It's getting harder to tell if this is sheer stupidity, planned malice or both.
Remember who did this in the future. Accepting them back into polite society is a horrific idea. They declared they hate everyone in the country and want to burn it down. There should be no Kumbaya, guitars and mallows around the fire.
Refer to David Brooks' opinion piece in today's NYT, about Republican Nihilism. He claims there is a spirit of "burn it all down". Seems to be seconded by several comments in this thread.
I'm rapidly getting to the point of joining that group.
I'm getting real tired of fighting tax breaks for people with 131 Scrooge McDuck piles of money already, at the cost of services a large portion of the country uses or may need.
To be clear, I don't have kids, but want my tax dollars to fund free lunches, but we can't have that. Instead we get garbage like public school busses being used to drive kids to private schools, while the public school students walk. (See Ohio)
Oh I think the wealthiest will be the first with heads on pikes when it all comes tumbling down.
The wealthiest people aren’t descendants of Julius Caesar, the Medicis, the Hapsburgs, Rollo (who is an ancestor to every European monarch), the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, etc.
Some of these are moderately wealthy now (eg the Rothchilds) but they don’t dominate the world’s wealth.
Part of this is that can be hard to maintain a lineage over time. Also, foolish fail sons will squander family wealth.
But some wealthy people just go the French Revolution way.
I don’t believe the Gateses, Musks, Bezoses, etc will survive the upheaval, violence and revolution they are making inevitable.
From the outside, the current model looks more like the Russian style burning down, not French revolution.
At the end it's an olygarchy with too much stockpiled military slowly creeping on it's neighbour and stationning troops "on vacation" across the border.
The wealthiest live in gated communities with private security, and are the ones who can scramble to their private jets when SHTF. The ones whose heads mostly end up on the spikes are the richest proles (i.e. "top middle class") - those who have enough money that it is obvious they're each, yet not enough to buy actual security or to be truly isolated from the rest of society if they so wish.
Yeah but who are their private security, cooks, cleaners, gardeners, handymen, pilots, etc? They're ordinary people and loyalty becomes harder and harder to motivate when the world is burning down.
Also, where are they running to? In an increasingly interconnected world, the whole developed world looks like it'll go down together.
I advocate for things like universal healthcare and providing food and shelter for every person not only because it's moral but also because we can afford it and it preserves the current system. If the ultra-wealthy really took a long-term view, they'd be fighting for those things because they simply won't survive the revolution.
But I believe we're beyond the point where electoral politics can halt a violent upheaval of the current economic order. And many, many people will die in that process.
It’s pretty simple, actually, you have a problem with institutionalized corruption in your country. This was lobbied for and now executed. Drill, baby, drill.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Also, please don't use this site primarily for political battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of which politics they prefer.
Lower energy prices and more renewables are both bad if you're in the fossil fuel business. Doubly so if the rest of the world is rapidly solarizing and you are desperate to hold onto one of your last best markets.
Coal and gas extraction are huge businesses with loads of money to pour into financing their own protection. They were so successful the meme it created broke free and took it's own life. It combined with reflexive anti-regulation, anti-intellectualism, and anti-tax forces so it's outlived even the need for it from some of the original creators (Shell et al have invested into their own renewables arms because they are the future).
It really is just this. Like I'm sure there are some folk in the GOP, both party and voterbase, who have actual principles. That however has been sacrificed on the altar of triggering the libs.
It's all they do now. If it will make some liberal in their heads unhappy, they'll do it. They don't care how much it hurts themselves.
That's honestly why I have absolutely not one iota of sympathy for all the Republicans who's businesses are getting obliterated by the trade "policies" of the dumbass in chief. You voted for this shit. I hope it sucks for you. I hope your wife leaves you. I hope your children never talk to you again. I hope broad society rejects you, permanently, for playing such stupid fucking games with the future of your nation, your children, and your own life.
Truly, it's the Right's chickens finally come home to roost. For decades the Republican side of things has gotten to play incompetent jackass olympics with the government, and between the US's position in global politics, our overall wealth and the general stability maintained by Democrats and moderates over the shrieking howling objections of themselves, everything kept trucking more or less to spec. Like children in a home maintained by parents who know what they're doing.
Now like the adolescents they so frequently scold everyone else for acting like, they have moved out on their own, maxed out their credit cards on stupid shit, and bills are stacking up. And just like those adolescents, they have no goddamn plan and just point the blame at everyone else for letting them fuck everything up for themselves.
Fucking. Children. And I don't just mean in that a distressing amount of them seem to be pedophiles.
Many believe that renewables are a boondoggle that will never be cheaper, pushed by either radical environmentalists who hate humanity, or by some shadowy conspiracy that's doing this as part of a plot to somehow reshape the world. And that fossil fuels are great, don't run out, and don't cause harm.
Solar and wind + storage is a viable path forward. Solar panels are getting cheaper, and batteries are getting better capacity and charge cycle stats each year. It may not be the path forward, we may never eliminate the need for a baseline system like nuclear plants or some gas or coal plants. But we can get ourselves off of them, other countries are, it's not like the US is special here. Same physics.
Planned malice. They simply hate "lib shit" and want liberals to suffer. The left likes solar and wind so actively placing barriers in the way of solar and wind is a way of saying "fuck you, libs" and kicking sand in their faces.
My aunt is a conservative lobbyist. She is also a drunk. This means that she gets drunk and texts my family her real feelings all the time. She is absolutely 100% motivated by hate. That's it. She has told her sister to kill herself because she's on government benefits. She has told my mom that she should be thrown in prison for going to an anti-Trump protest. She has told her own daughter that she'd be better off dead than bisexual. Her daughter has attempted suicide twice.
She is not motivated by some actual policy outcome. She is not motivated by trying to help people just through some different mechanism than the left would use. She is not motivated by libertarian ideals. She is motivated by hate.
This is true, but the funny part is, it's only going to impact red states. PNW/California already get most of their power from low carbon sources. Illinois has the largest fleet of commercial nuclear generators, and subsidizes it. NYISO gets a bunch of clean hydro power from Canada and some fossil gas. Is industry going to build where power costs are higher out of stupidity? Unlikely. "Stop hitting yourself."
As another comment mentioned, this is immaterial at the rate at which solar PV and batteries are being manufactured, it just makes electricity more costly (an additional tax) until we get to the future.
Outright banning solar and wind in red states and then watching as power generation companies flee to blue states as these energy sources outcompete fossil fuels in the marketplace doesn't matter. They still got to say "fuck you, libs." That's all that matters. Pointing out how this hurts their own voters won't change anything because the thing they want is not actually human flourishing. The thing they want is "fuck you, libs" and they got that already.
Hurting the voters in this way is a win for Republicans though.
They can use it as a wedge issue.
Look, Republicans in Republican states, they're leaving you without jobs and giving your jobs to immigrants. See, slightly red but mostly purple States? This is what will happen to you. And the energy companies take the blame, not legislators.
I don't even believe that this matters. I don't think the motivation is based on "hey we can use this as a strategy to get re-elected." I truly believe that the motivation is "fuck you, libs" and nothing deeper. Even if it makes them less likely to retain power they'll still do it. Because they got to spit on the left.
You’re not wrong, we’re just waiting for voters to age out (~2M 55+ every year, ~5k per day). Angry, irrational, uneducated people will not be swayed, nor change their mind or their vote. We just keep powering forward through the molasses. It is what it is. Change what you can, ignore what you cannot.
With health technology they'll live until 100 costing an disproportionate amount of money through government heathcare while continuing to vote Republican
The data is kind of misleading. Texas actually produces almost twice as much solar + wind power as California. The %mix is lower because Californians don’t have to run AC and heat year-round, so power demand per capita is way lower as a function of geography rather than policy.
I accounted for that in the comment you replied to. Texas has a voracious appetite for power due to data centers, manufacturing, and air conditioning, and impairing new renewables will hurt Texas more than California. Energy policy is in direct opposition to Texas' need for inexpensive, low carbon power due to their higher per capita consumption. Texas should be doing everything in its power to support the deployment of renewables, but out of ideology at the federal and state levels, they are not.
California is ahead of the curve by having built renewables and batteries before this policy change, while other states will be stuck with suboptimal energy policy for at least the next half decade, increasing their cost of power. California is also the world's fourth largest economy with the energy system they have built.
Unfortunately we cannot. She is actively stealing my grandparents' remaining money and taking legal steps to gain legal and economic control over my other aunt's life once my grandparents die.
My family would absolutely love to go no-contact with her. But if she ends up with guardianship of my other aunt once my grandparents pass then she'll be sentenced to suffer and die.
Also it sounds like that contact should be helping you for any eventual guardianship hearings. You are keeping a log with the exact date, time, and content of things like "She has told her sister to kill herself", right?
But unfortunately being a republican lobbyist means a couple things. She is extremely persuasive and she is friends with some relevant government officials.
Sounds like she’s a mean drunk? Or maybe she has her own trauma that you’re not aware of. Sort of a dehumanizing picture you paint.
It sounds like your broader point is that conservatives are all stupid and motivated by hatred. I kind of feel like you have plenty of your own hatred though but seem sort of blind to it.
I assure you that I am not missing some hidden trauma that complicates my aunt. What I described above is just a taste of the harm she's done to people.
Trauma is not an excuse or justification for the level of hatred described and especially not for years.
Unless someone is completely incapable of rational action (which has happened to me), there’s some level of personal responsibility involved.
I wouldn’t argue that conservatives are stupid and motivated by hatred. However, many people voted for a campaign of blatant hate and an explicitly stated desire for revenge. This definitely colors your view of anyone that doesn’t think this is a bad thing.
You seem to happily ignore who started this garbage, who's responsible for the orange shit stain on the entire country, who yelled "Fuck your feelings" when anyone disagreed, who refused to wear a mask to possibly prevent infections, but is quite happy to see their idiocy forced upon anyone else.
That’s how I feel about the title. How could that sentence ever make sense? People can support whatever they want. Which renewable resources? Pulpwood? Is it illegal to recycle?
Turns out the department that deals with farming, is going to focus on farming… and not on pushing electricity production.
Well yeah, the Department of Energy should probably be the ones spearheading our solar, wind, etc.
One problem with that is that the department of agriculture already has the relationships with farmers and producers. Now farmers who want to make a few extra bucks with some wind turbines or solar (which works well in tandem with growing stuff) have to talk to a stranger.
I’ve dealt with a lot of government agencies and never had a relationship with any of them. I doubt farmers have tight relationships with their local DOA rep.
Cool me too but I don't farm. I'm also probably missing out on resources that my taxes support. Are you?
Did those agencies you dealt with provide you with grants that you depended on to stay in business? Did those grants rely on actual proof that required onsite presence to confirm? Because it's one thing to measure a farm's yield and it's another to see how that yield came to be. There's a reason why the NRCS has field offices at the county level. It's so farmers can go there and so those working in the offices can go to the farms.
Remember who did this in the future. Accepting them back into polite society is a horrific idea. They declared they hate everyone in the country and want to burn it down. There should be no Kumbaya, guitars and mallows around the fire.