An Electric, or at least Hybrid Mess

The Obama administration has never been confused for the Bush administration when it comes to energy policy.    Even as a presidential candidate, Senator Obama told reporters that under his policy, "electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket."  Now this is not like the Sarah Palin "quote" that she could see Russia from her front porch.  That was actually Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live spoofing Palin, although you couldn't convince thousands of Palin-haters of that fact.  Senator/candidate Obama actually said his plan would cause the cost of energy for every American, no matter what their income, to "necessarily skyrocket."  And no news organization or "journalist" asked him about this plan, before or after the the election.  In fact, outside of a few conservative radio talk show hosts, you will never hear anything at all about this plan.


All right, the president plans to make our electricity rates skyrocket.  Surely he won't mess with our other energy costs too, right?  What is the president's plan to reduce the emissions from our cars?  Well, first of all he had to takeover a car maker - GM.  Then he had to force GM to manufacture a car that the American buyer didn't want or need and that GM was not ready to manufacture, the all-electric Volt.  Now the Volt may be the "car of the future," as the president of GM - Barack Obama claimed.  But as one reviewer said, "only if your future is 40 miles away.  Actually 20 if you want to get back home again."  That's right, the Volt has a range of 40 miles in its all-electric version.  After these horrible reviews, Chevrolet announced that the Volt now has a greatly improved range.  They basically turned it into a hybrid.  You know the kind of car that Honda, Toyota, and Nissan have been producing for years.  Only it's smaller and not as reliable as the Honda, Toyota, or Nissan.  Oh yeah, it's more expensive too.  Only $40,000 for a subcompact car.  Who doesn't want to pay $40,000 for a Cavalier or Focus?  American car buyers, apparently.  In January and February combined Chevrolet sold 602 Volts, up from its double digit sales from each of the previous four months.  This incredible increase proved that Americans were starting to warm up to the idea of an overpriced, unreliable clown car, right?  Well not exactly.  They also announced sales of over 5,000 Tahoes.  If you are not familiar with the Tahoe; and judging from the lack of sales by the company, most Americans are not, the Tahoe has enough space to haul everyone in my hometown of Graham, TX and their luggage on a two week vacation.  With enough room leftover to pick up a few souvenirs on the trip.  While that be a slight exaggeration, it would take the vacation budget of Graham to buy the fuel needed for a long trip.  The new fuel-efficient hybrid version of the Tahoe gets 20 miles per gallon!  So obviously gas mileage is not a major concern for the American car buyer. 

So what is the president of GM, Barack Obama, to do to encourage Americans to pay too much for a car they don't really want?  Go back to the engineering drawing board and design an electric car big enough, reliable enough, and efficient enough that the buyer will be happy to pay for it?  Don't know what country you're from, but that's not Barack Obama's America!  His plan is to take taxpayer money and give it to anyone who buys an all-electric car, in the form of a $7,500 tax credit to the buyer.  That would make the Volt a $32,500 embarrassment, rather than a $40,000 embarrassment.  Well, apparently, not enough people that pay enough taxes (49% pay nothing at all, but that's for another post) to make a $7500 credit worthwhile fell for the scam.  Those folks generally travel more than 40 miles per trip and carry cargo larger than a bag of M&M's, so the Volt isn't too practical.  Another slight glitch in the plan - to get anyone to buy the Volt at any price, with any incentive, Chevrolet had to go back to the 1990's hybrid technology.  So now the credit has been re-written to include hybrids.  And rather than a tax credit, the Obama administration is planning take the $7,500 straight out of the dealer's overflowing bank account and give it to anyone who buys a Volt.  The dealer is then responsible for filing for reimbursement from the similiarly overflowing vaults of the United States Treasury.  Most auto dealers who dealt with the government in the "cash for clunkers" scam will tell you how excited they are to participate in this plan.

What's the next step in getting the public to buy government-produced electric cars?  How about $4+ per gallon for gasoline.  I'll get to that in my next post.

America, we've got a problem. Really, we do this time.

In arson investigations, at least on TV, one of the first suspects is the person who reported the fire.  And then the people who help put out the fire, or who rescue the victims.  A few years ago, a huge wildfire burned thousands of acres in Arizona.  The fire, or actually a series of fires, was started by a firefighter.  He wanted the opportunity to be the hero who put out the fire.  About the same time, there was a similiar case in Colorado.  It's even more common in housing arson.  A firefighter, or more likely a firefighter wannabe,  creates a crisis in the hopes of coming to the rescue and becoming the hero.  And in the process gaining a job, a promotion, money, or at least publicity.

Next time we have a crisis in Washington D.C., we need to take a close look to see if it is a real crisis, and if it is, how was it created?  The perfect example is the housing crisis that brought about the current economic mess.  First of all, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank were part of a Democratic congressional majority that forced banks to make high risk loans to people who could not qualify for housing loans, as part of the Fair Housing Act.  (As an aside, take a REALLLLLLLLY close look any bill that includes the word Fair and doesn't involve ferris wheels and corn dogs).  The promise to the banks was that the loans would be backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  While CSpan will generally result in a full-on slobbering nap, maybe we should all be making that network the top rated cable channel.  Here's an enlightening video from 2004.



So, they created the crisis, ignored the warnings about crisis, and then took billions, soon to be trillions, to fix the crisis.  And oh, yeah, blame the people who were sounding the warnings for the crisis!

Another example, how about the $854 billion dollars to create jobs to keep unemployment from going over 8% at the beginning of Obama's presidency.  Using their own numbers, which are very questionable if not outright lies, they created or saved 3.5 million jobs.  That means the federal government spent $244,400 for every job saved or created.  And unemployment still went to almost 10%, or 14.4% if you include those who became discouraged and just stopped looking or were unemployed for so long that they were no longer eligible to be counted.

And don't even get started on Global Warming, Climate Change, Man Caused Global Climate Disruption.  I've written about that DC Caused crisis several times, so I won't get into it again.  Here are three links.
Obama and Gore to profit from Cap and Trade  Why no media outrage about cap and trade?  Rednecks and global warming

How about financial reform?  Was that even on your radar?  Now, with the solution that passed in a 2000+ page law this summer, every one of your financial transactions is subject to scrutiny by the the government.  Student loan crisis?  Fixed, as part of the 2000+ healthcare law.  Yes, part of the HEALTHCARE law!  The healthcare law that 60% of Americans want repealed.  The healthcare law that 68% of Americans did not want passed.  Now, for a Golden Oldie, victims of rape and incest do not have access to abortion.  Was that really such a pervasive problem that the government needed to get involved?  I'd like to see some stats, but now, less than 30 years later, abortion is an accepted form of birth control.  Or in the words of this British pundit, "getting rid of a couple of cells."



With the election this November, we had better take steps to handle our own problems before the "firefighters" in DC burn down our whole country.

Feel Better Now?

With BP's accident in the Gulf of Mexico, a lot of reports have referred back to 1989 and the spill of the Exxon Valdez.  So, here's a little history of the spill and its consequences.  First of all, Exxon paid for the cleanup, estimated at about $2 Billion.  In addition to the cleanup cost, Exxon paid about $6 billion in damages.  No one feels bad for Exxon, they deserved to pay for their negligence.  And it was negligence.  The captain was sleeping off a bender below deck and the third mate was navigating without a sonar.  The Valdez's sonar had been inoperable for over a year.

Now for the unforeseen consequences.  After paying out somewhere around $8 billion for the accident, Exxon's lobbyists went to the federal government to request limits to the damages an oil company would be liable for in the case of future accidents.  A Republican Congress passed a bill limiting future oil company's liability to $75 million in the case of future accidents.  The bill was signed into law by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton.  The law also gave the federal government final say on drilling locations.  Starting to get a little queasy?

Now come forward to 2008.  British Petroleum requested permission to drill in 500 (that's 5 hundred) feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana.  Louisiana's state government approves the plan.  The federal government then denies the request.  So, BP moves to its second option, a deep water project, 5,000 (that's 5 thousand) feet underwater to be specific.  You know what happened next.  An explosion and massive leak.

Three days after the accident, Norwegian, Dutch, and British companies offered use of their skimmers and booms to aid BP in the cleanup efforts.  The federal government declined the offer, citing the Jones Act which requires all ships working in U.S. waters to be American made, American flagged, and manned by American crews.  The Jones Act was a concession to unions in 1920,  as a protection to American shipbuilding jobs.  The Jones Act has been waived many times, most recently in the days after Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana, to accept aid from other countries.

Within a week of the accident, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, requested permission from the federal government to allow the state to build sand barrier walls between barrier islands off the coast of his state.  His request was denied, citing the need for further study of the affects of the proposed sand barriers.  After repeatedly denied requests to the federal government to allow the barriers, on June 14, Jindal ordered the National Guard to start building the barriers.  

For the first time in his 16+ month reign, the president started to receive criticism from the mainstream media, and some pressure from Democrats.  His get tough response?  Let's suspend all offshore drilling projects for at least six months.  The consequence?  It will only cost the region about 14,000 high paying jobs and untold payroll, and coincidentally tax revenue.  Again coincidentally, the deepwater drilling equipment will move on to other projects, notably in Brazil, where Petrobas stands to make huge money with its deepwater wells.  Oh yeah, the Petrobas projects will receive billions of dollars in aid from U.S. Export-Import Bank either through loans or loan guarantees.  Turns a U.S. disaster into a giant windfall for the Brazilian state-owned company, huh?  Also a nice turn of profit for one of Petrobas' large investors, George Soros.  Soros, again coincidentally, contributed thousands personally, and who knows how much through his various foundations to the presidential campaign of Barack Hussein Obama.  Another coincidence, Soros' socialist foundations promote the view of America as an "institutionally oppressive nation."  Just as a coincidental link to other hot issues of our time, his foundations also campaign for open borders and social benefits and amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Since destroying the economy of the region was not tough enough to satisfy the president's critics, he took on British Petroleum.  From the first day of the crisis, BP did everything possible to stop the leak.  They also said from the first day they would pay all legitimate claims.  The president said he didn't need to talk to the CEO of BP.  He said that in his experience, CEO's will tell you what you want to hear.  But the president's not interested in talk,  he wants action.  So, 58 days after the accident, the president meets with BP officials.  For 45 minutes.  The president is a busy man after all.  Lunch with Joe Biden after all.  That and an arm-twisting scheduled with senators who oppose his cap and trade scam legislation.  Give the man credit though.  In 45 minutes, the president got a promise of a $20 billion escrow account to be set up by BP to pay for claims.  Oh yeah, the account will be managed by the federal government.  The same government that handled the TARP theft and Stimulus ripoff so well.  That loud KA-CHING you just heard?  That came from the adding machines of unions all over the country.  You gulf shrimpers and resort owners better not hold your breath waiting for your money.   

Feel better now?

President Obama finally found out whose a$$ to kick. Yours.  Again. 

Catch!!!!

Remember when you were a kid and your friend would throw a ball at you and then yell, "catch!!?"  His goal was usually to hit you in the face.  Hilarious, huh?  One of our football drills was similar.  The receiver would stand inside a circle of 6 other players.  The coach would yell out a clock point, 12, 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10.  The player at that point would throw the ball at the receiver as he spun to catch the ball.  The coach would yell out the points out faster and faster, until you had footballs flying from all directions.

Right now, average Americans are the receiver in the middle.  And the Obama administration is surrounding us at all points of the clock, down to the seconds.  First they fire a fast, hard one at us.  A 2000+ page health care takeover.  We turned,  but not quick enough and took that fastball to the face.  Good news is that Americans threw it back hard enough to get their attention for a couple of minutes anyway.

Now they are firing away from every direction.  Here comes cap and trade.  Look out, here comes immigration reform.  Pow, there is another western state land grab Zoom, there went FCC regulation of the internet Voting on a change in language for statehood ballots for Puerto Rico Didn't see that one coming There went representation in the House for D.C. Lobbed in legalizing carrying firearms in national parks, while zipping in voting rights for convicted felons Ouch At least it is called the Democracy Restoration Act, how bad could that be Student loans as part of health care How'd that one get by It will be a revenue stream to reduce the cost of health care, oh, ok How's it going to produce revenue when it doubles the amount of grants given (those don't have to paid back)And if you work for the government you don't have to pay back your loan at all Boy, we fumbled that one Federal regulation of all U.S. waters, right over our head Goldman Sachs executives being excoriated by the Senate.  Caught that one.  Good.  Let those evil thieving bankers have it.  Almost destroyed our economy with their shady home loans.  Wait a minute, Congress required them to make those risky loans.  They protected their investors by hedging their bets, didn't they?  If I had money invested in Goldman, I'd be adding them to my Christmas card list!  Dropped that one too.  Stop, we need a break!  Put down that banking regulation reform!  Look out, here comes Supreme Court nominee!!