On Janesville GM plant designated as standby
Posted on June 1 at 5:16 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
One more year for Favre! Oh, wait. wrong story, same cruel drama.
On Plan gives hope to idled GM plants
Posted on May 27 at 4:21 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
I can't go into specifics, but the short version is that this plant is un-usable for purely logistical reasons. The biggest problem is that the power plant is on the wrong side of the building. There is no way to remodel it without tearing it down and starting over, and doing that would open environmental issues that would run into the billions to remedy.
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Another issue is the paint shop. It is completely outdated, out of compliance, etc. They've gotten by this long on a wing and a prayer, but to retool the paint shop alone would cost a minimum of 500 million dollars (that is not a number I just made up, it is from GM's own estimates).
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Janesville said they could retool to build conversion vans for 100 million, and be ready in 10 weeks. That was true, but only as a hail-marry, short term fix. That doesn't address any of the issues that need to be dealt with in order to make this plant viable in the long term. That just meant they could squeeze a couple more years out of the plant if GM was willing to throw them a bone. Unfortunately, the plant is not in that condition anymore- the infrastructure has been gutted, anything of value is gone or spoken for already.
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There is zero incentive or opportunity for GM to do anything other than what they're doing already: salvage what they can, sell off anything else of value for cash, make sure there are no immediate health or environmental risks (basically get rid of any liquids in the plant), lock the doors and walk away. The plant will sit, "idle" until it either falls down on it's own, or some government agency condemns it and knocks it down themselves (making them responsible for the costly clean-up).
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Like it or not, the plant is going to be a dead, rotting corpse in the center of this city for the foreseeable future. I can't cite my source(s), but they are management level, reliable sources. This really has nothing to do with how GM "feels" about Janesville, or what anyone wants one way or the other, including Obama. These are simply the facts. The plant is 'idle' and not 'closed' because if it's only idle they don't have to do nearly as much work to decommission it. They are not spending one cent they absolutely have to on this plant. They are literally going to lock the doors and walk away.
Posted on March 16 at 3:28 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Exactly right, Bill, except I believe our free-will is a gift from God. It was, you might say, His last act of complete freedom. I don't think it was a mistake or happenstance, or corruption and decay of the perfect world God created. God granted us free will for a very specific reason. I said much earlier that one of the reasons we're on this earth is to be tested and judged. If you remember the last thread, Athlea argued that God could weigh a soul in the absence of a life to judge it against. I believe you and I both rejected that notion, and the concept of original sin that is related to it. God granted us complete freedom to see what we would do with it. I don't think the afterlife is simply sitting on clouds playing lutes. There is work for us there just as there is work for us here. This life, then, is a sort of placement test. It's also the reason God intentionally denies man proof of His existence. It doesn't take much strength of character to obey a God you KNOW exists.
Yeah, that's a bit of an oversimplification, but I hope you get my gist.
Posted on March 16 at 3:12 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Back to your point though, Dr, you see then why a clear and reasonable definition of "omnipotent" is required. Armed with a reasonable understanding of what "all powerful" means, we escape the semantic traps laid by the atheists, exposing them as non sequitur. Simply saying "God can do anything" allows for obvious contradictions.
Posted on March 16 at 2:14 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Dr: I have a question: Is knowledge finite? I realize the question is pretty metaphysical, and mostly rhetorical (and answering "no" severely hamstrings one of my major points), but it is interesting. On the one hand you could argue that since the universe is constantly changing, and the prevailing belief of science is that chaos and uncertainty are fundamental attributes of the universe. If that is true, then even if you knew everything about every particle in the universe at one moment, we don't know what the universe will be like in the next moment (important because if we remove uncertainty, then the universe is deterministic, which is counter to free-will). But the assumption relies on the observer being bound by time. If God's power to move within the various dimensions of the universe at will includes the ability to move within time, then uncertainty is again removed. I guess it's not really a question, just a mental exercise.
Posted on March 16 at 2:06 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Yeah, Grandmas are special. No one else I know can make you feel quite so guilty while smiling sweetly. A gentle prod from Grandma has more weight than the heaviest club and cuts deeper than the sharpest spears wielded by mere mortals.
Posted on March 16 at 1:09 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
As for God changing his mind, I believe it is we that change. Just as men grow from children to adults, we as a people have grown in maturity and knowledge. It is reasonable then to believe that when the world was young, God treated Man as a parent treats a Child: seemingly arbitrarily, to protect them from dangers they cannot understand. But as we grow, we assume more responsibility for our actions, and the laws given by God change to reflect that.
Posted on March 16 at 1:06 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Bibledude: I'm not 100% sure I follow your question, mostly because it is the opposite of what I believe. You used the word 'anthropomorphisms', which means to assign human-like qualities to non-human entities. I gather, then, that you think I believe God is not human-like. I believe the opposite: I take "created in His image" far more literally than the orthodox Christian view. I didn't mean to imply that God has no will, no mind or passions. I simply meant that He is very limited in His ability to act on them. Scripture is clear that it is God's will that all His children return to Him. What, then, prevents Him from acting on His will? It would be a simple thing for Him to prevent men from committing evil, having evil thoughts, or in any other way endangering their souls. For that matter, why put the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden to begin with? Why would a being with complete sovereignty, power and knowledge allow anything to exist that might frustrate His will? Not because He has none, but because He must.
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When I say I take "in His image" literally, consider this: Christ was resurrected and ascended into the Heavens with His physical body. Was that simply a parlor trick for our benefit? Or is it not reasonable to suppose that God in fact is a literal being of flesh and bone? Such a belief answers the "omnipresence" problem as well: we are told God is everywhere. But does that mean that God is a disembodied omnipresent entity who's being fills the universe? How do we reconcile that with the knowledge that God cannot abide in the presence of evil? Could it not be that God's influence, His power and His love are everywhere in the universe without requiring Him to literally "be" everywhere? It also changes the notion of the Godhead. We are told that God is simultaneously three beings, yet one being. This is obviously a messy notion for humans to comprehend. But what if that "oneness" refers to unity in purpose and intent; that they are three unique, distinct and literal beings, operating in complete agreement? Why single out the Holy Ghost is being without a body (hence the name 'ghost'), if He was not unique in that regard?
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The God of orthodox Christianity is indeed utterly alien to Man, ineffable and incomprehensible. How does one reconcile that God with a God that walked and talked with Adam in the Garden, a God that created Man in His image? Orthodox Christianity requires too much mental acrobatics for me to believe. I prefer to believe that the universe is founded on plain and simple truths, immutable and primeval even to God. I believe that God has only two attributes of note: perfect knowledge of those truths, and perfect love. All of His other attributes follow from these two, and all other truths follow from those fundamental truths.
Posted on March 16 at 12:26 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Bill, if God is sovereign, just and merciful, then how do you answer GF's most constant question: is not God then directly responsible for every act of evil done by Man? If God has the power to act and does not, if God can have an intimate and loving relationship with each of us, why allow evil men to rape torture and kill innocent children?
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Your thesis is sound until compared to the cold light of reality. You cannot grant God complete power and authority without also burdening Him with complete responsibility and blame for evil. If there is no power or law separate from God, if God embodies all of creation, then how is He not soiled by evil as well? Your rhetoric disguises the unseemly aspects of that which we all know to be true.
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On Stimulus dollars to fund bike trail
Posted on July 6 at 3:13 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
I agree that this seems like a terrible way to spend stimulus money. The ideal way to spend stimulus dollars is on projects that have low material costs but high labor costs, maximizing the dollars that are pumped into the local economy. Given the size of the crew needed to install a bike path, this seems like it does not pass that test. It will keep a few workers busy for a few weeks.
Crunch: I don't get the Woodmans's reference. Could you elaborate? It sounds like there's a story there that I missed.