The Iraq war was a gigantic subsidy to the oil industry.
The Iraqi oil fields are owned and operated by the Iraqi Government. Occasionally they lease production to American drilling firms but Iraq's oil industry is largely a competitor to America's.
If the US and the EU decide to leave their renewable energy sector to the whims of the free market, while allowing China to subsidizes the hell out of it- we might as well just hand the entire industry over to them.
And if Chinese taxpayers foot our bill, what's the problem with that exactly? I'm not bothered by some foreign country subsidizing my lifestyle.
you mean like coal, gas and oil pay their own way? They get hundreds of billions of dollars worth of subsidies every year.
Not really. They pretty much get standard equipment depreciation schedules, present in virtually all heavy industry. They also get to deduct dry wells and other losses, also pretty standard stuff. Ethanol is a racket and basically just exist so that we may sacrifice to the corn gods, but oil and gas don't really get many subsidies that aren't standard for all industries. Per kilowatt hour, renewables get far more in the way of subsidies than oil or coal.
This is the ultimate example of the failure of capitalism. The wealthy and closed mided are able to push their agenda and beliefs, no matter how preposterous, to the masses because they buy the most while greedy publishers are willing to forgo fact over profit.
In other words, capitalism fails because it is exactly like every other system. I don't recall people praising Mao or Stalin for their open-mindedness.
Gods? What have they done lately? Promulgate fear and hatred, ignorance and death. Is it any wonder people have been rejecting gods for a century? There's really no contest.
Can you imagine a society that officially renounced belief in God? I can, because the USSR and Mao's China essentially did just that... and promptly started to promulgate fear, hatred, ignorance and death at a rate that has yet to be matched by any society in history. Germany, under national socialism, also devoted a great deal of effort towards science and essentially squelched the church and ended up with similar results.
I personally agree with the idea that evolution should be taught and not creationism but I'm not about to denounce religion without contemplating the alternatives.
The majority of Texans are not stupid, and even if they have their own private reservations, they know that the science of evolution is a basis for a large fraction of the modern economy.
Actually, I would disagree with the notion that evolution is a basis for the economy. The overall economic impact of the teaching of the theory of evolution is probably pretty limited. Yes, it matters to those with careers in biology, but those people would probably be taught about the theory of evolution (in much greater detail) during college.
Like most "social issues" such as gay marriage, abortion, the NSA PRISIM program, assault weapons laws, etc. the way students are taught about evolution may make an effective political wedge issue, but its actual effect on people's lives is generally small.
Regardless of their opinion of evolution, I imagine most Texans simply vote their party and the vast majority probably couldn't tell you who their school board member is or what he believes. A sizable chunk wouldn't even know what they themselves think about evolution. Many simply have never stopped to think about it because they're busy with other aspects of life.
To be replaced in the textbook market by????
This is also true of any other state. Almost any state will have drawbacks. I'm just as uncomfortable with some left wing state dominating the textbook market. If California were the market leader for instance, I can imagine we'd go from the creationist in Texas being a voice to the eco-cult of California insisting that GMO's cause cancer / environmental collapse / human mutations. Rather than dealing with the global warming deniers in Texas, we'd be dealing with the Chicken Little "the sky is falling" types which, if we're being honest, aren't really any more productive.
There's this one out West somewhere....Cali-something-or-other.
California is much more of a "local control" state than Texas is. Texas gives the Texas Board of Education a huge amount of power in deciding which textbooks are purchased while California largely lets individual school boards (and in some cases, individual schools) make those decisions. Thus the entire State of Texas pretty much ends up buying the same books making Texas the most influential market in the country for textbooks.
To be fair, science is effectively a belief system,
Science is more of a process than a belief. When we use the term "science" we are referring to the use of the scientific method to acquire knowledge about the natural world. Science itself prescribes no ethics, no meanings to life, no philosophies and, being the study of the natural world, has nothing to say regarding the existence of supernatural beings. If you look at scientific scholars you will find a diverse array of religious beliefs, philosophic beliefs and life practices. Science is not a belief system.
Then God was pleased, for he could cast the sinning Eve as the first human that the kind and loving God tossed into the lake of fire, to be tortured forever and ever, Amen.
Except that God isn't "tossing" people into the lake of fire. Christian theology seems to suggest that people who willingly reject God are going to hell by their own hands.
We do stil have that to a degree, even in most republics. The Koch brothers, for example, have considerable political clout mainly as a result of inherited money. And is was hardly a pure coincidence that George W Bush was in a posiiton follow his father's footsteps to become president.
The Koch brothers inherited a family owned business and, rather than going public, decided to keep it family owned. Just because their business is larger than others doesn't make it unique. Plenty of business owners inherited their family's firm.
Yes, Bush inherited political clout. Names like Bush, Clinton, Kennedy, Roosevelt, etc. have long carried power in the states dating clear back to John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams (John Adams even alluded to believing that the USA might benefit from inherited titles of nobility)
Some families produce politicians. Some families produce musicians. Some families produce football and baseball players. Some families produce businessmen. You can inherit talent and you can inherit a family name just as well as you can inherit wealth or good genetics. This isn't news to anyone.
I think that one of the things that people worry about with Prince Charles is that he does state opinions about a lot of things, and that, should he become King, he might start trying to turn some of his nominal powers into actual ones.
Your current monarch has done an outstanding job of remaining impartial and generally avoiding meddling in day-to-day political affairs. Under your system, a good monarch should. Charles however, does not inspire confidence that this will continue once he has the crown.
Second, the monarch can dissolve parliament which triggers a general election. I'd guess this means that, in the event of a knife edge like the one that got Bush in as president, so none of the parties can form a government, rather then wrangling in court, the monarch can effectively force another vote.
For those of use curious enough to watch, there was coverage of your last election here in the States and, for all intensive purposes, your last national election did end up being a knife edge. No party (or traditional coalition) ended up in the majority which is how you ended up with your Tory/Liberal coalition government, quite the political odd couple. The last time you ended up with a "hung parliament" was, if I remember right, back in the 70's which basically just resulted in a horrible mess and then another round of elections. This time, it was something your politicians kind of suspected might happen when the Conservatives started to lose steam near the end of the campaign so coalition talks were mostly in the works before the results were announced.
I suppose the big thing the monarch could do is force an election in the event Parliament simply refused to call one. My understanding is the "term" of a parliament isn't 100% codified but elections are traditionally held at least every 5-ish years (though sooner if the majority thinks it will gain seats and the WWII parliament didn't call an election for almost a decade due to the war). I suppose the queen could deny ascent to anything blatantly corrupt like a law meddling with the Boundaries Commission (oh how I wish we had one of those in the States) or some law denying the opposition party TV time or something. Much like your government's upper chamber, she's not much of a check, but with so few checks and balances, there needs to be some sort of check on power.
Yes, and we are all her "subjects", and pay for the upkeep of her properties and for state events in her honour. Most unsatisfactory.
We in the states pay for a lot of pomp and circumstances that are, from a pragmatic perspective, generally unnecessary. In this age of teleconferencing, there isn't much reason for our Presidents, Veeps, SoS's, members of Congress, etc. to be traveling around the globe. There isn't much of a need for the constant cross-country tours most of our politicians go on too. We don't really need a massive inauguration ceremony nor long fancy swearing in ceremonies for members of Congress.
Hell, we don't really need a full-time Congress. Our second most populous state, Texas, has a legislature that meets for a single 140 day session every 2 years (and Texans generally joke that they'd rather it just meet for 2 days every 140 years). A good chunk of our states have part-time legislatures so Congress probably would do fine on those terms too. Heck they'd probably cause fewer problems and it would be nice having our Congress run by people who didn't list "politician" as their primary career.
Government comes with needless formalities. It comes with being ruled by people who like to be popular unfortunately.
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer. -- A.J. Perlis
