Stuff that happened this week in the senate/house

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ChaosRocket

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I've been getting really irritated by the fact that the only time the democrats can win anything is when we're wrong. I mean we can't win a vote against a budget that cuts health care and education for poor kids while giving tax breaks to the wealthy, yet we can win a vote against drilling in Alaska.

The message I'm basically getting here is protecting frozen wasteland > protecting the lives and futures of poor children.

How are people ever supposed to get less poor and become better contributors to society if you don't even educate them or keep them healthy?
 
Actually, the democrats won a vote tehy were very much RIGHT about, regarding the Alaska oil drilling.

The drilling project would affect one of the largest reindeer (caribou) herds in North America, affect drastically (and negatively) the livelihood native peoples (in both Canada and the United States) who rely on that herd, and incidentally blatantly disregard at the very least the spirit (if perhaps not the wording) of a treaty with Canada, which last I heard had not been canceled.

If this oil could ensure five, ten years of oil supplies for the US, it MIGHT be an arguably wortwhile pursuit.

But it's not. Using the HIGH-end estimate, it's less than two year worth of oil. the lower estimates makes it less than one year worth of oil supplies for the US alone.

And you'd endanger wildlife, destroy native's ways of life, and walk all over a treaty with a nation whose trust in you is already freefalling thanks to OTHER breached treaties for about one year worth of oil?

If your answer to that is yes, don't wonder why fewer and fewer people likes America each year.
 
I suppose this will be solely an ANWR debate, not a general "Dems suck" one?
 
You can make it a Dems Suck one. I'm not particularly interested in debating the ANWR, especially not with you.
 
There wasn't one. We just both know we agree on pretty much all the facts, but that, given our respective world views (his "Economy First" stance vs my "Big Picture" approach), we'll never agree anyway, so I'm not particularly interested in having it out with him.
 
I just don't think that this has enough of a negative "big picture" effect to justify not doing it.
 
It's not the size of the negative effect on the big picture. It's the complete lack of a POSITIVE one in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah, if you consider only immediate impacts, "extra oil" might sounds a lot better than "native rights" and "international treaties with Canada".

But in the long run?

In the long run, you will forever disrupt the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people. That's a permament change - once you do it, there's no coming back. In the long run, you will disrupt the ecology of a rare and diverse ecosystem. In the long run, you will further damage your image among foreign nations - and the value of an american signature on a treaty.

That's the negative impact, in the long run.

What's the positive one?

That you will delay the unavoidable - having to abandon oil as your primary energy source - for an extra year or so. A drop in the water, to say the least. Once that year is gone, you're back at square one - you STILL have to wean yourself off oil, or face an unprecedented economic crisis.

And that makes ANWR drilling a pretty stupid idea.
 
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(his "Economy First" stance vs my "Big Picture" approach)

--that's a little biased, but i'll let it slide since i'm really really tired
 
Actually, characterizing my stance as the "big picture" (or "grand scheme of things") one is pretty much what you did yourself in our chat, earlier :p

And you frequently admited and shown that economy is what you favor the most. Not to say you ignore the big picture - mostly, as far as I know, you favor economy the most because you think that's what helps the big picture the most.

I tend to take the stance that nothing "helps the big picture the most". Hence why I characterized my view as big picture, and yours as economy first.
 
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Personally I wouldn't even have been nice enough to call your stance an "economy first" approach. :p

But I'm also really tired, I can't even debate right now, I just wanted to see what people had to say for now.
 
To be fair, I think the two sides are enviroment-first and economy-first.
 
Not really. As I said above - if we were talking about several years worth of oil supplies, then I wouldn't mind this. What seal the deal for me isn't so much the environmental downsides as it is the LACK of economical upsides from a more long-term perspective.

So it's not that I consider the environment strictly better than the economy -it's that in this particular case, given a *long term* picture, environmental and social aspects beat the economical ones.
 
So it's not that I consider the environment strictly better than the economy -it's that in this particular case, given a *long term* picture, environmental and social aspects beat the economical ones.

-- So then we're both "big picture" people. I just think that in the big picture the few million barrels we get from there is worth a little messin' up of the barren wilderness, you don't.
 
If it was a barren wilderness (which the Porcupine river valley is NOT - despite the cold, it's a very diverse ecosystem*), and IF the impact was only on the ecosystem, you might have a point.

But the problem is the social impact as well. The Alaska drilling project would endanger their main source of sustenance (the reindeer herd), and thus completely disrupt their lifestyle. Even then, if the economical benefit was critical enough, I could sort of see reasons to try to strike a deal with affected natives regarding the aforementioned exploitation.

But for maybe a year worth of oil? That's just pathetic greed, worthy of what was done to the natives in the XIXth century (you know, constantly pushing them off whatever territory they were on at the time so that the US of A could claim the resources around there...then doing it again, and again, and again, to the same tribe).

Yeah, I know, to you that doesn't matter - they're primitive, lesser culture, etc, etc, etc. I heard that one often enough from you, and I'm frankly not interested in hearing it again. You know I disagree on that, and we both know it's one of the few topic we're never going to have a remotely civil discussion on, since you consider my stance somewhere along cultural treason and I consider yours somewhere along cultural nazism.
 
That's what his stance on everything is when you get down to it, which is why I wouldn't be nice enough to say he takes an "economy first" stance. Most right wingers will bring up actual economic evidence that capitalism is better for everyone, including poor people, in the long run. He rarely does that, he mostly just rants about how poor people are genetically inferior and don't deserve anything and should have the deck stacked against them so that he'll be better off.

As for me, it's not that the people are primitive as much as it is that there are so few of them. I just don't see this as having a huge negative impact as compared to the economic benefit. And I generally am economy > environment, because people > animals and trees.
 
You would destroy the lifestyle of a minority for something that will barely benefit the majority at all? (maybe, one less cent per gallon?)

And if you accept that, where do you stop? Cutting funds for disabled kids education to finance tax cuts for everyone else? Exploiting a few hundred children in Sri Lanka so that Wal Mart can sell t-shirt a dollar cheaper here?

No minor economical benefit - and one cent less a gallon is minor - is worth the sort of sacrifice you would ask of a minority here.
 
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And if you accept that, where do you stop? Cutting funds for disabled kids education to finance tax cuts for everyone else? Exploiting a few hundred children in Sri Lanka so that Wal Mart can sell t-shirt a dollar cheaper here?

-Anyone who says yes gets a free marriage proposal.
 
I was asking Chaos, not you.

I've known what YOUR answer to that question would be for a long time :p
 
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