> Man, sometimes I feel like the Kennedys are America's most hypocritical family.
I don't know what this means. Are you referring to actions taken by other Kennedy family members? If so, why should the actions of one's relatives fall exactly in line with one's own legacy, lest their family be deemed hypocritical? That seems like an awfully high bar that presupposes the family is a single moral and ethical unit.
You mean, when Nixon introduced a much weaker healthcare bill right after Kennedy had managed to broker a bipartisan bill proposing a real reform? I don't see anything hypocritical about refusing to support a bill designed to keep the current broken system running and squash actual reform.
At least, that's how it looks to me as a complete outsider.
well, that’s not what the article says that I posted:
“Kennedy said later that walking away from that deal was one of the biggest mistakes of his life.”
“Over time, Kennedy realized his own plan couldn’t succeed. Opposition from the insurance companies was too great. So Kennedy dispatched his staffers to meet secretly with Nixon’s people to broker a compromise. Kennedy came close to backing Nixon’s plan, but turned away at the last minute, under pressure from the unions. Then Watergate hit and took Nixon down.”
I read that, and I don't think it contradicts my view.
Kennedy introduces a real reform bill; Nixon introduces a weak, "compromise" bill so the opponents of real reform (like the insurance companies) can use to oppose it while avoiding the wrath of the people who understand the status quo is terrible, by looking like they also want changes. Kennedy, defeated, judges whether accepting Nixon's bill - despite its intent - is still worth it, or whether the unions are right that it imposes too great of a cost on employees (25% of premiums). He makes a decision, then later he regrets it.
I have a place not too far from Cle Elum, and while I don’t recall the city that well, the windmills are built on fairly bland farm land are they not? i.e. it’s not like they built on the mountain range itself.
I visited the Wild Horse wind farm, and the turbines were on fairly nondescript terrain, if anything enhancing it. I think this is unlike, say, the Palouse area (a few hours east) or the Lake District in the UK, where farms are being erected on particularly beautiful countryside.
Of course it quickly becomes very subjective.
You wouldn't happen to be involved in the MSFT data center business?
The Kittitas Valley Wind Farm is East of Cle Elum and has a very picturesque backdrop. The ones you may be thinking of are East of Ellensburg and while it's not mountain views there are pretty rolling hills of badlands and canyons.
Of course it's in the eye of the beholder.
I do work for Microsoft but I'm in an enterprise Hololens business based in Issaquah.
The difference between American energy talk and practice runs deep. I don't see these families as more hypocritical, just more powerful.
I dislike these families blocking this initiative, but talk to almost any American about how much more they pollute, contribute to global warming, deplete resources, and so on more than nearly anyone in the world (without being any happier) and you'll generally hear agreement.
Ask them to consider flying less or some similar change to their lifestyle and you'll hear similar opposition.
I used the term hypocritical in regard to the Kennedys because many of them have run for and won public office on a strong progressive platform. They get downright preachy.
But as another user pointed out, they are a large family and assuming one speaks for all is unfair.
Tillerson, former Republican heavyweight Dick Armey and other residents of a ranch-filled suburb of Bartonville north of Dallas filed suit in 2012 seeking to block construction of the 160-foot-tall (49-meter-tall) water tower, arguing it would be an eyesore.
The suit, filed in Denton County District Court, also noted that the tower could encourage the town of Bartonville to sell “water to oil and gas explorers for fracking shale formations leading to traffic with heavy trucks... creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards.”
A bit of a bummer to hear, especially when Massachusetts is shutting down its only nuclear power plan in 2019. The plant produces the vast majority of the State's renewable energy and about 15% of its total power. It doesn't sound like there are real replacements lined up.
Probably not the intention of parent, but if you could mine the uranium that is released on the oceans by the earth's crust each year you would have an effectively renewable energy source that is nuclear.
We've also got enough thorium and uranium on the moon, mars, and asteroid belt to make nuclear effectively renewable for 5 or 10 earths living full-on Jetsons lifestyles for millenia to come.
I think a lot of our energy "debate" is caught up in opinionated words... "renewable" instead of "low carbon", "electricity" instead of "energy". These words frame our thinking and dialog in a manner quite favorable to entrenched primary energy interests :/
It’s a heckuva improvement on “clean” coal which produces the most greanhouse gases per BTU of any fuel. Nuclear still suffers from the distributed waste issue without a permanent storage facility or closed-loop reprocessing. Solar and wind are the ways to go long term. Solar especially, considering insolation gives a median daily recovery potential of about 1 kWh / m^2.
Intermittent character of wind and solar power production requires additional measures to build stable power system. Backup (fossil fuel) power plants, energy storage solutions. It is not so clear-cut.
That's why if you look up a reasonable definition of "renewable" is has the 'in a small amount of time compared to geological processes', or something of the sort.
Wind farms are a blight on the landscape, but suburban sprawl, massive parking lots, 6-lane highways still backed up with traffic, giant gas guzzling cars, coal power plants, and air pollution are beautiful.
Some friends and I visited an wind farm just as a place to fly a kite. The area was rolling green hills, a few cows and these massive, clean, white towers up into the sky. It honestly struct me as a scene from an idyllic future sci-fi movie. It was like walking around in someone’s CG desktop background.
In my hometown we built a wind turbine on the top of a mountain that overlooks the city. On clear days you can see the turbine poking out on top of the mountain and it looks absolutely gorgeous, like we're an advanced species intelligently harvesting energy from the planet. It's breathtaking in a way that's hard to describe.
My comment just mentioned the aesthetics of wind turbines and I still maintain they are no more ugly than a smokestack, city tower, bridge, radio antenna or even regular old suburban development that seldom get cancelled because of aesthetical concerns. What's so special about wind turbines that we hate how they look more than any other kind of development?
This argument holds for noise too: all the references I could find suggest wind turbines are far quieter than other forms of development. In my experience wind turbines aren't obtrusively loud at all. In my city we've installed a wind turbine at the top of a popular mountain and I can't remember ever distinctly hearing it, even within a couple of km[0]. The same cannot be said about highways or other development.
0. Grouse Mountain, overlooking Vancouver. I even think the wind turbine looks incredibly beautiful when you see it peaking up from the top of the mountain.
That wind farm could have eventually provided enough power for a million people. As much as the specific loss of renewable energy is detrimental in this case, the loss of another powerful demonstration in the US of offshore wind farm potential is probably just as great.
Are there areas off the coast of Massachusetts where this style of offshore wind farm can be implemented that aren't proximal to the most popular and picturesque vacation destinations in the area? I'm sure most people can get behind the idea of offshore wind but this wasn't the best thought out location for this project.
This has nothing to do with the landscape. I've driven by the pilot windmills. You can barely see them. This is about filthy rich white hypocrites throwing a tantrum over nothing. Most people in Massachusetts (or America for that matter) would probably have a hard time affording to vacation anywhere near these things.
That's literally almost all you'll find on either of the islands, to the point that it sticks out if there's a POC there. I'm a white upper middle class guy myself, but let's call a spade a spade. They tried to build this in the rich white guy's back yard and they didn't like it.
Edit: These are also the same people that claim to be progressives and for the POC(I'm liberal) in politics but when it comes to actually doing something that would have cleaner air, their first reaction is to NIMBY it. These are exactly what these people are. It's a definition.
As a relatively poor, white eastern European I feel somewhat offended that I'm thrown in the same bin as these people solely because of something over which I have no control - the tone of my skin.
I'm about 80% convinced that the MP behind it - Robert Syms, was in the pocket of somebody who saw a large wind farm threatening their investments in other forms of power generation. The idea that this was actually about the view is laughable.
It died at the hands of The Kennedys and the Kochs. An unholy alliance of progressives and conservatives sunk the project. Here we see that energy policy trumps politics when it comes into conflict with people's personal interests.
On the other hand, the industry learned so long as the turbines are out of sight, they are out of the NYMBY's minds.
> An unholy alliance of progressives and conservatives sunk the project.
The idea that powerful families are radically different because they support one side of politics or another is a great myth used to manipulate and control people. An average poor or middle class family has more in common with another such family on the other side of a political spectrum than with their respective party leaders.
I didn't get this at first reading, but it's a pretty subtle and important point.
Powerful families are chummy with other powerful people because power ends up being the most important status symbol, and ideology can hide behind it.
It's basically the reason that orthodox Republican economic policy can even exist. It's terribly debunked theory, but because the messengers are WSJ op-ed writers that went to fancy schools and wear bow ties to work, their view "couldn't possibly be just wrong".
There was some polls recently that showed that when asked about GOP tax plans, people refused to believe that the pollsters were even telling the truth on the facts, because it was so absurd. Of course there wouldn't be a tax break for private jet maintenance!
But politicians believe their friends, just like we all do. It's the base of "keep politics out of X".
Perhaps the point is subtle, because you seem to have missed it entirely. Republican policy isn't wrong because it isn't Democrat policy; it's wrong because they're the same policy with two slightly different marketing plans. If we judge this policy by its results, it's clearly neither progressive nor conservative. Rather, it's highly effective in keeping the plebes hard at work while ensuring that all resources of society are controlled by the wealthy and powerful and amoral. If you still care to defend one party against the other, you're still being manipulated.
That's a useful talking point to use when Republicans are in the midst of passing terrible legislation, it really spreads the blame. But it's a nonsense false equivalence in this era when they are undoing every single that the Democrats did under Obama's administration that they can, including and especially protections put in place to protect people from financial abuse by powerful incumbent players. You have taken a point about the very rich and used it to propagate the party equivalence meme.
Agree. There's really 3 parties in the US: Republicans, Democrats, and Incumbents. Your best bet is to always vote against the incumbent, even if you agree with whats coming out of their mouth.
It is disgusting that any individual has that sort of power.
Being in politics is supposed to mean being a public servant.
Well okay, how much power do you think Senators give their servants? They probably don't think of their housekeepers/sitters/chefs/etc's opinions at all. If their dog-walker objects to the dog that they get, what's going to happen? The dog sure isn't going to change.
We call it "servant", but in fact still treat them like royalty. We never fully made the transition from royalty to servant. Why do so many governments put their high officials up in special house/palaces? We don't do that for any other jobs. It would be much healthier to treat elections like a shared effort to hire someone to do a job.
Terry Pratchett has a lot of good aphorisms, but one that stuck with me is some etymology from a cop and a Machiavellian dictator:
> "It's all for the good of the city, sir. Do you know where the word 'policeman' comes from? It means 'man of the city', sir. From the old word polis."
> ...
> "You're a man interested in words, captain. I'd just invite you to consider something your predecessor never fully grasped."
> "Sir?"
> "Have you ever wondered where the word 'politician' comes from?" Said the Patrician.
These roles have a very specific purpose, and that purpose is service. They've veered sharply away from it, but that is still their job. Also, I think in real life the root is 'politia' or 'politika' or something, but the definition is similar.
And another word from that book: 'polite' apparently came from 'behavior befitting someone living in a city.' I guess social norms maybe became more important with the density?
This is all from ancient Greek where the city ("polis") was the state.
These terms were thus all created in the first democracy we know of. However, that was then followed by millennia of monarchies. Modern democracies came into existence in an environment where monarchies were still the norm and it shows. I find it reminiscent of the fact that Christians celebrate Christmas which is supposedly a Christian holiday by following all kinds of pagan rituals like the entire Christmas tree thing.
politicians are the one percent, they control the purse strings. the very rich are the only people of means who can pay them to look away.
politicians then use this wealth to divide the rest of the country to insure their continuance in power. they are loyal to their party before the people and it is that stranglehold that needs to be broken to bring accountability back.
I don't know what country you're from but there clearly seems to be two distinct political parties in the US, one that supports consumers and the other that supports corporations. Trying to argue that the DNC and GOP are the same is complete lunacy.
The DNC isn't nearly as innocent as you claim. The ultimate goal is power, the rhetoric and ideas are slightly different but corporations and the rich benefit the most.
disclaimer: I voted straight D in the last 4 elections
If you don't think the Rs and Ds are different sides of the same coin, just look at the nevertrumpers and "deep staters", career appointees who carry on regardless of who's in power.
This uniparty allows fringes of either side some pet causes, but at the heart of it, both parties share the same values.
That's not all that bad either, it guarantees continuity and limited disruption --but we need to understand that's how it works and its consequent limitations.
The only non unipartarians the last 25 years have been Perot, perhaps Sanders and Trump. Prior to that JFK.
Good. It was a corrupt boondoggle operation that was going to cost everyone a heck of a lot of money.
And I say this as someone who would like to see global warming hurry up and wash eastern MA into the Atlantic ocean.
Also, it takes a special kind of stupid to think you can take on rich and very well connected people and win.
>Lawsuits piled up, delaying the project. Cape Wind missed a series of contractual milestones, prompting National Grid Plc and Northeast Utilities’ NSTAR unit to cancel power-purchase agreements in early 2015. At the time, analysts declared the project all but dead.
I forget, is that the one where people were supposed to pay more than the already sky-high electricity rates for Locally Grown(TM) Non GMO(TM) Green(TM) energy or was that a different one?
Have any of you lived near a wind farm ? A few years ago I camped near one that had 5 wind mills, and it was 7 miles (11 k?) away, It was like I was sleeping with the loudest snorer you can imagine. I slept very little.
Maybe when located out in the ocean the sound would blend, but if on land I would not want one anywhere near where I live.
Anyway I heard they are making great strides with solar and even tidal power, I doubt those will keep you awake.
> Have any of you lived near a wind farm ? A few years ago I camped near one that had 5 wind mills, and it was 7 miles (11 k?) away, It was like I was sleeping with the loudest snorer you can imagine. I slept very little.
That really surprises me.
I've got a dozen turbines less than 10km away literally facing my windows (I can see them unless it's really foggy) and I never heard them, despite having real trouble sleeping when there's any sort of noise. The turbines are half a klick from a small town too, they'd have been burned down a long time ago if they could be heard from 10.
well maybe it was the terrain, it is a mountainous and maybe the shape caused come kind of reverb. I know I was warned by my camping neighbors about the sound and I thought "how bad can it be".
But it was a rough night with little sleep due to the sound.
Yes, I live a couple miles from a large farm, with smaller experimental wind farms half a mile closer. I have never heard the slightest sound from them.
Given that windmills only make a sound when there is wind, I have a really hard time believing you could hear them over the masking sound of the wind that was driving them. 7 miles is "train horn on a still winter's night" distance.
They're putting these windmills all over West Virginia - its a shame really. They really spoil the views and kill lots of birds. It's another case that shows the difference between what the little people have to deal with vs the elites.
House cats kill FAR more birds than windmills ever will. And windmills don’t kill any squirrels or chipmunks.
I’m not sure why people focus on the estimated 100k to 1M birds and bats killed by windmills[1] when house cats kill 1-2 Billion[2]. Perhaps they have an agenda?
I was hoping this was a parody, but I fear it’s not.
The impact on views of wind turbines is minimal. Even if you don’t like ‘em, I’m sure you’ll acknowledge that some minor inconvenience is better than long-term environmental damage.
My point was that the elites of Martha's Vineyard were able to kill the project, and at least part of that was based on what they look like. Windmills in the distant ocean view are much less impacting of views than ones prominently arrayed across ridge lines.
It appears there's one rule for little people and other for elites.
I grew up with them when they first started sprouting up in the UK. Decades ago now.
Do they really kill lots of birds? What articles have you read on this? Bird strikes were one of my concerns originally but I found the original claims to be unfounded.
The bird thing is an old myth, recently brought back into the public consciousness by Trump. If you want to protect birds, ban tall buildings, power transmission lines, farming, and cats; all kill far, far more birds than wind turbines.
Edit: BTW, I go by wind farms all the time on my way through beautiful Cle Elum Washington and they do not spoil the view in the slightest.
They are not nearly as jarring as the ugly houses people are building in the upper Madison County in Montana where my family lives.