A Big, Fat Blast of Hot Air

In his article in the The Weekly Standard,
"A Big, Fat Failure: Obama's budget makes a bad situation worse." (04/06/2009, Volume 014, Issue 28), Several of Matthew Continetti's assertions ring especially hollow and unsupported:

The president's vast new commitments in the areas of health care, energy, and education have already spooked small-government Republicans and the foreign investors who help finance America's public debt.

Who are the "small-government Republicans?" I don't think a “small-government Republican” has been detected at-large in the last forty years. Government and the debt associated with irresponsible spending grew under the last four Republican administrations. What does “spooked” mean? Do well-heeled Republicans fear their tax burden might actually increase to a level sufficient to cover the cost of the defense spending, farm-subsidies, Medicare prescription drugs (welfare for the pharmaceutical industry), nuclear-power subsidies, and Wall Street write-offs that “small-government Republicans” consistently insist upon?

And who are the foreign investors who are spooked enough to actually flee American treasury bonds? And would they not be equally spooked if we did nothing to stimulate the economy, educate our children, provide medical care to more than a privileged minority, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, or take steps to curb the environmental impact of global warming?

Nor will Obama's resistance to free trade encourage economic recovery.

How so? I have yet to see a truly compelling argument for the un-regulated free trade that is so heartily endorsed by the business community. Free trade has done nothing for our economy but boost profits for corporations who, unable to competently manage their businesses on a level U.S. playing field, seek to exploit underpaid oversees workers in factories that offer little or no environmental protection; and little or no worker safety, healthcare and pension provisions. (Provisions hard fought by our unions who Republicans also find burdensome, and reliably seek to eviscerate.) Is that the “free trade” that is so beneficial to the average American? Still, to my disappointment, Mr. Obama’s administration is populated with supporters of “free trade” as we now know it, and Mr. Obama has shown little or no inclination to significantly impede “free trade” profiteers.

Absent the economic growth his budget will squelch, the only ways out of the fiscal hole Obama is digging are massive tax increases, defaults and devaluation, and inflation.

How will this budget impede economic growth? How does one define a “massive tax increase?” Reversion back to tax rates that prevailed during times of broad prosperity (the ‘90s? -- top tax rate 39.6%; the ‘60s -- top personal income tax rate: 91% (http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml)) that fostered the well-being of a middle class? What defaults? Devaluation of what? And what evidence is there to suggest that inflation will become excessive, and what is excessive?

Empty, fear-mongering rhetoric gets us nowhere, which is where the last Republican administration so handily got us.

An Endless Parade of Energy Waves...

Ocean waves carry lots of watts waiting to be tapped.
Here's a practical application:

World's first wave farm now generating power for 1,500 homes

Tell me again why we're still burning coal and building nuclear reactors?

Mr. Cheney is still drinking that crazy Kool-Aid...



In a NYT article today, 'Cheney Asserts Obama Has Raised Security Risks' Dick Cheney, under the camouflage of another gleeful death-by-a-thousand-cuts assault on President Obama, condemns the President's attempted resuscitation of our Constitution after the feckless and cowardly Cheney and his calamitous gang of merry pranksters profitably eviscerated it.

I assume Mr. Cheney, until his dying grimace, will continue to take cheap shots at President Obama. With absolutely nothing to call a political or military success of his own, or even an honorable try to his credit, the only avenue open to the sclerotic Mr. Cheney for padding his lamentable legacy is the overused Republican standby of cutting down the honorable efforts of others.

Mr. Cheney whined in self-defense: “I think those programs (Guantanamo detentions, waterboarding, military courts) were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11,” Mr. Cheney said of Bush administration policies, echoing statements he had made in an interview last month with Web site Politico. “I think that’s a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles.”

Well, sure. What else could he say? That his policies (and they were his, not Bush's) were an abject failure, like everything else he undertook as President/Vice? That his policies were venal, and self-serving, and engendered hostility and hatred on a scale unheard of since the Roman Empire? That his policies put millions of dollars in the pockets of cronies through no-bid contracts while those policies cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians?

No, he'll never be a stand up guy and admit he blew it. He'll just keep swinging at the very people who labor to clean up his mess while he sits on the sidelines and counts his money. Swing and a miss. Now, go away...Dick.

Electricity Generation: Centralization vs. Decentralization

An interesting and well made argument against decentralization of electricity generation:
"Small is ugly if it means we keep burning coal
Big is beautiful if it breaks our dead-dinosaur addiction"

Still, the writer doesn't say a lot about using a diverse combination of alternatives, which is where decentralization seems to come into its own. He sticks mostly with wind and photovoltaics, but that's probably because they are the most viable choices for quick delivery solutions. Also, it seems that if we reduce our household consumption substantially through efficiency gains, decentralization offers better opportunities for lower cost production and reliability (see below: "Renewables: Intermittency & Reliability," or possibly more to the point and more convincing: "Mighty Mice"). But that still leaves commercial consumption (for which co-generation offers benefits -- see below).

It will be a while before the decentralization vs. centralization clamor dies down. In the meantime, let's do both, centralized and de-centralized renewables -- they're by no means incompatible.

Energy in the 2009 Stimulus Plan

Here's a concise rundown of the energy provisions in the Obama Administrations economic stimulus plan from the NY Times editors: "An $80 Billion Start"

What a refreshing revelation after the previous administration. Even if 50% of this money is spent efficiently, it's a giant leap forward in energy policy for the U.S., and the other 50% can be counted as penance for doing nothing innovative (at the federal level) these last fifty years. Cheers for President Obama.

Still, it is a disappointment to see money in there for research of "clean coal" and carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration -- snake oil if ever I saw it (tell me one thing we've buried in the ground that hasn't come back to haunt us).