Let's Face It - If Republicans Win in November...

[Business_Casual]

They'll probably just blow it by ordering a half-dozen (or 175) new aircraft carriers or something.

M_P

[Belmont31R]

They'll probably just blow it by ordering a half-dozen new aircraft carriers or something.

M_P




So thats what, Federal spending for a few days at this pace?

[Business_Casual]

Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm a GOP idiot myself. I just hope they learned something from the last time they were trusted with power.

We're running out of chances to get things fixed.

M_P

[Nathan_Bell]

True, but to put that into perspective.
Barry, Harry, and Nan have spent enough to have built nearly 175 Nimitz Class carriers with the $787Billion Porkulus alone.


Seriously though, none of the current politicians have the stones to do what needs to be done to repair the Republic, so they will go on moving the deckchairs.

[Belmont31R]

True, but to put that into perspective.
Barry, Harry, and Nan have spent enough to have built nearly 175 Nimitz Class carriers with the $787Billion Porkulus alone.


Seriously though, none of the current politicians have the stones to do what needs to be done to repair the Republic, so they will go on moving the deckchairs.




Since the day Obama took office the debt has been raised by 1.7 trillion. Almost 3x as much as any previous "record" in the same amount of time.

[Business_Casual]

True, but to put that into perspective.
Barry, Harry, and Nan have spent enough to have built nearly 175 Nimitz Class carriers with the $787Billion Porkulus alone.


Seriously though, none of the current politicians have the stones to do what needs to be done to repair the Republic, so they will go on moving the deckchairs.

175? That really puts it into perspective doesn't it? Where are the 24x7 TV ads saying that? That would get people's attention, IMO.

M_P

[BiggLee71]

Since the day Obama took office the debt has been raised by 1.7 trillion. Almost 3x as much as any previous "record" in the same amount of time.



That is ****ing ridiculous. Tax and spend politicians gotta go no matter what their political affiliation.

[John_Wayne777]

Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm a GOP idiot myself. I just hope they learned something from the last time they were trusted with power.

We're running out of chances to get things fixed.

M_P

Agreed. We all hope they've learned...but past experience indicates otherwise.

It's really getting depressing when we're hoping that one group of idiots cancels out the other group of idiots enough so that our lives aren't completely screwed up.

[chadbag]

Not that I think we should (I am libertarian on spending etc) but that would be pretty cool:

175 Nimitz class carriers to park off of China's coast and along Iran's waters. Would put plenty of people to work in the shipyards too.

[rubberneck]

Building 175 aircraft carriers would have put a whole hell of a lot more people to work than Obama's pork laden stimulus bill, but I digress.

[Belmont31R]

Building 175 aircraft carriers would have put a whole hell of a lot more people to work than Obama's pork laden stimulus bill, but I digress.




They could put a lot to work without spending a penny.


Open season on nuke plants and oil drilling.

[Thomas M-4]

175 aircraft carriers or 700 B-1 stealth bombers or how many f-22 raptors?
At least or kids would have befitted from them also. Instead of going into a black hole.:mad:

[JonnyVain]

Not that I think we should (I am libertarian on spending etc) but that would be pretty cool:

175 Nimitz class carriers to park off of China's coast and along Iran's waters. Would put plenty of people to work in the shipyards too.

At least the gov't would be spending money on what they are Constitutionally mandated to spend money on. Whether we need it or not is a different story.

[Nathan_Bell]

175? That really puts it into perspective doesn't it? Where are the 24x7 TV ads saying that? That would get people's attention, IMO.

M_P

Think I did the math right. $787B/$4.5B = 174 .89, so it is 174 Nimitz Class and one AEGIS cruiser as change.

I would love someone with Photochop skills to make a picture showing that many Nimtiz class carriers. If someone could do that I might have to be evil and start one of those annoying emails for people to forward around. :p

[Business_Casual]

Well make sure you send a copy to the Tea Party people!

M_P

[Safetyhit]

It's really getting depressing when we're hoping that one group of idiots cancels out the other group of idiots enough so that our lives aren't completely screwed up.


Seems as though every adult in my entire life is comprised of one of these decrepit types now. There is no relief, no oasis anymore.

Except some of the good folks here, that is...

[HES]

That is ****ing ridiculous. Tax and spend politicians gotta go no matter what their political affiliation.
Yep. Thread over. If its the current crop of Republicans and they take over in 2010 then yes they will blow as much money as the Democrats historically have done. What ever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?

[kwelz]

It depends on what Republicans win. Elect the same idiots that have been in office for years and we are screwed no matter what party they claim. Elect new Candidates with new ideas and true Republican values... Well we may just be ok.

[Palmguy]

Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm a GOP idiot myself. I just hope they learned something from the last time they were trusted with power.

We're running out of chances to get things fixed.

M_P

Me too but I'm not holding my breath.

And I personally view that opinion as realism, not cynicism.

[fog0fwar]

TERM LIMITS.......





Fog

[Nathan_Bell]

TERM LIMITS.......





Fog


Hell, just making them pass a test on what the Constitution says would eliminate about half of them, if we are to judge them by their labors.

[Business_Casual]

All I want to see is an agenda that:

1) Cuts taxes
2) Cuts spending
3) Cuts regulation

That should be enough for their first term.

M_P

[Nathan_Bell]

All I want to see is an agenda that:

1) Cuts taxes
2) Cuts spending
3) Cuts regulation

That should be enough for their first term.

M_P

Number three is the one that gets over looked so often.

[Belmont31R]

All I want to see is an agenda that:

1) Cuts taxes
2) Cuts spending
3) Cuts regulation

That should be enough for their first term.

M_P



I will add to that...


4. Take terrorism seriously.


Current idiot looks at it like an inconvenience, and takes days to say anything. Then he can't even put a ****ing tie on when he does so. I directly hold Clinton, and his lax attitude during the 90's responsible for 9/11 as well as the other attacks. Obama is Clinton but worse.


I will also say if they run Romney I will not vote for him. ****er is pro-gov health care and anti-gun. I don't see him as being fiscally conservative at all. In fact he should be a democrat.

[rickrock305]

All I want to see is an agenda that:

1) Cuts taxes
2) Cuts spending
3) Cuts regulation

That should be enough for their first term.

M_P



cut regulation on what?



my opinion is that if/when the republicans get elected back to the majority, nothing will change. we'll have more of the same.

[rickrock305]

4. Take terrorism seriously.



how so?

[glocktogo]

Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm a GOP idiot myself. I just hope they learned something from the last time they were trusted with power.

We're running out of chances to get things fixed.

M_P

I'll save you the suspense, they didn't. I have yet to see even a glimmer of an idea coming from the clueless twits in the Republican leadership. We've still got Michael Idiot Steele at the helm for Christsakes! :mad:

[Trajan]

It would be foolish to believe in any party. Republicans are copying the whole Ron Paul thing because the neo-con thing failed, and RP was a successful Republican at a grass roots movement. Once the Rep's get back in office I believe it will be the same thing over again.

Better than the Dems, but less than desirable.

[Irish]

All I want to see is an agenda that:

1) Cuts taxes
2) Cuts spending
3) Cuts regulation

That should be enough for their first term.

M_P

Sounds like Ron Paul.

[RogerinTPA]

I mean, who do you choose between "shit" and "shitier"?

After the 1st substandard year of the current administration and the loss of a few seats on the congressional side of the house, I hope the Republicans have gotten a "whiff" of reality and a wake up call. They need to move back from the "center" (acting more like Dems) and go back to representing and defending conservatism.

Term limits are the single best move to get rid of these career politicians, on both sides.

[Belmont31R]

how so?




Interrogate terrorists.


Don't treat it as a mere nuisance for whom we can sweet talk into not attacking us.


Treat it as a priority, and don't address the nation after an attack like you just waltzed in off the golf course, make a vague statement, and then forget it ever happened.


Don't close gitmo.


No Miranda rights.


I can go on if you like...

[Business_Casual]

cut regulation on what?


Nuke plants, drilling for oil, coal plants, banks, for starters. That should keep them busy for the first term.

There's plenty of unscrewing to do, if they just allowed more nuke plants to be built and some off-shore drilling or ANWAR that would be enough for 2010.

M_P

[Belmont31R]

I mean, who do you choose between "shit" and "shitier"?

After the 1st substandard year of the current administration and the loss of a few seats on the congressional side of the house, I hope the Republicans have gotten a "whiff" of reality and a wake up call. They need to move back from the "center" (acting more like Dems) and go back to representing and defending conservatism.

Term limits are the single best move to get rid of these career politicians, on both sides.



Congressional republicans are led by RINO's right now.


I simply will not vote for one, and they seem to be trying to foist Mitt Romney on us. He is worse than McCain.

[Thomas M-4]

delete

[Belmont31R]

Nuke plants, drilling for oil, coal plants, banks, for starters. That should keep them busy for the first term.

There's plenty of unscrewing to do, if they just allowed more nuke plants to be built and some off-shore drilling or ANWAR that would be enough for 2010.

M_P



And the thing about doing that is it costs the tax payer not a dime.


Allow the economy to build itself back up...dont tax and borrow money out of the economy, and then control how it gets spent. Obama and screw take any hint of something getting better, and then immediately claim it was the Stimulus even though only 200B something has been spent. In the grand scheme of things that is a drop in the buck to the total economy when he have a GDP of around 14 trillion.

Id also like to point out many of their "infrastructure" jobs arent even going to Americans. They are building sidewalks around here, and the entire crew looks like they just came out of Mexico. Not saying that automatically makes them illegals but anyone can put 2 and 2 together. There jobs "created or saved" is a complete scam with how they calculate what constitutes a saved or created job. A company getting Stimulus funds has its workers counted among the saved even if they were in no danger of losing their job without Stimulus money. I still do not know a single person who was put to work or had their job saved due to Stimulus funds.

Even if republicans do take back control Obama has created such a mess and debt they are going to get blamed for his problems he created. I do not want to see a return to the 2000-2006 days with huge deficits but its going to take MASSIVE cuts. So far Federal budget is up 40% in the last year.

[Business_Casual]

We have to start somewhere. An annoying person would point out that a journey of 1,000 miles starts with one step, but I am not going to do that.

M_P

[kwelz]

I am currently working for a Pro Gun, Pro Life Candidate running for congress. He served in the Marines, went to Annapolis, and then went to law school.

He wants to cut Taxes, Get rid of the useless regulations (especially with healthcare) and make sure we aren't spending more than we bring in.
Sound like someone you could get behind?

It is so nice to have a candidate I can really believe in. I am so glad to be from Southern Indiana so I can get him elected :)

[rickrock305]

Interrogate terrorists.

we do.



Don't treat it as a mere nuisance for whom we can sweet talk into not attacking us.

wtf are you babbling about?



Treat it as a priority,


how so? one of Obama's only major policy decisions thus far has been to increase the number of troops to fight.




and don't address the nation after an attack like you just waltzed in off the golf course, make a vague statement, and then forget it ever happened.



I'm sorry, how many days did it take Bush to address the nation after Richard Reid?

I'll give you a hint, it was more than Obama.

This is a ridiculous point anyway. Like it does any good?

Forgot it ever happened? You must have missed the increased training for Yemen, the reviews of watch list procedures, etc. Maybe thats not what you want to happen, but don't pretend like nothing has been done about it.




Don't close gitmo.


How does Gitmo help us in the war on terror




No Miranda rights.

you prefer military tribunals? fair enough, i don't disagree. but Obama is hardly the first to prosecute terrorists in a civilian court.

[RogerinTPA]

We have to start somewhere. An annoying person would point out that a journey of 1,000 miles starts with one step, but I am not going to do that.

M_P

How bout a list of candidates on both sides, vetted by the Tea Party, NRA and other conservative orgs, publish their recommendations, and then vote the list.

[rickrock305]

Nuke plants, drilling for oil, coal plants, banks, for starters. That should keep them busy for the first term.

what regulations are you referring to?

for example, regulations on banks. cutting regulation is what got us into this economic mess to begin with. to go around cutting regulation even more will open up the gates for Goldman Sachs and the like to create and pop another bubble for profit.




There's plenty of unscrewing to do, if they just allowed more nuke plants to be built and some off-shore drilling or ANWAR that would be enough for 2010.



nothing more than a bandaid for a bullet wound. a very short term solution.

we need to think more long term with alternative energy strategies. water, wind, solar, etc.

[Heavy Metal]

Nuke is serious and long-term, ask France.

Moreso that the wind and solar pixie-dust your propose.

Rickrock305, is their a single leftist PC talking point you don't schill? Are you sure you are on the right forum because you are waisting your time with that nonsense here.

Hell, I bet you still drink the Global Warming Kool-Ade.

[Business_Casual]

what regulations are you referring to?

for example, regulations on banks. cutting regulation is what got us into this economic mess to begin with. to go around cutting regulation even more will open up the gates for Goldman Sachs and the like to create and pop another bubble for profit.

I disagree - the regulation of the mortgage lenders required them to make loans based not on the ability of the borrower to repay them but rather on the social agenda of Carter/Clinton/Cuomo. These mortgages were pooled into giant, risk free securities backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Guess which one of the preceding entities was run by Barney Frank's lover? Anyway, those securities were then sold on, with the explicit blessing of the US financial regulatory bodies, as derivatives to banks all across the globe. When the housing market in the US collapsed, we threatened to take down the world. That is why the Democrats hid the problem from the people and blamed "Wall Street." Which is a nebulous term that is designed to engender populist anger.



nothing more than a bandaid for a bullet wound. a very short term solution.

we need to think more long term with alternative energy strategies. water, wind, solar, etc.

Not so, there are decades of mineral energy and centuries of nuclear energy that could be accessed. The return on investment - a business concept that the 91% of Obama's Administration that never ran a business are unfamiliar with - would be excellent and allow the development of renewable energies over a more considererd, rational pace.

M_P

[Belmont31R]

we do.

Nigerian bomber was questioned for 50 minutes. Hardly an interogation. People get questioned by police much longer for far less.

wtf are you babbling about?


I'm talking about his reaching out to terrorists, and trying to get the world to like us by taking a soft stance on terrorism. He also blames Gitmo on AQ recruitment, and a reason to close it down. That is appeasing terrorists so they like us more or some such BS.

how so? one of Obama's only major policy decisions thus far has been to increase the number of troops to fight.

I agree with sending more over.

However its not near the top of his priorities.





I'm sorry, how many days did it take Bush to address the nation after Richard Reid?

I'll give you a hint, it was more than Obama.

This is a ridiculous point anyway. Like it does any good?

Forgot it ever happened? You must have missed the increased training for Yemen, the reviews of watch list procedures, etc. Maybe thats not what you want to happen, but don't pretend like nothing has been done about it.


Watch list? That will not keep us safe.

More action in Yemen in good.

I never said Bush was perfect. I have a lot to harp on him about, too.

No Obama speaking doesnt do much but it does show he cares, and given the entire scope of things (what he said, his demeanor, other actions, other speeches, his appearance, etc) says what I need to know about how much he cares.

I never said Obama has done nothing about terrorism.






How does Gitmo help us in the war on terror


Provides a place for us to hold, and interogate combatants. I place to try them in a military court.


you prefer military tribunals? fair enough, i don't disagree. but Obama is hardly the first to prosecute terrorists in a civilian court.

Reid was tried in civilian court because the bill allowing and setting up military tribunals was just passed, and the system was not setup yet.

However once it was setup I dont recall Bush taking people out of that system, and trying them a couple blocks away from ground zero.

The vast majority of precedence in this arena allows for infedinate detention as enemy combatants. They are a MAJOR source of our intel which we will no longer get. Gibbs can say they got all the intel they were going to get but only a dope would believe 50 minutes with a suspect is enough time to determine that let alone conduct a proper interogation. We are going to lose a lot with this Mirandizing terrorists, and trying them in civilian courts.







Mine in red.

[Palmguy]

I'm sorry, how many days did it take Bush to address the nation after Richard Reid?

I'll give you a hint, it was more than Obama.

You show me one freaking person in here carrying pom poms for George W Bush (much less the person you are responding to) and this post might have a shred of validity.

:rolleyes:

[rickrock305]

Nuke is serious and long-term, ask France.

Moreso that the wind and solar pixie-dust your propose.

Nuke also generates a buttload of really nasty waste that doesn't go anywhere for a LONG time.

Plenty of places are using wind, water, and/or solar power to great effect.

[Irish]

Nuke also generates a buttload of really nasty waste that doesn't go anywhere for a LONG time.

Plenty of places are using wind, water, and/or solar power to great effect.

Bullshit. You know nothing of nuclear power plants if this is your premise.

[Belmont31R]

what regulations are you referring to?

for example, regulations on banks. cutting regulation is what got us into this economic mess to begin with. to go around cutting regulation even more will open up the gates for Goldman Sachs and the like to create and pop another bubble for profit.





nothing more than a bandaid for a bullet wound. a very short term solution.

we need to think more long term with alternative energy strategies. water, wind, solar, etc.



Not even close.


You need to go research the Community Reinvestment Act, and groups like ACORN who make a business out of suing banks to force them to make loans to people who do not qualify for them. In fact Obama sued Citibank in 1994 on behalf of ACORN to force them to make loans to minorities and the poor AND not on if they qualified for a loan based on their financial situation.

Actions like this put people into homes they could not afford, and put a lot of bad mortgages on the banks books. A lot of these loans also ended up at Freddie and Fannie.

The progressive idea of "everyone is entitled to a home" is a big part of this, and the associated laws and bank suits.

I will also add that interest rates were kept too low for too long also furthering this problem.

A lot of peices to this puzzle but DEREGULATION is not one of them. If banks were deregulated away from the CRA and lawsuits by people like Obama and ACORN they would be left to their own devices to decide who gets a loan and who doesnt. They would not have been filled to the gills with bad loans.

If banks did not care about making risky loans they would not even check people's credit ratings, income, etc. Its better for their business to not have bad debt on their hands. What was also a part of the problem is they turned mortgages into investments, and because of the bad debt in there they turned out to be a major bust. So one beget another.

[Belmont31R]

Bullshit. You know nothing of nuclear power plants if this is your premise.




Indeed. I should post the article about the solar fields in CA, and what a fiasco that turned out to be.


No one wants half their state turned into mirrors and wind farms to provide what a couple nuke plants could do more cheaply and long term.

[rickrock305]

Bullshit. You know nothing of nuclear power plants if this is your premise.



Lets see, what creates more waste...a nuclear power plant or some solar and wind farms?

Are you saying nuclear plants don't create radioactive waste that remains radioactive for thousands of years?

[rickrock305]

What was also a part of the problem is they turned mortgages into investments, and because of the bad debt in there they turned out to be a major bust. So one beget another.



thanks for proving my point.

[Gutshot John]

Lets see, what creates more waste...a nuclear power plant or some solar and wind farms?

Are you saying nuclear plants don't create radioactive waste that remains radioactive for thousands of years?

Nuclear plants don't create radioactivity. They use what exists.

What creates energy more efficiently? Nuclear power is without a doubt the most efficient form of green energy in existence.

Ask the French.

[Belmont31R]

thanks for proving my point.


I didnt prove your point at all.


The investments were fine except for all the bad debt the CRA caused among other similar acts.

[rickrock305]

Nuclear plants don't create radioactivity. They use what exists.

What creates energy more efficiently? Nuclear power is without a doubt the most efficient form of green energy in existence.

Ask the French.


http://www.eng.fsu.edu/~azadini/group/website/

Once certain fuels are used up it’s not a problem anymore, but in the case of nuclear energy, that is not the case. Since the fuel is both radioactive and fissionable is still concern about how the waste should be handled. Most nuclear waste remains radioactive for thousands of years. One possible solution to this is called reprocessing. Reprocessing is a method by which the fissionable materials still left in the nuclear fuel are removed. This too has its downsides because not only is fuel grade uranium removed but weapons grade plutonium can also be acquired by the process. Predominantly, the majority of spent nuclear fuel still goes to waste where it will sit for the next couple thousand years. The half-life of Uranium 235 is about 713 million years long and the half-life of Plutonium 239 is over 20 thousand years long. Due to such large half-lives, much time and money go into making sure that nuclear waste is safely disposed away from civilization. Waste disposal tools usually include containers that are made from multiple layers of lead and steel and rigorously tested to avoid waste leakage. There are also many underground waste disposal sites throughout the United States that have been constructed only to be filled within months. Yucca Mountain is the main waste storage site for the Federal Government. Yucca Mountain is located underground in the state of Nevada where there is very little rainfall. The desert like conditions are ideal for nuclear waste storage along with the added safety of multiple casing to further prevent radioactive contamination in the case of a leakage. Furthermore, the water table is very low a full 2,000 feet from the surface and a full thousand feet from the where the majority of the waste will be stored. Even if there is some seepage into the environment there is still a fair amount rock and dirt the radioactive particles must traverse before they pollute the water table.

http://timeforchange.org/pros-and-cons-of-nuclear-power-and-sustainability


Disadvantages of nuclear power generation:
The problem of radioactive waste is still an unsolved one. The waste from nuclear energy is extremely dangerous and it has to be carefully looked after for several thousand years (10'000 years according to United States Environmental Protection Agency standards).

High risks: Despite a generally high security standard, accidents can still happen. It is technically impossible to build a plant with 100% security. A small probability of failure will always last. The consequences of an accident would be absolutely devastating both for human being as for the nature (see here , here or here ). The more nuclear power plants (and nuclear waste storage shelters) are built, the higher is the probability of a disastrous failure somewhere in the world.

Nuclear power plants as well as nuclear waste could be preferred targets for terrorist attacks. No atomic energy plant in the world could withstand an attack similar to 9/11 in Yew York. Such a terrorist act would have catastrophic effects for the whole world.
During the operation of nuclear power plants, radioactive waste is produced, which in turn can be used for the production of nuclear weapons. In addition, the same know-how used to design nuclear power plants can to a certain extent be used to build nuclear weapons (nuclear proliferation).

The energy source for nuclear energy is Uranium. Uranium is a scarce resource, its supply is estimated to last only for the next 30 to 60 years depending on the actual demand.

The time frame needed for formalities, planning and building of a new nuclear power generation plant is in the range of 20 to 30 years in the western democracies. In other words: It is an illusion to build new nuclear power plants in a short time.


Sustainability: Is nuclear energy sustainable?
For several reasons, nuclear power is neither «green» nor sustainable:

Both the nuclear waste as well as retired nuclear plants are a life-threatening legacy for hundreds of future generations. It flagrantly contradicts with the thoughts of sustainability if future generations have to deal with dangerous waste generated from preceding generations. See also here .
Uranium, the source of energy for nuclear power, is available on earth only in limited quantities. Uranium is being «consumed» (i.e. converted) during the operation of the nuclear power plant so it won't be available any more for future generations. This again contradicts the principle of sustainability.


Is nuclear power renewable energy?
Nuclear energy uses Uranium as fuel, which is a scarce resource. The supply of Uranium is expected to last only for the next 30 to 60 years (depending on the actual demand). Therefore nuclear energy is not a renewable energy.




http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-power5.htm


On average, a nuclear power plant annually generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel, classified as high-level radioactive waste. When you take into account every nuclear plant on Earth, the combined total climbs to roughly 2,000 metric tons yearly [source: NEI]. All of this waste emits radiation and heat, meaning that it will eventually corrode any container and can prove lethal to nearby life forms. As if this weren't bad enough, nuclear power plants produce a great deal of low-level radioactive waste in the form of radiated parts and equipment.

Eventually spent nuclear fuel will decay to safe radioactive levels, but it takes tens of thousands of years. Even low-level radioactive waste requires centuries to reach acceptable levels. Currently, the nuclear industry lets waste cool for years before mixing it with glass and storing it in massive cooled, concrete structures. In the future, much of this waste may be transported deep underground. In the meantime, however, this waste has to be maintained, monitored and guarded to prevent the materials from falling into the wrong hands. All of these services and added materials cost money -- on top of the high costs required to build a plant.

Nuclear waste can pose a problem, and it's the result of properly functioning nuclear power plants. When something goes wrong, the situation can turn catastrophic. The Chernobyl disaster is a good recent example. In 1986, the Ukrainian nuclear reactor exploded, spewing 50 tons of radioactive material into the surrounding area, contaminating millions of acres of forest. The disaster forced the evacuation of at least 30,000 people, and eventually caused thousands to die from cancer and other illnesses [source: History Channel].

[Irish]

Lets see, what creates more waste...a nuclear power plant or some solar and wind farms?

Are you saying nuclear plants don't create radioactive waste that remains radioactive for thousands of years?

Waste in the construction of the plant or these farms, short term operations or the long term, what are you referring to? Do you realize what it takes to build or sustain any of these projects? Do you have any idea how a solar plant works? I do, I commissioned Nevada Solar One for usage and have been in the power busines for years. Solar sucks and has lots of environmental issues that you're completely unaware of.

Your generalizations won't work with me, especially on this topic. The material used to generate steam in nuclear power plants miniscule in comparison to coal, gas, etc. A kernel sized piece of material will generate the same amount of energy as a VW sized piece of coal.

Where are you located? I can set up a tour of a nuclear facility if you'd like so that you can get an education on the subject rather than lefty, greenie garbage that you've been inculcated with.

[thopkins22]

for example, regulations on banks. cutting regulation is what got us into this economic mess to begin with. to go around cutting regulation even more will open up the gates for Goldman Sachs and the like to create and pop another bubble for profit.:mad:It absolutely was not caused by too little regulation. Hayek received a Nobel prize for explaining the business cycle as it relates to money supply for this in 1974. Artificially low interest rates caused the banking issues. And let's say that you're still in favor of controlling the market through interest rates...why not allow the banks to self regulate(it's certainly in their best interest?) If those banks had gone tits up, you wouldn't have seen a sketchy loan for decades, not counting the loans the government "encouraged."


we need to think more long term with alternative energy strategies. water, wind, solar, etc.

I've had about enough of this hippie BS. When you're ready to sacrifice the state of Nevada to power Los Angeles let me know. For that matter there is enough oil to satisfy the world for many more generations. A "new" untapped field is being explored right now that stretches all the way from South America to Africa.

If something better comes along, the market will pick it up on it's own. No need to have the government starve people in Africa by driving up food prices since we need all that corn to make a little ethanol.

[Nathan_Bell]

Nuke also generates a buttload of really nasty waste that doesn't go anywhere for a LONG time.

Plenty of places are using wind, water, and/or solar power to great effect.

Nukes have all that 'waste' because they are not allowed to use the enrichment process to regain the nasties (which are where the power comes from) for re-use. The new technology and designs are incredibly efficient.

Wind power, in the best locations, doesn't get above 50% theoretical output when looking at a time frame of more than a month.

Water, we used to have all these things called hydro-electric dams but they made fishes sad so we cannot build them any more.

Sun doesn't shine everyday. The Greens love of solar proves to me that they are all lead by fuzzy headed "thinkers" who live in Cali. Much of the US doesn't have sunshine 300+ days per year, hell many areas have less than 100 days. WTF are those areas to do the other 260 days per year?

[Gutshot John]

http://www.eng.fsu.edu/~azadini/group/website/

The tilde (~) indicates a personal/individual website. Not a bonafide source of information.


http://timeforchange.org/pros-and-cons-of-nuclear-power-and-sustainability

Again an anti-nuke website isn't a bonafide source of information.


http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-power5.htm

Still nothing that says that nuclear power creates radioactivity.

Nuclear power has been proven safe and effective. That doesn't mean that radioactive material doesn't need safeguards to be handles safely.

Do you want greenhouse gases or nuclear power? The choice is yours but wind/solar can't make up the deficit.

Do you have a REALISTIC alternative?

[thopkins22]

Do you have a REALISTIC alternative?

Of course he doesn't. It's fun to blame corporate America, but the only plausible solutions require that he admits that corporations aren't all that bad, and that trendy environmentalists aren't all that great(or smart.)

[rickrock305]

I didnt prove your point at all.


The investments were fine except for all the bad debt the CRA caused among other similar acts.



I don't really have time to explain it all to you, its pretty lengthy. But the investments were quite obviously NOT fine.

The CRA is a very minute source of the problem.

http://www.newamerica.net/blog/asset-building/2008/no-larry-cra-didn-t-cause-sub-prime-mess-3210

It has lately become fashionable for conservative pundits (Larry Kudlow, George Will) and disgruntled ex-bankers (Vernon Hill, for example, in his March 7 American Banker editorial) to blame the current credit crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act. This is patent nonsense. The sub-prime debacle has many causes, including greed, lack of and ineffective regulation, failures of risk assessment and management, and misplaced optimism. But CRA is not to blame.

First, the timing is all wrong. CRA was enacted in 1977, its companion disclosure statute, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) in 1975. While many of us warned against bad subprime lending before the turn of the millennium, the massive breakdown of underwriting and extension of risky products far down the income scale-without bothering to even check on income-was primarily a post-2003 phenomenon.
To blame a statute enacted in 1977 for something that happened 25 years later takes a fair amount of chutzpah.

It's even more outrageous because of the good CRA clearly did in between. The 1990s were the heyday of CRA enforcement-for a variety of reasons including the raft of mergers and acquisitions that followed the 1994 Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Act, increased scrutiny of lending practices by the media and activism by housing advocacy groups and tougher enforcement by the Clinton Administration.That period saw increased home mortgage lending to lower income households and in lower income communities by the banks and thrifts covered by CRA, and a steady increase in the homeownership rate, especially for lower income and minority families. (See The Joint Center for Housing Studies). In addition, there was significant investment in affordable rental housing, community facilities and broader community economic development, directly by banks and thrifts earning investment credit under CRA or indirectly through bank investment in Community Development Financial Institutions and other community-based organizations.

New research by Ingrid Gould Ellen and Katherine O'Regan of NYUWagner, presented at a conference sponsored by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, convincingly demonstrates that property values went up dramatically in low and very low income urban census tracts during the 1990s, reversing severe declines during the prior two decades. While Ellen and O'Regan point out that this does not necessarily mean that everyone in those communities benefited, relating the improvement in home values in distressed communities to the effects of a statute designed to increase access to mortgage credit in those communities, during a period when the statute was vigorously enforced, is a reasonable connection.

Second, CRA does not either encourage or condone bad lending. Bank regulators were decrying bad subprime lending before the turn of the millennium (see Interagency Guidance on Subprime Lending), and warning the CRA-covered institutions we regulated that badly underwritten subprime products that ignored consumer protections were not acceptable. Lenders not subject to CRA did not receive similar warnings.And we also explained to those we regulated how to serve lower income communities and borrowers in a manner that was good for the borrower, good for the bank, and earned CRA credit.

For example, in October 2000, when I spoke to the National Association of Affordable Housing Lenders, a group of CRA-covered lenders, I said, "key to successful community reinvestment activity is being a responsible lender. Being responsible means making loans on responsible terms to people who can afford to pay them back, and making certain borrowers both understand the terms of the loan and have the opportunity to get the best terms available given their credit and financial position. But it also means expanding both the market for and affordability of loan products. It means working with customers to make them more bankable, helping families find the loan that is right for them, and investing in their success and yours by supporting organizations that assist you by counseling these individuals on the front and the back end of a loan."

CRA enforcement became a lower priority for bank regulators after 2001. My successor at the Office of Thrift Supervision, in fact, led an effort-eventually thwarted-to unilaterally loosen CRA regulations for institutions with more than $1 billion in assets. See 70 Fed. Reg. 10023. Nevertheless, CRA regulations were eased more generally in 2005. See 70 Fed. Reg. 44256.

The years that coincided with reduced CRA enforcement are also the years when CRA-covered entities wandered deeper into "higher priced loans," a category that includes, but is not limited to, "exploding ARMs" and other particularly pernicious kinds of loans. Thanks to the valiant efforts of late Fed Governor Ned Gramlich, starting in 2004 we have data about "higher priced loans." In that year, bank, thrifts and their subsidiaries-the entities covered by CRA-made about 37% of high cost loans. By 2006, the bank, thrift and subsidiary percentage was up to 40.9%. That a lack of interest in CRA enforcement coincided with CRA-covered entities getting into higher priced lending does not seem to me an argument for less CRA enforcement. Rather, it's an argument for better enforcement of a statute that, when well enforced, had proven its worth in helping both borrowers and communities.

Finally, it is nevertheless the case that CRA-covered lenders are not the source of the problem. One of CRA's major failings, in fact, is that it only applies to banks and thrifts. Remember all the investment banks who demanded product and then sliced and diced loans until it was impossible to understand their quality?They're not covered. Neither are the independent mortgage banks, the kinds of firms that have gone bankrupt or nearly so because of their abysmal lending practices, who regularly made about 50% of the high cost loans. Bank affiliates, another uncovered group, made about 12% of the high cost loans.

Janet Yellin, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco recently made this point, saying "Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans, and studies have shown that the CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households." And a recent study by Traiger & Hinckley LLP (See also the addendum).
CRA is not perfect. It doesn't cover a substantial portion of the financial services landscape. It has become complex, and the primary focus is on numbers of loans, with less attention to the quality of those loans. Asset-building depository and other services are given short shrift. And banks and thrifts have been allowed to "count" loans made by affiliates that are not subject to effective regulatory scrutiny. Governor Gramlich was right when he said that these entities-like the independent mortgage bankers-should be subject to far greater regulatory scrutiny, for many reasons. Certainly banks should not be allowed to count loans made by these affiliates for CRA purposes without such scrutiny.

But these are not reasons to repeal CRA or blame it for a mess caused primarily by those not subject to its reach during a period when even those under its umbrella were not encouraged to take it seriously. Rather, our challenge is to respond to the ongoing credit crisis in part by modernizing CRA, expanding its reach and making it even more effective than it was in the 1990s.




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/the-two-documents-everyon_b_169813.html


As a white-collar criminologist and former financial regulator much of my research studies what causes financial markets to become profoundly dysfunctional. The FBI has been warning of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud since September 2004. It also reports that lenders initiated 80% of these frauds.1 When the person that controls a seemingly legitimate business or government agency uses it as a "weapon" to defraud we categorize it as a "control fraud" ("The Organization as 'Weapon' in White Collar Crime." Wheeler & Rothman 1982; The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. Black 2005). Financial control frauds' "weapon of choice" is accounting. Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime -- combined. Control fraud epidemics can arise when financial deregulation and desupervision and perverse compensation systems create a "criminogenic environment" (Big Money Crime. Calavita, Pontell & Tillman 1997.)

The FBI correctly identified the epidemic of mortgage control fraud at such an early point that the financial crisis could have been averted had the Bush administration acted with even minimal competence. To understand the crisis we have to focus on how the mortgage fraud epidemic produced widespread accounting fraud.

Don't ask; don't tell: book profits, "earn" bonuses and closet your losses
The first document everyone should read is by S&P, the largest of the rating agencies. The context of the document is that a professional credit rater has told his superiors that he needs to examine the mortgage loan files to evaluate the risk of a complex financial derivative whose risk and market value depend on the credit quality of the nonprime mortgages "underlying" the derivative. A senior manager sends a blistering reply with this forceful punctuation:

Any request for loan level tapes is TOTALLY UNREASONABLE!!! Most investors don't have it and can't provide it. [W]e MUST produce a credit estimate. It is your responsibility to provide those credit estimates and your responsibility to devise some method for doing so.
Fraud is the principal credit risk of nonprime mortgage lending. It is impossible to detect fraud without reviewing a sample of the loan files. Paper loan files are bulky, so they are photographed and the images are stored on computer tapes. Unfortunately, "most investors" (the large commercial and investment banks that purchased nonprime loans and pooled them to create financial derivatives) did not review the loan files before purchasing nonprime loans and did not even require the lender to provide loan tapes.

The rating agencies never reviewed samples of loan files before giving AAA ratings to nonprime mortgage financial derivatives. The "AAA" rating is supposed to indicate that there is virtually no credit risk -- the risk is equivalent to U.S. government bonds, which finance refers to as "risk-free." We know that the rating agencies attained their lucrative profits because they gave AAA ratings to nonprime financial derivatives exposed to staggering default risk. A graph of their profits in this era rises like a stairway to heaven [PDF]. We also know that turning a blind eye to the mortgage fraud epidemic was the only way the rating agencies could hope to attain those profits. If they had reviewed even small samples of nonprime loans they would have had only two choices: (1) rating them as toxic waste, which would have made it impossible to sell the nonprime financial derivatives or (2) documenting that they were committing, and aiding and abetting, accounting control fraud.

Worse, the S&P document demonstrates that the investment and commercial banks that purchased nonprime loans, pooled them to create financial derivatives, and sold them to others engaged in the same willful blindness. They did not review samples of loan files because doing so would have exposed the toxic nature of the assets they were buying and selling. The entire business was premised on a massive lie -- that fraudulent, toxic nonprime mortgage loans were virtually risk-free. The lie was so blatant that the banks even pooled loans that were known in the trade as "liar's loans" and obtained AAA ratings despite FBI warnings that mortgage fraud was "epidemic." The supposedly most financially sophisticated entities in the world -- in the core of their expertise, evaluating credit risk -- did not undertake the most basic and essential step to evaluate the most dangerous credit risk. They did not review the loan files. In the short and intermediate-term this optimized their accounting fraud but it was also certain to destroy the corporation if it purchased or retained significant nonprime paper.

Stress this: stress tests are useless against the nonprime problems

What commentators have missed is that the big banks often do not have the vital nonprime loan files now. That means that neither they nor the Treasury know their asset quality. It also means that Geithner's "stress tests" can't "test" assets when they don't have the essential information to "stress." No files means the vital data are unavailable, which means no meaningful stress tests are possible of the nonprime assets that are causing the greatest losses.

The results were disconcerting
A rating agency (Fitch) first reviewed a small sample of nonprime loan files after the secondary market in nonprime loan paper collapsed and nonprime lending virtually ceased. The second document everyone should read is Fitch's report on what they found.

Fitch's analysts conducted an independent analysis of these files with the benefit of the full origination and servicing files. The result of the analysis was disconcerting at best, as there was the appearance of fraud or misrepresentation in almost every file.

[F]raud was not only present, but, in most cases, could have been identified with adequate underwriting, quality control and fraud prevention tools prior to the loan funding. Fitch believes that this targeted sampling of files was sufficient to determine that inadequate underwriting controls and, therefore, fraud is a factor in the defaults and losses on recent vintage pools.

Fitch also explained [PDF] why these forms of mortgage fraud cause severe losses.

For example, for an origination program that relies on owner occupancy to offset other risk factors, a borrower fraudulently stating its intent to occupy will dramatically alter the probability of the loan defaulting. When this scenario happens with a borrower who purchased the property as a short-term investment, based on the anticipation that the value would increase, the layering of risk is greatly multiplied. If the same borrower also misrepresented his income, and cannot afford to pay the loan unless he successfully sells the property, the loan will almost certainly default and result in a loss, as there is no type of loss mitigation, including modification, which can rectify these issues.
The widespread claim that nonprime loan originators that sold their loans caused the crisis because they "had no skin in the game" ignores the fundamental causes. The ultra sophisticated buyers knew the originators had no skin in the game. Neoclassical economics and finance predicts that because they know that the nonprime originators have perverse incentives to sell them toxic loans they will take particular care in their due diligence to detect and block any such sales. They assuredly would never buy assets that the trade openly labeled as fraudulent, after receiving FBI warnings of a fraud epidemic, without the taking exceptional due diligence precautions. The rating agencies' concerns for their reputations would make them even more cautious. Real markets, however, became perverse -- "due diligence" and "private market discipline" became oxymoronic. These two documents are enough to begin to understand:

the FBI accurately described mortgage fraud as "epidemic"
nonprime lenders are overwhelmingly responsible for the epidemic
the fraud was so endemic that it would have been easy to spot if anyone looked
the lenders, the banks that created nonprime derivatives, the rating agencies, and the buyers all operated on a "don't ask; don't tell" policy
willful blindness was essential to originate, sell, pool and resell the loans
willful blindness was the pretext for not posting loss reserves
both forms of blindness made high (fictional) profits certain when the bubble was expanding rapidly and massive (real) losses certain when it collapsed
the worse the nonprime loan quality the higher the fees and interest rates, and the faster the growth in nonprime lending and pooling the greater the immediate fictional profits and (eventual) real losses
the greater the destruction of wealth, the greater the (fictional) profits, bonuses, and stock appreciation
many of the big banks are deeply insolvent due to severe credit losses
those big banks and Treasury don't know how insolvent they are because they didn't even have the loan files
a "stress test" can't remedy the banks' problem -- they do not have the loan files


http://www.realestatejournal.com/buysell/mortgages/20071204-simon.html


One common assumption about the subprime mortgage crisis is that it revolves around borrowers with sketchy credit who couldn't have bought a home without paying punitively high interest rates. But it turns out that plenty of people with seemingly good credit are also caught in the subprime trap.

An analysis for The Wall Street Journal of more than $2.5 trillion in subprime loans made since 2000 shows that as the number of subprime loans mushroomed, an increasing proportion of them went to people with credit scores high enough to often qualify for conventional loans with far better terms.

In 2005, the peak year of the subprime boom, the study says that borrowers with such credit scores got more than half -- 55% -- of all subprime mortgages that were ultimately packaged into securities for sale to investors, as most subprime loans are. The study by First American LoanPerformance, a San Francisco research firm, says the proportion rose even higher by the end of 2006, to 61%. The figure was just 41% in 2000, according to the study. Even a significant number of borrowers with top-notch credit signed up for expensive subprime loans, the firm's analysis found.

The numbers could have dramatic implications for how banks and U.S. regulators address the meltdown in subprime loans. Major banks, mortgage companies and investment firms have been rocked by billions of dollars in losses as shaky subprime loans -- which typically carry much higher, or rising, rates and other potentially onerous costs -- have increasingly gone into default. Many analysts expect hundreds of thousands more loans could go bad over the next several years. The Bush administration and major financial institutions are working on a plan to freeze interest rates of certain subprime loans in hopes of avoiding an even bigger meltdown.

The surprisingly high number of subprime loans among more credit-worthy borrowers shows how far such mortgages have spread into the economy -- including middle-class and wealthy communities where they once were scarce. They also affirm that thousands of borrowers took out loans -- perhaps foolishly -- with little or no documentation, or no down payment, or without the income to qualify for a conventional loan of the size they wanted.

The analysis also raises pointed questions about the practices of major mortgage lenders. Many borrowers whose credit scores might have qualified them for more conventional loans say they were pushed into risky subprime loans. They say lenders or brokers aggressively marketed the loans, offering easier and faster approvals -- and playing down or hiding the onerous price paid over the long haul in higher interest rates or stricter repayment terms.

Sales Pitch

The subprime sales pitch sometimes was fueled with faxes and emails from lenders to brokers touting easier qualification for borrowers and attractive payouts for mortgage brokers who brought in business. One of the biggest weapons: a compensation structure that rewarded brokers for persuading borrowers to take a loan with an interest rate higher than the borrower might have qualified for.

There isn't a hard-and-fast rule on what makes a loan subprime. But generally they are riskier than regular mortgages because lenders are more willing to bend traditional underwriting standards to accommodate borrowers. Besides having a lower credit score, borrowers might wind up with a subprime loan if the mortgage was considered risky for other reasons -- such as borrowing a higher percentage of income or home value than normal, or borrowing without documenting income or assets. The resulting interest rates tend to be substantially higher than for conventional mortgages.

One key factor in determining what kind of loan a borrower gets is his credit score. Credit scores can run from 300 to 850, and many involved in the business view a credit score of 620 as a historic rough dividing line between borrowers who are unlikely to qualify for a conventional, or prime loan, and those who may be able to. Above that score, borrowers may qualify for a conventional loan if other considerations are in their favor. Above 720, most borrowers would expect to usually qualify for conventional loans, unless they are seeking to spend more than they can afford, or don't want to have to document their income or assets -- or are steered to a subprime product.

But rising home prices, and the growth of an industry of lenders specializing in subprime loans, led to an increase in all kinds of reasons for borrowers with good credit scores to sign up for subprime loans.

"Every single day ... I saw prime borrowers coming through my desk with 660, 680 [and] 720 credit scores," says Thomas Rudden, a former senior account executive at Mercantile Mortgage Co., a now-defunct subprime lender. Some were taking out loans as speculators, he believes, while in other cases he thinks brokers put borrowers into these loans because they thought it was easier.

Many borrowers figured they would refinance in a few years before the rate on their loan moved higher -- but falling home prices and tighter credit standards in the past year have suddenly made that unrealistic in many cases. "Brokers and agents were telling" borrowers with high credit scores for the past several years "that it was OK" to get subprime loans, "and borrowers were wanting to take on more debt," says Mark Carrington, director, analytical sales and support at First American LoanPerformance.

Confused Borrowers

A study done in 2004 and 2005 by the Federal Trade Commission found that many borrowers were confused by current mortgage cost disclosures and "did not understand important costs and terms of their own recently obtained mortgages. Many had loans that were significantly more costly than they believed, or contained significant restrictions, such as prepayment penalties, of which they were unaware."

Lending advocates have long alleged that minority and poor borrowers are often steered into subprime loans that carry excessively high interest rates and steep prepayment penalties. But the growing use of subprime loans by people with higher credit scores suggests that such problems exist among a much wider swath of borrowers than previously thought and may have little to do with the ethnicity of borrowers.

Doug Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association, says the line between borrowers who can qualify for a conventional loan and those who can't is blurry. "This perception that 620 is a break between prime and subprime ... is certainly not the view of the industry," he says.

Lenders make their decisions according to a variety of factors, including their own policies about risk, he says. Credit scores themselves are based on a variety of factors, including a consumer's payment history and debt load, how long the consumer has had credit, how actively the consumer is looking for new credit and the types of credit the consumer uses.

Lenders say they aren't responsible for borrowers who may have been reckless in their real-estate investments or their finances, or who have their own reasons for considering loans with subprime terms. "There are many borrower requests and situations, and multiple risk factors in addition to credit grading that go into loan underwriting decisions and often do result in borrowers with good credit grades accepting subprime loans," Countrywide Financial Corp. spokesman Rick Simon says.

Credit-worthy borrowers holding subprime loans may turn out to serve as a sort of shock absorber for the current mortgage crisis. They may be more likely than traditional subprime borrowers to withstand the double whammy of declining home prices and adjustable-rate mortgages soon due to reset at higher interest rates. The data perhaps explain why, so far, nearly 80% of the borrowers with subprime loans have continued to keep their loan payments current, according to some analysts. That could indicate the crisis won't continue to deepen as much as some fear.

But the situation also means that many otherwise credit-worthy borrowers are stuck with subprime loans whose costs may rise, which could harm them financially and further tighten pressure on the U.S. economy. Delinquency rates for subprime loans have been climbing in part because many of these loans included risky attributes such as no documentation of the borrower's income or assets. Many were made to first-time home buyers or to speculators who planned to quickly flip the homes. An analysis by Fitch Ratings of 45 subprime loans that went delinquent early in their lives -- even though the borrowers had an average credit score of 686 -- concluded last week that "these loans suffered in many instances from poor lending decisions and misrepresentations by borrowers, brokers and other parties in the origination process."

During the housing boom, the lower introductory rate on adjustable-rate mortgages made them feel closer in cost to regular loans to many subprime borrowers, but those rates can jump after two or three years. Brokers had extra incentives to sell those loans, which have terms that often are confusing to borrowers.

For instance, according to a March 2007 "rate sheet" distributed by New Century Financial Corp., now in bankruptcy-court protection and no longer making subprime loans, brokers could earn a "yield spread premium" equal to 2% of the loan amount -- or $8,000 on a $400,000 loan -- if a borrower's interest rate was an extra 1.25 percentage points higher than the Irvine, Calif., lender's listed rates.

Borrowers weren't supposed to see the information. Tiny print at the bottom of the document warned: "For wholesale use only. Not for distribution to the general public."

On average, U.S. mortgage brokers collected 1.88% of the loan amount for originating a subprime loan, compared with 1.48% for conforming loans, according to Wholesale Access, a mortgage research firm. Payouts for subprime loans have traditionally been higher, in part because these loans sometimes took more work and the approval rate could be lower. Brokers have sometimes used the money to help the borrower complete the loan, by reducing closing costs. But there is "a lot of play in the system," says A.W. Pickel III, a past president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, and president and chief executive of LeaderOne Financial Corp., a mortgage lender and broker in Overland Park, Kan. "You have to operate with an ethical basis."

Critics claim that yield-spread premiums encourage brokers to steer borrowers into loans that cost far more than they should and create excessive financial risk. In October, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley filed a lawsuit against subprime lender Fremont Investment & Loan and its parent, Fremont General Corp., alleging that the payments were unfair and deceptive.

Fremont, which quit making subprime mortgages in March, denies any wrongdoing. In a court filing last month, the Brea, Calif., bank said that without access to its loans -- often requiring a lower standard of proof of income, assets and credit history than traditional lenders -- "many Massachusetts residents who are homeowners today would never have been able to purchase homes." Fremont declined to make additional comment.

In most states, mortgage brokers and loan officers aren't under any legal obligation to put borrowers in the mortgage that best suits them. A provision outlawing yield-spread premiums was dropped last month from a mortgage-reform bill now working its way through Congress.

'Duped Into Loans'

Tom Pool, an assistant commissioner for the California Department of Real Estate, says his office has seen a number of cases involving "totally ignorant and unsophisticated borrowers who had good credit, but were duped into loans they had no hope of repaying." But experienced borrowers with high credit scores are often too casual about the loan process.

A study published last year in the Journal of Consumer Affairs concluded that some borrowers pay higher rates than they should because they don't shop around enough. An earlier survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association of borrowers who had bought a house within the previous 12 months found that half couldn't recall the terms of their mortgage, says the association's Mr. Duncan.

Often such loans involve fraud, says Peter Fredman, a California attorney who has two clients who wound up with loans with high interest rates despite good credit scores. "Because these people had decent credit scores, the lenders said they would do a 100% no-documentation loan and that opened the door for mortgage brokers to do whatever they wanted to do," he says.

Mr. Fredman is representing a couple in their sixties with a monthly income of less than $2,500 but mortgage payments of roughly $3,400, not including taxes and insurance. The husband and wife, first-time home buyers with credit scores of 680 and 667, expected payments of $1,500 a month. They tried refinancing to lower the cost, to little effect. They haven't made a mortgage payment since January.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html

What is really behind the mushrooming rate of mortgage foreclosures since 2007? The evidence from a huge national database containing millions of individual loans strongly suggests that the single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in a house -- that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater than the value of the house. This means that most government policies being discussed to remedy woes in the housing market are misdirected.

Many policy makers and ordinary people blame the rise of foreclosures squarely on subprime mortgage lenders who presumably misled borrowers into taking out complex loans at low initial interest rates. Those hapless individuals were then supposedly unable to make the higher monthly payments when their mortgage rates reset upwards.

But the focus on subprimes ignores the widely available industry facts (reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association) that 51% of all foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime, and that the foreclosure rate for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a growth rate of 200% for subprime foreclosures. (These percentages are based on the period since the steep ascent in foreclosures began -- the third quarter of 2006 -- during which more than 4.3 million homes went into foreclosure.)

Sharing the blame in the popular imagination are other loans where lenders were largely at fault -- such as "liar loans," where lenders never attempted to validate a borrower's income or assets.

This common narrative also appears to be wrong, a conclusion that is based on my analysis of loan-level data from McDash Analytics, a component of Lender Processing Services Inc. It is the largest loan-level data source available, covering more than 30 million mortgages.

The McDash data allowed me to construct a housing price index at the zip code level and then calculate the current equity position of each homeowner. I was thus able to compare the importance of negative equity to other variables related to foreclosures.

The analysis indicates that, by far, the most important factor related to foreclosures is the extent to which the homeowner now has or ever had positive equity in a home. The accompanying figure shows how important negative equity or a low Loan-To-Value ratio is in explaining foreclosures (homes in foreclosure during December of 2008 generally entered foreclosure in the second half of 2008). A simple statistic can help make the point: although only 12% of homes had negative equity, they comprised 47% of all foreclosures.

Further, because it is difficult to account for second mortgages in this data, my measurement of negative equity and its impact on foreclosures is probably too low, making my estimates conservative.

What about upward resets in mortgage interest rates? I found that interest rate resets did not measurably increase foreclosures until the reset was greater than four percentage points. Only 8% of foreclosures had an interest rate increase of that much. Thus the overall impact of upward interest rate resets is much smaller than the impact from equity.

To be sure, many other variables -- such as FICO scores (a measure of creditworthiness), income levels, unemployment rates and whether the house was purchased for speculation -- are related to foreclosures. But liar loans and loans with initial teaser rates had virtually no impact on foreclosures, in spite of the dubious nature of these financial instruments.

Instead, the important factor is whether or not the homeowner currently has or ever had an important financial stake in the house. Yet merely because an individual has a home with negative equity does not imply that he or she cannot make mortgage payments so much as it implies that the borrower is more willing to walk away from the loan.

The difference in policy implications is enormous: A significant reduction in foreclosures will happen when and only when housing prices stop falling and unemployment stops rising (see chart nearby).

Although the government is throwing money -- almost $2 trillion and counting -- at the mortgage markets with the intent of stabilizing house prices, its methods are poorly targeted. While Federal Reserve actions have succeeded in reducing mortgage interest rates, low interest rates induce refinancings more than they do home purchases.

To be sure, refinancings may put money in peoples' pockets, but it is home purchases that directly impact house prices. Nevertheless, housing prices are likely to stop falling fairly soon with or without government policies. That's because current prices are approaching their long-term, inflation-adjusted pre-bubble level. These pre-bubble prices appeared to be a long-term equilibrium, meaning that prices would be expected to return to those levels once the government's efforts to artificially increase homeownership receded. Unfortunately, recent attempts by politicians such as Barney Frank (D., Mass.) to again artificially increase homeownership levels might delay this return to sustainable equilibrium prices.

Other government policies are likely to be even less effective in reducing foreclosures. The Obama administration's "Making Homes Affordable" plan focuses on having the government help lower obligation ratios (the share of income devoted to house payments) down to 31% from levels somewhat above 38%. But my analysis finds that mortgages having such obligation ratios at closing did not later experience high foreclosure rates. This suggests that reducing these ratios is not likely to significantly improve the foreclosure problem.

Understanding the causes of the foreclosure explosion is required if we wish to avoid a replay of recent painful events. The suggestions being put forward by the administration and most media outlets -- more stringent regulation of subprime lenders -- would not have prevented the mortgage meltdown regardless of their merit otherwise.

Rather, stronger underwriting standards are needed -- especially a requirement for relatively high down payments. If substantial down payments had been required, the housing price bubble would certainly have been smaller, if it occurred at all, and the incidence of negative equity would have been much smaller even as home prices fell. A further beneficial regulation would be a strengthening, or at least clarifying at a national level, of the recourse that mortgage lenders have if a borrower defaults. Many defaults could be mitigated if homeowners with financial resources know they can't just walk away.

We are at a crossroads where we can undo the damage to the housing market by strengthening underwriting standards in a reasonable way. But to do so political leaders must face up to the actual causes of the mortgage crisis, not fictitious causes that fit political agendas and election strategies.

Mr. Liebowitz is professor of economics and director of the Center for the Analysis of Property Rights and Innovation in the management school at the University of Texas, Dallas.

[rickrock305]

Waste in the construction of the plant or these farms, short term operations or the long term, what are you referring to? Do you realize what it takes to build or sustain any of these projects? Do you have any idea how a solar plant works? I do, I commissioned Nevada Solar One for usage and have been in the power busines for years. Solar sucks and has lots of environmental issues that you're completely unaware of.

Your generalizations won't work with me, especially on this topic. The material used to generate steam in nuclear power plants miniscule in comparison to coal, gas, etc. A kernel sized piece of material will generate the same amount of energy as a VW sized piece of coal.

Where are you located? I can set up a tour of a nuclear facility if you'd like so that you can get an education on the subject rather than lefty, greenie garbage that you've been inculcated with.


I'm not referring to only solar as some magic panacea. I'm saying we need to harness solar, wind, water, and yes even nuclear power. I think putting all our eggs in the nuclear basket is more than a bit stupid.

What do you say about some of the cons I posted?

For example...

On average, a nuclear power plant annually generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel

Nuclear energy uses Uranium as fuel, which is a scarce resource. The supply of Uranium is expected to last only for the next 30 to 60 years (depending on the actual demand). Therefore nuclear energy is not a renewable energy.

The energy source for nuclear energy is Uranium. Uranium is a scarce resource, its supply is estimated to last only for the next 30 to 60 years depending on the actual demand.

The time frame needed for formalities, planning and building of a new nuclear power generation plant is in the range of 20 to 30 years in the western democracies. In other words: It is an illusion to build new nuclear power plants in a short time.

The problem of radioactive waste is still an unsolved one. The waste from nuclear energy is extremely dangerous and it has to be carefully looked after for several thousand years (10'000 years according to United States Environmental Protection Agency standards).


True or no?

[rickrock305]

:mad:It absolutely was not caused by too little regulation. Hayek received a Nobel prize for explaining the business cycle as it relates to money supply for this in 1974. Artificially low interest rates caused the banking issues. And let's say that you're still in favor of controlling the market through interest rates...why not allow the banks to self regulate(it's certainly in their best interest?) If those banks had gone tits up, you wouldn't have seen a sketchy loan for decades, not counting the loans the government "encouraged."

Please, educate yourself on the manner before throwing out some BS like this.

Right, low interest rates caused it all. :rolleyes:




If something better comes along, the market will pick it up on it's own. No need to have the government starve people in Africa by driving up food prices since we need all that corn to make a little ethanol.


Not necessarily. "Who Killed The Electric Car", check it out. (although I'm sure you won't, ignorance is bliss)

[rickrock305]

The tilde (~) indicates a personal/individual website. Not a bonafide source of information.



Again an anti-nuke website isn't a bonafide source of information.


Oldest trick in the book...can't refute the information so instead attack the source. pretty lame.




Still nothing that says that nuclear power creates radioactivity.

did you actually read it?


On average, a nuclear power plant annually generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel, classified as high-level radioactive waste. When you take into account every nuclear plant on Earth, the combined total climbs to roughly 2,000 metric tons yearly [source: NEI]. All of this waste emits radiation and heat, meaning that it will eventually corrode any container and can prove lethal to nearby life forms. As if this weren't bad enough, nuclear power plants produce a great deal of low-level radioactive waste in the form of radiated parts and equipment.





Nuclear power has been proven safe and effective.

until a terrorist decides to run a plane into one. we'll see how safe it is then.



Do you want greenhouse gases or nuclear power? The choice is yours but wind/solar can't make up the deficit.

Do you have a REALISTIC alternative?


Realistic? A combination of wind, solar, water, and nuclear power.

[Gutshot John]

Oldest trick in the book...can't refute the information so instead attack the source. pretty lame.


Really?

Perhaps you've heard of peer review?

Nice try though.

[rickrock305]

Of course he doesn't. It's fun to blame corporate America, but the only plausible solutions require that he admits that corporations aren't all that bad, and that trendy environmentalists aren't all that great(or smart.)



Of course you don't want to have an actual discussion, its much easier for you to make up my arguments for me so that your intellectual mightiness can be put on display...arguing with yourself.

what did i blame corporate america for, and where am i on record as saying environmentalists are great?

[thopkins22]

You're not addressing WHY regulation failed...probably because you're the type of person that thinks government regulation is capable of succeeding.

Let corporations and banks that make poor decisions go bankrupt. Stop central banks and politicians from flooding the market with cheap and easy money in order to delude the public into thinking we have a strong economy. Problem solved.

We're going to run out of nuclear fuel? Disregarding IrishLuck's point about modern efficient reactors weren't we supposed to run out of oil forty years ago too? How are they still profitably mining coal in West Virginia? Human beings have barely scratched the surface of a small portion of the planet...are you afraid of running out of landfill space too?

[rickrock305]

Really?

Perhaps you've heard of peer review?

Nice try though.


sure i've heard of it, i didn't know i had to have peer reviewed sources to determine that nuclear power plants generate radioactive waste. its common ****ing knowledge.

[Gutshot John]

Of course you don't want to have an actual discussion, its much easier for you to make up my arguments for me so that your intellectual mightiness can be put on display...arguing with yourself.

what did i blame corporate america for, and where am i on record as saying environmentalists are great?

Really you should take some of your own advice.

[rickrock305]

You're not addressing WHY regulation failed...probably because you're the type of person that thinks government regulation is capable of succeeding.



first, take the time to read some of what i posted. it explains a lot.



Let corporations and banks that make poor decisions go bankrupt.

ok sure, and?





Stop central banks and politicians from flooding the market with cheap and easy money in order to delude the public into thinking we have a strong economy.

ok sure, and?





Problem solved.


how so? we still have banks gaming the system, exploiting loopholes, etc.

[Gutshot John]

sure i've heard of it, i didn't know i had to have peer reviewed sources to determine that nuclear power plants generate radioactive waste. its common ****ing knowledge.

Another straw man and a rather pathetic attempt at dodging the issue.

When did I say that nuclear power plants didn't generate radioactive waste? In fact I'm quite sure I said the opposite.

Moreover you've failed to provide a REALISTIC alternative.

[thopkins22]

Of course you don't want to have an actual discussion, its much easier for you to make up my arguments for me so that your intellectual mightiness can be put on display...arguing with yourself.

what did i blame corporate america for, and where am i on record as saying environmentalists are great?

It's called inference;)

[Gutshot John]

really you should address the post where i handed you your ass instead of trying to attack me personally. its the first sign of a lost argument.

I must have missed that part.

Are you sure you comprehend basic English?

[rickrock305]

Really you should take some of your own advice.



really you should address the post where i handed you your ass instead of trying to attack me personally. its the first sign of a lost argument.

[rickrock305]

Another straw man and a rather pathetic attempt at dodging the issue.

When did I say that nuclear power plants didn't generate radioactive waste? In fact I'm quite sure I said the opposite.


noone is dodging anything. you're simply playing semantic games now.



Moreover you've failed to provide a REALISTIC alternative.



did you miss it? here, i'll post it again.

a realistic alternative is a combination of solar, wind, water, and nuclear power.

[Gutshot John]

noone is dodging anything. you're simply playing semantic games now.

did you miss it? here, i'll post it again.

a realistic alternative is a combination of solar, wind, water, and nuclear power.

Solar, wind and water combined cannot make up for the deficit lost by prohibiting fossil fuels for DECADES. That would be the antithesis of "realistic."

You're full of it.

[rickrock305]

lets review...here's where you came into the conversation...


Nuclear plants don't create radioactivity. They use what exists.


except i never said they created radioactivity. i said they created radioactive waste.

then i responded with this...


On average, a nuclear power plant annually generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel, classified as high-level radioactive waste. When you take into account every nuclear plant on Earth, the combined total climbs to roughly 2,000 metric tons yearly [source: NEI]. All of this waste emits radiation and heat, meaning that it will eventually corrode any container and can prove lethal to nearby life forms. As if this weren't bad enough, nuclear power plants produce a great deal of low-level radioactive waste in the form of radiated parts and equipment.


which isn't "peer reviewed" :rolleyes: :D

and then its straight on to you attacking me personally instead of debating the issue at hand. rather transparent I'd say.

[rickrock305]

Solar, wind and water combined cannot make up for the deficit lost by prohibiting fossil fuels for DECADES. That would be the antithesis of "realistic."

You're full of it.



First of all, i never said anything about prohibiting fossil fuels. Obviously this is a long term solution, not an overnight quick fix.

The combination of wind, solar, water, and nuclear could absolutely make up for fossil fuels rather quickly.

By the way, i noticed you conveniently left out my use of nuclear as well. That would be the antithesis of honesty.

[thopkins22]

Please, educate yourself on the manner before throwing out some BS like this.

Right, low interest rates caused it all. :rolleyes:
One finance degree later...yes, artificially low interest rates are the root cause.:cool:






Not necessarily. "Who Killed The Electric Car", check it out. (although I'm sure you won't, ignorance is bliss)I've already seen it, and I was not impressed. If there was any real money to be made from them(as in it was a viable product and was an improvement,) then I guarantee you that they would be in full swing production today. They aren't. If it was practical I'd start building electric cars tomorrow and make millions selling them to all the hippies.

[Belmont31R]

first, take the time to read some of what i posted. it explains a lot.



ok sure, and?




ok sure, and?




how so? we still have banks gaming the system, exploiting loopholes, etc.



By keeping interest rates low more people get into mortgages because there is more money to loan out. This is a big part of why these on the fly type mortgage companies came about. Throughout the 90's and 2000's loan rates were low putting more money and incentive out there.

The idiots that bought into these loans are part of the problem too. Instead they want to pull the victim card and accuse the banks for their problems instead of taking responsibility for their poor consumer choices.

Sure I think the ARM loan industry had part to do with it too. However I don't blame gun manufacturers when someone buys a gun and shoots themselves in the head with it. If you use a product irresponsibly or make a poor consumer choice you are to blame for your misfortunes.

With that said its not logical to point the finger at the banks, and place the blame on their shoulders. Regulate them? That is what the interests rates are supposed to do. Force them into bad loans for the good of low income areas? Then don't blame them when low income people default on their loans. People make bad consumer decisions? Blame them for that. Part of this whole capitalist system is people are supposed to take it upon themselves, and make informed decisions on the options out there as well as their own financial situation.

[Gutshot John]

lets review...here's where you came into the conversation...



except i never said they created radioactivity. i said they created radioactive waste.

Pound for pound the "waste" isn't any more radioactive than the fuel used. Radioactivity exists irrespective of whether it is used by man.

Your argument also ignores reprocessing of spent fuel.

Nice try but you're still flailing and you've yet to produce a realistic alternative.

Try again or are you going to continue to hide behind lame dodges?

[Irish]

Too much argumentative personal attacks and I don't have time to offer a million different rebuttals. For reference and to substantiate my point of view I will tell you that I've worked for 8 years for this company, www.ccivalve.com, in the nuclear and conventional power industries. Let me know if you ever need a severe service control valve, I'll get you hooked up ;)

Take care, I'm done here.

[rickrock305]

One finance degree later...yes, artificially low interest rates are the root cause.:cool:


People with much better finance degrees than yours I'm sure steered us into this mess. Doesn't mean much.

I'm not saying artificially low interest rates didn't play their part, but the root cause? Nah.




I've already seen it, and I was not impressed. If there was any real money to be made from them(as in it was a viable product and was an improvement,) then I guarantee you that they would be in full swing production today. They aren't. If it was practical I'd start building electric cars tomorrow and make millions selling them to all the hippies.


Hate to tell you, but you couldn't buy a Prius about a year ago. they were selling for way over sticker price.

they aren't in full swing production because companies like GM are well entrenched with our government and therefore receive all kinds of tax breaks, incentives, etc. that are not made available to makers of electric cars. just one example.

[rickrock305]

With that said its not logical to point the finger at the banks, and place the blame on their shoulders. Regulate them? That is what the interests rates are supposed to do. Force them into bad loans for the good of low income areas? Then don't blame them when low income people default on their loans. People make bad consumer decisions? Blame them for that. Part of this whole capitalist system is people are supposed to take it upon themselves, and make informed decisions on the options out there as well as their own financial situation.



where your argument falls apart is the fact that the majority of these foreclosures were NOT subprime mortgages. they were prime.

[rickrock305]

Too much argumentative personal attacks and I don't have time to offer a million different rebuttals. For reference and to substantiate my point of view I will tell you that I've worked for 8 years for this company, www.ccivalve.com, in the nuclear and conventional power industries. Let me know if you ever need a severe service control valve, I'll get you hooked up ;)

Take care, I'm done here.


i never attacked you personally at all, and I was interested to hear your response to this post i made...


I'm not referring to only solar as some magic panacea. I'm saying we need to harness solar, wind, water, and yes even nuclear power. I think putting all our eggs in the nuclear basket is more than a bit stupid.

What do you say about some of the cons I posted?

For example...

On average, a nuclear power plant annually generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel

Nuclear energy uses Uranium as fuel, which is a scarce resource. The supply of Uranium is expected to last only for the next 30 to 60 years (depending on the actual demand). Therefore nuclear energy is not a renewable energy.

The energy source for nuclear energy is Uranium. Uranium is a scarce resource, its supply is estimated to last only for the next 30 to 60 years depending on the actual demand.

The time frame needed for formalities, planning and building of a new nuclear power generation plant is in the range of 20 to 30 years in the western democracies. In other words: It is an illusion to build new nuclear power plants in a short time.

The problem of radioactive waste is still an unsolved one. The waste from nuclear energy is extremely dangerous and it has to be carefully looked after for several thousand years (10'000 years according to United States Environmental Protection Agency standards).


True or no?

[R/Tdrvr]

Pass the popcorn please. :D

(can we get one of those smilies?)
(and IBTL)

[Gutshot John]

where your argument falls apart is the fact that the majority of these foreclosures were NOT subprime mortgages. they were prime.

Do you just make stuff up?

Upwards of 80% of the mortgages issued were subprime. The overwhelming majority of defaults were subprime.

[rickrock305]

Pound for pound the "waste" isn't any more radioactive than the fuel used. Radioactivity exists irrespective of whether it is used by man.

Your argument also ignores reprocessing of spent fuel.

the simple fact remains, nuclear power creates radioactive waste that has to be dealt with. and nuclear power is still a finite source of energy.




Nice try but you're still flailing and you've yet to produce a realistic alternative.

lets see, whats more realistic...

a combination of solar, wind, water, and nuclear power.

or

nuclear


what sounds more rational to you?




Try again or are you going to continue to hide behind lame dodges?

nobody is dodging anything. i've answered the same question a handful of times already.

[Belmont31R]

where your argument falls apart is the fact that the majority of these foreclosures were NOT subprime mortgages. they were prime.



That didn't happen until later.


Again people buy into too much house or should not have gotten into a house in the first place.


Interest rates played a big part in this. Check out over the last 30-40 years, and the interest rate was the lowest in the 2004-2007 time period. The two are very much connected.

[Gutshot John]

the simple fact remains, nuclear power creates radioactive waste that has to be dealt with. and nuclear power is still a finite source of energy.

Really? No shit. All currently available energy that can meet our needs is finite in source.

When did I say anything different?


lets see, whats more realistic...

a combination of solar, wind, water, and nuclear power.

or

nuclear


what sounds more rational to you?

Given that you cannot replace nuclear/fossil fuels with solar/wind/water for DECADES and even then does so at exponentially greater cost your argument is definitely neither rational nor realistic.


nobody is dodging anything. i've answered the same question a handful of times already.

And your answer is untenable.

Again do you have a REALISTIC solution? or are you just blowing smoke?

[Belmont31R]

the simple fact remains, nuclear power creates radioactive waste that has to be dealt with. and nuclear power is still a finite source of energy.




lets see, whats more realistic...

a combination of solar, wind, water, and nuclear power.

or

nuclear


what sounds more rational to you?



nobody is dodging anything. i've answered the same question a handful of times already.


What you're missing here is that new technology minimizes the waste, and nuclear is still the best for cost vs. output. You can put up all the solar panels you want but its going to cost more, and you can only put them in so many places.

Water is fine. You just need to talk to all the enivornmentalists who do not want to see any more built.

Wind has similar limitations to solar.

Nuclear is by far the best option we have right now, and the technology is constantly increasing. There is enough fuel out there to last quite a while, and mining for uranium is also advancing in technology. Using the current system for mining it might only have 60 years worth of fuel left....but 20 years ago people were saying we were going to run out of oil in 20 years.

[Irish]

i never attacked you personally at all, and I was interested to hear your response to this post i made...

I wasn't inferring that you were and I'm not in the least offended by anybody's posts. Mostly I don't have time to dedicate to offering a complete and thorough answer, I will tomorrow if you'd like. I'm skimming through all this while streaming a Netflix documentary on one of my favorite bands ever, Face To Face!!! Me and my dog are having our own personal concert while the wifey's at work :cool:

Really quick... investigate what it takes to make a solar plant and the materials that are used, how are they created? Take a look at the oils that are heated by the panels, etc. Take a look at the resources that are expended to manufacture, install and maintain when it comes to wind farms. Alot of what goes into manufacturing these things, expendables and maintenance aren't often thought of when just comparing nuclear to more "green" alternatives.

Again, a good evening to all... back to my music time for me.

[rickrock305]

Do you just make stuff up?

Upwards of 80% of the mortgages issued were subprime. The overwhelming majority of defaults were subprime.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html

But the focus on subprimes ignores the widely available industry facts (reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association) that 51% of all foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime, and that the foreclosure rate for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a growth rate of 200% for subprime foreclosures. (These percentages are based on the period since the steep ascent in foreclosures began -- the third quarter of 2006 -- during which more than 4.3 million homes went into foreclosure.)

[thopkins22]

People with much better finance degrees than yours I'm sure steered us into this mess. Doesn't mean much.

I'm not saying artificially low interest rates didn't play their part, but the root cause? Nah.Without that distortion there would not have been any incentive for the banks to play so loose. Without that it would be more difficult to get a huge loan, so homes would be more affordable. Without the Fed injecting massive amounts of cash into the market that already lacked savings, the "lacking regulation" would never have been an issue.

What does my degree tell us? It told me to not listen to anyone who promotes the free market, but then refuses to step away from the most potent central planning tool available. It told me to believe in the market, something those who led us here do not.

[Heavy Metal]

The supply of Uranium is expected to last only for the next 30 to 60 years (depending on the actual demand). Therefore nuclear energy is not a renewable energy.

I love it when the clueless trot out this absurd number. It have often heard it vapidly repeated by anti-nuke activists not having the slightest understanding what it really means. We have prospected about a 50 year supply. There is a difference between prospected and actual. We are still burning up stocks left over from the bomb programs of the twentieth century. When stocks get low, we will prospect up another 50 to 100 years worth. When you have secured a 50 year supply of firewood for your cabin, looking for another 50 is not an immediate priority. That does not mean there is only a 50 year supply of firewood in planet earth.

There are literally millions of years of useable uranium in the crust of the earth. Even if we had to extract it from seawater or extract it from granite it would still be feasable because the great cost of Nuclear Fuel is not the ore but the processing into a fuel rod. The cost of the ore is the least cost item in the running of a Nuke plant.

And this is without re-processing or Breeder Reactors. With Breeders, you could extend just the current prospected supplies by a thousandfold.

And BTW, I have a minor in Geology.

[rickrock305]

Really? No shit. All currently available energy that can meet our needs is finite in source.

When did I say anything different?


ok, its obvious now that you just want to be argumentative just for the sake of arguing.

jesus, i was simply making a point, not saying you said anything :rolleyes:

[rickrock305]

Really quick... investigate what it takes to make a solar plant and the materials that are used, how are they created? Take a look at the oils that are heated by the panels, etc. Take a look at the resources that are expended to manufacture, install and maintain when it comes to wind farms. Alot of what goes into manufacturing these things, expendables and maintenance aren't often thought of when just comparing nuclear to more "green" alternatives.

Again, a good evening to all... back to my music time for me.



I don't disagree, I think solar has a ways to go but they are constantly making advances to make it cheaper and easier to manufacture. Just heard something the other day about a company that just made a huge advance in the way solar panels are produced.

Hey, nothing is perfect. Which is why I believe we need a solution of many different methods. To put all our eggs in one basket, e.g. nuclear, is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, e.g. oil.

[rickrock305]

Without that distortion there would not have been any incentive for the banks to play so loose. Without that it would be more difficult to get a huge loan, so homes would be more affordable. Without the Fed injecting massive amounts of cash into the market that already lacked savings, the "lacking regulation" would never have been an issue.

What does my degree tell us? It told me to not listen to anyone who promotes the free market, but then refuses to step away from the most potent central planning tool available. It told me to believe in the market, something those who led us here do not.



I'm all for letting the market do its thing without propping it up with bailouts and interest rate meddling.

But in order for the market to function properly, regulation is necessary.

[thopkins22]

Hey, nothing is perfect. Which is why I believe we need a solution of many different methods. To put all our eggs in one basket, e.g. nuclear, is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, e.g. oil.

Yeah oil was such a terrible mistake.:rolleyes: We would have been much better off without transportation, energy, plastics, and all those other evil products that we get from it.:mad:

Human beings have been progressively getting away from carbon fuels for over one hundred years. From wood to coal to oil to natural gas. Hydrogen is the next logical step. But regulations won't get us there.

[Irish]

I don't disagree, I think solar has a ways to go but they are constantly making advances to make it cheaper and easier to manufacture. Just heard something the other day about a company that just made a huge advance in the way solar panels are produced.

Hey, nothing is perfect. Which is why I believe we need a solution of many different methods. To put all our eggs in one basket, e.g. nuclear, is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, e.g. oil.

Quick question to clarify where you're coming from. Are you referring to solar panels like on a house or are you referring to a solar power plant? There are several different kinds but the ones I'm most familiar with are like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Solar_One which isn't anything like what you'd have on your roof.

Here's a picture http://sustainabledesignupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/nevada-solar-one-1.jpg or Google Nevada Solar One.

The concave metal heats a super duper special pipe which heats a super duper special oil to make water turn into steam and turns a turbine... quick & dirty explanation :)

[rickrock305]

Yeah oil was such a terrible mistake.:rolleyes: We would have been much better off without transportation, energy, plastics, and all those other evil products that we get from it.:mad:




i didn't mean we should have never used oil. i mean we shouldn't have put all our eggs in the oil basket. it would have saved us a whole lot of problems had we started making the move to alternative energy decades ago.

funny you guys wanna be tough on terrorism and wanna fight the terrorists and all this, and yet you defend the use of oil to the death. meanwhile those oil profits go directly to fund terrorists. talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

i'm out for the evening, gotta hit the gym.

[thopkins22]

But in order for the market to function properly, regulation is necessary.

Like what? The only thing the government needs to do for a functional marketplace is enforce contracts and prosecute fraud.

[rickrock305]

Like what? The only thing the government needs to do for a functional marketplace is enforce contracts and prosecute fraud.



Depends on your idea of functional i guess.

[khc3]

where your argument falls apart is the fact that the majority of these foreclosures were NOT subprime mortgages. they were prime.

And many of THOSE were second homes, investment and spec homes, not primary residences.

[Safetyhit]

Astounding how a thread about the stated impending doom of the Republican victory has evolved into another senseless bicker-fest between some usual combatants.

Regardless, the information about the process involved in manufacturing solar panels is quite interesting. Nothing against them overall, but certainly a new, practical perspective.

[thopkins22]

Depends on your idea of functional i guess.

Freedom to succeed or fail. Higher quality goods for lower prices. Much more subtle business cycles.

[Belmont31R]

I'm all for letting the market do its thing without propping it up with bailouts and interest rate meddling.

But in order for the market to function properly, regulation is necessary.



Some regulation is good. Most is bad.


For instance interest rates, CRA, court judgements telling banks who to loan to.


The sub-prime market could use more regulation through interest rates. Keeping interest rates up keeps sub-prime down as well as housing prices.

Part of the reason for the rise in prime foreclosures is the failure in the subprime market in the previous few years before prime started going up. You also need to look at the per-capita failure rates for each. Lots more failures per capita in sum prime than prime.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/images/2007/10/28/subprime1.gif

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SwVnkJI_RJI/AAAAAAAAG0s/JF9h0C80RuY/s1600/MBAQ3PrimeFRM.jpg


Then look at interest rates:

http://northphoenixagent.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/30-year-fixed-historical-mortgage-rate-trend-chart-lg.png

[Artos]

Astounding how a thread about the stated impending doom of the Republican victory has evolved into another senseless bicker-fest between some usual combatants.

God how I miss more aircraft carrier spending....what a friggin sad trainwreck of a thread.

make it stop...

[thopkins22]

Astounding how a thread about the stated impending doom of the Republican victory has evolved into another senseless bicker-fest between some usual combatants.

Don't think I qualify as a usual combatant, but I do think it's time for me to take a lesson from you and cease to engage rickrock.

[Safetyhit]

God how I miss more aircraft carrier spending....what a friggin sad trainwreck of a thread.

make it stop...

Don't worry, Rick the Rock is going to the gym now. We should be good for the evening.

[Safetyhit]

Don't think I qualify as a usual combatant...

Wasn't referring to you bro.

The other guy is smarter than I, but still allows himself to be sucked in too easily by the instigator. An odd combination.

[CarlosDJackal]

They'll probably just blow it by ordering a half-dozen (or 175) new aircraft carriers or something.

M_P

At least that would result in an asset that we can sell later if needed. How much of the "Cash-for-Clunkers" or stimulus money resulted in an asset? :rolleyes:

[Irish]

One of the more analytical or scientific ways of determining which is more feasible for the long run would be to compare an LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) on the different technologies. Read a bunch of boring shit on it here if you're interested http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=37456

[glocktogo]

Astounding how a thread about the stated impending doom of the Republican victory has evolved into another senseless bicker-fest between some usual combatants.

Regardless, the information about the process involved in manufacturing solar panels is quite interesting. Nothing against them overall, but certainly a new, practical perspective.

Yep. So long as the business as usual politicos have people with such short attention spans that they can't go 2 pages without going off on a tangent, they can keep driving this country right into the ground. Guess we don't deserve better governance. :(

I kept this message short so some of you might have a snowballs chance in hell of making it through without thinking of fuzzy bunnies. :)

[Mac5.56]

I just want to say that I'm glad Modern Pirate gets it. It's the Federal Government that is a problem, a f@cking cancer if you ask me, not A PARTY.

[travistheone]

I just want to say that I'm glad Modern Pirate gets it. It's the Federal Government that is a problem, a f@cking cancer if you ask me, not A PARTY.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

[Bubba FAL]

Just a simple question: Where does the electricity to power all those cool electric cars come from?

To comment on the original post: If the new crop of politicians fail to toe the line (i.e., forget why they were elected) we vote the bastards out next time around. Continue the cycle until we get representatives that are worth a shyte.

And yes, the thought of Romney being a contender in 2012 makes me ill - nothin' but an empty suit. We can (and must) do better...

[RogerinTPA]

You guys crack me up! :p

[rubberneck]

TERM LIMITS.......





Fog

Nice idea but the prospect of having to get re-elected keeps a lot of stupid behavior in check. If you are term limited and you will never be able to run again what is you incentive to not vote for some really stupid law. That goes for both parties. Since there are very few congressional districts that are truly safe (last weeks special election proved that) most congress critters can't stray too far from the reservation if they ever want to get re-elcted. IMHO Term limits invite more idiotic behavior than the current system.

[CharlieKilo]

Do you think it really matters what party is in office?

[chadbag]

Do you think it really matters what party is in office?

The last year proves that it does. For all the unconstitutional stupid and expensive things the R have done, they are using handtools to get to hell versus the huge powder diggers the D prefer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288

[Business_Casual]

I think, with regards as to whether the progressive McCain was in office or the progressive Obama is in office, it is very similar to the NFL. Does it matter if the Saints or the Vikings are in the Superbowl? Really only to their fans. The outcome - ratings, revenue, royalties on merchandise, etc. is largely unaffected by the result. The process is much more important overall.

M_P

[Belmont31R]

Do you think it really matters what party is in office?


It matters who is in office more than what party they belong to.

[RogerinTPA]

I think, with regards as to whether the progressive McCain was in office or the progressive Obama is in office, it is very similar to the NFL. Does it matter if the Saints or the Vikings are in the Superbowl? Really only to their fans. The outcome - ratings, revenue, royalties on merchandise, etc. is largely unaffected by the result. The process is much more important overall.

M_P

Well said.

The point that there are "progressives" in both parties, is an issue a lot of people fail to recognize, and IMO, the most important factor when selecting a candidate.

[Gutshot John]

When did "progressive" become such a dirty word?

They used to call themselves liberals (as recently as the 1990s) until they realized that people don't vote for liberals and so started calling themselves progressives but they aren't "progressives" any more than they aren't liberals.

McCain is neither a liberal nor a progressive in any modern sense. Maybe he is in the classic sense but then classic conservatism and classic liberalism don't mean what they do today. Classic conservatives believed in a restoration of monarchies in Europe and were heavily protectionist/mercantilist I don't think anyone would agree with that. Classic liberals believed in individual liberty and free commerce, I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

Over time conservatism co-opted classic liberalist values like free-trade but it was originally a liberal idea.

Classic progressives (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt) gave us food standards and the 5 day work week. What's wrong with that?

This nation was founded by the most radical "progressives" "liberals" (insert your meaningless label here) of their time.

[Belmont31R]

When did "progressive" become such a dirty word?

They used to call themselves liberals (as recently as the 1990s) until they realized that people don't vote for liberals and so started calling themselves progressives but they aren't "progressives" any more than they aren't liberals.

McCain is neither a liberal nor a progressive in any modern sense. Maybe he is in the classic sense but then classic conservatism and classic liberalism don't mean what they do today. Classic conservatives believed in a restoration of monarchies in Europe and were heavily protectionist/mercantilist I don't think anyone would agree with that. Classic liberals believed in individual liberty and free commerce, I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

Over time conservatism co-opted classic liberalist values like free-trade but it was originally a liberal idea.

Classic progressives (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt) gave us food standards and the 5 day work week. What's wrong with that?

This nation was founded by the most radical "progressives" "liberals" (insert your meaningless label here) of their time.



True but progressive today fits a certain ideology just as it did in the mid to late 18th Century.

[Gutshot John]

True but progressive today fits a certain ideology just as it did in the mid to late 18th Century.

Fair enough but I'm not sure how McCain= Progressive=Obama.

I can see Obama=Progressive=libtard but that's about as far as I get without scratching my head.

I can understand and appreciate that people don't like McCain and that any politician is just a politician and will always seek to perpetuate their own power.

I can understand that the two-party system is pretty much a joke.

My take is similar to Peggy Noonan the two parties are as such: Republicans=Creeps, Democrats=Nuts but that transcends meaningless labels.

[Belmont31R]

Fair enough but I'm not sure how McCain= Progressive=Obama.

I can see Obama=Progressive=libtard but that's about as far as I get without scratching my head.

I can understand and appreciate that people don't like McCain and that any politician is just a politician and will always seek to perpetuate their own power.

I can understand that the two-party system is pretty much a joke.

My take is similar to Peggy Noonan the two parties are as such: Republicans=Creeps, Democrats=Nuts but that transcends meaningless labels.



No one has said they are exactly alike that I have seen.

However their health care plan had a lot of similarities. Taxing "cadillac" plans, and providing subsidies for people to get insurance.

Both pro-amnesty.

Both against interrogations.

Both support entitlement programs.


There are a variety of other similarities but I don't feel like typing everything out.

McCain is not as bad as Obama. McCain is Obama lite.

[Gutshot John]

No one has said they are exactly alike that I have seen.

However their health care plan had a lot of similarities. Taxing "cadillac" plans, and providing subsidies for people to get insurance.

Taxing cadillac plans iirc was espoused by a large number of conservatives. Obama only came around to the idea when he had to. He opposed it in the election. IIRC even Cato was in favor of taxing those plans. AFL-CIO/AFSCME on the other hand (arguably the base of modern progressives) HATED taxing those plans and got a special deal to be exempt.


Both pro-amnesty. McCain supported immigration reform but I don't know that he ever supported amnesty. Ronald Reagan certainly supported amnesty and signed it into law. I don't know that Reagan counts as a progressive though he was a big fan of TR.


Both against interrogations. Ehhhhh kinda but it isn't that cut-and-dry.


Both support entitlement programs. Virtually every Republican in Congress gnashed their teeth about Medicare cuts involved in Obamacare. Many republicans voted for both Social Security and Medicare. I concede that this was posturing but then I don't think you can say every member of both parties counts as progressives.


McCain is not as bad as Obama. McCain is Obama lite.

I agree but then every Republican for the past half-century is accordingly Obama lite.

So what is progressivism in the modern sense and how does it differ from modern liberalisms emphasis on big government?

I'm at the point where I want to throw everyone out of government and start again but those people would only become what they beheld, 5, 10, 15 years down the line.

[Belmont31R]

So what is progressivism in the modern sense and how does it differ from modern liberalisms emphasis on big government?



I'm not quite sure why people point to one person, and say they did this so how can this be X?

Reagan also signed the law ending new machine gun purchases, bailed out banks, raised taxes (although they were lower than when he started), etc.


To me a modern progressive is someone who's ideology pushes collectivism, entitlements, globalism, socialism, etc.


To me a conservative is someone who believes in limited and small government, individuality, self-responsibility, state's rights, low taxes, capitalism, individual rights, etc.


John McCain is sort of a mix. Some areas he is progressive, and others conservative.

[mtneer13]

good reading the "i'm smarter than you are, nana-nana-boo-boo's" on here...fact of the matter is this, neither party is worth a shit...end of story, no rebuttal needed, thank you very much, that's all folks...there isn't a damn thing that anyone on this board will do to help facilitate change in the direction that this country is headed towards...sorry, but that's the FACTS jack!!!

[mtneer13]

let's see how long it takes to chime in a this isn't a political debate forum...that's been going on for 7, count 'em, seven pages so far...

[glocktogo]

When did "progressive" become such a dirty word?

They used to call themselves liberals (as recently as the 1990s) until they realized that people don't vote for liberals and so started calling themselves progressives but they aren't "progressives" any more than they aren't liberals.

McCain is neither a liberal nor a progressive in any modern sense. Maybe he is in the classic sense but then classic conservatism and classic liberalism don't mean what they do today. Classic conservatives believed in a restoration of monarchies in Europe and were heavily protectionist/mercantilist I don't think anyone would agree with that. Classic liberals believed in individual liberty and free commerce, I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

Over time conservatism co-opted classic liberalist values like free-trade but it was originally a liberal idea.

Classic progressives (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt) gave us food standards and the 5 day work week. What's wrong with that?

This nation was founded by the most radical "progressives" "liberals" (insert your meaningless label here) of their time.

Probably about the time that the Democratic party abandoned Jim Crow laws, embraced Abraham Lincoln (who was a Republican) and entered the era of social programs as bait for low income and ethnic voters.

If what you're doing isn't working, well you can always buy votes! :(

[LMT42]

Hello everyone,

I'm new around here and thought I'd throw my hat in the ring in this thread. I haven't seen anyone mention lobbying or lobbyists. Until we outlaw ALL lobbying (including campaign contributions), we're screwed. Our country is owned by big oil, big pharma, big banks, insurance companies, etc. ad nauseam. Doesn't matter which party is in power when they're all bought and paid for.... just my little opinion though.

L.

[Business_Casual]

Hello everyone,

I'm new around here and thought I'd throw my hat in the ring in this thread. I haven't seen anyone mention lobbying or lobbyists. Until we outlaw ALL lobbying (including campaign contributions), we're screwed. Our country is owned by big oil, big pharma, big banks, insurance companies, etc. ad nauseam. Doesn't matter which party is in power when they're all bought and paid for.... just my little opinion though.

L.

I don't understand that at all. Lobbying is just groups of citizens asking the politicians to address their concerns. The NRA is a lobby group, so when they ask for our 2nd Amendment rights to be respected, they are screwing us? That's just a red herring to distract you from the bullshit the politicians don't want you to notice.

Anytime someone says they want to "clean up" Washington or "get the money" out of politics, they are lying to you. That's about as possible as getting the wet out of water or the grit out of sand. Politics is money. Money is politics. It's up to the citizens to monitor and vote out the offending politicians.

Sure big oil spends money on capitol hill. So does Verizon. If they didn't they'd be run out business by the regulations be made patsys for the gang up there.

M_P

[glocktogo]

At the federal level, any law they pass should meet three criteria. It should be legal under the constitution, within the scope of their enumerated powers, and it should benefit the whole country. If it doesn't pass the first, they shouldn't consider it. A review of all the previous laws that have been overturned would give them a good idea of what's kosher and what's not. The second should be self explanatory.

If it doesn't meet the third, it should be left to the states.

If it were a requirement to meet these criteria before leaving committee, you could have all the money and lobbyists involved you want.

[mattjmcd]

At the federal level, any law they pass should meet three criteria. It should be legal under the constitution, within the scope of their enumerated powers, and it should benefit the whole country. If it doesn't pass the first, they shouldn't consider it. A review of all the previous laws that have been overturned would give them a good idea of what's kosher and what's not. The second should be self explanatory.

If it doesn't meet the third, it should be left to the states.

If it were a requirement to meet these criteria before leaving committee, you could have all the money and lobbyists involved you want.


Agreed, with one or two caveats. I think that the third "test" needs to be flexible wrt projects that might fall under federal purview but which do not benefit all states. I would use the national highway infrastructure as an example. Massive defense projects might be another.

[texasrangers]

funny i thought they were all the same. the dems work for the bankers. the repubs work for the bankers (let us not forget that that great patriot* John McCain STOPPED his campaign and rushed to Bush's side, where Obama also happened to be, to help pass TARP). the dems want to tax us to death and spend it on welfare and universal healthcare, the repubs want to tax us to death to spend it on warfare and spying on us.

again lets not forget that Reagan (that conservative!) had the biggest deficits of any president ever, and added to those records in just about each successive year.

*i find John McCain despicable for many, many reasons, but the biggest has got to be the fact he vehemently denies that there are still POW's and MIA's from Vietnam that have not been accounted for. anyone with the least bit of knowledge about the situation knows that we did not get the remains of all of our people back. you think someone who spent years as a POW would have a tiny bit of respect for the families of soldiers who never returned.

i mean seriously, how can you respect any of these people? demand that they follow our law, and our law is the Constitution.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/reviews/commentary/433

[Gutshot John]

*i find John McCain despicable for many, many reasons, but the biggest has got to be the fact he vehemently denies that there are still POW's and MIA's from Vietnam that have not been accounted for.

Uhm...no one denies that there are plenty of MIAs from Vietnam. Being MIA by definition means they are not accounted for.

The only question is whether they are alive and in captivity and that John McCain knew this and covered it up. I'm skeptical on all counts but if you have some proof I'd like to see it.

If you don't think he respects the families of those that paid the ultimate price I'd like to see something that indicates it.

[texasrangers]

Gutshot John,

please read the link I provided.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/reviews/commentary/433

[Gutshot John]

Gutshot John,

please read the link I provided.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/reviews/commentary/433

I did, a commentary/review does not constitute proof on any planet. Moreover he concedes that the author provided no citations and that the work was pretty shoddy.

Do you have independent proof, something other than the review and the author of a conspiracy tract?

[Safetyhit]

This nation was founded by the most radical "progressives" "liberals" (insert your meaningless label here) of their time.



Fascinating and accurate point. But one should keep things in context.

If Thomas Paine would have gone around rapping, openly pursuing men sexually, or advocating overtaxing...this as well as writing inspirationally during the revolution, even the most liberal of his peers would have chopped his head off eventually. Their true ideals at the time were not so personally offensive to the general population. Rather they were deemed offensive to their oppressors and their brainwashed ilk who knew no other way of life at the time.

And yes, I know the epitome of bing free is being able to rap, but you surely get my bigger point. There is a difference. The earlier group inspired the hopeless and oppressed while the current one looks to revert us into...something.

Anyway, some of our modern liberals are real nasty scumbags. Think Al Franken, not at all in the realm of our founding liberals by any stretch. Just a weird piece of shit.

[texasrangers]

just because a person is not a good writer and does shoddy work does not mean the work they do is not credible, or not worthwhile.

I was going mostly off what John LeBoutillier and Bill Hendon, both Republicans, said about McCain.

"While many families of MIA combatants felt betrayed, the White House knew that the bulk of Americans would approve."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983202-1,00.html

[Gutshot John]

just because a person is not a good writer and does shoddy work does not mean the work they do is not credible, or not worthwhile.

Actually that's exactly what it means. If you have no verifiable citations than you have no proof. Sorry. It's always amusing that conspiracy theorists point to a lack of proof as proof of a conspiracy.

So again the issue is whether there are/were POWs held in captivity after the war and whether John McCain knew that and covered it up.


I was going mostly off what John LeBoutillier and Bill Hendon, both Republicans, said about McCain.

Just because people say it, doesn't make it true. You may recall that people had all kinds of accusations about the Bush administration and 9/11.


"While many families of MIA combatants felt betrayed, the White House knew that the bulk of Americans would approve."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983202-1,00.html

The article is not about John McCain, the article is about the Clinton WH. I don't expect MIA families to be happy about normalizing relations with Vietnam. My grandfather who fought during WWII wasn't happy with normalization of relations with Germany. He hated Germans. Doesn't change that Germany (West) was a vital strategic partnership against the USSR.

What exactly does that prove?

[kaiservontexas]

This is why I vote my conscious and not for a sporting event. Yeah, I am a silly libertarian. Death by a million cuts is just a painful death.

[Gutshot John]

Yeah, I am a silly libertarian.

But you're looking less and less silly every day.