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Diger
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Warmskin
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 Posted - 05/03/2011 : 04:43:31 AM
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Thanks for the video, Diger. It's both funny and sad to listen to this excellent expose on CFL bulbs. I love Lew Rockwell like a brother. My mind and his point in the same direction. He is pure Jeffersonian, thus he's the ultimate American.
I'm wondering what we'll do with all those millions and billions of CFLs in the county dumps across our nation. That mercury is going to build up, and I don't mean the car, Mercury. So, the greenies can't see into the future so well. Typical of a lot of green ideas -- just address one problem, but not the fallout of doing that one thing like CFLs. Where will they be when our dumps become too toxic (from CFLs) for our health?
Break a normal light bulb - not a problem. Just sweep up the broken glass. Drop a CFL, and you have a toxic problem in your home. I wonder if one should call out a hazmat team to clean up that mess. It must be very expensive to call them out to your home. $$$$$$$ 
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto." Thomas Jefferson
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Country: USA
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balataf
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Posted - 05/24/2011 : 02:56:07 AM
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Government Motors quarterly report showed a nominal profit.
The standard range of price ratio of a share to the company's earning power is usually in the range of about 15.00/1. Basicly to justify GM's level, that would be earning about $2.12.
But currently GM's is a miniscule, tiny, pitiful, ratio of 00.28.
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Edited by - balataf on 05/24/2011 03:00:47 AM |
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Country: USA
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balataf
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Posted - 07/05/2011 : 6:47:58 PM
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Driving to Delusionville
Obama’s former auto czar is in deep denial about the government’s failed bailout
Shikha Dalmia | July 5, 2011, Reason Mag.
The former Obama auto czar, Ron Bloom, was on Capitol Hill last week telling Congress what a grand bargain the auto bailout has turned out to be for taxpayers. (His testimony should be on the Syfy channel.) But much was missing from his story that he might have heard if he had hung around for the next panel. (Full disclosure: I was on it.)
The story that Bloom told, and that President Obama is making the signature theme of his re-election campaign, goes like this: If the administration hadn’t infused $80 billion into GM and Chrysler, the companies would have hemorrhaged to death. Financial markets, themselves in panic mode, would not have given them the funds necessary to restructure through Chapter 11 bankruptcies and stay in business. Hence, they would have had to shut their factories, sell their assets for scrap and liquidate. And this would have bankrupted auto parts suppliers, shut down dealerships, laid off 1 million workers—whose pension and unemployment benefits taxpayers would have had to foot -- and devastated entire communities. GM and Chrysler may never repay taxpayers in full. But any loss is less than the cost of this economic Armageddon.
This narrative would make for a great horror movie. But any resemblance to real world events is purely coincidental.
For starters, many experts suspect that at least GM could have obtained private bankruptcy financing if it had presented a credible restructuring plan addressing the cause of its malaise: the uncompetitive costs of its unionized work force. If it couldn’t, then the government could have offered guarantees to private lenders for the amounts they loaned, which likely would have been smaller than the bailout.
But the administration took matters in its own hands, using taxpayer dollars to commandeer the bankruptcy process to protect key constituencies, while giving short shrift to others. It gave Chrysler’s secured creditors, who would have had priority in a normal bankruptcy, 29 cents on the dollar. Chrysler’s unions, on the other hand, got more than 40 cents, even though they are equivalent to low-priority lenders. This made a mockery of longstanding bankruptcy law, something that will make credit markets wary of lending to political sacred cows in the future.
The administration favored union workers not only over creditors, but also other workers. All United Auto Workers retirees at Delphi, GM’s auto supplier, got 100 percent of their pension and retirement benefits. But 21,000 nonunion, salaried employees lost up to 70 percent of their pensions, and all of their life and health insurance. The Treasury could have covered 93 percent of the benefits of all employees for the same funds it spent on full union benefits, testified Bruce Gump, a representative of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association.
Even for GM and Chrysler, the bailout constitutes a missed opportunity, not a second chance. They didn’t get nearly the kind of relief from labor costs that they would have in a normal bankruptcy. Not only are they on the hook for most of their legacy costs, they still pay union workers $58 per hour including benefits. This wouldn’t be so bad if Toyota, whose costs are $56 per hour, were setting the industry’s cost curve. But that’s no longer the case. Hyundai and Kia, with $40-an-hour costs, do that. The bailout prepared GM and Chrysler to compete with the industry leaders of yesterday, not tomorrow.
Absent the bailout, these companies would have survived, but they would have looked very different. They might have merged into one, pooling resources and slashing excess capacity from the industry. Alternatively, entrepreneurs might have purchased their more viable brands and run them as independent companies, breaking up the industry’s big vertically-integrated players into myriad smaller ones. Either way, the labor and capital squeezed out from the industry would have been more productively deployed elsewhere. History offers examples: A bankruptcy-triggered reorganization of the steel industry three decades ago led to an 18 percent increase in employment in the plastic industry, which replaced steel for some uses. The auto bailout has entrenched the status quo, strangling new possibilities.
Worse, it has unleashed a systemic moral hazard. GM had accrued $70 billion in losses in the two years before the bailout and debt 24 times its market capitalization. By contrast, Ford had eliminated money-losing brands and mortgaged all its assets -- including its logo, the Blue Oval—raising funds to weather the economic downturn. By bailing out GM, the administration rewarded its recklessness and penalized Ford’s prudence. Every company that feels it is too big to fail, or is a national icon or major regional employer, will wonder whether it makes more business sense to save for a rainy day or simply hold out for taxpayer assistance. And just as the Wall Street bailout became a justification for the auto bailout, the auto bailout will become a justification for the bailout of future reckless players.
The administration is casting GM as an Atlas-like figure carrying the economy on its shoulders. In fact, the real Atlases are the taxpayers and creditors carrying GM—and they got screwed by the bailout.
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Country: USA
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balataf
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Posted - 07/17/2011 : 11:30:43 AM
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The coming clean tech crash
By Dan Mitchell
Forget about the tech bubble. The clean tech industry has been inflating for years, thanks to generous government financing. But that's about to change.
So clean, so expensive.
FORTUNE -- As federal stimulus spending dries up, the clean tech industry faces a "funding cliff" at the end of this year that could jeopardize one of the few economic sectors that is producing job growth, according to a report issued by the Brookings Institution.
Such is the peril when an industry is supported by fickle government financing (as opposed to the more reliable, if far less needed, government financing enjoyed by industries like agriculture and petroleum).
The report, "Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment," is an attempt to address the fact that there is an "absence of standard definitions and data" about the "clean economy."
For example, what are "green jobs," anyway? It's not so easy to define. The report distinguishes between the "clean economy" and the "clean tech industry." The former "employs more workers than the fossil fuel industry," which might sound surprising until you learn that the "clean economy" includes people working in mature industries like mass transit and manufacturing. The clean economy grew more slowly than the national economy between 2003 and 2007, but the clean-tech sector – which includes makers of solar panels, fuel cells, biofuels and the like – saw "explosive growth" and outdid the economy as a whole during the recession.
But whether that growth can continue is an open question. It largely depends on government – and with states going broke and federal stimulus funds going away, it seems almost inevitable that there will be a clean-tech crash. Devon Swezey of The Breakthough Institute put it succinctly when he recently made the hard prediction that a crash is coming. "Clean energy is still much more expensive and less reliable than coal or gas," he wrote, "and in an era of heightened budget austerity the subsidies required to make clean energy artificially cheaper are becoming unsustainable."
When high prices put a heavy lid on demand for socially desirable products, subsidy has to be long-term and reliable – in place until the industry can sustain itself, and finance its growth privately. Semi-regular infusions of cash tend to create booms and busts. Right now, we're headed for a bust.
A particularly dispiriting outcome of all this is that in the absence of a firm, long-term commitment from the federal government, many U.S. clean tech firms are looking to China for investment. Meanwhile, we're arguing over light bulbs.
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These factors are equally true in the other democracies, especially where they are desperately struggling to avoid financial disaster from the costs of the collapsing welfare state.
On a different note, I was very impressed by a recent article. (Sorry, I lost the reference.) The giant firms of past generations employed hundreds of thousands of ;oer-skilled people in such fields as railroads, steelmaking, shipbuilding, and mines.
For one example, the lines that are today's Union Pacific, running from Vancouver to San Diego, to Omaha, to Texas. Begfore World War Two, this required 20,000 switchmen, sitting out along the miles of tracks in little switch towers. Today's switching for all that is handled completely by about 25 men who sit in a room in Allentown Pa.
Meanwhile, todays new giants, like Google, Yahoo, E=basy, etc. could have all their employes "sit in Madison Square Garden together." Not only are they so few, but they are mostly very high-skilled, like software engineers.
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Edited by - balataf on 07/17/2011 11:36:25 AM |
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balataf
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Posted - 08/18/2011 : 02:29:10 AM
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Green Job Scam Revealed By Walter Russell Mead
The “green jobs” idea — that we could vitalize the economy by spending tons of money on promoting ‘green energy’ and other green ideas — is running into trouble. Prominent (and much subsidized) solar manufacturer Evergreen Solar is filing for bankruptcy, citing lower prices and increased competition from a familiar source:
“When margins are getting squeezed, pennies count,” says Pavel Molchanov, a solar analyst with Raymond James Financial. “Quite frankly, as a solar manufacturer, it is a lot better to pay workers $1 an hour in China than workers $15 an hour in Massachusetts.”
Those who tout green jobs as the engine of America’s economic growth miss a fundamental point: there’s no substantive difference between green manufacturing and any other type. Manufacturers have been fleeing the high labor costs and regulation of the United States for cheaper labor in China for years — there’s no reason they won’t do the same simply because a product is “green.” While there is certainly a market for solar panels and other green products, that market follows the same economic rules as everything else. Green jobs are not a solution to America’s economic woes.
Meanwhile from Seattle comes the story that a highly promoted weatherization program (another ‘green jobs’ pipe dream) has gone belly up. Seattle won a $20 million grant from the feds to hire 2,000 locals at “living wages” to upgrade the insulation on 2,000 low income homes. Jobs, free insulation, and a reduced carbon footprint for Seattle. In green circles, this passes for policy brilliance; the Mayor of Seattle joined Vice President Biden last year to get the grant off to a good start. “A triple win,” said the Veep.
And how did this clever little piece of green urban policy work out? Not so great, according to an article by Vanessa Ho in SeattlePI.
But more than a year later, Seattle’s numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program. Many of the jobs are administrative, and not the entry-level pathways once dreamed of for low-income workers. Some people wonder if the original goals are now achievable.
“The jobs haven’t surfaced yet,” said Michael Woo, director of Got Green, a Seattle community organizing group focused on the environment and social justice.
“It’s been a very slow and tedious process. It’s almost painful, the number of meetings people have gone to. Those are the people who got jobs. There’s been no real investment for the broader public.”
But at least all those low income homeowners got insulation upgrades, right?
Well, not exactly, writes Ms Ho, but the Washington Athletic Club got some work done, as did some community hospitals. So: $20 million dollars gets us some paper shuffling bureaucratic jobs for a handful of meeting addicted hactivists and some subsidized building work for a health club.
The “Green Jobs” initiative was a signature policy for the Obama administration and it makes perfect sense on paper: it unifies all the Democratic interest groups, bridging the ideological divide between ‘growth Dems’ and ‘green Dems’. It’s got only two tiny little flaws: first, that it doesn’t work in the real world, and second that the wheels may be coming off the wagon before the 2012 election has safely passed.
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Country: USA
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Warmskin
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Posted - 08/18/2011 : 02:50:35 AM
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The economics of the green cars is that they will be so expensive, that the lower financial echelons of people will not be able to afford them, and thus will continue to drive their old clunkers that get lousy gas mileage.
The one thing that will be green is that these poorer people will not be able to drive very much. However, that is not at all a desirable result. People should be free to drive where they want, in accordance to their ability to pay for the wear and tear on their car.
I fear that in the future, the politicians will force car companies to install some device that will report how many miles you drove to the gov't. Thus yet another freedom will be lost, but the greenies will think that is wonderful. They won't give a thought to personal freedoms that should be the hallmark of American life.
Think in terms of 2111. What will be the norm of that year. You can bet that transportation will be quite unfree in terms of where you can go and when you can travel from point A to B.
I would think that a statue of Al Gore will be in front of the building which houses the Department of Automobile Travel. Of course, many other departments will exist in 2111.
The schools in 2111 will teach the children that Americans in 2011 were horrible and ignorant people who were arrogant enough to drive where they wanted in a vehicle of their choice, but that will be pure propaganda on the part of the school systems and the Dept. of "Education."
Could well be that the UN will force all nations to have only one type of car -- golf carts - one per family. Naturally, we'd have to develop a lot more electricity by then. Golf carts are not self-propelled for very long. Not even the Enegizer Bunny can work that hard. Poor little guy will die of heat exhaustion, and PETA will start to battle against electric cars. Okay, that last sentence was more allegorical than real, but you folks get the point.
"Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his (and her) conduct."
Thomas Jefferson
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Country: USA
| Posts: 1964 |
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JimmieMac51
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Posted - 08/18/2011 : 2:00:20 PM
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I read today that some states are already looking into taxing you for the miles you drive. This is because, not only a few more electric and hybrid vehicles, but also because people are driving less because of the high gas prices. A device can track you by GPS.
Jimmie
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Country: USA
| Posts: 188 |
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Warmskin
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Posted - 08/19/2011 : 04:58:01 AM
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Hmm, I wonder if you could hire a technician to remove the GPS and then you could keep the durned thing at home. That might be illegal, in which case, I would not recommend that. Or, you could do like those whackos and put tin foil all over your car so the GPS would be rendered useless, but again that might be illegal and silly looking, so I would not recommend not doing that. I would recommend voting out all the legislators who voted for the GPSs to be put in the cars.
Only gov't could screw up the relationship between mankind and his car.
"Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his (and her) conduct."
Thomas Jefferson
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Country: USA
| Posts: 1964 |
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balataf
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Posted - 08/20/2011 : 12:32:54 PM
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"Green Jobs, Red Faces" from Investor's Business Daily
Posted 08/19/2011
Industrial Policy: The fact that President Obama's "green jobs" campaign has been an enormously expensive failure is now so glaringly obvious even the New York Times can't ignore it any longer.
In a surprisingly candid article headlined "Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises," the Times' Aaron Glantz reports that "federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show," and that Obama's goal of 5 million new green jobs in 10 years is a "pipe dream."
Glantz notes, for example, that Obama's much-heralded weatherization program "never caught on."
California still has spent only about half its $186 million in federal weatherization funds, creating a grand total of 538 full-time jobs. He also points to the $59 million spent in California on green job training that resulted in just 719 placements.
Glantz isn't the first mainstream reporter to discover this. Earlier in the year, Politico reported that "nearly three years into Obama's presidency, the White House can't point to much solid evidence that significant numbers of Americans are scoring the green jobs the president has been touting."
And even some Democrats are growing weary of the administration's relentless green jobs blather.
"Of course, we want to be part of the new innovation and green jobs," Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said recently. "But you know, the green jobs have been about a lot of talk, and not a lot has been happening on that."
For anyone who's followed this story, these failures shouldn't be news. The weatherization program, for example, has long been plagued by scandal and needless red tape.
And as we've pointed out in this space, the landscape is increasingly littered with failed "green" companies unable to survive in the marketplace even with huge government subsidies.
But the Obama administration still has its head buried under a pile of solar panels, with the president endlessly touring "clean" factories, pushing electric cars consumers don't want and talking about politically correct "jobs of the future."
Then again, if the Times can see the light, there might still be hope for Obama.
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Country: USA
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balataf
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Posted - 08/31/2011 : 2:16:42 PM
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'Green jobs' promise something for nothing By: David Freddoso
08/30/11
.Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada caused the central economic planners' heads to explode in March 2009 when he released a study showing every "green job" the Spanish government was creating with its regime of open-ended subsidies was simultaneously devouring enough resources to create 2.2 jobs in Spain's private sector.
"Green jobs," the professor concluded, were economic losers, destroyers of wealth and productivity. What's worse, 70 percent of them were short-lived installation gigs, not long-term jobs at all.
Spain's socialist government, which had presented "green jobs" as the way out of the country's economic problems (perhaps that sounds familiar), reacted to Calzada's study with fury. The Industrial Ministry took the incredible step of trying to make his university disavow his work. But behind the scenes, the same government officials were quietly coming to the same conclusions as Calzada.
In the United States, Calzada's study upset the wind power lobby, environmentalists, and the Obama administration. American liberals tried to argue that Calzada had erred by doing what is obvious to everyone outside of government who uses money -- he accounted for the opportunity costs of government spending.
Imagine that - an economist who doesn't assume that you can get something for nothing.
Since then, Calzada has been proven right in nearly every metric. Spain has a serious sovereign debt crisis -- not helped much by its commitment of 11 percent of Spain's gross domestic product to subsidize renewable energy. The renewables program will cost the Spanish crown four times what it had originally budgeted.
The government is trying to wiggle out of its already-promised subsidies, which could generate legal problems or else a banking collapse. Unemployment in Spain exceeds 20 percent. Spanish industry is paying inflated prices for energy -- causing greater inefficiency and more job losses.
Speaking with me this week, Calzada expressed amazement that in the wake of his own nation's failure in this area, a few progressive members of Congress still want to drive the United States off the same cliff.
"How is it possible, having the example of Spain. ... Why would you like to repeat the same story?" It's a great question.
In reality, Calzada wasn't nearly bearish enough on green energy welfare. His study did not explore the consequences of the artificially high electricity prices the Spanish scheme has created for industry and residential customers.
He didn't try to measure the economic damage caused by misallocation of private investment. After all, thousands of Spaniards withdrew good investments and borrowed against home equity to install potentially worthless solar panels -- what if their capital had been invested to create real jobs instead of simply chasing government subsidies?
The central planners in Spain, much like President Obama with his stimulus package, assumed that they could get something -- a lot of really good jobs -- for nothing. They were wrong. People who think that way are always wrong.
David Freddoso at the Washington Examiner:
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blavan
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Posted - 09/01/2011 : 09:29:58 AM
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Now hold on there. The edict to ban traditional lightbulbs was set in stone by the powers that were before the current administration. Let us get the facts right, like noting that those tea party rallies showing thousands of people in attendance at an events that were filmed in a different season of the year. I am not one who typically gets into political discussions, but can we just be accurate here?
Being Naked and Being Real
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jbsnc
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Posted - 09/01/2011 : 12:15:20 PM
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blavan, "The edict to ban traditional lightbulbs was set in stone by the powers that were before the current administration."
I failed to find any reference to the current administration creating the CFL movement Can you show me?
"like noting that those tea party rallies showing thousands of people in attendance at an events that were filmed in a different season of the year."
Did they claim it was the same event?
Happy Nuding.
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Country: USA
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Warmskin
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Posted - 09/01/2011 : 9:17:46 PM
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Congress must pass laws, and not a president. Many people keep looking to the president as the source of new laws. I can't blame them, though because of our unenlightened school system.
A president can veto bills like the CFL bills, but if the bill regarding CFL bulbs were not vetoed, then Bush may be held in contempt for his failure to veto.
By the way, my oldest CFL burned out the other day. I'm not sure how to get rid of it, but I did put the durned thing into a plastic bag, and I placed that in another plastic bag along with some old paper towels for cushioning, and so on. I may put a sign inside the outside transparent bag stating that there is a CFL inside. Maybe there is a federal form I'm supposed to fill out in triplicate, and am required to have it notarized. Not really sure.
At some time in the future, there will be 10s of millions of discarded CFLs. What will gov't do about all these toxic bulbs? Bury them in a desert and make sure no one builds a home within 100 miles of the site?
To me, LEDs are a better answer, even without studying up on them. As far as I know, they are not hazardous when you eventually throw them away. Until then, bring back the incadescent light bulbs.
On an aside, seems everything Edison invented is no longer being used -- records, lights, analogue movie cameras using using film, DC power to homes, record players. Odd to see him becoming passe.
Another thing to do is install more (can't think of the term - mental blankout) skylights (?). They bring plenty of light in during the day, where it otherwise would be dark in parts of the house. They are not that expensive. Of course, at night, they're useless, unless you live under a powerful street light, and there is a full moon out.
"I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind."
Thomas Jefferson
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Country: USA
| Posts: 1964 |
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balataf
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Posted - 09/02/2011 : 11:29:59 AM
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Edison illustrates it well, changing circumstances can make him and other Founding Fathers less relevant on problems that did not exist when they were around. Warmskin has made a very good point!
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"Green" projects
