Are Some Haters Of Government Sensing The Looming Regeneracy?

[Kinser79]

(03-18-2017, 02:34 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(03-18-2017, 01:58 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: pbrower2aI'd like to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. If there ever were to be a secret police agency operating in America, then it would be located in DHS. The FBI, the Marshals' Service, and the BATF are effective enough as it is.
[quote pid='23765' dateline='1489817418']

Yes, Eric -- Kinser has gone from revolutionary to reactionary in seemingly two shakes of a puppy-dog's tail; in that I sense the delicate aroma of skunk spray.

The main problem with DHS is that it is a giant cluster fuck, and has been since day one.  I'm less concerned with the FBI and Marshals than I am the other agencies.  The Secret Service should be returned to Treasury since besides protecting dignitaries their man function is to investigate and apprehend counterfeiters of the currency.  The BATF really has no purpose since Prohibition was repealed.

I'm surprised at your view PBR.  I thought you subscribed to the horseshoe theory of politics.

The Secret Service has the responsibility of protecting the life of the President. Thus if someone angrily but with a BAC above the limit for driving a motor vehicle proclaims that someone ought to shoot the President, maybe the Secret Service will have someone visit him and give him an explanation of why even the expression of such an idea is a bad thing to do for personal comfort.  It is still within the Treasury Department.

I forgot to mention that the Coast Guard has responsibility for law enforcement on the seas and some inland waterways, including the Great Lakes.

BATF exists for the enforcement of tax laws on alcohol and cancerweed, and of sundry laws involving firearms.

Secret police? KGB, Gestapo, Mukhabarat, Ovra, Kempeitai, BOSS, Mississippi Sovereignty Commission... it's all un-American.

(03-18-2017, 01:11 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Is there any question that the fossil-fuels industry has its hooks deep into President Trump?

Quote:I don't think it matters.  Let us just suppose we could convert to all renewable electricity generation tomorrow.  We'd still need fossil fuels to make and install all those solar panels and windmills and then we'd still need oil to transport them around to the instillation sites and that's assuming we don't need oil for the plastics to make them to start with.

The fact of the matter is if one wants to actually be "green" they need to think less of gimmicky products and gadgets and more along the lines of driving less, using less, and doing without more.  The latter is a much harder sell.

I'm sure that horses were used in the installation of John D. Rockefeller's pipelines. Farmers have been using windmills for centuries, and not only in America. Solar panels? The Old Order Amish can use them for generating energy for refrigerators and freezers. Big energy does not want to lose its control of the market.  

President Trump seems to want to destroy Amtrak, a civilized way to get around America. I'd love to take the Denver-San Francisco route again. Superb scenery!  And I wouldn't need to dodge some horrible drivers. Considering that there are people who cannot drive cars and are scared of airplanes... what are they to do? Get a horse?
[/quote]

1.   You may want to consult Wikipedia PBR.  The US Secret Service has been under the auspices of DHS since 2003.

2.  The US Coast Guard also needs to be transfered back to the Department of Transportation.  While they do some law enforcement, mostly they rescue people lost at sea in territorial waters and near by international waters.

3.  The BATF needs to be broken up and its various duties either abolished or subsumed in an other department.  The problem with a lot of federal agencies is that they are overly redundant.

4.  Both the NSA and CIA are actively spying on US citizens as you'd know if you left the fake news bubbles surrounding CNN, MSDNC and so on.  They need to be abolished completely.  If we need military intelligence I'm sure that the military can take care of that with less fuss and muss.

5.  It isn't the 1800s anymore.  Simply put outside of the Old Order Amish no one has enough horses, let alone enough horses of the right type (not all horses are the same, you don't use a high strung thoroughbred for children's pony rides for example) to be very useful in installing and transporting these windmills and solar panels.

5b.  I have this strange feeling that you've never actually ridden a horse before, particularly not for an extended period of time.  I have.  There is a reason that cowboys are depicted as walking bowlegged in old films.  It is also the same reason that riding a horse was less common than hitching it to a buggy or wagon.

6.  The construction of windmills requires steel which unless you want to deforest the continent, more than it has been already, requires burning coal--more specifically a refined coal product called coke.

7.  Even if we don't have to use oil to make the plastics for these windmills and solar panels (which is unlikely) we will still have to use fossil fuels to run the factories to make them.  Refining the silicon for solar panels requires a great deal of electricity.

8.  Trump's budget would mean cuts on a lot of long distance Amtrak routes.  Routes that are not profitable.  Myself I think Amtrak should be privatized entirely.  Seriously anything the private sector does poorly the public sector does it even less well.  The government is the people that have brought you such wonders of customer service as the DMV.

9.  You're also forgetting that his budget blueprint is a proposal.  The House is the one still passing the budgets in this country.  Something called Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the US Constitution.