I notice gas prices lately have not given you an opportunity to demagogue. Though perhaps you're tempted to gloat, as lives have been jeopardized and communities ruined for tertiary recovery of fossil energy. I remember the days, in Nixon's administration, and Ford's, when I worked as a summer intern for what was then ERDA, I believe, predecessor to the DoE, abstracting proposals for such technologies. I'm delighted to see them brought to fruition. I'm not so delighted at the methane cloud above New Mexico and contaminated well water in other communities. Perhaps even aquifer depletion is occurring. (I forgot about earthquakes when writing Bobby Hurt). All these externalities by which we are subsidizing the current cheap price of gas. These externalities must be internalized into the price of crude and methane and gasoline, by regulated compensation and strict tort liability for the extractors. Let's pay at the pump for their increased direct and underwriting expenses.
I've said as much in the past. Why I write now is because I got an email from the Union of Concerned Scientists about the issue of proprietary formulations of fracking chemicals as an impediment to community and plaintiff action. I call on you to set low thresholds for presumptive evidence of harm, sufficient to subpoena and force disclosure of chemicals used, and as I've said in the past, to create a rebutable presumption that such chemicals in groundwater both originate from the fracking operation and contribute to illness if such contribution is evident in laboratory animals. Underwriting costs will likely soar in a just legal and regulatory system for tertiary extraction. SO BE IT!! PAY AT THE PUMP!!!
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Friday, August 15, 2014
Bobby Hurt Wrote Back!!!
And I reciprocated .......
I was quite fond of Virgil's "Goode News." Virgil had some peculiar views. He was proud of them. They marked him as a maverick, not a marionette. Your newsletters have consistently pointed to the latter. I think I've expressed myself on that point repeatedly. I won't belabor.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote on the subject of your evident glee in thwarting the private property rights of St. James College, and your gratuitous parroting of unfounded and pejorative characterization by the looney fringe of the motivations and actions of our President. Also, you were proud of legislation that guts humane and wholesome laws, rather than fully fund their enforcement, and encourage Lawrenceville's participation in upholding the Rule of Law.
None of the recent response to my email addresses my concerns, but neither does it reinforce my concerns. You speak as a Congressman -- saying essentially nothing, but in a way that reflects a consideration of broad concerns which indeed have thwarted even the heroic efforts of Bush 43 to bring about a consensus. We are a similar age. If my father has his way, I'd have been Hampton-Sidney class of 1976. Instead, I went to Carnegie Mellon, and remember a fondness of Woody Guthrie, especially his Hobo's Lullaby and Los Gatos. That was 1948. It ain't going away. They ain't going away. I remember at Carnegie being a fan of Milton Freedman. Funny how Chile suffered under his advisorship. Funny how Alan Greenspan regrets the failure of objectivist ideology as a governing principle. Funny how those same principles failed Bremer's consulship in Iraq. YOU AND PAUL RYAN ARE IN THRALL TO A PROVEN FAILURE. -- but I digress. Dr. Freedman spoke of voting with your feet. What is more violent? The intrusion of our borders, or what is necessary to deflect that intrusion? Are people coming here to be given stuff? I think not. They want to be safe. They want to pursue aspirations. They want to be Americans!
I digress again. I was doing Census work in 1999 in the orchard country around Covesville during harvest season. When I had car trouble -- who came to my aid? Not the priest. Not the Levite. THE SAMARITAN! I'm proud to have such neighbors. I wish the law would adapt to the facts on the ground rather than promote violence to alter those facts. In fact, I demand it. Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Pope Francis all demand it. And that is a much better governing principle than the "Triumph of the Will" philosophy prevalent in the Bush Administration. Perhaps Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand aren't so bad after all -- it's the Leni Riefenstahl aberration of the wingnut Right that screwed up Chile's and Iraq's economy, and are working hard (out of Wichita) to undermine our own.
In closing -- I wasn't particularly pleased by your response to my email, but was at least pleased to not be so aggressively and egregiously displeased as is routine from you weekly newsletter.
I was quite fond of Virgil's "Goode News." Virgil had some peculiar views. He was proud of them. They marked him as a maverick, not a marionette. Your newsletters have consistently pointed to the latter. I think I've expressed myself on that point repeatedly. I won't belabor.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote on the subject of your evident glee in thwarting the private property rights of St. James College, and your gratuitous parroting of unfounded and pejorative characterization by the looney fringe of the motivations and actions of our President. Also, you were proud of legislation that guts humane and wholesome laws, rather than fully fund their enforcement, and encourage Lawrenceville's participation in upholding the Rule of Law.
None of the recent response to my email addresses my concerns, but neither does it reinforce my concerns. You speak as a Congressman -- saying essentially nothing, but in a way that reflects a consideration of broad concerns which indeed have thwarted even the heroic efforts of Bush 43 to bring about a consensus. We are a similar age. If my father has his way, I'd have been Hampton-Sidney class of 1976. Instead, I went to Carnegie Mellon, and remember a fondness of Woody Guthrie, especially his Hobo's Lullaby and Los Gatos. That was 1948. It ain't going away. They ain't going away. I remember at Carnegie being a fan of Milton Freedman. Funny how Chile suffered under his advisorship. Funny how Alan Greenspan regrets the failure of objectivist ideology as a governing principle. Funny how those same principles failed Bremer's consulship in Iraq. YOU AND PAUL RYAN ARE IN THRALL TO A PROVEN FAILURE. -- but I digress. Dr. Freedman spoke of voting with your feet. What is more violent? The intrusion of our borders, or what is necessary to deflect that intrusion? Are people coming here to be given stuff? I think not. They want to be safe. They want to pursue aspirations. They want to be Americans!
I digress again. I was doing Census work in 1999 in the orchard country around Covesville during harvest season. When I had car trouble -- who came to my aid? Not the priest. Not the Levite. THE SAMARITAN! I'm proud to have such neighbors. I wish the law would adapt to the facts on the ground rather than promote violence to alter those facts. In fact, I demand it. Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Pope Francis all demand it. And that is a much better governing principle than the "Triumph of the Will" philosophy prevalent in the Bush Administration. Perhaps Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand aren't so bad after all -- it's the Leni Riefenstahl aberration of the wingnut Right that screwed up Chile's and Iraq's economy, and are working hard (out of Wichita) to undermine our own.
In closing -- I wasn't particularly pleased by your response to my email, but was at least pleased to not be so aggressively and egregiously displeased as is routine from you weekly newsletter.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Bobby Hurt is pissing me off yet again.
Rep Robert Hurt of Virginia's 5th Congressional District (our Represntative from Wichita) sends out a weekly email, touting the Kleptocrat party talking points. Last week, he was calling our President bad names. I sent a quick note there, especially in light of his pride in the interference in the private property rights of a local entity. Didn't blog it. This week it's a repeat of the "House Republicans have paved the way for the rape of our communities and wage-enslavement of our neighbors, BUT THE SENATE WON'T YIELD" trope that shows up every few weeks, on slow news weeks (or embarrassing rich news weeks).
I just cutting and pasting what I wrote. Maybe a few links thrown in for context...........
I've written in the past advocating private and public infrastructure investment. It would be nice to see a US Govt balance sheet where debt was balanced against income-generating assets. Then your 17 Trillion figure would be, hopefully, a net positive, and not a bankrupt government.
But my concern is the recent report that greenhouse gas emissions from Alberta oil sands are projected to exceed by a factor of three prior projections. And yet, with our cooperation or without -- say a British Columbia route to China or a Saskatchewan route to Europe -- extraction, refining, and combustion will proceed. Those gases are there, like it or not. (OR pretend it doesn't matter or not).
TAX CARBON!!! Build the pipeline, and tax carbon. Tax Western Virginia coal carbon. Tax the release of methane by fracking operations. Tax cow flatulence. Don't indemnify groundwater contamination and other externalities of extraction and transport. In fact, write laws which make it a rebuttable presumption that contamination originates from extractive use or transportation spill of the contaminating substances, with specific, preferably treble penalties. PAY AT THE PUMP!!!
Stop the subsidizing of harmful externalities. Create systems of compensation and remediation. Then, we will end up paying more money for our BTUs, entirely voluntary, when we pay at the pump. The system you are perpetuating with your very un-Republican objection to cap and trade, is one of violent coercion where I am enslaved by the consumer of cheap energy, who pollutes my air, my water, my vistas, my sacred natural spaces, even the very weather, to keep fuel cheap, at his neighbor's expense. I should think Ayn Rand would abhor the kind of coercive violence you have been advocating. And certainly Pope Francis has expressed his explicit abhorrence.
TAX CARBON!!! perhaps Cap and Trade. PAY AT THE PUMP!!! These are not socialist values. THESE ARE CHRISTIAN AND AMERICAN VALUES. INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE -- the Whig and Republican parties were born on that value. In times of cheap capital -- Where are the investments in low-unit-cost, large-capital energy production and conservation projects? Private projects? You, in your committee assignments, have and have squandered opportunities to alter that. Where is the information, transportation, electrical distribution, waste disposal, water impound, and other investment, both public and private? Why is Congress wanting to see America squander the Whig/Republican ethic that fed our prosperity? Why is Congress facilitating the erosion of the physical and moral fabric of America to subsidize the Plutocrats and Kleptocrats, who impoverish communities when they come waltzing in with their unregistered private equity advisors.
I just cutting and pasting what I wrote. Maybe a few links thrown in for context...........
I've written in the past advocating private and public infrastructure investment. It would be nice to see a US Govt balance sheet where debt was balanced against income-generating assets. Then your 17 Trillion figure would be, hopefully, a net positive, and not a bankrupt government.
But my concern is the recent report that greenhouse gas emissions from Alberta oil sands are projected to exceed by a factor of three prior projections. And yet, with our cooperation or without -- say a British Columbia route to China or a Saskatchewan route to Europe -- extraction, refining, and combustion will proceed. Those gases are there, like it or not. (OR pretend it doesn't matter or not).
TAX CARBON!!! Build the pipeline, and tax carbon. Tax Western Virginia coal carbon. Tax the release of methane by fracking operations. Tax cow flatulence. Don't indemnify groundwater contamination and other externalities of extraction and transport. In fact, write laws which make it a rebuttable presumption that contamination originates from extractive use or transportation spill of the contaminating substances, with specific, preferably treble penalties. PAY AT THE PUMP!!!
Stop the subsidizing of harmful externalities. Create systems of compensation and remediation. Then, we will end up paying more money for our BTUs, entirely voluntary, when we pay at the pump. The system you are perpetuating with your very un-Republican objection to cap and trade, is one of violent coercion where I am enslaved by the consumer of cheap energy, who pollutes my air, my water, my vistas, my sacred natural spaces, even the very weather, to keep fuel cheap, at his neighbor's expense. I should think Ayn Rand would abhor the kind of coercive violence you have been advocating. And certainly Pope Francis has expressed his explicit abhorrence.
TAX CARBON!!! perhaps Cap and Trade. PAY AT THE PUMP!!! These are not socialist values. THESE ARE CHRISTIAN AND AMERICAN VALUES. INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE -- the Whig and Republican parties were born on that value. In times of cheap capital -- Where are the investments in low-unit-cost, large-capital energy production and conservation projects? Private projects? You, in your committee assignments, have and have squandered opportunities to alter that. Where is the information, transportation, electrical distribution, waste disposal, water impound, and other investment, both public and private? Why is Congress wanting to see America squander the Whig/Republican ethic that fed our prosperity? Why is Congress facilitating the erosion of the physical and moral fabric of America to subsidize the Plutocrats and Kleptocrats, who impoverish communities when they come waltzing in with their unregistered private equity advisors.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Boehner
The IRS where? Cincinnati, you say? Boehner cronies in a false flag operation, I think. And the destruction of data only makes that seem more likely. But I believe truth will out.
It was like the cold war days. Russia hates China hates USA. The object is for A to harm B, while implication C. Then B and C are at war -- and A prevails. False flag, that's what I think.
Now this lawsuit. WTF!!! I would think that exemption from regulation, temporal or absolute, are part of the unmitigated power of the president to pardon. Perhaps unitary executive doctrine requires a specific exemption from the President -- an explicit executive order. Given the Republican preference for a strong (unitary) executive, then perhaps they are pursuing an action which they win by losing, solidifying the doctrine of absolute pardon power beyond criminal clemency. Boehner must be a genius. An evil genius, alas. Braniac from Superman, colored orange not green. There must be a word for a lawsuit that one wins by losing. Unconstitutional certainly.
It was like the cold war days. Russia hates China hates USA. The object is for A to harm B, while implication C. Then B and C are at war -- and A prevails. False flag, that's what I think.
Now this lawsuit. WTF!!! I would think that exemption from regulation, temporal or absolute, are part of the unmitigated power of the president to pardon. Perhaps unitary executive doctrine requires a specific exemption from the President -- an explicit executive order. Given the Republican preference for a strong (unitary) executive, then perhaps they are pursuing an action which they win by losing, solidifying the doctrine of absolute pardon power beyond criminal clemency. Boehner must be a genius. An evil genius, alas. Braniac from Superman, colored orange not green. There must be a word for a lawsuit that one wins by losing. Unconstitutional certainly.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Desperation and dependency
Bull Moose on the Loose
| It's up to us, not Priest nor King, To cede authority To folks with grand ambitious dreams To mold society By force or guile or subtle style Each seeks to gain the right To pick the traits that earn success What's fair and wrong and right 'Who is my neighbor?' Christ was asked, 'Who I ought love as self?' 'Who is his neighbor?' we might ask, 'What counts to him as wealth?' Counting wealth in dollars and cents Eye on the bottom line Neighbor is but cost or purchase Employed or coaxed to buy. Counting wealth in favors owed And power to coerce Neighbor is but us or them The minion or the cursed Counting wealth in a vista breadth Of beauty, peace, delight My neighbor thrills and entertains And keeps me safe from plight. Coercion and exploitation Want losers, all but few. And fight each against the other 'Who's with me?' Red or Blue? I choose neither of these swine To cast my precious pearl Kept in my pocket, I am rich Enough to make this world Yield more and more through stewardship Of what my vistas hold And dream of Teddy, LaFollette And Pinchot's days of old. By Robert Corey |
Letter to Bob Hurt, re: USPS financial services.
Predatory lending is among my greatest concerns for what's wrong about America. And I'm not at all sure how to fix things. I don't think financial services through the USPS will be a remedy without dangers... specifically the danger of systemic collapse should this "too essential to fail" institution have collection issues.
I developed a certain affection for Tom Bliley, when the Clinton impeachment circus destroyed my faith in Congress and I became something of an active correspondent. I had hoped that my Delegate, Paul Harris could replace him. I hoped he might have replaced Virgil when the district lines were drawn that way after the 2000 Census. Anyhow, I voted for Martin, not Cantor. Both had their issues, but I trust a man of faith more than an acolyte of Objectivism. You seem to be something of both, but I hope sometime to appeal to the former. Often, I see something in the Sunday texts that might serve to persuade you to follow Jesus, not Ayn. Anyhow -- back to predatory lending.
Cantor was only my Rep for his first term. I didn't write much, and his correspondence responses paled to Bliley's exemplary staff work (as do yours, though meritorious, relative to Virgil's -- I never cared for Perriello's). I recall writing against his signature education tax credit, for the designation of the Falls of the James as an historical treasure, for Bliley's signature Liberty Dollar, and for developing means for reputable financial companies to better secure debt to displace collateralized usury (pawn, title, and paycheck loans, also rent-to-own). I think perhaps Cantor read "securitized" instead of "secured" and "mortgage" rather than collateral, and tongue-in-cheek blame my emails to Cantor for America's economic collapse. (As I tongue-in-cheek imagine Lewinsky as a correspondence clerk reading my letter to the President mentioning his boring neckties (Rush, at the time, was selling neckties), then selecting her initial gift to Handsome).
The point being -- the clients of predatory lenders don't deserve too much consideration. Consumer lending in general is symptomatic of the cancer in our culture that creates desperation (which RHINOS love) and dependency (which Democrats love). A consumer culture is a sick culture -- an exploitative culture. It is the culture you, Rep Hurt, pander to every time the price of gas rises at the pumps. It is the culture those offensive internet campaign ads, funded with public money, appealed to. Our aspirations, not our appetites, ought direct our energies. That is authentic Republican culture -- nothing RINO about it, though too often dismissed as such.
But, our God accommodates the hardness of our hearts. He's a God of harm reduction. (I welcome the opportunity to expand on that theme, but I've diverged enough already). So we work to (treat the symptoms) thwart the exploitation and income inequality and compensatory socialism of a culture of consumer debt (including the National debt for recurring expenses), while seeking to identify, understand, and cure the illness. USPS financial services will likely be a more socially healthy response to consumer lending than Paycheck lending -- but bears the same risks. The risks, and means to lessen them (and not systematize them, as happened with mortgage lending) must be addressed. The public treasury and national economy cannot be held hostage to the insatiable hungers of a sick society.
What I hope to see more of is aspirational lending -- enterprise lending. What you, Rep Hurt, are championing (or seem to be) in your appeal for unfettered and unmonitored private equity funding. I see where micro-lending by faith organizations is something I'd like to explore. People with dreams need someone other than Gordon Gecko and the Shark Tank to support those dreams. And, despite your fine rhetoric, they need their Gordon Geckos to be licensed, registered and regulated.
I developed a certain affection for Tom Bliley, when the Clinton impeachment circus destroyed my faith in Congress and I became something of an active correspondent. I had hoped that my Delegate, Paul Harris could replace him. I hoped he might have replaced Virgil when the district lines were drawn that way after the 2000 Census. Anyhow, I voted for Martin, not Cantor. Both had their issues, but I trust a man of faith more than an acolyte of Objectivism. You seem to be something of both, but I hope sometime to appeal to the former. Often, I see something in the Sunday texts that might serve to persuade you to follow Jesus, not Ayn. Anyhow -- back to predatory lending.
Cantor was only my Rep for his first term. I didn't write much, and his correspondence responses paled to Bliley's exemplary staff work (as do yours, though meritorious, relative to Virgil's -- I never cared for Perriello's). I recall writing against his signature education tax credit, for the designation of the Falls of the James as an historical treasure, for Bliley's signature Liberty Dollar, and for developing means for reputable financial companies to better secure debt to displace collateralized usury (pawn, title, and paycheck loans, also rent-to-own). I think perhaps Cantor read "securitized" instead of "secured" and "mortgage" rather than collateral, and tongue-in-cheek blame my emails to Cantor for America's economic collapse. (As I tongue-in-cheek imagine Lewinsky as a correspondence clerk reading my letter to the President mentioning his boring neckties (Rush, at the time, was selling neckties), then selecting her initial gift to Handsome).
The point being -- the clients of predatory lenders don't deserve too much consideration. Consumer lending in general is symptomatic of the cancer in our culture that creates desperation (which RHINOS love) and dependency (which Democrats love). A consumer culture is a sick culture -- an exploitative culture. It is the culture you, Rep Hurt, pander to every time the price of gas rises at the pumps. It is the culture those offensive internet campaign ads, funded with public money, appealed to. Our aspirations, not our appetites, ought direct our energies. That is authentic Republican culture -- nothing RINO about it, though too often dismissed as such.
But, our God accommodates the hardness of our hearts. He's a God of harm reduction. (I welcome the opportunity to expand on that theme, but I've diverged enough already). So we work to (treat the symptoms) thwart the exploitation and income inequality and compensatory socialism of a culture of consumer debt (including the National debt for recurring expenses), while seeking to identify, understand, and cure the illness. USPS financial services will likely be a more socially healthy response to consumer lending than Paycheck lending -- but bears the same risks. The risks, and means to lessen them (and not systematize them, as happened with mortgage lending) must be addressed. The public treasury and national economy cannot be held hostage to the insatiable hungers of a sick society.
What I hope to see more of is aspirational lending -- enterprise lending. What you, Rep Hurt, are championing (or seem to be) in your appeal for unfettered and unmonitored private equity funding. I see where micro-lending by faith organizations is something I'd like to explore. People with dreams need someone other than Gordon Gecko and the Shark Tank to support those dreams. And, despite your fine rhetoric, they need their Gordon Geckos to be licensed, registered and regulated.
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