Michael Pardee wrote:
It's children that tend to "gnaw" on things. Odd that you would cite
"institutional stupidity" when you aren't sure ("cancer or something
like that") of the dangers. Much of the imported ceramics (drinking
utensils for example) contain high amounts of lead and there is a
connection between lead in the blood during pregnancy and impaired brain
development. California is not the only state with this particular type
of "initiative" (law).

Michael Pardee wrote:
<snip>
Collusion would seem unlikely wouldn't it? No code of cooperation among
vultures. If memory serves FERC was pretty much staffed by friends
of the Bush Administration.

Speaking of Enron and Bush did you find it odd that Ken had a heart
attack just when he did, and are you familiar with the curious details
surrounding the death (officially suicide) of Cliff Baxter (former Vice
Chairman of Enron) who sold out and bailed after stumbling across
Enron's illegal activities in 2001? He was to be a government witness
before Congress and a federal grand jury investigating the Enron
collapse and was in a position to finger Ken Lay in the Enron Ponzi
scheme that largely funded Bush's 2000 election campaign.

All of Baxter's friends claimed that he wrote only in cursive letters.
Suicide note was in block. Including the signature.

Baxter was wearing his bedclothes, no shoes, no socks, no slippers. A
toxicology report disclosed the presence of large amounts of Ambien, a
powerful non-narcotic sedative. Also found was Norpropoxyphene, a
narcotic painkiller and Citalopram, an anti-depressant. This cocktail
of chemicals would have made it impossible for him to drive himself to
the spot where he supposedly shot himself, using untraceable ammunition
known as "rat shot" (a Teflon coated bullet containing small pellets).

"F.H." <connectu2 (AT) verizon (DOT) net> wrote

Yes indeed, but California sees fit not to take any effective action, but
only to warn of a mysterious risk and to quantify it far more vaguely than I
did, leaving the public no better off than they were but merely more anxious
and confused. Would the lead be absorbed through the skin of the hand? What
action should the public take to deal with the supposed danger? Are people
in other states suffering from not knowing they are at risk unless they take
unspecified action? Simultaneously, a few yards away people were definitely
suffering progressive hearing damage en masse in the simple pursuit of
trying to get from one end of the facility to the other. Warn of vague
potential dangers but do nothing, then ignore well-understood injurious
conditions. Make sense to you?

Personally, I am rather well versed in the dangers of heavy metals -
particularly lead, mercury, and arsenic. I even knew of the toxicity of
polonium before it ever made the news. (Approximately as radio-toxic as
radium, it is roughly 100 billion times as toxic as cyanide.) I also know
that, despite the warning on the sign, cancer is not a major risk of lead
exposure... the neuro effects are much graver. And I know that lead glazes
are federally prohibited on the interior of food vessels because acidic
foods can leach the lead out, but the outside of food vessels may be lead
glazed because the risk was judged to be low by more knowledgable people
than I. California merely took the opposite approach, inviting the voting
public of uncertain education to weigh in on yet another technical issue.

Michael Pardee wrote:
No offense, but this struck me as the kind of primer I hear pitched to
try and hook me for the upcoming news. ("stay tuned, details next hour")

Pet peeve of mine.

Any thoughts on the Thimerosal in vaccines linked to autism?

LOL, you and Bill seem to have a distinct anti California bias. To your
defense, we *did* just re-elect Arnold. But its not only the voters
that are of "uncertain education." We have term limits because we
apparently believe that on the job "education" leads to *certain*
dishonesty.

In article <059b3adb6620f02b550ceaf0736162b9 (AT) mixmaster (DOT) it>,
George Orwell <nobody (AT) mixmaster (DOT) it> wrote:

Now where will that hydrogen be produced?
-Leaving the pollution there.

F.H. wrote:

No - just anti-stupidity bias.

Yep - people in CA are wising up some (finally got enough pissed off is
more like it). It took a while for them to dig themselves into a hole,
and it will take a while to dig themselves out - remarkable progress has
been made thanks to Arnold. But he can't stop all the stupid legislation
- but he can - and has - vetoed some of it. So yeah - you're right -
things are looking up.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

"F.H." <connectu2 (AT) verizon (DOT) net> wrote


I am opposed to mercury compounds for ingestion, in any quantity. Mercury
has been known as a cumulative poison for longer than I've been alive and
the effects are too well known.

That said, we do know the effects of mercury poisoning at all sorts of
levels. Mostly we know the effects of compounds that introduce mercury into
the body - nasty things like methyl mercury. Those effects have never been
linked with autism. Is that to say that a specific mercury compound can't
have unique effects? Not at all. But... it has been around as the external
antiseptic Merthiolate and I used it a few times when I was a kid. (Explains
a lot, maybe?) WHO finds no evidence yet that it is toxic in the doses used
in vaccines.

Bottom line - still worth watching, but not my responsibility.

"F.H." <connectu2 (AT) verizon (DOT) net> wrote

I am a former Californian; moved to Arizona in 1974. I have about the same
view of the place as I did then - there is probably the same ratio of
intelligent people to screwy people there as anywhere else, but in
California the screwy people are more cohesive and form a significant voting
block. Here they tend to fight among themselves while reasoned points of
view remain cohesive. Also, corruption is more open here in Arizona, so
actually getting things done in order that they might generate wealth to be
skimmed is a priority <8^P

Mike

Michael Pardee wrote:

LOL! I vote that the most intelligent post in this thread.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

"Bill Putney" <bptn (AT) kinez (DOT) net> wrote

Emotional words like:

"rediculous regulations...forced several major...companies to pull out"

Companies aren't forced out, they are choosing to leave. Unless it was
a situation were no drivers at all could buy insurance, because there
were absolutely no insurance companies writing new policies, I cannot
see how it is anything more than CA wrote some regs that cut into their
profits, so some of the insurance companies tried some ham-handed
attempts at blackmail that obviously didn't work.


Why? As long as there's some companies out there willing to do business
in your state according to whatever cockamamie regulations you put
in place, then why do you have to do anything at all to help other companies
that don't what to do business in your state?

So how did this suddenly change from "several major companies"
into "the insurance industry"

As I said, do tell? What was the story?

If your speaking out against one side but you know the alternatives are
equally bad, then your doing a disservice today by not at least mentioning
that.

You mentioned prevalent thinking. So, I guess that there was a time 30
years ago
when people would say things like "I think we ought to
try instituting a 55Mph speed limit to see if we can save energy although
I know that it is probably going to waste money on extra time spent on the
freeways
so the total economic benefit may end up being nil - but we won't
know unless we trial it"

Funny how I can't remember any of the pro-double-nickel people saying
that. Instead I remember quite a lot of irrational FUD.

When exactly did this time in history exist?

Bill I know you are old enough to have some political sense and you
know perfectly well that if you want to drag the center right you have
to argue from the ultra right, and if you want to drag the center left you
have
to argue from the ultra left. You cannot argue from the center. That is
why there are ultra conservatives and ultra liberals.

The usual argument I hear people that make your complaint making is
that the problem today is that the issues are so much more complex, which is
understandable in
a highly technological and mechanized civilization, that it requires the
average
person to put more effort and time into understanding the issues. Yet
at the same time due to this very same complexity of civilization, there
are many more distractions to people's time. So, people don't spend the
time and as a result they are easy prey for the 5-minute-soundbite.

This is the old "people were more reasonable in the 'olden days'" argument.
You will pardon me if I'm sick to death of it, I have got a crawful this
week reading all the drippy tributes to dead President Ford.

What all these folks seem to forget is that back in these more reasonable
olden days they were lynching blacks.

And older than that we had people like Laura Ingalls Wilder who
went around writing lots and lots of articles castigating Roosevelt
and the New Deal (as if the Hooverites had any better idea how to get
out of the Depression)

And further back than that we had all the pro slavery arguments to the
point that the country was split into a civil war.

So once again I have to ask, when did this more reasonable time
period in history exist?

Please relate this to the zero emissions thing. You never really explained
who is raping who, here.

Didja know - the people can always opt to NOT buy forested property
and opt to NOT build on it. Why is it necessary for CA to make sensible
regulations for people to build in forested areas? Maybe they should
just tell the people "we are going to make senseless regulations for
building in forested areas so if your not an idiot, then don't build there"

It's like New Orleans. They rebuilt the dikes. But they don't allow you
to build a house on 30 foot stilts. Maybe what they are really telling the
smart people who can read between the lines is "if your not an idiot, don't
build a house here"

I don't regard either of these solutions as stupid solutions. Actually I
regard
them as rather clever solutions since it increases the chances that the
stupid
people will build in those places, so when the floods and fires come
through,
it might even help increase intelligence in the gene pool by killing off the
stupider
ones.

Ted