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Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

Agreed, if there is anything that I've learned in my life in America is that private charitable organizations handle their donations WAY better than the government handles our tax dollars. They make the dollar go much farther and they help all the right people much better. The government is a big, wasteful machine that will only make you wonder exactly all that money you've had taken away has been going.

Not to mention that big government depends on the existence of a victim class. Government programs have created generations of dependents, and that's just fine with some. It keeps them in power.

convince the upper-middle class and lower-upper class to donate more because the fact is, the big guys like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do more donating than anyone can really ask of them.

Exxon Mobil pays more in taxes than 50% of the people in the US. One corporation paid more than 65 million taxpayers, and yet they're being ostracized and threatened with more taxes. We don't need a revolution, we need to see Atlas Shrugged come to fruition.

...Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do more donating than anyone can really ask of them.

I must say I was very impressed with Bill Gates and his charitable efforts. The fact that he would donate a huge sum of his earnings when he by all rights did not have to is quite noble. Sure he left enough for his family to survive on but he does deserve it. I'm not an MS fan but Bill took a fledgling company from near bankruptcy to a multi-billion dollar corporation. He was not alone but many other companies have tried the same and failed. Now the fact that he is leaving MS to concentrate on charitable efforts is amazing. He obviously is not doing it for popularity since he has all he would ever need in that dept. I think the guy down deep is still the geeky nerd who just happen to make it big and now wants to give back a good portion of what he has.

Crichton is a genius. I'm glad someone else gets joy out of reading his articles and speeches. By the way, did you see that left-wing monstrosity that A&E made out of The Andromeda Strain?

Yes. Very unfortunate.


These alarmists are in it for one thing. It's not for saving the planet, helping the populous, feeding the hungry, etc., etc. If you want to know the whole source of this entire disaster scenario line of hogwash just follow the money. Noone acts like this or continue to offer up purely unscientific bologna unless there is some serious money to be made.

Making money in the modern world

• Fabricate a crisis
• Fabricate a solution
• Scare everyone with the fabricated crisis to create demand for the fabricated solution.
• Laugh all the way to the bank

It is the law of supply and demand causing prices to rise. They limit the supply thereby making it appear demand has increased and make billions. It's in food, oil, housing....oh wait that one finally burst.

Again....everyone can believe we are all gonna die if we don't do this or that. Heck I shoulda been dead 50 times by now with all I've eaten and the chemicals I've been around in construction and the factory. If it's hype it will die and if it's not....then they win and we all die. Either way we don't have the technology to predict much less stop 80% of the ridiculous stories they are fabricating day in and day out.

In the end it's all about money, control, and who controls the money. It's been that way for the past hundred years and this new round of b/s is no different.

Also the liberals try to tax the heck out the very people that provide us with what we need. Ya know....I never received money from a poor man. Leave the companies alone, give them permission to do what they do best be it oil or food, and let's stop trying to come up with absolutely absurd ways to circumvent a system that works. All systems come and go and we will eventually use alternate more efficient, more powerful forms of energy. Obviously right now based on results of the EU and the USA we just don't have the technology to do it now. Stop taxing the people who can invent new solutions - now that's a 'green' policy I would actually back.

Fusion is one source of energy we could really benefit from yet nearly every country, including the USA, has reduced funding the new reactor to be built. How are we ever going to find something new if we insist on squashing progress? I would love to get off of oil and stop paying these ridiculous over-inflated unjustified prices. But until we get serious about either using the resources we have here (oil shale anyone?) or finding alternate more powerful ones we will never see them. I bet the oil companies are laughing their arse off. We know we have oil shale here that would satisfy our current oil import volume for the next 100 years yet some greenie group doesn't want to do it b/c of ancient Indian carvings. Seriously. Put them in a museum for all to see and let's get on with business. So you don't like the prices but you don't like any of the obvious solutions? I bet oil execs are like fine then....pay the price.

So I say either mine what we have and use the current system or fund research for investing in a new system. Stop worrying about Yogi Bear and mine the stinking resources we have at our disposal. What we are doing is like playing Civ 4 and not using any of our local resources to further our cities. Is this really rocket science folks?

Have you ever had a friend that could not get a job? Yet every job you suggest to him he has some excuse as to why it wouldn't work for him? Our energy policy is that guy.