Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

No. Ragu was saying we can't complain when it's used to fund things we don't like.

Like supporting public funding of renewable energy but not needless warmongering is an ideologically indefensible position.

It's a "you can't support the things you support unless you also support the things you don't support" argument. It's nonsense.

 

Except this isn't what happens.

Our lawmakers don't even read the bills they pass, and often a company or industry can receive a subsidy and/or tax break via language that would slip by even the most careful reader of a bill.

These things get funded wither by individual lawmakers, or by non-elected bureaucrats, who are open to outside influence, not by consensus.

 

Yes, as along as the will of the people isn't subverted for personal and political gain like it was during the Bush-Cheney administration when a needless war was started and billions of dollars in no-bid contracts were funneled to a company of which the vice president happened to be a former CEO. Then I have not only a right but a fundamental duty to complain.

 

You said this:

Would you like to clarify?

 

It is exactly what Ragu was saying.

 

Who's to say the will of the people wasn't subverted for personal and political gain when hundreds of millions to billions of dollars were doled out to Tesla, SolarCity, Solyndra and countless others?

 

cran, like it or not you are a textbook case of someone who views "democratic processes" as lovely things until such time as said processes do something you don't like. Then, rather than admitting that "democratic processes" don't deliver nearly as much magic as you'd like, you claim that said processes were "subverted" for "personal and political gain."

 

He's saying you support the system -- the game, he calls it -- and this is how it's played. You get one with the other. What you see as an indefensible position might not seem that way to others. If you like the system, you eventually have to take what you get.

 

I'm willing to look at any evidence you have that suggests any illegality. I don't begin with the premise that there was wrongdoing.

Not unless you want to falsely suggest there is equivalence between Musk's companies and Haliburton in the manner in which they acquired and used public funds.

 

"Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together." -- Halliburton management