The Koch Brother's Conspiracy to run America for Themselves

[Star Man]

Koch Brothers' ALEC Tentacles Creep Into Your State

Monday 18 July 2011
by: Allison Kilkenny, Truthout | News Analysis



(Photo: internets_dairy)


Thanks to the work from the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and investigative journalists like Beau Hodai, we now know that ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), a front group for major corporations, the Koch brothers and right-wing lobbying groups, actively disseminated model bills promoting its agenda to state leaders.


ALEC creates plausible deniability for state legislators by claiming it's not lobbying, of course, but merely making friendly suggestions and, in turn, the legislators ultimately reap the rewards of being extra nice to ALEC's corporate clients.


Though many of ALEC's activities are still only recently coming to light, we can already see the group has widespread influence in national politics.
Using its hilariously titled bills (one called "Economy Civil Rights Act" openly wages war on regulation and public services), the right-wing group aims to distribute its propaganda in all 50 states.


In one of their models, the group outlines its opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) regulation of greenhouse gases. ALEC claims the rise in carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases is not linked to a decline in welfare or public health. "Indeed," ALEC's bill remarks, "quite the opposite is true."


The model bill continues in an attempt to refute other overwhelming evidence of global warming: rising sea levels, rising ocean temperatures, retreating mountain glaciers, warming temperatures etc.
ALEC concludes:

Therefore, be it resolved that because of the aforementioned lack of evidence that human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases will "endanger public health or welfare" as required by §202 of the Clean Air Act, the American Legislative Exchange Council urges EPA to not make an endangerment finding under §202 of the Clean Air Act and regulate greenhouse gases from mobile sources.
Be it further resolved that that until and unless Congress enacts new statutory language clarifying and specifying EPA's legal and regulatory obligations with respect to carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, EPA should refrain from further deliberations on a possible endangerment finding regarding carbon dioxide regulation under §202 of the Clean Air Act.

ALEC offers specific instructions - er, sorry - helpful suggestions to the attentive Republican representative. In a model bill entitled "Conditioning Regulation of Non-Pollutant Emissions on Science," ALEC states:

The following language may be used as a freestanding bill or amendment to a bill, (e.g., a bill to regulate carbon dioxide). It requires [the State EPA] Administrator to perform an assessment that considers certain criteria prior to formally proposing or implementing regulation of any emission not listed as a "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act.

A press release on ALEC's site brags that at least 13 other states have passed resolutions based on their model language.


Republicans have always been extremely receptive to ALEC's propaganda on the environment. One of the first measures George W. Bush signed into law as governor of Texas was a model that gave corporations immunity from penalties if they tell regulators about their own violation of environmental rules.


This is like a serial killer being let out of jail for good behavior if he tells investigators where he buried the bodies.


Attack on Voters
ALEC's Public Safety and Elections Task Force approved a piece of model legislation called the "Voter ID Act," that calls for voters to have IDs with both a photo and expiration date, which, of course, rules out college IDs from young voters who historically vote overwhelmingly Democrat. These types of bills also discriminate against poor and minority voters, who again, tend to vote for Republicans' ideological opponents.


States like Ohio and South Carolina have now adopted new, stringent voter ID requirements. Ohio's HB 159 requires voters to show one of five forms of ID to vote in person: a driver's license, state ID, military ID, US passport or a "new, free photo ID that State Bureau of Motor Vehicles would dispense to indigent citizens who qualify."
The law replaces the former rule that required a photo ID or utility bill, bank statement, paycheck or government document with a current name and address. However, HB 159 does not allow students to use IDs issued by state colleges. Thus, Ohio effectively disenfranchised 900,000 Ohioans for the negligible and entirely overreported handful of voter fraud instances that occur during elections.


Of course, it's not clear that the Ohio and South Carolina Legislatures were directly influenced by ALEC, or whether they ever saw the model bills. The state Legislatures and ALEC might simply be ideological soulmates. In fact, the group's secretive nature makes assessing the exact scope of ALEC's influence a daunting task.


First, one would need to submit a public records request to the office of a lawmaker in order to request copies of documents, including emails, to see if ALEC had any kind of direct contact with the lawmaker. Hodai warned me that it would be difficult to do this, since 25 of 50 states exempt legislative records in one form or another.


The example he supplies is the case of Indiana's Sen. Jim Buck, a public-sector chair of the ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force, who recently introduced a piece of model legislation aimed at aligning public employee pay with workers in the private sector. "There was no legal way for me to get hold of these records, due to the state's legislative public records exemption," says Hodai.


Other reporters have also tried to get to the bottom of ALEC's shady practices. Wisconsin journalist Shawn Doherty noted a striking similarity between the governor and Republican legislators' health care agenda and ALEC's "The State Legislators Guide to Repealing ObamaCare."


Republicans have also proposed a pair of bills that allow insurance policies in Wisconsin to throw out state mandates requiring coverage for a broad variety of medical treatments and conditions, Doherty reports.

This legislation, dubbed "Health Choices and Opportunities" by authors Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa and Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, is similar to what the ALEC guide calls the "Health Care Choice Act for States," which allows people to purchase health insurance across state lines. In 2010, according to the guide, 19 states introduced such legislation and Wyoming enacted it.

When Doherty confronted Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who admits to being a "proud member" of ALEC since 1994, about the mirror language, Fitzgerald shrugged off his questioning.

State lawmakers have always turned to such national organizations for help brainstorming ideas and crafting legislation, Fitzgerald says. "These groups are about exchanging ideas between different state legislators from around the country to be sure we're not isolating ourselves in Wisconsin."

Then there's Michigan's HB 4453, a bill that prohibits governmental entities from competing commercially against the private sector, which would effectively privatize all public services, including schools.


Eagle-eyed citizens noticed HB 4453 bears an uncanny resemblance to a bill that was made available through CMD's document dump. When they confronted Rep. Tom McMillin about the similarities (McMillin had said in the past it didn't matter whether he was a member of ALEC or not), the lawmaker attempted to distance himself from the group.

McMillin had told The Rochester Citizen at a town hall meeting at the Older Persons Commission that he would allow The Rochester Citizen to come to his office in Lansing and he would log in to his ALEC account and let us compare bills on the ALEC member-only part of the web site to some of the legislation he has introduced. McMillin never made good on his promise.

While the group's influence with health care legislation remains speculative in Wisconsin and Michigan, ALEC's manipulation of public policy has been conclusively proven in other areas. The group itself claims that in each legislature cycle, members in all 50 states introduce 1,000 pieces of legislation based on its work and 17 percent of these bills become law.


Assault on Workers
Flipping through the pages of ALEC's model bills is like reading "The Simpsons'" Mr. Burns' wish list for torturing his employees.


An ALEC model called "Prevailing Wage Repeal Act" would repeal all laws requiring administratively determined employee compensation rates, including wages, salaries and benefits. CMD notes that paying the prevailing wage is designed to ensure quality work is done on public projects and also helps keep wage standards in the construction industry.


"The Employer Standing Act" gives an employer preferential standing before the appropriate boards or commission to dispose of a workers' compensation claim if they can convince the board the claim was filed fraudulently. This bill gives rights to corporations and employers at the expense of workers, notes CMD.


But this isn't just a fantasy diary. Many state leaders have actually adopted the anti-worker, anti-union language of the ALEC model bills. Wisconsin-style assaults on labor have now been introduced in Arizona, California, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Vermont.
ALEC's war on public employees fell under a trilogy of bills in the "Paycheck Protection bundle," first reported by Hodai. The Employee Rights Reform Act, the Labor Organizations Deductions Act and the Political Funding Reform Act were all penned by ALEC as a way to kill unions by defunding them and making the collection of unions dues a cumbersome process.


In its original version, the "Prohibition of Negative Check-off Act" was designed to prevent any "arrangements that are not entered into by the payer," the ALEC model reads. "The Act declares that nonvoluntary payments and negative check-off plans are void as against public policy." Basically, it's a mechanism to defund unions.
The anti-union language was adopted by Florida's Representative Dorworth in the form of HB 102, but the bill died in chamber following pressure from union members. (Near identical language was also referred to committee by Georgia lawmakers, though substantiating ALEC's direct connection proves difficult given a 1975 State Supreme Court decision to exempt the legislature from the Georgia Open Records Act under a separation of powers argument.)


The group was also directly involved in Arizona's "Show Me Your Papers" SB 1070, having disseminated the model legislations among state lawmakers. ALEC currently represents corporations that include Corrections Corporation of America (the nation's largest private jailer), the Geo Group (the second largest private jailer) and Sodexho Marriott (the nation's leading food services provider to private correctional institutions), all companies that would obviously directly profit from more people being locked up in Arizona's prison system.


The secretive nature of ALEC's operations makes it difficult for journalists and citizens alike to know the group's exact level of influence on state legislatures. CMD's ALEC Exposed web site (alecexposed.org) asks individuals to spread the word about the group and for citizens to demand the truth about which politicians in their states are members of the group. Visitors can also cross-check their states' bills with the ALEC models to see if there are similarities.


"These bills and resolutions reach into almost every area of American life: worker and consumer rights, education, the rights of Americans injured or killed by corporations, taxes, health care, immigration and the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink," CMD states. "Only by seeing the depth and breadth and language of the bills can one fully understand the power and sweep of corporate influence behind the scenes on bills affecting the rights and future of every American in every single state."


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Citizens, this article describes exactly how the corporatocracy operates. Our nation is being rapidly taken over by corporations. Is your mortgage underwater? It's the fault of the banking sector. Fifty-two cents of every one of our tax dollars goes to the military. That's the influence of the military-industrial complex's corporations and bureaucracies. Are your Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security being threatened? The corporations want to take the money from you. Is Obama caving in to the Tea Party and the Republicans? Yes, and that's because he was a corporate candidate from the beginning. Wake up America!



Star Man

[Speak2Truth]

"The model bill continues in an attempt to refute other overwhelming evidence of global warming: rising sea levels, rising ocean temperatures, retreating mountain glaciers, warming temperatures etc." ....?

The Earth has been warming for 18,000 years, with the most drastic warming earlier on in this cycle. It was so drastic, oceans were rising one inch per year for a thousand years!

Nothing like that is happening today. We are only just now thawing out of the Little Ice Age, returning to the warmer temperatures enjoyed during the Medieval Climate Optimum a thousand years ago. As NASA told us, this is due to increasing solar output starting in the late 1880s. However, even during that decade, San Francisco was blanketed by snow in winter. That's how cold it had gotten. I have some terrific photos of it.

Regulating CO2 has nothing to do with fighting global warming. China outpaced the USA's CO2 output years ago and is rapidly gobbling up all the carbon-fuel sources on Earth. If these schmucks believed their own BS, they'd be putting an absolute HALT to China's construction of a new coal-fired power plant almost every week.

The real agenda is what it has always been - to pillage US assets and give China global dominance. This is the effort to bring the entire world under global Communist control, with Mikhail Gorbachev as one of the ringleaders. He created and directs Green Cross International to coordinate his minions in various national governments.

The Obama Administration has been deep in bed with the folks perpetrating this scheme and directed the EPA to "regulate" in order to circumvent the authority of Congress, our representatives, in this matter. Additionally, Obama has taken direct action to ensure we do not move to a clean, carbon-free energy economy that would free us from carbon taxation and regulation designed to economically wreck the United States.

Obama Cuts Hydrogen Research Funds - Beneficiary is Ethanol
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/20...esearch-funds/

GW Bush began the conversion of our nation to clean, carbon-free Hydrogen, generated by Geothermal and other non-carbon sources of energy... and Democrats have fought frantically to keep us from getting there.

[Star Man]

"Regulating CO2 has nothing to do with fighting global warming.

"The real agenda is what it has always been - to pillage US assets and give China global dominance.

"The Obama Administration has been deep in bed with the folks perpetrating this scheme and directed the EPA to "regulate" in order to circumvent the authority of Congress, our representatives, in this matter."

The breadth of your reactionary thinking is truly stunning. I call TROLL on you sir. And I will not speak to you or reply to any of your comments again. If you attack me, I'll ask to have you kicked off the WaccoBB.

Star Man.

[Speak2Truth]

"Regulating CO2 has nothing to do with fighting global warming.

"The real agenda is what it has always been - to pillage US assets and give China global dominance.

"The Obama Administration has been deep in bed with the folks perpetrating this scheme and directed the EPA to "regulate" in order to circumvent the authority of Congress, our representatives, in this matter."

The breadth of your reactionary thinking is truly stunning. I call TROLL on you sir. And I will not speak to you or reply to any of your comments again. If you attack me, I'll ask to have you kicked off the WaccoBB.

Star Man.

I'm just sticking with the science and the statements of the folks pushing the "wealth redistribution through environmental policy" agenda. It's not just limited to the communist Van Jones. It goes much further than the Obama Administration...

IPCC Official Ottmar Edenhofer: World climate summit, Cancun, is actually about distribution of the world's resources
https://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1877-i...ds-wealth.html

CO2 is not what they're concerned about. They're not stopping China from accelerating its CO2 production - and China already produces more than the USA.

Mankind did not cause the end of the Ice Age and we can't prevent another.

There has been no temperature increase since 2005 despite rising CO2. The reason for this is well understood. As the SORCE satellite has shown us... the sun's Total Solar Irradiance has gone a bit tepid.

The Sun is the control knob for Earth temperature. Everything else just reacts to it. Here, have a look at solar irradiance change, how it ended the Little Ice Age in the late 1800s, caused a cooling period from 1945 to about 1980, resumed warming after 1980, has recently caused cooling again...

Solar Variation - shows sun driving Medieval Climate Optimum, Little Ice Age, Recent warming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

If you want to run from the science, that's fine. I'm just presenting this information for people with open eyes and intellectual curiosity.

[zenekar]

I'm just sticking with the science and the statements of the folks pushing the "wealth redistribution through environmental policy" agenda. It's not just limited to the communist Van Jones. It goes much further than the Obama Administration...

IPCC Official Ottmar Edenhofer: World climate summit, Cancun, is actually about distribution of the world's resources
https://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1877-i...ds-wealth.html

CO2 is not what they're concerned about. They're not stopping China from accelerating its CO2 production - and China already produces more than the USA.

Mankind did not cause the end of the Ice Age and we can't prevent another.

There has been no temperature increase since 2005 despite rising CO2. The reason for this is well understood. As the SORCE satellite has shown us... the sun's Total Solar Irradiance has gone a bit tepid.

The Sun is the control knob for Earth temperature. Everything else just reacts to it. Here, have a look at solar irradiance change, how it ended the Little Ice Age in the late 1800s, caused a cooling period from 1945 to about 1980, resumed warming after 1980, has recently caused cooling again...

Solar Variation - shows sun driving Medieval Climate Optimum, Little Ice Age, Recent warming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

If you want to run from the science, that's fine. I'm just presenting this information for people with open eyes and intellectual curiosity.

Since Speak2Truth(?) referenced thegwpf.org, folks should be aware that the director of GWPF is Benny Peiser. See https://www.carbonbrief.org/profiles/benny-peiser to learn about Peiser -- read especially the last paragraph of the text on the page -- "He later admitted he had found only one study explicitly rejecting the consensus. This paper was not peer reviewed and was published by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists."

[Speak2Truth]

Since Truth(?)2Power referenced thegwpf.org, folks should be aware that the director of GWPF is Benny Peiser. See https://www.carbonbrief.org/profiles/benny-peiser to learn about Peiser -- read especially the last paragraph of the text on the page -- "He later admitted he had found only one study explicitly rejecting the consensus. This paper was not peer reviewed and was published by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists."

Since you raised the issue of "consensus", let's be clear on what we are talking about.

It is an inescapable truth that mankind affects Earth's climate. For example:

The European Union has mandated a 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, mandating that 10 percent of all vehicles be powered by biofuels. Government spends tax dollars, toward this end, on the investments of George Soros in this market.

Consequence: Vast amounts of Amazon rain forest are destroyed for soybean and sugar cane cultivation to produce biofuels. Brazil announced that deforestation was on track to double in 2009.

The climate change consequences are already showing and will be severe in the long run. So, there should be a 100% consensus on the claim that mankind "contributes" to climate change.

Science does not support the Carbon Tax and Wealth Redistribution schemes of government bodies, Soros, Gore and others seeking to enrich themselves based on a fallacy. CO2 is a miniscule 0.038% in the atmosphere and its heat-catching effect is completely overwhelmed by all the other gases combined, especially water vapor which represents 95% of that heat-catching effect. What's more, the entire atmosphere can only respond to changes in solar forcing. That's why Earth temperature change has tracked very nicely with changes in solar output since we've kept track of it. That's why there has been no warming since 2005 - reduced solar output. Rising CO2 cannot cause warming, it's just one gas in the mix that responds to solar energy changes.

More about "consensus"...

U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims
Scientists (many who worked on IPCC report data) Continue to Debunk “Consensus” in 2008 & 2009
https://epw.senate.gov/public/index....B-BD9FAF4DCDB7

Naomi Oreskes claims consensus on AGW. Review of published scientists shows less than half endorse it, greater number reject it.
97% claim is false.
https://www.dailytech.com/Survey+Les...rticle8641.htm

[Star Man]

One of the consequences of an invasion by a Troll is that people stop reading the important information that often appears on the WaccoBB bulletin board. I hope you're listening Barry. I am closing the notifications for this thread and putting the putative Troll on "Ignore." I feel about Trolls the same way I feel about what happened in the Safeway just now. A drunk bum puked in the aisle where the cheese and butter are stored. I looked at and smelled the mess and said to myself, "I can come back tomorrow and get butter." Apparently trolls, like drunk-bum puke are an unavoidable fact of American life. The bum has a First Amendment right to get drunk I guess, but I also watched Safeway Security usher him out of the store.

[Speak2Truth]

We Liberal Intellectuals pursue knowledge in order to form a realistic worldview. We happily examine the viewpoints of people with differing viewpoints in order to learn whether their viewpoints were formed by facts and reasoning that we had not been previously exposed to. That is how we learn and grow.

We don't call then "Trolls" then blind ourselves.

I invite you to engage, with open mind and honest intentions, in exploring information to form an honest, realistic worldview.

You can be sure that many sources of "information" have really just been trying to manipulate your perceptions to make you serve their purposes. You can only free yourself from this by exploring outside the box they try to keep you in.

Did you find anything factually or reasonably wrong with what I wrote? If so, I invite you to correct me. If not, I invite you to consider adjusting your worldview to fit the facts.

[Barry]

One of the consequences of an invasion by a Troll is that people stop reading the important information that often appears on the WaccoBB bulletin board. I hope you're listening Barry. I am closing the notifications for this thread and putting the putative Troll on "Ignore."

I hear you. I don't consider Speak2truth at troll. He seems respectful and even thoughtful at times. Besides being from the "other side" he's also dominating the discussion area by the sheer volume of his postings. Hopefully this is just his "welcome back" salvo and it will scale back some.

For the time being I consider him a "guest". He's welcome as long as he remains respectful and doesn't continue to dominate all discussions. At least for a while...

I suggest some of you take on countering bits of his arguments. I seem to remember him having sliver of open-mindedness, and so should we, too.

I'm on vacation and have just been scanning his posts. If anything is really out of line, please point it out to me via email.

[Speak2Truth]

Apologies if I seem to be dominating conversations. I just happen to enjoy engaging in back and forth discussion of these issues.

I relish the opportunity to find people with differing viewpoints and to learn what facts their viewpoints are built upon. We all see different things in our lives and our worldview is based upon those things.

I'm trying to be completely open minded to information supported by facts.

lolchan, in particular, has posted some really amazing historical stuff that leads me off to other avenues of research.

And, yes, I'll dwindle down again soon. Off to Hawaii to work on a project and enjoy nature a bit.

[Orm Embar]

One of the consequences of an invasion by a Troll is that people stop reading the important information that often appears on the WaccoBB bulletin board. I hope you're listening Barry.

I rarely post, but I wanted to give emphasis to the quote above.

I read Wacco as a digest and I am now seriously fatigued with the sheer volume of posts by Speak2Truth. I have no comment about content . . . it's just a LOT to scroll through so now I am trying to figure out if I can use the ignore option on the digest. Otherwise I might just need to stop reading waccobb until things settle down.

cheers

[Speak2Truth]

Ahhh... clever strategy Orm!



Wait, hang on, are you saying you get all the posts on this entire system in digest form? Wow.

[pbrinton]

I hear you. I don't consider Speak2truth at troll. He seems respectful and even thoughtful at times. Besides being from the "other side" he's also dominating the discussion area by the sheer volume of his postings. Hopefully this is just his "welcome back" salvo and it will scale back some.

For the time being I consider him a "guest". He's welcome as long as he remains respectful and doesn't continue to dominate all discussions. At least for a while...

I suggest some of you take on countering bits of his arguments. I seem to remember him having sliver of open-mindedness, and so should we, too.

I'm on vacation and have just been scanning his posts. If anything is really out of line, please point it out to me via email.

I have to weigh in with Star Man here. I have read some of the posts, and what we have here is not someone with a thought-out point of view looking to test it against intelligent opposition. I thought about responding to a couple fo them, but became overwhelmed by the sheer number of statements that were not merely false, but the mirror image of the truth. If he really believes in what he is saying he must live on a different planet from the rest of us. These are not opinions, they involve a wholesale rewriting of history. For instance he says W inherited a recession when he took office. Does anyone remember that election? The main debate was about how to spend the surplus that Clinton left, which was expected to keep growing! W sure took care of that problem!

This kind of tactic is a well-known habit of trolls. They get you involved in a whole series of different points, and each one gets more and more convoluted and breeds even more diversions, and it drives normal people off bulletin boards. The fact that he can be polite and even humorous is a smokescreen.

It would be useful, Barry, if you would describe how people would set about blocking a particular poster from their Digests should they wish to do so. And to anyone who might be thinking of nor reading Wacco because of this, hang in there; these thing pass.

Patrick Brinton

[theindependenteye]

>>>I have to weigh in with Star Man here. I have read some of the posts, and what we have here is not someone with a thought-out point of view looking to test it against intelligent opposition. I thought about responding to a couple of them, but became overwhelmed by the sheer number of statements that were not merely false, but the mirror image of the truth.

The Right has developed that to a fine art. They would call it a fresh way of looking at things. I'd call it being freaked by your own shadow. New Agers might just say, "We create our own reality." But I find this stuff fascinating in a grim sort of way, using it as the basis of a character in a death-of-the-world novel I'm working on intermittently.

>>>If he really believes in what he is saying he must live on a different planet from the rest of us.

Nope, same damn planet. That's the problem.

Cheers—
Conrad

[Barry]

It would be useful, Barry, if you would describe how people would set about blocking a particular poster from their Digests should they wish to do so. And to anyone who might be thinking of nor reading Wacco because of this, hang in there; these thing pass.

Patrick Brinton

Here you go:
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/showt...111#post138111

[anathstryx]

I hear you. I don't consider Speak2truth at troll. He seems respectful and even thoughtful at times. Besides being from the "other side" he's also dominating the discussion area by the sheer volume of his postings. Hopefully this is just his "welcome back" salvo and it will scale back some.

For the time being I consider him a "guest". He's welcome as long as he remains respectful and doesn't continue to dominate all discussions. At least for a while...

I suggest some of you take on countering bits of his arguments. I seem to remember him having sliver of open-mindedness, and so should we, too.

I'm on vacation and have just been scanning his posts. If anything is really out of line, please point it out to me via email.

I am reminded of the type of person who, when invited to your house, is so eager to impress you with how incredibly cool they are, they do just the opposite, squared. Rather than discern how things naturally ebb and flow in your space and settle into it, they overwhelm and disrupt. They are rarely, if ever, invited back. Or, if it's inevitable that they will return (like a family member), one rationalizes a host of excuses for their behavior and just grits teeth until they leave again.

I think this community would suffer from a lack of opposing points of view, no matter how tedious it does become to debate every position or idea (even more so in the current national chaotic, spleen-wrenching climate of recalcitrant disagreement). Waccoland would just become an insular mutual appreciation clique, stagnant and boring.

The sheer volume of Speak2truth's posts made me wonder if he even takes a break to go to the bathroom! But, I must admit, he is most certainly intelligent and articulate and I have always be oddly fascinated by people who are both and yet have such fantastically skewed perspectives of life, the Universe, and everything. It makes me wonder what arrangement of nature and nurture caused the shaping of their lenses so radically different than mine. How can we know if we don't engage them?

Since the Other camp loves to wave Jefferson around as a vanguard flag, I found this wonderful gem:

"...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another. ... When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ... There are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The first is of young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details & modifications which a further progress would bring to their knowledge. The other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics. ... Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal."
-Thomas Jefferson

Anathstryx

[podfish]

>>>what we have here is not someone with a thought-out point of view looking to test it against intelligent opposition. I.... became overwhelmed by the sheer number of statements that were not merely false, but the mirror image of the truth.
I find this stuff fascinating in a grim sort of way,

I think these are well thought-out views, which is one reason I get drawn to responding to the second observation here - that they're often mirror images of the truth. It's the mix of historical detail with breathtaking leaps of assumption that keeps grabbing me. I trust pretty most of the posters here to be sincere; hell, I'm usually sincere myself. This flurry of posts on a bunch of topics all seem to show a sincere desire to educate the rest of us. What they all seem to have in common are a ton of details about A, B and C, a few arbitrary indefensible claims E and F and the assertion that they all add up to G. But the math doesn't hold up, usually because of those A,B and C don't really lead to G - and E and F are wacco.

I've always taken "troll" to mean someone whose main intent is to kick a hornet's nest just to see them buzz.



and to close on an indirectly related but thematically consistent note, with what I find a wonderful example of how one's biases shape the way conversation is framed. This is from the Wall Street Journal's article on drilling for natural gas:
"Politicians wringing their hands over how to create more jobs might study the shale boom along the New York and Pennsylvania border. It's a case study in one state embracing economic opportunity, while the other has let environmental politics trump development."

"environmental politics". Yeah, that's a choice of phrasing that reveals a lot.

[Speak2Truth]

Guys guys guys....

I have read some of the posts, and what we have here is not someone with a thought-out point of view looking to test it against intelligent opposition. I thought about responding to a couple fo them, but became overwhelmed by the sheer number of statements that were not merely false, but the mirror image of the truth.

Why do you repeat that claim but fail to demonstrate it with evidence? When asked, I present the evidence to support the statements I make. That's what reasonable comparison of ideas and information is all about.

I would have been greatly impressed if you had actually presented well supported counter-arguments.

In fact, I often say that claims made by others are the "mirror of truth", that to arrive at truth one need only state the opposite of what they have claimed - but ONLY if I have researched and found the evidence to back my own viewpoints.

Here, let's try this.

Can anyone name the President who took drastic action to set this nation on the course to freedom from petroleum as our mainstream fuel, freedom from carbon-based fuels in general, and to produce nearly unlimited energy in a manner sustainable for probably millions of years?

Can anyone name the Presidential Candidate who led the charge to stop him?

I ask these questions because nobody has ever gotten this right - in fact, the general public believes the opposite of the truth.

[BizWrangler]

I hear you. I don't consider Speak2truth at troll. He seems respectful and even thoughtful at times. Besides being from the "other side" he's also dominating the discussion area by the sheer volume of his postings. Hopefully this is just his "welcome back" salvo and it will scale back some.

For the time being I consider him a "guest". He's welcome as long as he remains respectful and doesn't continue to dominate all discussions. At least for a while...

I suggest some of you take on countering bits of his arguments. I seem to remember him having sliver of open-mindedness, and so should we, too.

I'm on vacation and have just been scanning his posts. If anything is really out of line, please point it out to me via email.

"Being from the other side"???? We are ALL a part and parcel of this universe, and I take issue with the attitude here at Wacco towards those who may not share your vision of the world. I have seen other people here who are frequently posting (Dixon, for example), so why should Speak2Truth be accused of dominating discussions and Dixon or others not? Seems to me like a double standard - those with liberal vs those more conservative or differing opinions. Everyone should be treated the same regardless of their personal perspectives being unlike your own.

I don't necessarily share the same opinion as many here on Wacco, however I don't get my undies in a bunch when any of you voice yourselves even though I may not agree. I haven't the time or interest in engaging in some of these long discussions that take place, so it is my choice not to participate. I might participate more often, however I've seen how unwelcome folks 'from the other side' are here, so I keep to myself for the most part. This Us and Them stuff has to stop! We need to find common ground and be respectful of others. People seem to get such tunnel vision that is exclusive and fosters ill will - all while calling this a 'conscious community'. I certainly fail at being articulate, which is another reason I don't post often. I will say, it is offensive, this whole 'other side' state of consciousness that I see here all too often. I may not agree with all Speak2Truth has to say, but I sure do believe in his right to speak his mind regardless. Putting his posts 'on guard' (for lack of a better term) just because you don't share the same opinions just doesn't settle right with me. Using the excuse calling frequent posts as dominating isn't valid because you allow others to do it all the time, but they are from YOUR side.