Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2012, Energy, Junk Science, Liberalism | Tags: Inadequate Investigation, Solyndra Bankruptcy, Squandering Taxpayer Money
And these voices are from some of the members of the media most in the tank for Obama. Experienced investors were even more dubious.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Mitt Romney, Bain Capital's Record, Obama's Failed Investments
The Obama Campaign, noted for its brilliance, oddly seems to want to have a debate about which of the two candidates is more qualified to run the world’s largest economy. Obama’s economic policies vs.Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital? Um, you might want to rethink that.
Obama has made it clear that he really doesn’t understand the concept of profit. Liberals are often taught that profit is a bad thing that the rich sometimes do to line their disgusting pockets and pay for their yachts.
It is obvious that the administration is a little unclear about just how jobs are created. Today’s dismal jobs report makes that very obvious. Three and a half years later is really too late to keep blaming George W. Bush. At what point does the economy become Obama’s? When the recession is over? That happened in June of 2009, officially, from the agency that makes those decisions.
The Obama team does understand hiring, and have done a lot of it, creating new government departments and issuing new regulations; but they miss the detail about who pays for what. Government jobs are just another bill for the taxpayers to pay. From the president on down to the lowliest janitor, taxpayers pay their salaries and benefits. Government has no money of its own, a fact that liberals forget until they need more revenue, at which point they expect taxpayers to pony up without complaint funds which, when received, will become ‘government money.’
Bain Capital buys failing companies that they hope to revive, with private money from themselves and from investors. They look at the books carefully before they invest, and determine what is needed— money, better management, eliminating a sector that is losing money, a new business plan — and consider what they can successfully provide. If the business still fails, Bain and their investors will lose money, and have a harder time raising investment money the next time. Not every business can be made to succeed, but under Mitt Romney more than 70 percent of their businesses did succeed, many dramatically so. It’s a very good record.
The Obama Administration has picked businesses to fulfill their ideological interest in green energy. They have listened to promoters’ talk of capacity and potential, and had the benefit of having supporters or campaign bundlers in charge or as investors so there were some familiar faces.
They did not ‘invest” their own money, but invested billions of taxpayer funds in speculative businesses that had no track record nor no evidence of expertise or professionalism. When one of those businesses goes bankrupt, it is just another total loss for the taxpayers. The administration’s goals are policy driven — intended to fulfill green ideology, not return on investment driven. We’re still looking for one clean energy success. Just one.
Mitt Romney showed up at Solyndra’s empty building to make the point that when the administration invested in Solyndra, it wasn’t the administration that lost money, it was the taxpayers. The Obama campaign is trying to claim that Romney’s policies in Massachusetts were an economic failure because during his tenure, Massachusetts unemployment rate was 4.7%. Um, 5% unemployment is usually considered full employment.
Obama has big problems arising from his inexperience. He has made universally bad bets. Attempting to invest in “green” energy in spite of the abundant evidence from Spain and other European countries is folly. You would need extensive investigation from trained professionals in the technology and business prospects. Making investments with politically connected business ventures has led to charges of corruption and cronyism. The largest bets went to friends and contributors to Mr. Obama. The biggest losses went to the taxpayers.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Energy | Tags: Big Investment, No Jobs Yet, The Fisker Karma
Fisker Automotive announced today that the company’s revenue for the first quarter of 2012 has exceeded $100 million, and funding for the company has exceeded $1 billion. Pretty good for a company that has only one product, pretty, but questionable. In the last six months they have sold 1,ooo cars since starting deliveries last December.
That would add up to about five-and-a half cars sold a day. That’s really good for a car that retails for over $100,000. Fisker said they would make 15,000 Karmas in 2012. The recalled battery packs either are replaced or will be soon.
Fisker also announced earlier this year, the Atlantic, a less expensive model that is also extremely sexy looking. Very good looking cars, very expensive price. President Obama has invested $200 million in the company which they have already received. they also received federal funds to help purchase a closed General Motors plant in Delaware, Vice President Biden’s home state, where they said they would one day employ 2,000 auto workers to assemble the clean burning gas-electric car called the Atlantic. However they may never make cars in the U.S.
The Karma is a hybrid sports sedan that it assembles in Finland, and the company says it has started to sell in Europe and could soon be on sale in the Middle East. Rich oil sheiks should really like this one. Fisker appears, however, to be preparing for the day when they will no longer get government monies —”then obviously we are in a place where other options are open to us and have to be considered from a business perspective.” Well, yes, I can’t imagine a Romney administration continuing to plunk down taxpayer money for sexy playthings for the 1%.
The electric car is a puzzle that has not been solved. The GM Volt and the Nissan Leaf have fared poorly in the marketplace. For the electric car to be more than a plaything for very rich environmentalists, it has to succeed in the mass market.
The cars themselves are technology marvels; the availability of charging infrastructure can be extended as long as government is willing to foot the bill. Good looks and supposed environmental purity may be appealing to first time buyers. BUT. Electric car batteries are extremely expensive — they can account fo one third of the cost of the car — and they depreciate fast. New buyers may not pay much attention to the resale value, but for the mainstream market it’s important.
Lots of attention has gone to the roll-out of charging stations, but little attention has gone to investment in the smart-grid technology that would assure that the grid would support mass charging. If 5% of cars in LA County were to plug in at the same time, that could place a 750 megawatt load on California’s already strained grid — equal to two midsize power plants. There is no evidence that electric cars will have the slightest effect on CO2 in the atmosphere, and using our own abundant oil resources should bring the price of gasoline down significantly.
Engineers have said that they have investigated every element in the periodic table of elements, and that battery technology will require some breakthrough that is as yet completely unknown. Electric cars look very different and have all sorts of bells and whistles, but they don’t go significantly farther on a charge than the 1898 Roberts electric car which went a solid 40 miles on a single charge.
Why do people move? Packing up all your stuff and moving to a new location is not an easy task, and it’s not fun. Trust me, I’ve done it a lot. It’s one thing if you decide you can finally afford your dream house, and quite another when you downsize.
But think of the boundless courage that sent the Pilgrims across months of the North Atlantic in a leaky ship, or even the Puritans, a little later, in the Winthrop fleet. Taking all your earthly possessions and leaving everything you have known to strike out for the completely unknown is something else entirely. Americans continued to up and move — across mountains, looking for better farmland. They pushed into what is now Tennessee and Pennsylvania. And consider those who embarked on wagon trains to cross an unknown Indian territory bound for an unknown Oregon.
Fast forward to today. California, the ‘Golden State’ has, in the last two decades, lost four million more people than have come to California from other places. Lots of reasons. High taxes, if you don’t own a big chunk of Google or Apple, your chance of owning a home in the Bay Area is close to nil. Environmental extremism, with a goofy cap-and-trade law resulting in skyrocketing energy costs drives out jobs and business. Jerry Brown believes that green jobs will replace vanishing industry.
New York’s high taxes have made the Empire State a place to flee. In the past ten years, it has suffered an exodus of some 3.4 million New Yorkers, nearly a million more people than those who escaped East Germany for West Germany or West Berlin from 1949 to 1961 — an exodus that led the Communists to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961.
The outflow hasn’t stopped. New York State’s income loss for the state is $45.6 billion, according to the Tax Foundation. There is still plenty of immigration from abroad. It’s not surprising that most refugees have headed for sunny, income-tax free Florida. New Yorkers who leave an estate of more than 1 million get hit with a state death tax reaching 16%.
Governor Andrew Cuomo admits the problem, but hasn’t threatened New York’s status as “tax capital of the nation” with any substantive reforms.
I don’t know why it is so hard to understand, but people who live in high tax states are moving to states with no income tax. States with high energy costs and high taxes are losing businesses to low tax states with reasonable regulation. Some of the folks who are moving are the hated rich, and they seem to be rich because they run their businesses — which they are also moving — efficiently, and find it more profitable to do business in states where taxes are low, energy costs are low, and the states are preferably right-to-work.
Oddly enough, most of the states with a business-friendly climate seem to be run by Republican governors who go for balanced budgets and low taxes. Must be a coincidence.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Energy, Environment, National Security, Politics | Tags: "Beyond Natural Gas", American Energy Abundance, Greens Target Fossil Fuels
America has undergone a monumental change, and the major media are just waking up to it. The administration has apparently not heard. America is awash in fossil fuels. We have lots. All that bit about being dependent on foreign oil — nevermind. America has a boom in shale natural gas, and even Fortune magazine admitted it in a cover story.
So, naturally, as night follows day, the Sierra Club has announced a new battle plan called “Beyond Natural Gas.” This is a companion piece to “Beyond Coal,” in which the Sierra Club has been lobbying for rules to force the shutdown of America’s coal-fired power plants, the closure of coal mines, an end to the use of coal — which supplies just a little less than half the electricity in the country.
The theme was previously that coal was dirty, disgusting, dangerous, and we should rely instead on clean natural gas. Now that they have the closure of coal-fired power plants well underway, they are turning to eliminating natural gas. Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune announced their goal this month.”We’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.” They have rolled out a new website that says:
The natural gas industry is dirty, dangerous and running amok. The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears, and the less of it we burn, the better off we will be.
Sounds vaguely familiar. But this is no idle threat. The Sierra Club has deep pockets, with 1.4 million members, generous funding from liberal foundations, and the knowledge of just how to work the media and the politicians. The lobby has successfully helped to block new nuclear plants for more than 30 years, the “Beyond Oil” campaign helped to keep much of America off-limits to oil drilling, and its “Beyond Coal” campaign has all but shut down new coal plants, and is working on shutting down the old ones.
The Sierra Club was once a modest affair, founded by John Muir in 1892, to “make the mountains glad.”It is the oldest and arguably the most powerful environmental group in the nation. But it is no longer my father’s Sierra Club. It used to offer summer horse packing trips into the high Sierra, featured Ansell Adams’ beautiful photographs of Yosemite, and grew into photography books, animal books and all those nice things that make us love nature — that we can put on our coffee tables to show how ecologically with it we are. It has grown into a radical environmentalist organization of 1.4 million members with leadership positions held by activists with radical ties. It has managed to maintain a “mainstream” image, but its goals are hardly mainstream.
The radicalism of radical environmentalism is way out there, and makes little sense. They essentially oppose modern civilization, and all its peoples. They are attempting to shut down the power plants that power the wind farms and solar arrays that they, for now, favor. How long will wind energy be acceptable when Congress offer special waivers to the wind farms for the eagles they chop up? The green energy bubble is bursting everywhere. The Energy Tribune notes:
The EU’s ideologically-driven Energy Road Map prioritized ‘green’ renewable energy, diverting away from Russian natural gas dependency and harmonizing energy and environmental needs. The result: a devastatingly inept screw up that threatens continent-wide power outages even, as Die Welt recently reported, in Germany as early as next winter.
In short order, EU energy policies have created an unsustainable, publicly-subsidized, market-skewing ‘green’ energy bubble, eschewed a cheap fossil fuels policy and realistic alternatives to Russian gas imports. Together those failed policies have resulted in the double double-whammy of soaring of energy prices and, as is now being reported, diminishing European industrial competitiveness.
The Sierra Club gets no awards for consistency. They were all for natural gas when the price was $8 or more per million BTUs and the supply seemed to be limited. But gas prices have fallen to $2.50, and natural gas may come to dominate U.S. energy production. Wind and solar and biofuel power may never be competitive. If the subsidies are removed, there will be no profit in wind and solar anyway. It’s ordinary people who will benefit if there is a plentiful supply of cheap natural gas. It will benefit industry and the economy, and there are somewhere around 600,000 jobs in the natural gas industry alone, not to mention the jobs provided by a thriving economy fueled by cheap, abundant energy from natural gas and coal.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Energy, Politics | Tags: Campaign 2012, Chicago Style Graft, Solyndra & Friends
Filed under: Energy, Foreign Policy, Military, National Security, The United States | Tags: Armed Services Committee Says No, Military Green Energy Experiment, No Subsidies - No Fuel
The House Armed Services Committee’s proposed Pentagon Budget contains a provision that could bring a screeching halt to the U.S. military’s ambitious experimentation with biofuels. This is a very good thing.
Actually, it was probably the president’s ambitious idea. President Obama seems to be a true believer in anthropogenic global warming, whether from conviction on his own part or from conviction urged by the support of Big Green is unknown.
The Army has been developing alternative fuel technologies for ground vehicles, such as a high-tech steam engine that can run on a variety of fuels, including biofuels. The Army is contracting with Cyclone Power Technologies developer of the all-fuel, clean-tech Cyclone Engine, and Advent Power have been awarded a contract to develop a compact 10kW auxiliary power unit designed to increase operating efficiencies and decrease fuel usage of ground combat vehicles.
The committee sensibly voted to ban the Department of Defense from purchasing alternative fuels that cost more than traditional fossil fuels.
The Air Force has been test-flying a 50-50 blend of camelina and jet fuel in public displays of its high-performance Thunderbirds demonstration team. Camelina is a weedy plant in the mustard family.
The Navy has been testing a variety of biofuels in ships and aircraft, including its Blue Angels demonstration team. Along with camelina, the Navy’s tests include algae and waste grease. The Navy has spent a whole year in an all-out effort to launch a Green Strike Group by mid-June, in time to participate in the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) maritime exercise. Every member of the Green Strike Group, including both ships and aircraft, must run on green fuel.
When the Commander-in-Chief supports clean green fuels, the military salutes and says yes sir. But the world has changed, or rather our knowledge of the energy situation in the world has changed. America is awash in accessible fossil fuels. The Navy attended a “Sustainable Maritime Fuels Forum in Australia earlier this Spring, and toured local biofuel facilities. Yet Australia has become a fossil fuel powerhouse, with plentiful resources for hundreds of years.
Governments are picking winners and losers with their usual wisdom. One after another of President Obama’s “green investments” is going broke. Europe is backing away from wind and solar as fast as they can— even sunny countries like Spain. Both wind and solar rely on fossil fuel energy as the required 24/7 backup. The math doesn’t work. Without subsidies and mandates for fleets or utilities to purchase biofuels, there would be no market.
The House Armed Services Committee has it right. If all this alternative energy costs way more than our own traditional fossil fuel; subsidies and mandates from the government to attempt to force their bright ideas on an unwilling military, that don’t, as yet work, is folly. Our military has enough problems with ill-advised downsizing, presidential leaks, and failure to understand the military’s mission. They don’t need to be messing around with alternative fuels as well.
It is very odd that at the same time the military is being forced to downsize, and desperately needed replacement of needed equipment is cancelled, we are indulging in wispy ideas that small experiments in alternative fuels can be expanded to supply massive quantities of fuel to run the military. The math doesn’t work. Growing crops to compete with fossil fuel takes vast acreages of land needed for food; and is only conceivable if the price of fossil fuel is extraordinarily high. The president is trying to make that happen, but the people aren’t going to go along.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Energy, Junk Science, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear | Tags: "Clean" Energy, And Other Fantasies, Green Jobs
Obama hasn’t a lot to brag about in the way of economic recovery, so he’s trying his best to distract from the economy and turn your attention elsewhere. There is the War on Women, elevated from a matter of taxpayers not feeling that it is necessary for them to pay for women’s birth-control pills ($9. a month or less) into a vast right-wing conspiracy depriving all women of voting age of all rights to everything. The Saga of Julia was just another attempt to make the ‘war’ more believable, but that didn’t work either. How about all his ‘investments’ in clean energy?
Can President Obama name one clean energy success? In an ad campaign from President Obama, a man claims his job was saved by President Obama’s meddling in the auto industry. The man works for Johnson Controls, a company that received $299 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies from the stimulus and promised to build two factories in the United States. They built one in this country and will build the other one in Hungary. They will also be laying off workers in coming months.
A Congressional hearing on May 16 exposed more Obama Cronyism. BrightSource Energy received an even bigger loan guarantee from DOE than Solyndra did. They received $1.6 billion in April last year. Their CEO claimed that the Ivanpah project would create 1,400 jobs, which would amount to $1,43 million per job. The BrightSource chairman was nominated to be Commerce Secretary, and the company has become known as “politically connected.”
First Solar received $1.46 billion in loan guarantees, but announced last month that it will lay off another 2,000 employees. On May 7, they reported lst quarter losses of 8 cents a share, a 12% revenue decline. They are expected to join Solyndra in bankruptcy soon.
Willard & Kelsey Solar Group has gone bankrupt, but claimed they only received money from Ohio taxpayers, but they actually got $6 million from Obama’s green energy loan program as well.
A123 Systems, an electric car battery maker who shipped faulty batteries to Fisker Automotive, has seen its stock fall to $1 and is filing for bankruptcy. They got $279 million from taxpayers
Solar Trust for America declared bankruptcy on Monday after receiving a conditional commitment of $2.3 billion in loan guarantees from the Dept. of Energy. Secretary Chu hailed it as “the largest amount ever offered to a solar project.” But they never got the money.
Abound Solar announced on 2/29/12 that they were laying off 280 workers, a 70% reduction in their workforce. They received 400 million from DOE’s loan program.
Ener1, a lithium-ion battery maker filed for bankruptcy. Ener1 owns EnerDel which received $118.5 million from Obama’s “green” energy stimulus plan.
Amonix, a solar company touted by President Obama in 2010 has laid off 200 of its 300 employees. They got $5.9 million.
These energy companies were supported by Obama’s energy stimulus, and are failing or have already filed for bankruptcy. There are lots more stories , and more will come out over time. It will probably be buried on the back pages of compliant media, who hope you won’t notice.
- Evergreen Solar
- SpectraWatt
- Solyndra (received $535 million)
- Beacon Power (received $43 million)
- AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
- Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
- SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
- First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
- Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
- Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
- Amonix (received 5.9 million)
- The National Renewable Energy Lab
- Fisker Automotive
- Abound Solar (received $400 million)
- Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
- Solar Trust of America
- A123 Systems (received $279 million)
- Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
- Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
There are also loans to foreign clean energy companies. It is estimated that 80% of these loans went to President Obama’s campaign donors. The President claims that he has created 2.7 million clean energy jobs. But it looks as if a remarkable number of those were considerably more temporary than expected.
ADDENDUM: More of Obama’s unfortunate “investments.”
- Raser Technologies ($33 million grant) bankrupt.
- ECOTotality $126.2 million for electric car chargers ($45 million in losses) insider trading investigation.
According to Peter Schweizer, 71% of Obama Energy Department grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democrat party. Collectively, they raised $457,834 for the Obama Campaign, and were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 Billion.” The Energy Department’s Inspector General has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” according to Politico, related to the department’s green energy programs.
Filed under: Energy, Environment, Freedom, Humor, Politics | Tags: Real Problems, Small Warnings, The Eco-Police
If you watched the SuperBowl, you may have seen this, but it’s too good to allow it to fade in the memory. Sometimes serious subjects are best dealt with mockery and humor. We have a government intent upon regulating. The old quote from World War II is attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) and is a reminder…
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
You are recycling and using twisty lightbulbs aren’t you?
Like this:
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Energy, Junk Science, National Security, Progressivism | Tags: "Beyond Gas", Radical Environmental Organizations, The Sierra Club
You are familiar with the Sierra Club, aren’t you? They have those lovely books and calendars with famed photographer Ansel Adams pictures of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. All the bookstores have them. The Sierra Club was founded as an environmental organization devoted to protecting Yosemite, the Sierras and the Redwoods. Did you know that it has become one of the most radical environmental organizations in the world?
They have just declared war on the natural-gas industry. The Sierra Club already has their “Beyond Coal” campaign, and “Beyond Oil,” and they are renaming their efforts against natural gas as “Beyond Gas”. Clever.
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said “As we push to retire coal plants, we’re going to work to make sure we’re not simultaneously switching to natural-gas infrastructure. And we’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.
Perhaps you have read about the new discoveries of massive supplies of energy found in shale deposits, and thought gratefully about the possibility that your energy bills would go down. Not so fast. The environmental organizations and the Left want the country to depend on “clean energy,” which is, so far, embodied entirely in wind farms and solar arrays. It is hard to understand their motivation: they are zealots, they are dimwits, they are useful idiots?
•In 2011, the United States produced 23.0 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the world’s largest natural gas producer.• In 2011 the U.S. produced 5.67 million barrels of oil, making it the world’s third largest oil producer. •The U.S. has 261 billion tons of coal in its proved coal reserves. •These are the world’s largest coal reserves and over 27 percent of the world’s proved coal reserves. •Proved conventional oil reserves worldwide more than doubled from 642 billion barrels in 1980 to more than 1.3 trillion barrels in 2009. •The U.S. has 486 billion tons of coal in its demonstrated reserve base, enough domestic coal to use for the next 485 years at current rates of consumption. •This doesn’t include Alaska’s coal resources, which according to government estimates, are larger than those in the lower 48 states. • The world could hold more than 700 quadrillion (700,000 trillion ) cubic feet of methane hydrates — more energy than all other fossil fuels.
♦In 2011, wind power produced 1.2 percent of the energy used in the United States. ♦ In 2011, solar power produced 0.1 percent of the energy used in the United States. ♦ In 2011, hydroelectric power contributed 3.3 percent of the energy used in the United States and 7.9 percent of the electricity. ♦ There are 104 nuclear reactors in the U.S. and construction for all began prior to 1974.
Since 1970, the six “criteria pollutants” have declined by 63 percent, even though the generation of electricity from coal-fired plants has increased by over 180 percent.
The subsidies for wind energy are running out as they were part of Obama’s stimulus plan. If they are not renewed, the wind industry probably cannot survive on its own without governmental force. Aside from all the scandal and crony capitalism in the “renewables” field, wind and solar combined cannot produce the energy we need to keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer. People die from the cold. Germany now has 15% fuel poverty — people cannot pay for the energy they need. Britain has had huge problems with fuel poverty— it wasn’t long ago that British seniors were buying up used books at jumble sales to burn for fuel. And the earth is cooling instead of warming.
The zealots apparently believe that if they just give enough money to their well-connected friends who are involved with “renewable energy” that the industry will somehow take off. If they just ban enough of our cheap, abundant resources, then people will be forced to use “renewable energy,” and if they switch us all to electric cars — oh wait, the electricity for our electric cars is produced by coal-fired or gas-fired plants. Well, they’ll force us all onto light rail and high-speed trains — oh wait… You will notice if you are paying close attention that the term “renewable energy” has dropped from favor, and been replaced by “clean energy”— the “renewable” bit only worked when we were running out of fossil fuels. Now that they are truly plentiful, they have to come up with another tactic. Just imagine if we eliminated coal and eliminated natural gas! Basic, elementary common sense and logic fail. Besides that, remember than wind and solar require 24/7 backup from regular coal or gas-fired power plants. How is this possibly supposed to work? Are they zealots, dimwits or useful idiots?
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Taxes | Tags: Liberal Hypocrisy, Obama Administration, Political Irony
• Obama has claimed credit for advocating and signing the Lilly Ledbetter Law, which mandates equal pay for women when they are doing the same job as a man: Women in the White House are paid 18% less than the men.
• The federal government has been fighting a “War on Poverty” since the 1960s: The result is that today one in six Americans live in poverty—the highest rate for a generation.
• Obama says that we must reduce our dependence on foreign oil: yet shutting down drilling in the Gulf, banning drilling on both coasts and in Alaska makes us more dependent on foreign oil.
• Obama says he wants to bring down the price of gas at the pump: yet he is trying to get a standard deduction for the oil companies that is available to all manufacturers eliminated as a “subsidy,” which will raise the price of gas.
• Obama claims that he wants to reduce partisanship in D.C. : then he resolutely refuses to meet with Republicans, and insults Republicans in public.
• The president has said several times that he favors redistribution in income: the redistribution he practices delivers taxpayer money to union supporters, campaign bundlers, and environmentalist supporters.
• Obama praised the troops coming home from Iraq, and invited soldiers and their wives to dinner at the White House to say thanks: as he is attempting to cut military pay and raise the cost of military healthcare.
• “I believe the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history” Obama said: yet he is resolutely increasing the size of government, government control and government regulation.
• Obama claims the gap between those at the very top, the 1%, and everybody else is growing wider and wider: the top 1% have a smaller share of total household income than they did in 1920, and the bottom 40% pay no taxes.
• Obama blames “the rich” for not paying their “fair share”of revenue: the rich did not create our debt, the government did with bad ideas, poor oversight, misguided laws and over-regulation.
• The president excoriates Republicans for being “against regulation”and thus wanting polluted air and water, and sick kids: businesses of both parties, in business organizations, corporate CEOs and small businesses have publicly told government that over-regulation and micro-management area problem that is keeping business from hiring.
• The Bush tax cuts meant 52 straight weeks of job growth, 8 million new jobs over 6 years. The unemployment rate averaged 5.3%, after-tax income per person rose more than 11%, and real GDP from 2000-2007 grew $2.1 trillion or 17%. The Bush recession ended in June of 2009. The Recession became Obama’s to deal with, but he has continued to blame it on Bush, and never accepted any responsibility except for admitting that there weren’t as many shovel-ready jobs as he thought.
• Obama has promised thousands of “green jobs”in solar cell factories, wind farms, insulating homes: Most of the jobs turned out to be overseas, nonexistent, only ‘green’ by redefinition, or simply temporary. When thousands of jobs were promised, and were ‘shovel ready’ (Keystone XL) Obama refused to authorize them. Canada will sell oil to China.
• CO2, carbon dioxide, is a colorless, harmless gas that we breathe out, and plants take in as natural fertilizer, and release oxygen. CO2 is one of the building blocks of life, without it there would be no life: Obama’s EPA is attempting to regulate it as pollution, and eliminate it as a ‘greenhouse gas,’ even though the amount in the atmosphere is unusually low.To eliminate CO2 would be to eliminate life itself.
• The Occupy Wall Street people, to protest the lack of economic opportunity and jobs, demanded that everyone skip work to protest in the streets, thereby damaging the economic opportunity they claim to want.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Education, Energy, Environment, Health Care | Tags: Capitalism and Freedom, Competition Creates Success, The Free Market
Once upon a time, in the first days of November of 2010, all that was right about the world was shattered by one of the biggest electoral swings in congressional history. Democrats are still trying to grasp what has happened.
Conservatives don’t particularly dislike Liberals, but they detest their ideas. Liberals detest Conservatives and don’t understand their ideas at all.
Conservatives believe that reality suggests we are all flawed human beings, who must be set free to learn from our mistakes and grasp for opportunity. We make a lot of mistakes, but we turn around and correct them, muddle through and do amazing things in the process. The great innovations usually originate in a single mind, not in a committee.
A transaction in the free market does not happen unless both parties find it to their advantage. Competition keeps prices low and fosters innovation. Competition increases the quality and choices of products and services. Competition is hard work for businesses, and they have to fight for customers. They have to keep track of what their competitors are doing, and find ways to innovate. Because it is hard, they lobby lawmakers to constrain the free markets in which they originally achieved success.
The most effective way to control capitalists is through competition, not regulation. Liberals are sure that rapacious big business will cheat customers, abuse workers and charge too much if uncontrolled. In the free market, who wants to be a customer of such a business? They’ll go where they’re treated well.
Liberals offer to control the forces let loose in the free market. But control is seldom evenly applied. Those in control will, because they are human, favor one business over another. Or they will favor the unions, or pick winners and losers, and subsidize a favored business while ignoring the competition.
Liberals are suspicious of competition. They have tried hard to stamp it out in the schools, eliminating winners and losers. Everybody gets a medal and nobody is a winner— lording it over the others. But if there are no winners, there is no point in trying to be best. It is failures that make us work harder to succeed.
President Obama said that “the free market is the greatest force of economic progress in human history,” but he didn’t mean it. No president in history has worked so hard to expand state control over health care, energy, the environment, the financial sector, education, and American business. If the free market fits into Obama’s vision of America, he hasn’t explained how.
Obama assumes that progress begins with the administration of government money to jump-start a business. Government investment will somehow foster innovation and create jobs and prosperity. “Government money” is not taken as seriously as is the money from the pockets of individual investors. If you run short, there is usually more government money to be had, because failure would make the giver of government money look bad. Individual investors do more due diligence in the first place, and monitor operations more carefully— it’s their money at stake.
Nobody ever said that the free market is easy. It’s hard, but it works. We have evidence over and over— from history, from developing countries, from our own successes and failures.
We are fallible human beings, yet we rise to opportunity. One fallible human being’s success opens doorways for many more. The United States of America has been a beacon to the world in demonstrating the freedom and possibilities of the free market, and more and more nations are growing and prospering because of it.
How very odd that in” the worst recession since the Great Depression,” we should forget the simple rules that made us Americans.
