Hypocrisy

Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online has an excellent editorial in today's Chicago Tribune on the intellectual hypocrisy of the folks currently in charge.

His idea of the intellectual hypocrisy of the government is based on a JP Morgan chart, which shows the private sector experience of the President's appointees.

As you can see from the chart, Obama's cabinet doesn't fall a little short of others in "real world" experience, but about 2/3 short of previous least experienced cabinet (Kennedy).

His cabinet isn't made up of folks who've run things, and done things that they had to worry about the cost of. It's made up of people who've never managed an actual enterprise.

Goldberg's point is that folks who've never run everything are proposing to run basically everything from your health care to auto emissions to banks and auto makers.

Their record, by the way, isn't so good so far. They took over banks with TARP, and set rules for how they can pay people, and now the banks can't find experienced bankers to run them under the new rules.

And, since the banks are finding ways to meet the TARP repayment requirements early, and get out from under the government, the Fed now wants to change to rules so it can take over healthy banks it thinks might be a threat to financial stability. That change is sure to make it easier to get folks to work in the industry.

They took over GM, fired the old CEO, ousted his replacement, and now worry about finding anyone else who wants to run Government Motors. My guess is they won't find a senior level executive with experience in that industry to take the job.

I'll refer our friends in D.C. back to a book I read some 20 years ago, that explained exactly why the government was bad at running things. Command of the Seas by John Lehman; Regan's Secretary of the Navy; who wanted to get the government out of the shipyard business because they did a poor job of running them. Government regulations on compensation made it impossible to get anyone above the mid-manager level in the civilian sector to take on the job of managing any of the Navy's shipyards. Lack of experience led regularly to decisions that caused huge cost overruns, poor performance, and a lack of competitiveness with the civilian sector on nearly every job the government managed yards performed.

Lehman found those problems not only at the yards, but in every part of the Department of the Navy that was run by career civil servants. He also found the one thing that could stop any government reform from working as designed; Congress. As hard as anyone would try to fix something, someone in one chamber or the other would find it a threat to a constituency and get a rider passed in a bill that undid the reform.

Anyone that thinks health care reform or cap and trade is going to work any different doesn't understand the culture of government, and the hypocrisy of their intellect.

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Junk Science Equals Junk Mail

I posted my letter to the Illinois Senators last week. I got an immediate auto reply from Roland Burris, and nothing else.

I thought Dick Durbin ignored me, but he didn't. His reply got caught by the junk mail filter, and until I checked it yesterday, I didn't realize he'd sent anything back. I guess Outlook '07 knows that junk science equals junk mail.

Here is the Senator's reply. I basically echo's the presidents sentiment that global warming is a non-debatable thing. It's happening, even if 700 scientists think it's not.

Dear Mr. Beller:

Thank you for contacting me to express your views regarding the creation of a national "cap-and-trade" program to address global warming. I appreciate hearing from you.

As a part of the Fiscal Year 2010 budget, President Obama laid out his proposal for the creation of a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat global warming. Specifically, President Obama's proposal would cap greenhouse gas emissions at 14 percent below the 2005 levels by 2020, with a goal of reducing emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2050.

By tackling the sources of climate change and taking steps now to reduce the impacts of global warming, we can protect our environmental future while expanding our economy. If we choose to ignore global warming and its consequences, we are placing our planet and our future in grave danger and could face large-scale environmental and economic dislocations that threaten our national security.

Although some see it differently, mainstream scientists have accumulated overwhelming evidence that the global warming problem is real and that we can't afford to wait any longer to act. Most scientists believe that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will raise the earth's temperature by as much as three to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. This temperature change could produce catastrophic changes in our climate.

I am confident that our nation has the ingenuity and technical savvy to achieve meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. A market-based cap-and-trade system can set the ground rules for private competition, to help us achieve the necessary goals as inexpensively as possible. At the same time, we must provide industries with sufficient time to prepare for new standards and ensure that consumers are not subject to sudden cost increases.
Your voice is a valuable part of this discussion. I will keep your concerns in mind as the Senate considers legislation on this matter.
Thank you again for your message. Please feel free to stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator

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Letter to the Senators

This is the letter I sent to my two Senators, Dick Durbin and Roland Burris about Cap and Trade.


Dear Senator,

Soon your chamber, like the House of Representatives will try and ram through the Cap and Trade legislation to transform our energy policy.

Like the House will the Senate be voting on 1200 pages of legislation that no member has had time to read?

Will you and Senator Burris have the courage to come home and tell us the truth of the costs of this bill in the Midwest, where coal electricity is the prevalent source?
Will you repeat to them what the President said, that "electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket" under cap and trade? Or will you repeat his claim that this will create thousands of new jobs, even though the European experience with Cap and Trade has been just the opposite?

Will both of you go downstate, and tell the families who earn their livings in the coal mines that the bill is designed to put them out of work?

Will you come to Abbott Labs in North Chicago, or Baxter in Round Lake, and tell the folks there that their jobs will probably move to a facility overseas? Abbott and Baxter use a lot of coal generated steam for their drug processing, under this legislation productions costs will skyrocket.

Will you tell those people that the double whammy of the proposed health care legislation and energy legislation will make it necessary for their jobs to move for their company to survive?

I don't believe you have the political courage to do this sir. Instead, I think what will happen is if it passes you'll have lunch with the limousine liberals on the North Shore, and tout what a great thing you've done for the environment. You’ll ignore what it's going to do to the working men and women in your state and their families, the people your party claims to be the champions for.

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What Took Me So Long?

I can't believe it's taken me this long to realize that I should be overjoyed with President Obama. Seriously. His firing of GM's CEO, and the new revelation that he's looking for a way to have not only executive pay, but other pay rates managed by the government made me realize he really is looking out for me, not the big guy.

Anyone with half a brain knows that business is bluffing when they claim his cap and trade to end global warming will drive them offshore. Where would they go to find cheaper labor, and less restrictions than here?

The idea that charitable contributions will dry up when he tells fat cats they can't deduct them anymore is crazy. Who gives to charity expecting a tax break, I sure don't!

No, now I realize that the President is really looking out for me, and I'm onboard with him.








Check the date of this post.

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Climate Security Act

Next week our Senate will be debating the "Climate Security Act", which in some circles is becoming known as the Economic Insecurity Act.

What the Act does is mandate reduced carbon emissions, by allocating every dwindling numbers of carbon credits to industry, then setting up a "cap and trade" scheme, in which your industry, if it's good, will have extra credits, and can sell them to those that don't.

Exceed what you are given and you either buy excess credits from someone else, or pay hefty fines to the new government bureaucracy set up to administer the system. Here's the Chamber of Commerce's depiction of the bill's regulatory set up. Go ahead, try and figure it out without getting a migraine.

A lot of focus is spent in the bill, and in editorials and other opinions on the problems this is going to create for the electric generation business. The only (viable) option to meet the reduction goals mandated is going to be replacement of coal plants. Since oil fired plants wouldn't reduce emissions enough to meet goals, that leaves "Green Power", nuclear, or Natural Gas as the fuels of choice.

Green is the least cost effective, and effective period, option. For a newer generation coal plant to be replaced would take between 25 and 50 square miles of windmills packed as tightly as possible. Solar isn't an economically sound option due to cost, and area required. In the areas where coal is most prevalent, the upper Midwest and North East, solar isn't viable due to sun availability.

Natural Gas would use many less carbon credits, but again, to fire a large enough plant to replace a coal generation facility, you'd need a much larger NG infrastructure. The bill contains no provisions to increase the supply of that cleaner burning fuel, or make it easier to transport. You end up with residential customers fighting utilities for a dwindling supply.

That brings it to nuclear. The problem is we'd need to more than double our current number of nuclear plants to replace our coal fired plants. The bill again contains no provision to make that happen, and the electric industry says while 150 new plants would be needed by 2020, the realistic number that could be built is closer to 30.

While cost is the initial barrier to nuclear plants, over their lifetime they end up costing less than coal plants because of reduced staff needed, lower maintenance costs, and obviously, not having to buy fuel daily.

The bigger problem, which again, the bill doesn't address, is the legal maze that pops up every time someone says "I want to build a nuke plant". Start planning now and you MIGHT be able to break ground in 12-15 years on a new plant.

Max Epstein, writing in the Washington Post points out other flaws in the bill, specifically how the "free credits" to power companies actually increase the cost to consumers of reducing carbon emissions.

The Wall Street Journal points out that the EPA has estimated a drop in GDP growth of between .9 and 3.8% by 2030, and 2.4-6.9% by 2050. That's somewhere between 1 and 3 TRILLION dollars of economic growth stiffled by the legislation.

They also point out that there are a lot of more transparent tax increases that could be used to try to adjust behavior. However, cap and trade lets the legislators decided who are the winners and losers, other tax hikes leave that to the people taxed. Congress just can't have that happening.

I will be writing both of my Senators this weekend (Durbin and Obama) and letting them know that this bill seems to be the worst possible option to try and drop the growth of carbon emissions, and that they should vote against it. I know those letters will be ignored, but at least I' can say I tried.

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