But that does not argue for doing nothing, or talking tougher.
Many if not most advocates for government action to mitigate global warming argue that doing nothing will be far more costly than taking sensible, pragmatic steps now.
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To be sure, GE watchers argue strongly against doing anything as foolhardy as dismantling a good thing.
Plaintiff lawyers argue they are doing a public service by enforcing laws against false advertising and other unfair trade practices.
Will they blame councillors, who may argue they are doing the best for their area within the financial constraints they face?
Will they blame the Scottish government, which would argue it is doing the best it can for councils within the financial constraints it faces?
Selling a covered put is more of an abstraction, but you could argue you are doing that if you have cash lying around equal to the value of the underlying securities and wouldn't mind being forced to purchase the securities at the put price.
No doubt all the players will argue they're doing just that.
The judges, they argue, have only been doing their job in ensuring the laws are properly implemented.
As the defense lawyers argue that Rajaratnam was just doing his job, what I find most fascinating are the characters in this story.
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In 2004, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry decided that the way out of that predicament was to argue that Bush, while doing the right thing in combating terrorism, was distracted by Iraq when he should have been focused on Afghanistan.
Doing so, they argue, would in turn prompt Russia to refuse to ratify the START II Treaty and to withdraw from the earlier START I accord.
But that too, you could argue, was Julia's doing.
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In doing so, one might argue that the retailer has become no more than an operator of real estate .
Those who oppose the idea argue that if you raise the cost of doing something (such as hiring workers), you get less of it.
You could even argue that Sina (SINA) Weibo is doing this in their battle against Tencent Weibo, as they are pursuing market share over monetization.
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But, after eight years of stagnation and in the midst of a lingering banking crisis, it would be brave now still to argue that Tokyo's trade and finance bureaucrats are doing a good job.
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Some even argue in favor of nationalizing existing infrastructure, in hopes that doing so will magically build out next generation networks with unlimited mobile bandwidth and fiber optic connections to 100% of the U.S. population, whatever the cost.
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Some students, professors and campus police officers argue a person determined to kill cannot be stopped, but say they are doing everything they can to put a proper security system in place.
Now I would argue that global free trade is the only logical or sensible thing to be doing: but leave that aside for a moment, what possible arguments are there against free trade within Africa?
Many pundits argue that the costs of producing goods in another country can be more expensive than doing so with local labor and facilities.
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Given its assertion that states base their foreign policies on unsentimental assessments of their national interests, true realists would argue that there is no rational bar to enemy states sharing the same allies if doing so advances their national interests.
Indeed, some observers argue that the banking system is already, in effect, nationalised, with government policy doing all it can to keep banks alive by allowing them to ignore problems for as long as possible while obstructing attempts by some banks to heal themselves.
They argue it is just wrong to award legal status to workers who have broken the law, and by so doing you only create more powerful incentives for others to cross the border illegally.
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