Mike Malloy controversial comments

[FredLeonard]

Most people I know who are "right wingers" are either people of modest means who have strong religious convictions, disaffected people hurt by the mediocre economy, or small businesspeople who feel that their ability to prosper (or even continue) in business is being choked by unnecessary over-regulation.

Very few care a whit about the "people at the top" you feel that the right wing is protecting.

I know that there are many conservatives in talk radio, and probably a lot of them in the conservative movement, who look up to the "people at the top", and may want to see them protected for some reason.

But you get out among the actual people in day-to-day life who are conservative, most of them just want a fair shake at a decent job, or a chance to build and prosper their small business without having to take all the extra time to keep track of all the paperwork.

And it's not just the EPA. The EPA is just one of the more obvious regulation agencies -- it's a popular target because everybody knows about the EPA. The IRS is another one. Everybody knows about it, so it is also used as an example.

But most of the regulation that affects people -- especially small business -- is on the local level. When I hear small businesspeople talk about "government regulation", they may mention the big national agencies like the IRS and EPA, but the actual regulative mechanisms they are complaining about are on the local and State level, not Federal.

Most regulations are designed to benefit the customer or the public at large, not owners and investors. The great flaw of capitalism is it is concerned only with the providers of capital (investors, owners or stockholders). By law, corporate managers are required to act in the fiduciary interests of stockholders - public, employees and customers be damned. Regulation is there to provide some balance.

Funny how big corporations already entrenched don't complain about - they even push for - regulations that thwart newer and smaller entrants who would compete with them. They also seem very attached to different forms of corporate welfare. This all smacks of hypocrisy.

It's curious: 100 years ago, populists - the same kinds of people you just described - were anti-corporate and thought government could help them. But the business community has gotten such people to hate the government (and favor business in the name of job creation - which usually doesn't happen).

When Adam Smith wrote about "free markets," corporations, trusts and trade associations hadn't been invented yet. They had guilds but those were small potatoes compared to how business operates now.

 

[JeffM]

I know that there are many conservatives in talk radio, and probably a lot of them in the conservative movement, who look up to the "people at the top", and may want to see them protected for some reason.

Not all in conservative talk radio either, to be fair. There's an afternoon talk host on the state public network here (them galldang liberals, right?) who has an almost embarrassing mancrush on Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and other bazillionaires, and is forever bringing them up in conversation as paragons of virtue.

 

[Avid Listener]

But most of the regulation that affects people -- especially small business -- is on the local level. When I hear small businesspeople talk about "government regulation", they may mention the big national agencies like the IRS and EPA, but the actual regulative mechanisms they are complaining about are on the local and State level, not Federal.

Even when it is coming from the Federal bureaucracy, it is usually the low-level bureaucrats assigned to handle a particular local region that are the most egregiously inept. If anyone ever doubted the Peter Principle, let him simply engage with some Federal bureaucrats.

 

[FredLeonard]

Several posts about NPR have been moved here...

http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?666554-NPR

 

[umfan]

Fred quote: "It takes only a small increase in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to change the climate. A small increase has already done it. An additional small increase can be catastrophic. That's what scientists say. What you say comes from politicians, preachers and right-wing talk show hosts protecting the profits of the elite. But why worry? It's a problem for people 100 years from now to deal with. "

So when the next inevitable volcanic eruption occurs, we're doomed right? Give me a break. You have zero support for the assertion that a small additional increase in atmospheric CO2 has an environmental impact.

You're powering your computer with a pedal powered generator as you type, right?

 

[FredLeonard]

Fred quote: "It takes only a small increase in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to change the climate. A small increase has already done it. An additional small increase can be catastrophic. That's what scientists say. What you say comes from politicians, preachers and right-wing talk show hosts protecting the profits of the elite. But why worry? It's a problem for people 100 years from now to deal with. "

So when the next inevitable volcanic eruption occurs, we're doomed right? Give me a break. You have zero support for the assertion that a small additional increase in atmospheric CO2 has an environmental impact.

You're powering your computer with a pedal powered generator as you type, right?

Zero support? That's completely false. Instead of getting science from right-wing talk show hosts and preachers, I suggest you watch Neil deGrasse Tyson's update of "Cosmos" (which, by the way, aired on Fox).

 

[umfan]

I suggest that you support your assertion that a small increase in CO2 can drive climate change. Be sure to address why CO2 levels have increased greatly worldwide since 1998 yet glaobal temperature has been flat to falling, specifically why this lack of correlation for your assertion. While you're at it, provide the r-squared value for global temperature and CO2 level for this period.

You're the one making the assertion, Fred, so back it up or concede that you cannot do so. I suggest you be prepared to provide support, which is what you ask of others here instead of getting your science from areas where this is a bias and conflict of interest into thinking that CO2 is what's driving climate change.

 

[FredLeonard]

I did. Watch "Cosmos" and think for yourself.

Beyond that, the entire science community has not been able to make a dent with you people on this an other issues, so it's not worth trying to document anything with wing-nuts, ditto-heads, tea baggers and religious right fundamentalists.

The world was created in 4004 BC and all the dinosaurs died in the flood. Then god altered the rate of carbon decay to make fossils look millions of years old to test your faith. It doesn't matter because Jesus will come back any day now and all liberals, scientists and people who have earned degrees from the University of Michigan will go to hell. Happy?

 

[Avid Listener]

Watch "Cosmos" and think for yourself.

Which do you want us to do? Watch a TV show, or think for ourselves? If you are going to give us a choice like that, shouldn't you at least pick one side or the other?

 

[umfan]

Okay so Fred can't back up his position. About what I figured, so nothing new.

I do think for myself Fred, more than you're able to do at least on this topic. The climate is changing, it always has and is very dynamic. Before policies are implemented that will have a material effect on the lives of millions, there should be verified certianty that some benefit will happen as a result of such upheaveal. I submit that evidence limiting carbon emissions have not met that test and should not be regulated until such evidence exists.

 

[FredLeonard]

Okay so Fred can't back up his position. About what I figured, so nothing new.

I do think for myself Fred, more than you're able to do at least on this topic. The climate is changing, it always has and is very dynamic. Before policies are implemented that will have a material effect on the lives of millions, there should be verified certianty that some benefit will happen as a result of such upheaveal. I submit that evidence limiting carbon emissions have not met that test and should not be regulated until such evidence exists.

OK, you don't want to watch the show that provided exactly what you asked for. If I provided a link, I doubt you'd read that either. Fine. Keep your mind closed. But don't say I didn't offer back-up because everybody (else) who reads the last few posts can see I did. Go back to the Buzzboard. GG, TC and 48125 are more your kind of people any way.

 

[TheBigA]

The irony here is that this is another discussion that you never hear on talk radio.

 

[FredLeonard]

This thread had been dead for over a week and then UMFan (notice "fan," not "alum") decides to start ragging about some old comment on global warming. One favorite wing-nut tactic is to yell "prove it." And whatever they get back is never enough. And some of you wonder why I despise tea baggers.

 

[umfan]

I disagree Big A, I hear quite a bit about climate change on Talk Radio.

Fred, I haven't been to the 'Buzzboard' in over six years. It's certainly your call if you want to support your position. I gave you a basis why I'm skeptical. Let's leave it at that.

 

[TheBigA]

I disagree Big A, I hear quite a bit about climate change on Talk Radio.

I'm sure you do, but a DISCUSSION involves more than one side of an issue. That's what I'm talking about.

 

[FredLeonard]

I'm sure you do, but a DISCUSSION involves more than one side of an issue. That's what I'm talking about.

I imagine Fascist Frank Beckmann, gets his talking points from the automakers, and preaches the gospel of denial to the great unwashed of White trash suburbs like Dearborn Heights.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I disagree Big A, I hear quite a bit about climate change on Talk Radio.

Quite a bit yes.... all of it denial and skepticism.

If I wanted to listen to a conservative talk person.... radio or TV... with an intelligent conversation about climate change, who would you suggest I tune in?

 

[Small Market Guy]

The only show of either political bent where I've heard any sort of scientific discussion of climate change without political bias is Coast to Coast. It was terminally boring.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The only show of either political bent where I've heard any sort of scientific discussion of climate change without political bias is Coast to Coast. It was terminally boring.

But you folks IN the Talk business, you folks who need a POSITION to explain and defend apparently don't take the time to read the academic journals where climate is discussed. Most of us don't. We think we are not intellectually up to it, our vocabulary is so limited that we spend more time looking up words than we do digesting the meat of the article. But by poking around CSPAN and Bill Moyers (yes, I understand he has a biased agenda, but he also has outstanding intellectual skills), reacing the Op Ed pieces in the daily newspapers (both sides) an intellectually honest person has to come to point of saying: "Folks, we've got to sit down and talk our way through all this!"

When you look at the satellite photos of the polar ice caps over the last 20 or 30 years... you just have to eventually... even if it is in the privacy of your basement or the woodworking shop in your garage... you have to finally say: "HOLY CRAP!!! What is going on? Where has the ice gone?"

As far as I can tell, the cameras on the weather satellites are not politically biased.

Every time I leave home here at the south end of Appalachia and head up the Super-slab to Chattanooga and then turn onto the road headed toward Nashville... you come to somewhere around Walden Ridge, somewhere just before you get to Sequatchie River and you see these "strips and bands of death" killing the forests on certain ridges in a pattern that looks man made.... totally unlike any pattern of nature via normal tree diseases and as you clear the Chattanooga traffic and finally click on the cruise control, you finally say: "HOLY CRAP!!! What is going on?"

And I'm sorry to break the news to you, but when you get out the maps and look everything over, you begin to smell "coal fired power plant."

Theree is more scientific information out that than you and I together can every consume and digest. So I watch for guests on TV talk shows and listen to their story, read their credentials, assess what value I give them on the integrity scale, and then digest that part of their story that seems to have credibility.

It is obvious that my methodology is a very foreign concept with people who do conservative talk radio. In today's political climate, "getting honest" might involve killing a career.

 

[Small Market Guy]

When you look at the satellite photos of the polar ice caps over the last 20 or 30 years... you just have to eventually... even if it is in the privacy of your basement or the woodworking shop in your garage... you have to finally say: "HOLY CRAP!!! What is going on? Where has the ice gone?"

Except that's not what is going on at all. This ice cap is fine.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...LING-Return-Arctic-ice-cap-grows-29-year.html

And you don't know that because the sources you use for news are doing the exact same thing you accuse conservative talk radio of doing.