Speedom of Freech


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    I look at the First Amendment and I see protection for the people and the press. Nowhere do I see protection for a PAC, which is what this case was about. On that basis, how do you think the SC can possibly justify giving PACs First Amendment Rights?

    A PAC is an organization of people. At what point do they stop being people?

    At what point did the web stop being people?

    What?

    There needs to be consistency. If the First Amendment doesn't cover a web full of people, why should it cover a PAC full of people? Neither one is listed in the Amendment.

    I don't follow. Are any of those people no longer people?

    Originalism says that when you consult the text, you give it the meaning it had when it was adopted, not some later modern meaning. -Justice Scalia

    So from an originalist perspective, Citizens United was incorrectly decided. Right? Yet, IIRC, Scalia voted with the majority.

    You're going to need to explain how you got to here, because I wasn't able to follow. Are you arguing that the people who made up Citizen's United weren't people who had rights to speak freely?

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    And while we're on the topic, and borrowing from your statement, how do you feel about: "people who have organized themselves into a union and pooled their resources to use those pooled resources to speak out"? I ask because courts have tried to prevent unions from speaking out.

    In general I tend to disagree with what they're saying. I disagree that they should be able to force members to pay them. I think that they should be able to speak just like anyone else.

    I invest in a company, they don't ask me if they can spend my dividend on a lobbyist. Should they be able to forcibly confiscate my dividend for that purpose? Why not pay the money to me; I should be able to speak for myself.

    Yes. As a shareholder you vote on the board of directors (and maybe some other stuff) to decide these things. It's like a republic, which you should be familiar with.

    You can try to make a case that there is more force against a union member than against an investor but I have doubts--no one is making the member work in that industry.

    The investor bought the piece of the company willingly (or authorized someone on his behalf, e.g., mutual fund). The union is using the force of law to take the union member's money.

    Is your concern for the rights of the union member based solely on the nature of its speech?

    No. It's about them taking money from their members (with respect to this issue).


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    The investor bought the piece of the company willingly (or authorized someone on his behalf, e.g., mutual fund). The union is using the force of law to take the union member's money.

    TDEMSYR. That makes exactly as much sense as saying that the company is using the force of law to take the investor's money.

    If you don't pay money to the company (or to a previous shareholder :pendant:), it's illegal for you to take the stock from them. If you don't pay money to the union, it's illegal for you to participate in the benefits of union membership. (Except in the case of right-to-work laws, but let's not get into that rabbit hole. :pendant:) In both cases, the force of law backs up an ordinary financial transaction in exactly the same way.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    The investor bought the piece of the company willingly (or authorized someone on his behalf, e.g., mutual fund). The union is using the force of law to take the union member's money.

    TDEMSYR. That makes exactly as much sense as saying that the company is using the force of law to take the investor's money.

    What?

    If you don't pay money to the company (or to a previous shareholder :pendant:), it's illegal for you to take the stock from them. If you don't pay money to the union, it's illegal for you to participate in the benefits of union membership. (Except in the case of right-to-work laws, but let's not get into that rabbit hole. :pendant:) In both cases, the force of law backs up an ordinary financial transaction in exactly the same way.

    Yes, I thought we'd covered this before that the law now states that members can decide to only pay dues towards bargaining stuff, not political activism. There have been disputes about unions actually following through on this.

    Now, back to our regularly scheduled cognitive dissonance:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    What if they stood at their door (let's assume they leased an office or something) and gave speeches?
    What if they printed flyers or pamphlets and handed them out on a corner?
    What if they published a book to sell on Amazon?
    What if they made a video and Netflix picked it up?
    What if they published articles on their web page?
    What if they wrote letters to the editor of a newspaper?
    What if they posted stuff on their facebook wall?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    The investor bought the piece of the company willingly (or authorized someone on his behalf, e.g., mutual fund). The union is using the force of law to take the union member's money.

    TDEMSYR. That makes exactly as much sense as saying that the company is using the force of law to take the investor's money.

    If you don't pay money to the company (or to a previous shareholder :pendant:), it's illegal for you to take the stock from them. If you don't pay money to the union, it's illegal for you to participate in the benefits of union membership. (Except in the case of right-to-work laws, but let's not get into that rabbit hole. :pendant:) In both cases, the force of law backs up an ordinary financial transaction in exactly the same way.

    Fox logic!!



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    If you don't pay money to the company (or to a previous shareholder :pendant:), it's illegal for you to take the stock from them. If you don't pay money to the union, it's illegal for you to participate in the benefits of union membership. (Except in the case of right-to-work laws, but let's not get into that rabbit hole. :pendant:) In both cases, the force of law backs up an ordinary financial transaction in exactly the same way.

    In the case of investment, a whole plethora of other investment opportunities exist for you to explore, for taking your money and going elsewhere with it. In the case of the union, they are quite likely the only protection racket in town, so to speak (the only one that you could turn to unless you wanted to make a drastic career change, anyway). They're not comparable.


  • ♿ (Parody)


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @anotherusername Sure, and a union shop (the "protection racket" concept in question) should be flat-out illegal IMO. This has no bearing either way on the point you replied to.



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @anotherusername Sure, and a union shop (the "protection racket" concept in question) should be flat-out illegal IMO. This has no bearing either way on the point you replied to.

    Even if the only negative consequence is that you'll have no union representation, they're still the only union in town. You can't just go join a different union; that's not generally an option.



  • @Polygeekery said in Speedom of Freech:

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    I look at the First Amendment and I see protection for the people and the press. Nowhere do I see protection for a PAC, which is what this case was about. On that basis, how do you think the SC can possibly justify giving PACs First Amendment Rights?

    A PAC is an organization of people. At what point do they stop being people?

    At what point did the web stop being people?

    There needs to be consistency. If the First Amendment doesn't cover a web full of people, why should it cover a PAC full of people? Neither one is listed in the Amendment.

    Originalism says that when you consult the text, you give it the meaning it had when it was adopted, not some later modern meaning. -Justice Scalia

    So from an originalist perspective, Citizens United was incorrectly decided. Right? Yet, IIRC, Scalia voted with the majority.

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    And while we're on the topic, and borrowing from your statement, how do you feel about: "people who have organized themselves into a union and pooled their resources to use those pooled resources to speak out"? I ask because courts have tried to prevent unions from speaking out.

    In general I tend to disagree with what they're saying. I disagree that they should be able to force members to pay them. I think that they should be able to speak just like anyone else.

    I invest in a company, they don't ask me if they can spend my dividend on a lobbyist. Should they be able to forcibly confiscate my dividend for that purpose? Why not pay the money to me; I should be able to speak for myself.

    You can try to make a case that there is more force against a union member than against an investor but I have doubts--no one is making the member work in that industry.

    Is your concern for the rights of the union member based solely on the nature of its speech?

    You've lost your fucking mind. Invest your money elsewhere. No dividends are being confiscated.

    Bullshit. If a company has 100,000 investors and spends $10,000,000 on political speech, it reduces every investor's dividend by $100.

    Save the argument that the lobbyists get regulation changes that make the company more profitable, because the same argument applies to union lobbying.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    Bullshit. If a company has 100,000 investors and spends $10,000,000 on political speech, it reduces every investor's dividend by $100.

    Do you even know how dividends work? Do you think that all companies pay out dividends or something?



  • @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    You're going to need to explain how you got to here, because I wasn't able to follow. Are you arguing that the people who made up Citizen's United weren't people who had rights to speak freely?

    I didn't think my argument should be that hard to follow, but let me try to reframe it.

    The web is made up of people. Citizens United is made up of people.

    SCOTUS ruled that Citizens United is entitled to free speech. But the government has repeatedly tried to restrict speech by individuals on the web. SCOTUS has been largely silent on the topic, and many originalists have argued that entities such as Facebook are not entitled to First Amendment protection; because WWW didn't exist in 1789, hence does not mention WWW.

    But PACs also did not exist in 1789. So, if originalism is valid, it would seem that Citizens United was wrongly decided. But Scalia, an originalist, voted in favor of the ruling.

    If Citizens United was decided correctly (and I believe it was) how to reconcile that with originalist arguments on other topics? Is free speech to be decided solely on whether we happen to like the speaker? If so, is it actually a right?



  • @Polygeekery said in Speedom of Freech:

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    Bullshit. If a company has 100,000 investors and spends $10,000,000 on political speech, it reduces every investor's dividend by $100.

    Do you even know how dividends work? Do you think that all companies pay out dividends or something?

    You just have to pick at every nit, don't you? While avoiding facing the argument?

    Fine: substitute for "company" the phrase "publicly traded corporations".


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election Banned

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    he wouldn't have been able to sway the mildly more reasonable idiots who gave him enough votes to win.

    He didn't. Hillary and her "basket of deplorables" was what swayed them. They didn't vote for Trump so much as against Clinton.

    No, those people voted third party. Anyone who voted for Trump so they didn't have to vote for Hillary was by definition an unreasonable idiot because Trump was worse than Hillary on every single issue, including insulting the voter base supporting their opponent.



  • @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    The web is made up of people.

    Tubes, surely?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    Bullshit. If a company has 100,000 investors and spends $10,000,000 on political speech, it reduces every investor's dividend by $100.

    How many companies do this?

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    Save the argument that the lobbyists get regulation changes that make the company more profitable, because the same argument applies to union lobbying.

    This is actually a different part of the Amendment, specifically, "o petition the Government for a redress of grievances."


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    I didn't think my argument should be that hard to follow, but let me try to reframe it.

    Um, actually you didn't make an argument. Just that vague statement.

    The web is made up of people. Citizens United is made up of people.
    SCOTUS ruled that Citizens United is entitled to free speech. But the government has repeatedly tried to restrict speech by individuals on the web.

    How so? Examples, please.

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    SCOTUS has been largely silent on the topic, and many originalists have argued that entities such as Facebook are not entitled to First Amendment protection; because WWW didn't exist in 1789, hence does not mention WWW.

    Have they? Or was it originalist strawmen of the sort who bleat about muskets and the Second Amendment?

    But PACs also did not exist in 1789. So, if originalism is valid, it would seem that Citizens United was wrongly decided. But Scalia, an originalist, voted in favor of the ruling.

    Occam's razor says that you're confused about something. For instance, Scalia wasn't an originalist but a textualist.

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    If Citizens United was decided correctly (and I believe it was) how to reconcile that with originalist arguments on other topics? Is free speech to be decided solely on whether we happen to like the speaker? If so, is it actually a right?

    Step 1: Recognize that most of your posts are the worst strawmen ever.
    Step 2: ?
    Step 3: Profit!

    My more serious response is to disagree with whatever you have identified as "originalist arguments." Because again, it sounds like the sort of strawman that proponents of a Living Constitution make up when they're arguing for a postmodernist interpretation. But, even if it's someone honestly believing that they're an originalist, I can still disagree with them, because I don't see any conflict at all with the text and the ruling.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    he wouldn't have been able to sway the mildly more reasonable idiots who gave him enough votes to win.

    He didn't. Hillary and her "basket of deplorables" was what swayed them. They didn't vote for Trump so much as against Clinton.

    No, those people voted third party. Anyone who voted for Trump so they didn't have to vote for Hillary was by definition an unreasonable idiot because Trump was worse than Hillary on every single issue, including insulting the voter base supporting their opponent.

    This is the opposite of truth in many cases. 👋


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    But PACs also did not exist in 1789.

    They likely did, in one form or another.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Polygeekery said in Speedom of Freech:

    @CoyneTheDup said in Speedom of Freech:

    Bullshit. If a company has 100,000 investors and spends $10,000,000 on political speech, it reduces every investor's dividend by $100.

    Do you even know how dividends work? Do you think that all companies pay out dividends or something?

    You just have to pick at every nit, don't you? While avoiding facing the argument?

    Fine: substitute for "company" the phrase "publicly traded corporations".

    Do you think that all publicly traded corporations pay out dividends?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    he wouldn't have been able to sway the mildly more reasonable idiots who gave him enough votes to win.

    He didn't. Hillary and her "basket of deplorables" was what swayed them. They didn't vote for Trump so much as against Clinton.

    No, those people voted third party. Anyone who voted for Trump so they didn't have to vote for Hillary was by definition an unreasonable idiot because Trump was worse than Hillary on every single issue, including insulting the voter base supporting their opponent.

    Nice to have your mouth frothing back. It keeps things interesting.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    How many companies do this?

    Only the most mature of them. If you invest in any high growth companies, there are no dividends. Also, dividends are solely at the discretion of the board.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Polygeekery said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    How many companies do this?

    Only the most mature of them. If you invest in any high growth companies, there are no dividends. Also, dividends are solely at the discretion of the board.

    Sorry, wasn't asking about the dividends part. Was asking about them spending money on public political speech.

    I'm familiar with the corporate finance decisions involved with dividends.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election Banned

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    he wouldn't have been able to sway the mildly more reasonable idiots who gave him enough votes to win.

    He didn't. Hillary and her "basket of deplorables" was what swayed them. They didn't vote for Trump so much as against Clinton.

    No, those people voted third party. Anyone who voted for Trump so they didn't have to vote for Hillary was by definition an unreasonable idiot because Trump was worse than Hillary on every single issue, including insulting the voter base supporting their opponent.

    This is the opposite of truth in many cases. 👋

    Name one.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    he wouldn't have been able to sway the mildly more reasonable idiots who gave him enough votes to win.

    He didn't. Hillary and her "basket of deplorables" was what swayed them. They didn't vote for Trump so much as against Clinton.

    No, those people voted third party. Anyone who voted for Trump so they didn't have to vote for Hillary was by definition an unreasonable idiot because Trump was worse than Hillary on every single issue, including insulting the voter base supporting their opponent.

    This is the opposite of truth in many cases. 👋

    Name one.

    One what? People who didn't vote like that? Issues? I'll go ahead and do both:

    1. Me.
    2. Oil pipelines.

    0_1495807417945_81e1f265-796f-4663-96cb-bdf14d1739c6-image.png


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election Banned

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    he wouldn't have been able to sway the mildly more reasonable idiots who gave him enough votes to win.

    He didn't. Hillary and her "basket of deplorables" was what swayed them. They didn't vote for Trump so much as against Clinton.

    No, those people voted third party. Anyone who voted for Trump so they didn't have to vote for Hillary was by definition an unreasonable idiot because Trump was worse than Hillary on every single issue, including insulting the voter base supporting their opponent.

    This is the opposite of truth in many cases. 👋

    Name one.

    One what? People who didn't vote like that? Issues? I'll go ahead and do both:

    1. Me.
    2. Oil pipelines.

    0_1495807417945_81e1f265-796f-4663-96cb-bdf14d1739c6-image.png

    Issues. Trump supported them, so he was worse than Hillary on that. Fun fact: DAPL has had three spills now and they haven't even finished it. Fun fact 2: it still does nothing to benefit more than a few dozen US citizens, so it still doesn't even satisfy #MAGA bullshit, either.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    he wouldn't have been able to sway the mildly more reasonable idiots who gave him enough votes to win.

    He didn't. Hillary and her "basket of deplorables" was what swayed them. They didn't vote for Trump so much as against Clinton.

    No, those people voted third party. Anyone who voted for Trump so they didn't have to vote for Hillary was by definition an unreasonable idiot because Trump was worse than Hillary on every single issue, including insulting the voter base supporting their opponent.

    This is the opposite of truth in many cases. 👋

    Name one.

    One what? People who didn't vote like that? Issues? I'll go ahead and do both:

    1. Me.
    2. Oil pipelines.

    0_1495807417945_81e1f265-796f-4663-96cb-bdf14d1739c6-image.png

    Issues. Trump supported them, so he was worse than Hillary on that. Fun fact: DAPL has had three spills now and they haven't even finished it. Fun fact 2: it still does nothing to benefit more than a few dozen US citizens, so it still doesn't even satisfy #MAGA bullshit, either.

    It's fun to get a window into your delusions.



  • Since @masonwheeler has ignored my requests for evidence, I'll go ahead and supply some. All this data comes from the FEC via www.opensecrets.org.

    First, a few notes: all dollar numbers are in millions of US dollars. All data is for the 2016 federal election cycle (all candidates and issues).

    Total Spending: ~$6800
    Total Outside Spending (not candidate committees): ~$1200 (18%)

    Total Donations by Organizations to PACs: ~$800 (75% of PAC spending)

    By Group (of the top 25% of organizational donors, donating ~90% of all organizational donations):

    • Unions made up 20 of 50, including 5 of the top 10.
    • PACs made up 15 of 50, including 4 of the top 10.
    • Private corporations (ie not publically traded, so these are family corporations mostly) made up 8 of the top 50. The first private corporation on the list is number 11.
    • There were 3 single-issue groups, including the #1 donor (a climate change organization).
    • There were 2 trade groups (the National Association of Realtors and the Cooperative of American Physicians).
    • There was 1 public corporation (Chevron Corp) at #30.
    • There was 1 for-profit charity(⁉) at #40.
    • The median donation in the top 50 was 5 million dollars.

    Conclusions: Yeah, as I thought. Public corporations give a vanishing fraction of the total money spent. Since they can't donate to anything but a PAC, their spending (direct or otherwise) is a rounding error. Unions are major contributors, and almost entirely to liberal causes. Private corporations tend to give more to conservative ones, but that's their own money not from investors.

    TL:DR--for-profit corporate spending is a drop in the bucket. Unions are orders of magnitude larger. Individual donations make up the ultra vast majority of spending. I'm not concerned here. No evidence of crowding out of speech.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @Benjamin-Hall I'm finding it difficult to square "PACs made up 15 of 50, including 4 of the top 10" with "Public corporations give a vanishing fraction of the total money spent. Since they can't donate to anything but a PAC, their spending (direct or otherwise) is a rounding error."

    Seems to me that your own figures establish that private corporations' spending was a massive percentage of the election cycle! (Especially considering that the "total donations by organizations to PACs" figure is almost certainly much higher than reported, due to the gutting of applicable laws (and funding for enforcement) regarding reporting...)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    Seems to me that your own figures establish that private corporations' spending was a massive percentage of the election cycle!

    Where did you see that?



  • @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    Fun fact: DAPL has had three spills now and they haven't even finished it.

    Fun fact: the alternative to oil pipelines is to send them along rail in the kind of cars that blew up Quebec City a few years ago.

    0_1495813019516_lac-megantic-settlement.jpg

    People oppose the oil pipeline because they oppose oil. Once you realize the oil's going to be transported one way or another, your realize the pipeline is by far the best and safest way to do it. Not building the oil pipeline doesn't make the oil magically teleport to its destination.

    Oh, and, we probably wouldn't even need all this oil if the idiots voting no on the pipeline hadn't also been voting against nuclear power back in the 70s and 80s.



  • @masonwheeler PAC != public corporation. PACs are specific organizations of individuals for a specific purpose. They are a creature of campaign finance reform laws and would not exist without them. There was one publicly-traded corporation on the list, giving 3.3 million dollars. That means that of the total of 733.8 million dollars donated by organizations in the top 50, 3.3 came from companies that might possibly have investors. All other donations came from individuals. And this was only ~800 million of 6.8 billion spent. I'd call that a rounding error.

    A point of law: PACs get their donations from a few sources:

    • individuals
    • other PACs
    • non-profit groups (non-PAC)
    • for-profit groups (private and public corporations)

    From the data I could find, the ultra-vast majority (90+%) came eventually from individuals. Not from corporate groups unless those were groups being funded by donors for the purpose of political spending. I don't see the big deal here. No detectable speech was crowded out. If you know otherwise, show the data. You haven't shown any to this point.

    Oh, and most PACs disclose their donors. The only ones that don't are the single-issue groups that don't advocate (by law) for or against a specific candidate.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    Once you realize the oil's going to be transported one way or another

    Assertion failure



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    Assertion failure

    Well if you have the goods on that oil teleportation technology, I'd love to hear all about it.



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    Once you realize the oil's going to be transported one way or another

    Assertion failure

    TDEMSYR. As established in other threads, without oil we have mass die offs. No other technology can cover at the present. Things may change, but right now oil will be transported, like it or not.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @Benjamin-Hall said in Speedom of Freech:

    As establishedasserted in other threads with a bunch of long-debunked oil industry talking points, without oil we have mass die offs.

    FTFY

    No other technology can cover at the present.

    We have the technology. We just don't have the widespread adoption of it yet, because the fossil fuel industry has gone well out of its way to suppress the competition.

    Things may change, but right now oil will be transported, like it or not.

    You do realize that oil reserves, in the US and worldwide, are at record levels, right? We are swimming in already-extracted oil. We could shut down every rig in the entire world and get by just fine for a good while.



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    We have the technology. We just don't have the widespread adoption of it yet, because the fossil fuel industry has gone well out of its way to suppress the competition.

    Right; so those Greenpeace anti-nuclear activists are sponsored by the fossil fuel industry?

    That makes perfect sense. Congratulations.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Fox said in Speedom of Freech:

    he wouldn't have been able to sway the mildly more reasonable idiots who gave him enough votes to win.

    He didn't. Hillary and her "basket of deplorables" was what swayed them. They didn't vote for Trump so much as against Clinton.

    No, those people voted third party. Anyone who voted for Trump so they didn't have to vote for Hillary was by definition an unreasonable idiot because Trump was worse than Hillary on every single issue, including insulting the voter base supporting their opponent.

    This is the opposite of truth in many cases. 👋

    Name one.

    He kind of did, you dumb autistic bastard.



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    You do realize that oil reserves, in the US and worldwide, are at record levels, right? We are swimming in already-extracted oil. We could shut down every rig in the entire world and get by just fine for a good while.

    BTW when people say "oil reserves" 99% of the time they don't mean extracted oil sitting in tanks (unless they say "strategic reserves").

    They're talking about the amount of known oil in the ground that can be extracted by current technology. And yes, the US has enough of that to meet our needs for like 100 years, but once OPEC learned about that they cut THEIR prices to price OUR drillers out of the market. (And killed Venezuela as a side effect, to boot.)


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat Yes, that's what I mean. Strategic reserves are at all-time high levels around the world.



  • @masonwheeler The US strategic reserve would power US industry for about 15 minutes.

    It's intended for military use.

    EDIT: even the military's probably be out of it before 6 months are up, assuming the reason we're tapping it is because we're in a hot war.

    Fortunately, it does give us enough time to restart North Dakota drilling and becoming self-sufficient again oil-wise. One good thing about that short boom and bust is that there's a lot of good complete infrastructure just sitting there that can be restarted.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Benjamin-Hall said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    Once you realize the oil's going to be transported one way or another

    Assertion failure

    TDEMSYR. As established in other threads, without oil we have mass die offs. No other technology can cover at the present. Things may change, but right now oil will be transported, like it or not.

    You forgot about vacuum trains.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    Once you realize the oil's going to be transported one way or another

    Assertion failure

    Got it. You are going full Fox and saying "Leave it in the griund11!1!!!"



  • @Polygeekery said in Speedom of Freech:

    You forgot about vacuum trains.

    And freezer boats. Which we'll ALL be living in soon.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    People oppose the oil pipeline because they oppose oil.

    Which is ironic because that's a great description of @Fox.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Benjamin-Hall said in Speedom of Freech:

    As establishedasserted in other threads with a bunch of long-debunked oil industry talking points, without oil we have mass die offs.

    FTFY

    No other technology can cover at the present.

    We have the technology. We just don't have the widespread adoption of it yet, because the fossil fuel industry has gone well out of its way to suppress the competition.

    Things may change, but right now oil will be transported, like it or not.

    You do realize that oil reserves, in the US and worldwide, are at record levels, right? We are swimming in already-extracted oil. We could shut down every rig in the entire world and get by just fine for a good while.

    It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.

    0_1495814790508_2719268e-0a5d-428e-a0dd-596e058e2fc9-image.png



  • @masonwheeler Funny, you talk about things being "long-debunked" but I'm the only one with data here...Yes, I'm going to keep hounding you about this because you have never once in all the time you've spent in the garage met the burden of proof. You've rarely even tried. It's all argument by assertion which is obnoxious and sophomoric. Actually, my high-school sophomores produce better-cited research than you do, and they're notoriously awful at it.

    Both you and Mr Literal Hitler Squared have made this your entire argument style. Lots of passion, little facts. And then people complain about fake news...


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @blakeyrat Yes, that's what I mean. Strategic reserves are at all-time high levels around the world.

    Current Storage Design Capacity - 713.5 million barrels

    https://www.spr.doe.gov/dir/dir.html

    Current inventory: 687.7 million barrels (mixture of sweet / sour crude)

    In 2016, the United States consumed a total of 7.19 billion barrels of petroleum products, an average of about 19.63 million barrels per day.

    At average 2016 usage, we'd have about 95 days of oil (max of ~99 if it were at 100%).


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    You do realize that oil reserves, in the US and worldwide, are at record levels, right? We are swimming in already-extracted oil. We could shut down every rig in the entire world and get by just fine for a good while.

    You've lost your fucking mind.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @blakeyrat Yes, that's what I mean. Strategic reserves are at all-time high levels around the world.

    And what are those strategic reserves for exactly? Hint: They are not for our cars and industry. We would not "get by just fine for a while" on them.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Polygeekery said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    You do realize that oil reserves, in the US and worldwide, are at record levels, right? We are swimming in already-extracted oil. We could shut down every rig in the entire world and get by just fine for a good while.

    You've lost your fucking mind.

    It doesn't even pass the sniff test. If that were true, then why would the oil industry be bothering to buy anything from the people pumping it out of the ground?

    Or maybe "a good while" was just a few weeks.


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