It's still an atrocious waste of money. We could eliminate the budget deficit just by repealing this and the other money pits enacted by Obama."
Deficits were projected through the 2020s back in 2008, before Obama even took office. When Obama was sworn in, we had the all-time largest debt and were bleeding masses of jobs daily. The economy was in a freefall and there was even a question of whether all the banks would go under. The Affordable Care Act is not the problem. I would look first to Republican blanket obstruction, which is doing more damage in every area of growth than any other single problem or program and is holding down the economy and all the revenue it would create, preventing economic growth from subsuming the debt, as it did with the WW II debt and during the Clinton Administration with Reagan's debt (also a record amount at the time).
"1. Solyndra is an example of a futile attempt by a futile department to clean up the atmosphere."
So, we shouldn't try? Let the world warm when we could minimize the damage?
"And by the way, you know what the largest greenhouse gas is? Water vapor. What do you plan to do about that?"
Water vapor it is not out of balance and isn't increasing as a percentage of the atmosphere like carbon, methane, and other gasses are. You are not in agreement with the U.S. Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization (NOAA), NASA, the European Academy of Sciences, the British Academy of Sciences, the European Science Foundation, the African Academy of Sciences, the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, the European Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop and Soil Science Society of America, the European Federation of Geologists, The European Geosciences Union, the Goelogical Society of America, the Geological Society of London, the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, the American Meteorological Society, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the Royal Meteorological Society, the World Meteorological Organization, the InterAcademy Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, National Geographic, the United Nations, the Environmental Protection Agency...
"2. No it's not. Read the Constitution."
Of course government's job is to serve the people. Otherwise everything would go to hell. Criminals and fascist groups would seize your property, planes would crash, armies would invade, certain minorities might be murdered, or at the very least discriminated against much more than currently exists, snake oil would rule the supermarkets, malpractice would be rampant, and so on. The Constitution is merely a tool that helps us govern our country and the founding fathers realized that it would need to change as things changed in the world, and thus made it a living document.
"3. Tariffs."
Let's see the numbers. I don't think there's even a fraction of what we need to run the police, fire, emergency services, army, navy, air force, schools... and eliminating many of these things would lead to anarchy and make us much worse off. And what's wrong with people contributing to their society to make it a better place for themselves, as well as everyone else?
"4. In a capitalist society, people can spend their money as they wish."
So, as long as people can say they live in a 100% capitalist society everthing's hunky dory? What do people do when they're too old to work and an economic downturn ate up all their retirement money; or their children were crippled or died; or they couldn't have children? We can do better and give our people a better quality of life simply by going with the system that works best in each area and still have a 95% capitalist economy.
"5. Charities and local governments can help those people. The Federal government should not get involved."
One for one, and none for all, eh? I for one don't want to live in a gated community surrounded by enormous poverty, despair, crumbling infrastructure, violence, and a warming planet because everyone is too busy looking out for numero uno. Teamwork makes the world a better place and government needs to facilitate things when markets and systems don't work properly.