Posted on 08/16/2009 12:55:58 PM PDT by tobyhill
Four Democratic senators want to put off the proposed cap & trade legislation. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad both of North Dakota are urging the Senate to delay legislation that puts caps on greenhouse gas emissions and instead, pass a narrow bill that sets requirements on the use of renewable energy.
Senators Lincoln and Dorgan are up for re-election in 2010 and are from states that would be hurt economically from a cap and trade bill similar to the one passed by the House in June.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D. NV) does not want to separate the climate and energy legislation. “I don’t think we are going to take to the Senate floor a bill stripped of climate provisions,” said Reid, quoted in Bloomberg.
Getting the required 60 votes in the Senate could be a challenge for the Democrats. Most Republicans have stated that they oppose it. Fifteen Democrats say the House version would hurt the economy and needs to be amended before gaining their support.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Speaker of the House does NOT have to be a member of the House of Representatives or any elected official at all. It has never been otherwise (I’m fairly certain), but there is no Constitutional requirement that Speaker be a representative.
Even if a former “class” in the House of Representatives passed a requirement that the Speaker be an elected member, such a requirement can be eliminated by a majority vote of the current “class”. I don’t think such a requirement has ever been addressed.
You just wait and see how fast they turn against GeoThermal the first time there is a large earthquake in an area where there has been strong development of GeoThermal.
It will be like Three Mile Island, but with more reason behind it.
The name Nazi itself came from official name NSDAP - National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei - National Socialist German Workers' Party. Classic Fascism allows private ownership but relies partially on corporatism as means of total economic control, while not necessarily ownership of all means of production. As Goebbels said, "Why own when you can control?" This allows some individualism and reward of initiative and, while socialist, is a more efficient economic system than Communism, which has fallen under its own weight everywhere. This is why these days we are seeing formerly Communist countries like Russia and China relaxing the state's ownership and moving towards more economically efficient fascist system, while remaining essentially socialist and statist in nature.
Shortly before Gorbachev's "perestroika", his predecessor Leonid Brezhnev tried to explain away harsh economic conditions and failures as not yet having a complete Communism, but rather Soviet Union being still in a stage of "advanced socialism".
"Progressives" is just another name that "liberals" in the West adopted when "liberal" became discredited and associated too closely with policies and ideology of Soviet communism. In fact, Henry Wallace, FDR's Vice President and friend of Joe Stalin, ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket and was endorsed and supported by Communist Party USA.
More recently, faced with the fall of Communism and its discredited economic system, "Progressives" / "liberals" moved away from the notion of government ownership and into government control through "taxation, restrictions and regulations". Also, some leaders (most visibly, Tony Blair in UK and Bill Clinton in USA, via DLC platform, as well as Hillary Clinton; Paul Martin in Canada and Kevin Rudd in Australia) of different left-wing Labour / People's / Workers' / Progressive parties in the West started advocating an economic system of Third Way, which is a close integration of government and private enterprise, especially large corporations.
If Third Way sounds a lot like a mask for fascism, it's because it is. That's where "Progressives" are really moving, whether most of them realize it or not. of course, they don't want to be associated with fascism, they are just trying on different - new or well forgotten - names or terms. Ironically, for a long time, they have taken to using the term "fascist" and "right-winger" to attack and discredit anyone who disagrees with them, when they are correctly accused of favoring communist or socialist philosophy, and because the term, unfortunately, is much more pejorative than "communist" or "socialist". It simply serves as a convenient counter argument for "leftists" commonly associated with "socialism" or "communism" but not "fascism".
The view that Fascism is a right-wing ideology became fixed, incorrectly, after Hitler and National Socialists (Nazis) persecuted, among others, German Communists, who were understood to be left-wing. Somewhat similar to what happened earlier in Russia around and after Communist Revolution, with a hard split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (factions of Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party) over relatively minor differences in proposed direction and policies.
Excellent post from loveliberty2. It is ALL about principle. I’ve been trying to get this across for some time. Felt I was a feather blowing in the wind. But you nailed it!
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It seems that we are in complete agreement, starting with ALL of these being left-wing and collectivist philosophies.
Yes- when many use the word “fascist” they are simply using it as a pejorative. I wrote earlier, “When people were calling Bush “fascist”, that was simply a smear. I challenged them to define fascist, and when they were unable to respond, I educated them and they were reduced to calling him monkey instead. Dear Leader has been RULING as a fascist (most recently demonstrated by his town hall antics).”
When I am labeling Dear Leader and Pelosi, etc., Fascist, I am NOT using it as a pejorative. I am attempting to describe as accurately as possible the system of government they espouse and are trying to bring about, and is the thrust of the argument in that other thread. I ran into a problem, though, when researching the question.
Nazi vs. Fascist: They don’t want to eliminate “class” in society (They don’t want to be saddled with the same health care as the masses, and have never bashed their rich, “high-class” or “elite” supporters.) That leads to the determination “Nazi” does not describe them as well as “Fascist”.
Now, referring to http://open-encyclopedia.com/Fascism they appear in almost every way to operate PRECISELY as Fascists but never goad people into a frenzy by extolling the virtues of the United States. They don’t really do it with racism, either- they merely use that as a pejorative. Their goal seems to be completely “one world” or “globalist” instead in all that they try to do.
To distinguish socialists from communists, refer to http://open-encyclopedia.com/Communism ... Communism, I’ve heard it argued, has never been implemented. Apologies to Marx and Engels, but it is the supporters of communism who make that argument. Communism as it is now defined requires that there be NO “state”.
So, can we properly refer to Dear Leader et al as “Communist”? Here again we run into their definite love of CLASS and elites in society. I have not been able to discover a word that describes Fascism without nationalism.
Either we stipulate that the “whole world” is the “nation” for Dear Leader et al, or we need a new word for their desired governmental system. I proposed “CommuFascist” earlier for this MORE EXTREME form of Fascism.
The whole point, though, is that whether this philosophy is called CommuFascist, or “Progressive”, analysis reveals that Dear Leader, Pelosi, and ALL these super-liberals are espousing a MORE EXTREME FORM of Fascism. Dear Leader is a “one-world” Mussolini.
We are being generous to these leaders of our nation when we describe them as Fascist, not pejorative.
Your “problem” is simply semantics, because the meanings of the terms have not been that well defined to begin with, and have been distorted, made obscure or unrecognizably morphed, often quite deliberately, by interested parties, and depend on the authors’ bias or knowledge.
It has been simply too short a period of time in history of Marx and Engels philosophy of socialism, that German Fascism was born and died. While nominally called Nationalist (after DAP added National Sozialistische) it was in reality - as well as its ally at the time, fascist Japan, despite racism of German Nazis - no less expansionist in nature than explicitly “International” communism. Both were and are totalitarian regimes. The major difference between these totalitarian socialist systems is economics of Control vs Total Ownership of resources and means of production. Besides higher efficiency of control, there is also a built-in mechanism of finger-pointing and deflecting blame for the problems to the “owners” of resources or producers. You can see it clearly in Putin’s Russia or Hu’s China or in Obama / Pelosi / Reid shifting blame on the “enemies of the state”.
Occasionally, when I talk to people who are really interested in knowing and understanding “what is going on?” I give them a brief overview and recommend Jonah Goldberg’s excellent book “Liberal Fascism”. Just the title alone is usually enough to further pique their curiosity, and my “job” is then done - they learn more from this book then they ever knew, and they’ll never again see the political environment in the same light.
Oh, c’mon! Dig your heels in and push for another trillion dollar boondoggle. Grow a pair, 0bammy! ;^)
Don’t “delay” it! Grow some balls and vote it down!
I never knew that, thanks for new info.
I suspect most House Democrats already want Pelosi gone because they see her as a liability for next year’s elections. If Obamacare fails to pass by Christmas recess, which I think is likely, then they’ll have their excuse, and they’ll be calling for her head.
Now, if it was anyone else, I’d say the Speaker would step down in the face of that pressure. Pelosi, though, is arrogant and selfish enough to refuse to resign. I even expect her to run for re-election as Speaker, and I expect her to lose no matter what happens. Most would quietly resign once it was clear they didn’t have the votes for re-election, but Pelosi is delusional enough to run anyway.
She’s going to cause one hell of a mess for the Democrats, and it’s going to be sweet. She’ll be a rank-and-file member of Congress in 2011.
Conrad lives in a conservative, coal producing, state. He has to act in accordance with the realities of the state he is in. He gains more support by going against Washington. Besides, the Countrywide mortgage scandal is knocking loudly at his door.
I'd put more weight on the realities of a coal-producing state than on any chance of the Countrywide scandal ever making a dent -- unless they can throw him under the bus without damaging the rest of the gang.
BUMP
BTTT
“My mail is running about 99 to 1 against (cap and trade),” said Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, during the hearing. “I’ll use the parade analogy, as well. What are people yelling at (me) during parades? It’s, “No to cap and trade!”
http://southeastfarmpress.com/legislation/climate-legislation-0803/
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