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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 31, 2024 14:09:01 GMT -5
Since "compromise" seems to have become an emotive term*, how about "deal-making" or "working things out" or "getting things done"? The practical work of politicians (and others who have to devise policies, practices, and protocols) is doing stuff, and since there is rarely unanimity in figuring out what things need doing and how to do them, adjustments get made. People compromise all the time, in settings from families to the UN.
In matters of moral or practical importance, the crucial problem is nearly always where to draw lines, and when either party sees absolutes at stake, those lines are often hard--and that's where compromise is seen as a moral failing rather than as a practical mechanism. I strongly doubt that the proposition that compromise is a "progressive strategy" can stand up to close examination. (For that matter, I'm not sure that "progressive" is a category with hard, impermeable boundaries.)
*Actually, it already has a negative edge, thanks to its application to spies and women's virtue and structural integrity.
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Post by aquaduct on Mar 31, 2024 16:15:51 GMT -5
But still not even close to the best solution. The best for who? Anybody.
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Post by aquaduct on Mar 31, 2024 16:35:40 GMT -5
But still not even close to the best solution. I am willing to agree to disagree with you, Peter. I think compromise is closer to the best (better?) solution than you think it is. Everyone makes sacrifices, but also make progress.
Compromise has gotten us an EPA ban on internal combustion engines by 2035. Welcome to the wholesale destruction of the country. That's anywhere near the best solution to anything in this country?
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Post by epaul on Mar 31, 2024 17:00:37 GMT -5
Compromise has gotten us an EPA ban on internal combustion engines by 2035... Well, just for the sake of accuracy, there is no stated ban on the internal combustion engine. There are looming standards that might put an end to the sale of new vehicles that are powered by gasoline or diesel, but the internal combustion engine may still be around for quite a while if it is powered by a fuel that doesn't release CO2, and hydrogen is such a fuel. Only the future will tell what ends up working or not working, but several major car manufacturers are developing cars with internal combustion engines, good old V8s and V6s, that run on hydrogen instead of gasoline or diesel. So far, they aren't exploding. Time will tell. The future is so tricky to predict. [can't get video to work. This link should] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_internal_combustion_engine_vehicle[Toyota's work] www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGL5g91KwLA-I pulled the earlier Honda hydrogen-powered CR-V link as that was about hydrogen fuel cell tech, not ICE.
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Post by aquaduct on Mar 31, 2024 17:22:23 GMT -5
Compromise has gotten us an EPA ban on internal combustion engines by 2035... Well, just for the sake of accuracy, there is no stated ban on the internal combustion engine. There are looming standards that might put an end to the sale of new vehicles that are powered by gasoline or diesel, but the internal combustion engine may still be around for quite a while if it is powered by a fuel that doesn't release CO2, and hydrogen is such a fuel. Only the future will tell what ends up working or not working, but several major car manufacturers are developing cars with internal combustion engines, good old V8s, V6s, and 4 bangers that run on hydrogen instead of gasoline or diesel. So far, they aren't exploding. Time will tell. The future is so tricky to predict. [can't get video to work. This link should] www.caranddriver.com/news/a42796089/2024-honda-cr-v-powered-by-hydrogen-details/[Toyota's work] www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGL5g91KwLAHydrogen as a fuel sucks (10% of the energy capacity of gasoline or diesel). Probably worse than EVs. So as we move toward 2035, vehicle makers (not just cars, but also semis, crane trucks, combines, ships, trains, lawn mowers- they're all under EPA's regulatory authority and CO2-free mandate) will be forced to build vehicles nobody wants and will not be able to make vehicles people do want. This can only serve to crater and destroy a major portion of our industrial base. And the business of doing the hard work that supports everything about modern life will similarly collapse. Welcome to an almost unimaginable dystopia. Hope y'all like it when you get it.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,903
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Post by Dub on Mar 31, 2024 17:24:31 GMT -5
If “compromise” means meet in the middle (some of what I want and some of what you want) I agree with Peter that no good will come from it. If I want shit and you want caviar, shitty caviar won’t be a satisfactory solution.
Proposed programs are often only useful if they are implemented just as intended by the design, not pulled apart and modified to death. Changing the program will likely be worse than both full implementation and complete abandonment.
We need a congress whose members have both the time, resources, and inclination to fully understand what it’s doing and the political will to stay on course and forget the culture wars.
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Post by millring on Mar 31, 2024 17:41:33 GMT -5
If “compromise” means meet in the middle (some of what I want and some of what you want) I agree with Peter that no good will come from it. If I want shit and you want caviar, shitty caviar won’t be a satisfactory solution. Proposed programs are often only useful if they are implemented just as intended by the design, not pulled apart and modified to death. Changing the program will likely be worse than both full implementation and complete abandonment. We need a congress whose members have both the time, resources, and inclination to fully understand what it’s doing and the political will to stay on course and forget the culture wars. Exactly!
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Mar 31, 2024 19:18:15 GMT -5
Compromise has gotten us an EPA ban on internal combustion engines by 2035... Well, just for the sake of accuracy, there is no stated ban on the internal combustion engine. There are looming standards that might put an end to the sale of new vehicles that are powered by gasoline or diesel, but the internal combustion engine may still be around for quite a while if it is powered by a fuel that doesn't release CO2, and hydrogen is such a fuel. Only the future will tell what ends up working or not working, but several major car manufacturers are developing cars with internal combustion engines, good old V8s and V6s, that run on hydrogen instead of gasoline or diesel. So far, they aren't exploding. Time will tell. The future is so tricky to predict. [can't get video to work. This link should] www.caranddriver.com/news/a42796089/2024-honda-cr-v-powered-by-hydrogen-details/[Toyota's work] www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGL5g91KwLATo inject additional accuracy, a hydrogen powered car is NOT a good old V8 internal combustion engine that substitutes hydrogen for gasoline. They use a hydrogen fuel cell to produce electricity that powers an electric motor that propels the car. The only byproducts of the process are heat, water, and electricity. My division of GM was doing early work on the concept. Edit: I see from Paul's second link that Toyota is indeed working on ICEs that use liquid hydrogen in place of gasoline. Mea culpa.
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Post by aquaduct on Mar 31, 2024 19:21:07 GMT -5
If “compromise” means meet in the middle (some of what I want and some of what you want) I agree with Peter that no good will come from it. If I want shit and you want caviar, shitty caviar won’t be a satisfactory solution. Proposed programs are often only useful if they are implemented just as intended by the design, not pulled apart and modified to death. Changing the program will likely be worse than both full implementation and complete abandonment. We need a congress whose members have both the time, resources, and inclination to fully understand what it’s doing and the political will to stay on course and forget the culture wars. Congress discovered in roughly the late sixties that actually legislating was too much of a career risk. You know, if your name is on a vote for a piece of legislation that somebody doesn't like, that's ammunition to defeat you. So they stopped doing that and simply created regulatory agencies like the EPA to do the heavy, faceless lifting while they just voted to fund the agencies. Who could argue with paying for important stuff, particularly if it's jammed inside an omnibus spending bill that normal humans can't possibly decipher? Cute, huh? The last piece of actual legislation that squeaked through Congress (barely) was Obamacare in 2010 or 2011. In 1984 environmentalists figured out how to end around the requirements to actually get what they want through legislation by getting a liberal Supreme Court in Chevron v. NRDC to let the agencies (specifically EPA in this case) decide for themselves what a crappy piece of legislative bloat like the Clean Air Act really meant. Then, in 2007, they went for the throat with a victory (not really a victory, more of a WTF do we do with this shit now that we've painted ourselves into a corner?) that gave EPA the right to regulate CO2 through Massachusetts v. EPA. A big part of why I'm looking forward to Chevron falling is that, once that con game of making big money for nothing blows up, Congress will have no choice but to start doing their damn jobs again.
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Post by howard lee on Mar 31, 2024 19:53:42 GMT -5
If “compromise” means meet in the middle (some of what I want and some of what you want) I agree with Peter that no good will come from it. If I want shit and you want caviar, shitty caviar won’t be a satisfactory solution. Proposed programs are often only useful if they are implemented just as intended by the design, not pulled apart and modified to death. Changing the program will likely be worse than both full implementation and complete abandonment. We need a congress whose members have both the time, resources, and inclination to fully understand what it’s doing and the political will to stay on course and forget the culture wars.
Curses! Foiled again.
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Post by epaul on Mar 31, 2024 22:33:46 GMT -5
]To inject additional accuracy, a hydrogen powered car is NOT a good old V8 internal combustion engine that substitutes hydrogen for gasoline. They use a hydrogen fuel cell to produce electricity that powers an electric motor that propels the car. The only byproducts of the process are heat, water, and electricity. My division of GM was doing early work on the concept. Edit: I see from Paul's second link that Toyota is indeed working on ICEs that use liquid hydrogen in place of gasoline. Mea culpa. I made a rushed post. The Car and Driver Honda link shouldn't have been used as it was about the fuel cell approach. I dumped it on an edit and replaced it with a general purpose Wiki link on Hydrogen ICE engines. I don't know if Hydrogen-fueled ICE will ever be worth a hoot, I was just amazed that they worked (and that conventional gas engines could be converted). Again, the goal of, the reason for, replacing conventional gas and diesel engines isn't to give the consumer a better performing car, the goal is to give consumers a planet that doesn't go to hell for the generations that follow. If you don't believe/accept that CO2 emissions are warming the earth's atmosphere, then there is no way in hell you will ever forgive the EPA for giving us things like those little turbo-charged 3-cylinders (those little turbo-charged 3-cylinders are unforgiveable even if you do believe CO2 emissions need to be reigned in. Shame on Nissan, shame on Ford.)
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Post by epaul on Mar 31, 2024 23:04:18 GMT -5
We shall see, but I expect that the decisions made by a clear preponderance of people with responsibility in these matters (courts included) will mean that, while the goal of eliminating the use of gasoline and diesel engines for general transportation will be adjusted when necessity demands, it will not be eliminated.
(a Trump term would be bump in the road, no more. I suspect the need to abate the release of CO2 into the atmosphere wherever, whenever, and however possible will continue to grow ever more apparent... with the only arguments remaining being those of how and how much)
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Post by james on Apr 1, 2024 0:03:30 GMT -5
CO2 emission reduction efforts in the automotive industry are global. The US is not going to be avoiding the trend.
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Post by aquaduct on Apr 1, 2024 7:50:23 GMT -5
CO2 emission reduction efforts in the automotive industry are global. The US is not going to be avoiding the trend. Only as long as the West insists on committing industrial suicide. There's nothing that locks the US automotive industry into that pact should Chevron fall in June. You Europeans are welcome to continue self immolation to your hearts content. But we've always been significantly different than you both politically and geographically.
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Post by Cornflake on Apr 1, 2024 8:00:30 GMT -5
Some issues can't and/or shouldn't be compromised. Abortion is an example. You either allow it or you don't and there really isn't any middle ground to be occupied. The issue of healthcare avoided compromise for many years. Our Representative Biggs thinks Obamacare is socialized medicine and is evil. For Biggs and others, there's a principle at stake in the issue. We only got Obamacare when Obama temporarily had big majorities in Congress. I don't ask or expect that legislators abandon their principles on such issues. We just have to fight those out.
Most of the business that Congress should be tending to doesn't involve significant matters of principle. For example, the copyright laws need revision. There's room for give and take in the revision. The immigration laws need revision. I think a pretty good compromise was in sight until one Presidential candidate decided to sink it. Most legislators recognize the need to assist Ukraine. There's room for a compromise on the amount and the details. About the only principle lurking in these disputes is the principle that you don't want the other party to succeed, even if the success benefits Americans.
Legislators in both parties should recognize that roughly half the country disagrees with them. If they insist that everything be done their way, very little will get done, no matter how much legislative action may be needed. IMO.
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Post by Village Idiot on Apr 1, 2024 11:30:40 GMT -5
According to this, I'm a straight up and down moderate.
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Post by Russell Letson on Apr 1, 2024 14:04:21 GMT -5
Some issues can't and/or shouldn't be compromised. Abortion is an example. You either allow it or you don't and there really isn't any middle ground to be occupied. With respect, that's not really the case, except for those whose position is that the product of conception (that is, a fertilized egg) must never be removed from the maternal body by human intervention. In fact, the very meaning of "abortion" is not singular and undebated. (I won't expand on that last statement--the range of positions is easily researched.) Aside from the matter of the moral and legal status of the termination of an otherwise successfully-proceeding pregnancy, there are non-trivial questions about prenatal development--the progression from zygote to embryo to fetus, the point at which various structures appear, the point of viability--as well as philophical/moral/theological questions about personhood and rights--including risk-benefit calculations and the possibly conflicting rights of fetus and mother. So legal/ethical arguments about abortion are neither simple nor binary.
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Post by Russell Letson on Apr 1, 2024 15:04:32 GMT -5
Addendum: "Red line" political/moral positions are always going to be problem points in setting policies and regulations. The underlying problem is where and why exactly one sets those red lines. I understand the absolutist nature of some of them--the life/death and human-status issues behind some anti-abortion positions, for example, or (to a lesser degree) the binary-gender views affecting the treatment of transexuals and non-binary identities. But other factors lead some politicians to take red-line positions, and some of them are pretty clearly attempts to cater to factions with particular material or political-power interests. And holding matters X or Y hostage to unrelated issue Z strikes me as dysfunctional--but then, the farthest-right rump faction of the House GOP isn't interested in function.
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Post by millring on Apr 1, 2024 16:50:53 GMT -5
If “compromise” means meet in the middle (some of what I want and some of what you want) I agree with Peter that no good will come from it. If I want shit and you want caviar, shitty caviar won’t be a satisfactory solution. Proposed programs are often only useful if they are implemented just as intended by the design, not pulled apart and modified to death. Changing the program will likely be worse than both full implementation and complete abandonment. We need a congress whose members have both the time, resources, and inclination to fully understand what it’s doing and the political will to stay on course and forget the culture wars. Additionally, the way it often seems to work is in a "you vote for my bill and I'll vote for yours" that adds debt upon debt upon debt as the only way to get anything passed is to pass something else (that usually wouldn't, on its own merits, pass) along with it. And then at election time a politician has to campaign having voted against his constituent's will in order to get something they might want. And so we are treated to the ad campaigns claiming that so and so voted to kill kittens (when the killing kittens bill was the only way he could get the bill to grant a chicken in every pot).
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Apr 1, 2024 17:55:48 GMT -5
If “compromise” means meet in the middle (some of what I want and some of what you want) I agree with Peter that no good will come from it. If I want shit and you want caviar, shitty caviar won’t be a satisfactory solution. Proposed programs are often only useful if they are implemented just as intended by the design, not pulled apart and modified to death. Changing the program will likely be worse than both full implementation and complete abandonment. We need a congress whose members have both the time, resources, and inclination to fully understand what it’s doing and the political will to stay on course and forget the culture wars. Additionally, the way it often seems to work is in a "you vote for my bill and I'll vote for yours" that adds debt upon debt upon debt as the only way to get anything passed is to pass something else (that usually wouldn't, on its own merits, pass) along with it. And then at election time a politician has to campaign having voted against his constituent's will in order to get something they might want. And so we are treated to the ad campaigns claiming that so and so voted to kill kittens (when the killing kittens bill was the only way he could get the bill to grant a chicken in every pot). If there's enough lobbyist money involved they are willing to switch it up and give us a kitten in every pot.
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