you believe that it stands for a LIBERAL philosophy and attitude on life AND when a 4th generation Californian such as myself PROVES YOU WRONG about the state's air quality, environmental issues, energy issues, or the state's budget deficit, you then bring your argument back to the old Conservatives vs Liberals crap sounding very much like the Timothy McVie's of the World.
What makes me laugh even further is the fact that you end your latest "hissy-fit" with you accusing me of projecting my values onto yours, and calling me all sorts of names, ASSUMING that I am a liberal in my political views.
Maverick, your paranoia is simply amazing. Do you always make all sorts of fanatically half-cocked assumptions about someone's sexual preferences, race, values, and political ideology all because of what geographical area that they choose to live in?
In fact, when USC takes on Oklahoma for the National Championship next month, I have no doubt that you will also turn that into some sort of ridiculous political debate.
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Quote from Maverick74:
Well, well, well, look who is using my screen name to presume my age. You think you know everything too. I am not bashing the golden state. I am just pointing out how different your state is from the other 49 states in this country. And Yes, outside of Orange county, California is very liberal. I have many friends that live out there and everyone one of them agree with me 100% and they are liberal! And the only thing I said about California was that it's the SUV capital of the world, but YOUR paranoia turned that into me bashing the environment. I have never made comments concerning the environment of California in particular although I will go on the record as saying that everytime I have been in LA, the air is actually orange! I kid you not. There is a haze so bad out there that you really can't tell when it's cloudy outside. But that's another story.
And I did not accuse you of projecting your values on me but rather liberals in GENERAL think they should project their values on the rest of us. We see it on TV, the movies, music, you name it. Then you get all your special interest groups that lobby Washington for every kind of crazy idea you can think of in the name of diversity.
There is a general elitist attitude from all liberals that they are smarter and more enlightened then the rest of us and you have permeated that view with your own posts on ET.
You guys continue shove your liberal ideology down our throats. You continue to attack our President because he doesn't support your gay marriages, keeping God's name on our currency, or because we are not giving away enough money to your big government programs.
Tonight as we speak, Hollywood is getting all the rich and powerful liberals together to see how they can throw Bush out of office. I wish them luck, because the other 49 states in this country do not share the same ideolology as them. And they just don't get this. They can raise all the money in the world, but hate speech and money is not going to get Bush out of office.
Quote from ARogueTrader:
Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America's environment for more than thirty years
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife.
Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats.
The Bush attack was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals.
In his six years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit, diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.
I am angry both as a citizen and a father. Three of my sons have asthma, and I watch them struggle to breathe on bad-air days. And they're comparatively lucky: One in four African-American children in New York shares this affliction; their suffering is often unrelieved because they lack the insurance and high-quality health care that keep my sons alive.
My kids are among the millions of Americans who cannot enjoy the seminal American experience of fishing locally with their dad and eating their catch. Most freshwater fish in New York and all in Connecticut are now under consumption advisories. A main source of mercury pollution in America, as well as asthma-provoking ozone and particulates, is the coal-burning power plants that President Bush recently excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.
Furthermore, the deadly addiction to fossil fuels that White House policies encourage has squandered our treasury, entangled us in foreign wars, diminished our international prestige, made us a target for terrorist attacks and increased our reliance on petty Middle Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.
When the Republican right managed to install George W. Bush as president in 2000, movement leaders once again set about doing what they had attempted to do since the Reagan years: eviscerate the infrastructure of laws and regulations that protect the environment. For twenty-five years it has been like the zombie that keeps coming back from the grave.
The attacks began on Inauguration Day, when President Bush's chief of staff and former General Motors lobbyist Andrew Card quietly initiated a moratorium on all recently adopted regulations. Since then, the White House has enlisted every federal agency that oversees environmental programs in a coordinated effort to relax rules aimed at the oil, coal, logging, mining and chemical industries as well as automakers, real estate developers, corporate agribusiness and other industries.
Bush's Environmental Protection Agency has halted work on sixty-two environmental standards, the Food and Drug Administration has stopped work on fifty-seven standards. The EPA completed just two major rules -- both under court order and both watered down at industry request -- compared to twenty-three completed by the Clinton administration and fourteen by the Bush Sr. administration in their first two years.
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Full article here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/featuregen.asp?pid=2154