Here’s an article by John Petersen on why the electric car is a no-go for future energy independence due to the very limited rare earth elements that are required to produce the batteries. It is a great argument for recuperative braking, and a great argument against the obvious, that replacing fuel with batteries is an extremely naïve idea with regard to either environmental concerns or energy supplies. I was bitching about that during the cap and trade debate, if my memory serves.

Innovation is what’s needed though. The key to energy independence isn’t these wild ideas about shifting us from cars to trains, but rather developing technologies like practical energy cells. This requires investment. And fuel cells include more technologies than electric storage batteries, which are horrible.

Hydrogen is a good example. It’s a portable fuel. And it’s made from electricity which could be generated in remote areas of the country, like in mountains from turbines or in deserts from solar panels, and shipped in a variety of was to fueling stations.

Who knows what technology will produce. Hopefully though, the next leap in transportation technology will appear in the US under a US company.

There’s a lot of $$$ locked up in US companies right now, waiting out uncertainty. A lot of people would like to see taxes raised on companies, and that money used to fund research. That’s a better idea than using such monies to fund green projects using today’s piss-poor green technology. But still, the usual process in Washington is to divvy money out to congressman’s districts for supporting the bill, rather than to the most promising research projects. And that’s assuming any of those fools in Washington could determine what’s promising.

Others would like to keep the tax burden off companies so they can do their own research. This is a fine idea, but could take a long time. Such research is risky. A lot of people and corporations will certainly be losing billions before that singularity is found, and no one is in a hurry to do that right now.

Because energy is such an important thing to all of us, and is essential to safety and security, I think government should be finding ways to promote this innovation. Taxing so Uncle Sam can write checks is the wrong way to do it, because as I’ve said, Washington doesn’t reward merit, it rewards votes. So I think the best way to promote domestic fuel cell research is to reduce the capital gains tax, and perhaps the corporate tax, on such research projects.

It’s a matter of overcoming uncertainty, both from the bad economy and the gamble of scientific progress. Lowering those taxes specifically on green energy will increase the reward to investors, and thus overcome some of that uncertainty and move money in. Simple economics – complicated fuel science.

Worst case: Investors don’t move money to green energy and things stay the same, no loss in revenue. Second worst case: Investors move money out of other investments into green energy, tax revenues decrease but carefully targeted green energy investment increase. Best case: Locked up money comes loose, tax revenues rise, and someone invents a practical green vehicle fuel system.

I haven’t been catching a lot of news since my class started, but isn’t it funny how surprised and outraged the Obama guys are about S&P? It’s so f-ing funny. The administration was trying to tell S&P that they had big mistakes in the way they calculated the agreement’s debt reduction:

First off, you’re only counting income dollars once. We know for a fact – just ask the CBO – that we can count many of those dollars twice, assuming you have an overly optimistic imagination and accounting ‘style’. Second, you’re not counting the unicorn pastures we plan to construct, which will, by 2014, have attracted approximately 100,000 unicorns. Third, uhmmm, why aren’t you assuming that by this time next year Obama will not have charmed the economy back to a non-recession growth rate? Are you some kind of Tea Party terrorist RACIST?

In other news… Why the hell were 22 Navy SEALs crammed in a Chinook en route to battle, or en route to anywhere? What were 22 SEALs even doing all in the same geographical region? Are we back to Billy-C’s SF abuse? That’s like taking 22 Navy SEALs and putting them all on the same BIG FUCKING SLOW-ASS HELICOPTER VERSION OF A GOSH-DARN TRAILER-HOUSE!!!!! WHAT THE F****************************K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

–Better arguments for Professor Dove’s article, “Buy Ameri-mexi-nadian”–

1. The best thing to do for the economy is to buy what you think is the best value. If an American company isn’t building the car you want, or if the American car of your type – say a Focus – costs $50 more a month than its foreign competition, what else will you do? Lower your personal standard of living in an effort to ‘patriotically’ support a corporation? Ford doesn’t do that. Neither does GM or Chrysler. They buy their shit where ever it’s cheapest – usually foreign. And they move production to where ever it’s cheapest whenever they have the chance. Do you think a new factory will ever be built in UAW territory again???

2. Foreign companies have low labor costs, resulting in higher value cars. American companies have some of the highest labor costs. Although the American workers are more productive than their foreign competition – those gains are nullified by their incredibly high – low skill wage. Unions in the US have functioned like a power syndicate taxing the auto companies – resulting in far-above market wages for their members. An auto worker is doing basic manual labor for what is equivalent to $50 an hour while his non-union neighbor is willing to do the job for $15 or $20, even less in this economy. If the auto companies can get a reasonable hold on their labor costs – they’ll add more value tot heir cars and be more competitive.

3. Besides the history of bad quality, US car companies also have a history of bad service – and that’s a recent history. It’s been over a decade since most foreign car companies have offered the 100,000 mile power train warranty.  Domestic manufacturers still only offer the 30,000 mile with an expensive extension – and often don’t cover problems when they do occur during the 30k miles. That kind of thing really sticks in a person’s craw.

4. US companies have unappealing entry-level options - still. Each US manufacturer has it’s small economy car, the type first-time car buyers often get. But they don’t offer the value of other models – like the Honda Civic. And how could they offer value? US auto companies loose money on the little cars, and only keep them so they can compete in the first-time buyer market. That reason for having a first-rate high-value first-time-buyer car is to start a tradition with young people. If a person buys a Honda and has a great experience, they are likely to buy a Honda the next time around. And foreign manufacturers like Honda excel in this market because all they make are small cars and they do it profitably – that’s where their energy is focused.

5. We no longer need large scale manufacturing for national security. The Great War was certainly the war to end all wars. Who, after enduring the destruction and loss of life of that great global conflict, could ever wage large-scale war again? Our modern weapons simply make it too horrific.

[edit: 1948] Now that we have the bomb, large scale war is something we’ll only experience in history books. No one will wage large scale war because it would eventually end in nuclear warfare, which would be catastrophic and in no one’s interest.

[edit: 1953] Oh shit, we might need that heavy production, or some counter to the Soviet mechanized forces, which are growing at a rate that will soon threaten all of Western Europe with an unstoppable swooping invasion.

[edit: 2003] Large scale warfare is a thing of the past. Modern wars are small, requiring light and fast military forces and air power. Heavy equipment is obsolete when a hand full of Ranger teams with eye’s in the sky and bombs from heaven can do in a month what the Soviet Army couldn’t accomplish in 7 years – or when such a modest force can topple a military regime over night, such as Sadam’s.

[edit: 2009] Modern wars require many troops, but only a fraction of them are combat focused, because the main goal is protecting and appeasing the civilians of the area. Domestic production of military equipment can be small because we don’t loose it – we just wear it out. Sudden large-scale war production is as unnecessary as fighter planes and manned air power.:-)

I feel like Obama is a good guy. His wife likes him, and she seems picky. His children are well behaved. But Obama is a bad president. Compare him to Bill Clinton.

Now, Slick Willy – he’s a jerk. But he was a good president. Hell, he’s still a good president in effect. But Billy had like 10 years of experience as a governor of the State of Arkansas. He already knew how to actually do things.

All Obama has ever run is a campaign, or rather, hired someone to run a campaign. But all a candidate needs to do on the trail is charm people. Obama is a superb charmer! And that’s all he’s done so far. What’s his biggest accomplishment? The health reform bill of course. And what did that require of him? Charm. Others wrote it. Others fell on swords to pass it. He just pranced around making false arguments about his opposition, charmingly, and, charmingly, spoke in the grand generalities that allow people to imagine a perfect world can be had at his command – if given the power.

But when shit starts to explode, industries shut down, and ecosystems are being destroyed day by day on the TV set – or in the back yard – all that fancy charm starts to look like pandering and political maneuvering.

You know things are getting bad out there when James Carville and other prominent hard core libs/dems are turning on their beloved Obama. It’s quite an implosion we’re witnessing. It’s shocking how fast the dems went from fab to drab. And drab is stating it kindly. To see republicans and conservatives winning in long held liberal states is monumental. the people are speaking, and doing so with vigor. The next elections will be very interesting, especially after having seen the results of the recent primaries.

The oil spill has really taken Obama by surprise it seems. Things have gone from bad to worse for this guy, health care, cap and trade, immigration, and now the spill. These crises are really showing him to be completely incompetent. His age and inexperience are shinning through like a spotlight. The more this spill expands, figuratively and literally, the more Obama really does seem to lack the slightest dam clue as to what he is doing. He’s waning from one opinion to another trying to stay political ground. When the media turns on him saying he isn’t passionate enough, he starts cursing in a really awkward attempt to look enraged. And he gets hammered by the same back stabbing media.

“We’re dying down here!” exclaims Carville to the nation on TV. Obama must have been cursing at the screen at that moment. If only he could have redirected the certain rage he must have felt toward Carville at the actual oil spill, he would have looked very concerned, like his media wanted. I never thought I’d see the day when Carville was calling out his guy so prominently and with such abandon.

Perhaps our government system really does work. The people are so outraged with Obama’s nation killing policies and welfare programs that he’s actually forcing his own political demise. People are speaking with decisive action at the poles. He will likely be a one term president, which is still evidently long enough for him to do some serious and long lasting damage to our economy, laws, policies, industry, and general way of life. Now we know what happens when an ideological and inexperienced adolescent is allowed to run the country. It really seems to come down to this, the difference between an idealist and a realist.

We have a professor running the country. Which if we all needed to learn something, would be great. But we need a professor who has lived, worked, and run in the real world. And not the sleezy Chicago political world. Obama seems to embody all the most inadequate qualities for running a country, which is clearly showing now. Like cracks in a brand new road made with an inferior cement mix. We need a Roman road president, who’s experience and character have a deep and solid foundation. Politics as usual would even be an upgrade from Where Obama has taken us. After all these blatant back room deals, failed policies, platitudes, etc, it makes you want to scream and gives you a sense of real helplessness with regard to what is going on in washington. Obama has redefined politics as usual, setting a completely new standard for the depravity of politics. Obama politics as usual makes Clinton politics look like girl scout cookies. This is a bold new standard and total hypocrisy we are witnessing. Obama’s promises on the campaign trail got left on the trail, replaced by a Grinch smirk. When voters go to the poles, it will be interesting to see if the pendulum will swing back center or far right. With the extent to which Obama has poisoned the political landscape for all politicians, it will likely swing hard right, bringing who knows what. We’ll either see balance or something new we’ve never seen before, perhaps. For now, we just need to get the bull out of the china shop while there is still a few good dishes left.

A Value Added Tax (VAT) is a tax on the estimated value of products at each stage of production and distribution. And like all taxes on business, it’s passed on to the consumer – making everything more expensive.

A VAT is similar to a sales tax in who actually pays it, but the difference is that the VAT hides the amount the consumer pays. When you look at your receipt from the grocery store you can see the sales tax. It’s right under the subtotal. When you buy a car there’s a special line just for the sales tax.

But the VAT is charged at each state of production and shipping. It’s not marked anywhere for you or me to see. With a VAT, the auto manufacturer would be charged based on the value of the car when it’s sold to the dealer. The shipper for the car would be charged a VAT for the value of the shipping. The subcontractors, the companies that make all the parts for the car, would be charged a VAT for the parts they manufacture. And the producers who make the material the parts are made of, they would pay a VAT too, as would the shippers, as would the producers of the packaging material.

And this huge and complex system would apply to most everything. All the materials and equipment everywhere in between the above process would carry the VAT hidden in its price – everything from tools to toilet paper.

This is why sneaky politicians like the VAT. They can make promises of monetary gifts to get into office, once in office establish expensive entitlements and pass huge goody bills for their friends, and pay for it by raising the VAT without anyone noticing. Historically that’s what has happened in Europe anyway.

If a sales tax is raised everyone sees it. But you can raise the VAT quietly, incrementally, with few people raising a fuss.

So why am I bringing this up? The US doesn’t have a VAT. We have income and sales tax. Well, I bring it up because the US is spending huge amounts of money, adding to the immense pile of debt, and otherwise over the past couple years has been moving in the direction of of a European style of heavy tax/entitlement. Also, Obama says the VAT is, “on the table” with regard to fixing the county’s serious budget problems.

And seriously, what else is there? Is anyone going to cut precious programs in this Liberal climate? Hell, we’re passing new ones. The answer Obama and his Dems have offered to EVERY problem so far is a huge pile of cash or a huge new bureaucracy – but usually both. He promised (pfft) not to raise taxes on anyone making less than blah blah. But he can’t raise income taxes on the rich anymore. They’re already on the down slopping side of the bell curve. (raising their taxes will result in lower tax revenue) What else is there?

So watch out for the VAT. It’s a sneaky tax. Every tax is bad for the economy – but this one dodges accountability with the consumer. It hits everyone including the poorest, which is actually good for the Democrat’s style of campaign/governance. They can suck money out of our society then distribute it back as the clumsy, slow, expensive bureaucracies see fit – VISIBLY – so the politicians can take credit for ‘giving’ assistance to people in need.

Reconciliation

One of the jobs of the Senate is to keep Bad bills from getting through. Think about it. Think about all of the highly contentious, arbitrary, partisan issues we have and have had that basically split the country down the middle. And think about the other possibilities of a simple majority rule.

The Senate serves as the bad-bill-block by allowing endless debate on the issues. So really serious stuff might take years to hammer out, and unfair stuff won’t get through at all, because you can’t take a vote until everyone is done debating or there are 60 votes to proceed. Blocking a vote by purposely making an endless case is called the filibuster.

In the old days, the filibuster actually involved a guy speaking for hours and hours until enough supporters for the bill dwindled out the door – killing any successful vote for it. But later, a general agreement was made that a filibuster would just be called and you wouldn’t have to perform the bladder/bowel exhibition.

Certain bills can’t be mulled over for years though, like the yearly budget. And often painful cuts and other adjustments need to be made to keep the national debt under control. I mean, seriously – think what a simply majority would do to the deficit! So in 1974 they came up with reconciliation.

“A reconciliation instruction (Budget Reconciliation) is a provision in a budget resolution directing one or more committees to submit legislation changing existing law in order to bring spending, revenues, or the debt-limit into conformity with the budget resolution. The instructions specify the committees to which they apply, indicate the appropriate dollar changes to be achieved, and usually provide a deadline by which the legislation is to be reported or submitted.”

-         U.S. Senate: Reference Home > Glossary > Reconciliation instruction

And what reconciliation basically does is limit debate to 20 hours, eliminating the filibuster option for the minority. That way, despite screams from the minority, President Romney can eliminate gay marriage and welfare while President Palin makes abortion illegal and  institutes Manifest Destiny and subsequently military service to fulfill it.

So you might wonder how – how in the world can Pelosi pass healthcare reform with reconciliation –an obvious budget specific special exception? Well – simple: Congress includes reconciliation instructions in the budget directing certain committees – like the health, financial, or labor committees – to produce healthcare reform legislation that will hit certain spending targets by a certain deadline. This legislation is then stapled to the omnibus bill and sent to the floor for 20 hours of debate followed by a simple up or down vote.

This is crazy right? This is a huge nightmare waiting to happen. We aren’t the first to realize such a reasonable method to keep the cookie jar safe could be perverted into rationalizing that anything can be called a cookie.

That’s why in 1985 the Byrd rule was added, which imposed a set of rules for the reconciliation process, limiting what it can reconcile to legislation that principally affects federal revenues. A tax cut: yes. Some welfare reform: sure. A new Federal holiday: nope. But this leaves a bit of ambiguity – I guess; especially after Nancy Pelosi blows your record amount of political capital in your first six months in office and leaves you wrapped to a particularly nasty bill like Ahab to his wale.

The Byrd rule states that legislation is unfit for reconciliation if it “produce[s] changes in outlays or revenue which are merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the provision.”  The trouble here though is that “merely incidental” and “provision” aren’t defined. So weather or not something’s affect on Federal revenues is “merely incidental” – like regulating insurers, creating a public plan, or funding abortions – is up to the Senate parliamentarian – an arbitrary referee.

Sen. Robert Byrd is now 92. He says the process was intended for deficit reduction and using it for health reform or cap and trade is an outrage that must be resisted.

But others make the nearsighted argument that health reform and cap n’ trade are deficit reducers. Or they make the argument that, if budget matters are too important to be constrained by normal Senate rules shouldn’t saving live and saving the planet also be exceptions?

Yeah – sure. Good thinking stupid.

I just need this quick rant. Diane Reims read a letter a moment ago. It went something like this, in regard to the new Afghan offensive: I think Obama is taking big gamble. Success is fleeting. The solution is not guns and rockets. I think we should buy the opium harvest outright.

I’d like everyone to tell me their two favorite reasons this idea is Sofa King stupid? And let’s focus away from the “gun’s and rockets” argument, since Liberals will never succumb to the idea that there exists a thing called aggressor for whom only force is understood.

It’s simple. An attempt to “buy the opium harvest outright” would essentially double the demand for opium in Afghanistan, driving the price up. Of course, if would be more than double. There isn’t a co-op or central distribution center to go and right-out buy the whole lot. You’d have to artificially increase the demand several fold – increasing the price several fold.

If you look at any supply/demand curve, you’ll see the left side levels out at some point while the right side slopes up increasingly into a near vertical.

Think of it in these terms: Bananas are about $.50 a pound. They’re this cheep because that is the market price. If Kroger has bananas at $.75 a pound, I’ll wait until I’m at Meijer to get some. If Meijer put bananas on sale, say $.40 a pound, I might grab an extra one. If something happens and bananas drop to $.20 a pound, it probably won’t matter – I won’t buy more than maybe one extra. I’m already buying the maximum number of banana’s I care to eat. So you see the left side of the graph levels out.

Now look at the right side of the graph. Let’s say the demand doubles. What will this do to the banana price? It means there won’t be enough bananas to go around, so the price will double, triple, and keep growing until the market find its price – all depending on how much people want a banana.

This is the same thing that will happen in Afghanistan with opium. The price will – certainly – more than double. And what happens to either opium or bananas when the price rises, or when the demand goes up? Farmers struggle to fill the demand. Just like when we started funding ethanol fuel, there were food shortages in south America because farmers were switching from the local staple food – corn – to growing corn for fuel. Likewise, Afghan farmers will switch from rice and other staples to opium. And thus the price for staple foods will go up pricing more Afghans out of the market.

Will this take opium from the Taliban and make them unable to sell it and finance their guns and rockets? No, it will just make opium cost more at first, until the farmers catch up. Opium cost to the drug trade at the farmer-buyer lever is like water costs to a tire factory. All the drug trader’s costs are in smuggling and enforcing – and Taliban are probably considered something of both.

And if the US wanted to keep the price up, they’d have to dump more and more money into the drug market every year to compensate for the increased growing, continuing the cycle of skyrocketing food costs. So – it would just be stupid.

This might lead one to image a different market solution. It might seem a good idea to start buying up another crop. If you could raise the price of something besides opium, farmers would grow that instead of opium. There one problem with this – actually two. There’s of course the problem that Afghans already pay most their income for food and are easily priced out. But the fundamental problem is in HOW the crops are priced. Rice or fruit have price curves that are low, because the demand is dependent on people already at max output – they really can’t spend more on food. And if they could, they wouldn’t buy a whole lot more of it. You only need so much food regardless.

Opium is different. The price curve can rise very high. Opium demand depends on world demand for opioids, efforts governments make at regulating opioids, number of suppliers fighting over the market, trends in opioid use, and all the other regular world trade variables. In other words, even if you multiplied the price for a non-opium Afghan crop by 10, opium would still price its way into holding the amount of crop land it needs to fill the demand – because the actual opium cost in the final illegal opioid drug in pennies on the dollar – if that.

It’s better use guns and missiles to damage the Taliban’s ability to buy and ship opium and what they buy with the opium. Cutting off a smuggling routs and otherwise making the opium business an extremely deadly one drives the price up quite a bit!

I still don’t have much love for the Creationist movement, but this Ben Stein movie is hilarious. It, among other things, follows scientists who were blacklisted for being associated with “intelligent design.” It’s pretty well done. Made me laugh.

It’s fine for passive citizens whose allegiance is more or less irrelevant. If you were a functioning part of the framework –allegiance would be different. A soldier, for example, can’t question his orders. He must obey them, unless of course they are illegal. Our current climate nearly has solders requiring basic training in military law – with all the appeasement we’ve been attempting in Iraq when civilians get killed.

Sometimes bad things have to happen to protect good things, and we need people willing to do the bad things. Those are patriots. Those are men like Oliver North who stand up and take blame honorably. Those men are like the SEAL team that shot those poor confused pirates in the head.

Sacrifice. Your people before yourself. Patriotism.

I wouldn’t call the US a big company. Yeah, the government is, but the United States of America and the Constitution are much more than that. They are an idea. That is what America is – it’s not just this jackass government. I don’t understand how one can be a patriot “for now” unless they plan to change some core beliefs – like becoming a socialist.

If Denmark (referenced from previous post) or any country wants to impose their government on my people – I’ll fight them for no other reason than the fact that a foreign – unelected – group is compelling something on my people. This is a primal patriotic response. The Taliban and Al Qaeda use it to convince people who don’t know any better to fight the Iraqi and Afghan governments.

Also – if our government became unjust or oppressive – like Iraq and Afghanistan WERE – that would be a different story. I would then fight the government as a patriot to the United States of America. Of course, some of the people I would be fighting would also be patriots. It’s a matter of politics at such a points.

Regardless, politics doesn’t dilute the meaning of patriotism. Patriots put their society before themselves. And despite the trends in word use, patriotism is just as important during times of peace. Patriots support and protect their society in millions of ways besides killing rivals and aggressors – like trimming tree branches away from stop signs and clearing snow away from fire hydrants.