Think I mentioned before that I question the value of making decisions for the whole nation based on the "macro" perspective. Macro means looking at the nation as a whole, the economy as a whole, health care spending as a whole, etc. It's an extremely useful aggregate for scholars or historians (sometimes) but I'm not so sure it's useful for developing policy.
For example, wasn't it 2005 that Katrina hit? So looking at data from that year and ignoring everything else, you'd have to conclude that Americans spend one hell of a lot of money on repairing water damage. Should we mount a socialist program for that?
The same principle applies to health care and insurance. Of course, insurance adjusters and statisticians have finely-sliced demographics on which groups get the most money and benefits, at what age, and why -- apparently more money is spent on people in the last years of their lives than at any other time.
Surprise, surprise. People get sick, they may recover in part and stagger along for a time, and then they die. I don't think we even need insurance adjusters to figure that out.
The funny thing is, Obama seems to be looking at these high-cost groups in order to find some way to reduce what's spent on them.... apparently so he can offer this money to another group that has less use for it. This way, the Macro statistics on socialized medicine will look better.
Yeah. Kill all the sick people. That's a sure way of reducing health care costs. And that is fundamentally what Obama has planned.
Anyway, the macro view is, as I said, very useful for scholars as a means of number-crunching or something. But it isn't a useful or practical way of developing a general policy. You just can't lump people all together. You end up eliminating the cost of cancer treatments for a 70-year-old woman in order to guarantee insurance to a 24-year-old gymnast who probably has very little use for it. It looks good on the books, but it isn't a practical or reasonable way to provide health care. You're only taking it away from the people who need it.
And I guarantee, if health care becomes "free," suddenly many more people will believe they need it. Rather than sitting in the bathroom with the shower going hot, making steam, to break up chest congestion from a cold, people will be lining up at the doctor's office, demanding their fair share of attention and antibiotics. That part is entirely predictable.
And this applies to not only health care, but to everything else as well.
Anyone remember a while back when the federal government for some reason had a huge inventory of cheese? Apparently they'd bought tons of excess cheese from US dairies to support the price of cheese in the supermarket. The government floated the idea of redistributing this cheese to people who were getting welfare and food stamps in place of some of their cash benefits.
I don't know, although the scheme does seem convenient, is this a plan that works? People are hungry, so let them eat cheese? What if, instead of cheese, the government had purchased an excess of pine tar to support that industry? Would the feds be passing out barrels of pine tar and a booklet of recipes for making it palatable?
That's the trouble with the macro view.
And wouldn't it be better to let the dairies suffer a bad year and learn how much cheese to make instead of supporting their dreams of huge cheese demand? After all, the time and money they invested in making cheese might have been better spent making sour cream or yogurt. They should know that and make the adjustment.
The only way you can even try to get macro economic management to work is to take complete control of everything. And heaven knows, that doesn't work. Like, would there be some kind of Standing Fashion Committee in congress, determining what kind of shoes should be made in the US? The way congress operates, by the time they reached a decision, they'd have shoe factories making sandals in December and boots in April. That's pretty much the way it worked out in the USSR. But maybe the Commissars did manage to balance their books.
I doubt it, though. I knew some Russian Jews who were allowed to leave the USSR way back in the 1970s -- before the USSR collapsed -- and what I heard from them was that the black market was pretty much a way of life. No one even believed there was anything wrong with it. You had to cheat the system just to survive.
One of these Russians, actually he was Ukrainian, told me that somehow about three-quarters of all the produce raised in the Ukraine managed to fall off the truck before it reached Moscow. No one could figure it out.
And just to add... I had both macro and micro economics in college. In the micro class, one of the first things we learned was this graph of an apparently cast-in-stone principle. Picture a graph, more or less an "L" shape. Now draw a diagonal line from the top of the tall stem to the end of the short base. This illustrates what happens to nearly any kind of enterprise when you raise prices. That is, you'll make more money on fewer goods. Net gain -- zippo. Except you do stand to lose customers long term.
That's a given. Cast in stone.
Think about that in terms of tax increases.... on anything. The only way you can get around that kind of result is if you put a gun to the buyer's head and force him to pay the higher price. Or put a gun to the producer's head and force him to continue to produce. Etc.
This is another way of explaining why socialism doesn't work.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Awestruck
Well, it's Memorial Day tomorrow -- or today, depending on when I finish writing this.
To be honest, I'm not convinced there's anything I can say about it that could convey my personal appreciation for all those people who've laid down their lives to preserve the US. Can't beat Lincoln on this:
To be honest, I'm not convinced there's anything I can say about it that could convey my personal appreciation for all those people who've laid down their lives to preserve the US. Can't beat Lincoln on this:
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.... (Gettysburg Address)
Almost anything you can say about Memorial Day comes off totally self-serving; "thanks" just doesn't cover what they did for me.
About 10 years ago I followed the path of Sherman's March through Georgia doing research for my Civil War novel. In most cases, you almost have to see the ground of a battlefield to write about it well, even if you're just writing fiction. Standing where those men stood, seeing what they could see can give you an entirely different perspective on things. Same is true of Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Manassas, Fredericksburg....
Anyway, leaving Atlanta (which is completely rebuilt and doing fine now) I veered off Sherman's course and headed down toward Americus, Ga., to Andersonville. That was one of the worst prisoner-of-war camps in the US during the Civil War. Yeah-yeah, Elmira.... OK, that was no picnic, either. Don't want to get into a yours-was-worse contest here. Andersonville is a national park now and a memorial to all POWs from all wars in which the US participated.
The old camp itself, the area that had been enclosed by the stockade walls, is a pretty good size and parts of it are dotted with capped wells. These are just metal caps embedded in the ground, maybe the size of the top of a mayonnaise jar. There wasn't a lot of good water at Andersonville, so the prisoners dug those wells, except Providence Well, which is kind of in the middle of the camp. A bolt of lightning struck the earth there and a well sprang up all by itself. Still and all, it's surrounded by signs warning against drinking that water.
Otherwise, a Y-shaped stream runs through the stockade, the branches on the hillsides feeding what's now a creek no more than two feet wide, if that. This ends in an area that's deliberately kept marshy. This served as a latrine mainly, but sometimes the water was used for drinking or washing, too. Sometimes a weakened prisoner just couldn't get to fresher parts of the creek. It was marshy because the fence impeded its flow beyond the wall of the stockade.
I visited Andersonville in late October, and it was 90 degrees that day. According to some reports from POWs at Andersonville, the death rate was highest in August, due to the heat. The day before I'd been to Pickett's Mill northwest of Atlanta, and the ranger there warned me that Andersonville was below the "gnat line," so to expect plenty of bugs, and he was right.
The prisoners at Andersonville had no shelter, no shade. Only the water described. The place was only open for about 10 months, and in that time, I believe something like 30,000 POWS moved through -- and quite a few of them are buried there. Something like 20% of them died of scurvy, typhoid, typhus, starvation, untended wounds, in some cases the violence they perpetrated on each other, and heaven only knows what else. It's one of the saddest places I've ever seen.
The museum is small but offers a tour of a wide variety of horrors soldiers have suffered throughout the centuries when they fell into the hands of their enemies. They had a life-size bamboo cage modeled after those that the North Vietnamese used to parade US POW's through the public streets with citizens throwing garbage and other stuff at them.
They also have a display of things the POWs made while they were in captivity. Little metal boxes of woven metal, these made from food cans cut into strips. One item that caught my eye was a handmade US flag about the size of a man's handkerchief. There's a story behind it.
This was at a Japanese POW camp during WWII. One of the Americans incarcerated there made the flag out of some kind of sacking, using an ink pen for the blue field of stars. I'm not sure where he got the red dye for the stripes, but the flag is a pretty good replica of the "real thing." During one inspection, a Japanese guard found the flag and confiscated it from the prisoner.
At this camp, the POWs were tasked with cleaning out the offices of the Japanese commanders. A prisoner who was assigned to this duty found this handmade flag in the trash in one of the offices. He retrieved it and returned it to the man who'd made it, probably at some deadly risk to his own well-being. Now it's just a relic from the past. And maybe a very painful memory for someone, at that.
Part of the Andersonville complex includes the graveyard for those who died there. When the Civil War ended, Clara Barton went down to Georgia to assist in collecting the names of those who'd died at Andersonville in order to erect tombstones for them. Actually, at the time they died, their bodies were just dumped into a common grave behind the tents that served as the prison hospital. So the tombstones now stand there side-by-side with only inches separating them and only minimal length between the rows. The tombstones don't represent individual graves; they only acknowledge those who are buried there... somewhere.
Then there's Arlington National Cemetary across the Potomac from Washington. That was a Custis family plantation -- as in Martha Custis Washington -- and ended up belonging to the wife and family of Robert E. Lee. During the Civil War, the land was "appropriated" shall we say, by a Union quartermaster named Meigs, who turned the land into a cemetary for the Union dead.
Meigs' son had been killed in battle, and Meigs wanted to bury him in the kitchen garden at Arlington, so that his grave would be visible from the windows of the plantation house. Sure enough, the oldest graves at Arlington are in the kitchen garden right outside the house.
And Audie Murphy is buried under a big tree directly across the road from the amphitheater behind the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. You can stand facing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the view encompasses the Potomac River, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, Capitol Building, all in one line.
The last time I was at Arlington there was a sad little funeral in progress: a horse-drawn caisson with a single coffin on it under a flag, followed by a couple mourners. They were moving down a hillside on a side lane. I didn't know anyone still observed those traditions.
Anyway, everytime I see the flag, it conjures up all of this stuff. What does it say about the US now that we're so willing to give up our freedom for specious promises of subsistance from Barack Obama and Tim Geithner? Is that why all of those soldiers suffered and died? So I can stand in line at a filthy public clinic and beg for free aspirin or one more week on the dole? Or pedal to work in a piece of junk fueled by rotten cabbage so Waxman and Pelosi can keep their seats in the House?
Just can't find the honor in that.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
It never rains in California
Haven't read any detailed accounts of this event yet, but have heard reports that Californians have stated a resounding "NO!" to a whole spate of new taxes designed to pull the state's fat out of the fire. Including one proposal that would withhold future lottery winnings. (Like, how many people would buy lottery tickets just as a donation to the state?) So apparently now the Governator is compelled to resort to Plan B: cutting government spending.
What a novel idea. Damn, Sam, cut spending? Eureka! Who the heck thought that one up? Put him on the payroll!
The trouble with California is that ever since residents of the state discovered the referendum process, they used it to vote themselves any number of "free" goods and services. I remember when California truly was the Golden State, but that goes back to the days when Reagan was governor.
Now it's bankrupt. And the climate has made it attractive to all kinds of loonies who want a handout, including illegal aliens. I mean, it's a lot more comfortable to live in an old Maytag box in L.A. than it is in Chicago or Boston.
I mentioned before that I have relatives who live in California. I've been there a few times and am not too crazy about it. Too hot and dry for me. Even the flowers out there have all the color scorched out of them (compared to what you see elsewhere), and the "grass" is all yellow and dried up. Kinda like what we'd call "hay" in the Midwest. I do really like the freeways, though, if you drive them in non-rush hours. I could just coast around from Long Beach to Pasadena and be perfectly happy... in non-rush hours.
Anyway, I'd be shocked to learn that Californians voted any other way than the way they did. Nobody wants a tax increase. Now let's see if they'll be happy to see all the government-sponsored goodies disappear. If they do. I suspect that California is like any other government enterprise and usually finds a way to spend four times as much as necessary for any product or service, so maybe the government largesse will be missed by only a very few people, and they might not even be US citizens.
Fox and Republicans have been cautiously optimistic about the vote in California all day. But, as I said, I would have been very surprised if anyone would answer "Yes" to the question: "Would you like to pay more taxes?"
Rather, I suspect that many of the citizens believe that everything that comes from government is free of charge, so why on earth should they be asked to pay more taxes? Duh?
And damn, all those manic-liberal movie stars out there... didn't they vote? Or have they moved to Nevada and Texas where the taxes aren't quite so bad?
I find it very bizarre to hear movie stars -- who won't do six weeks work for less $1 million+ -- whining about the poor. What the hell do they know about it? Or why don't they fund poverty programs themselves? They can afford it easier than most other people.
Same with many members of congress. If they're really committed to helping the poor and disenfranchised, all those millions of people they con into voting for them, why don't they pool their extra cash and open a trade school or co-op pantry for the poor, or a clinic for the homeless? Why do they insist that everyone else pay for these kinds of programs while they horde their bucks in tax shelters?
Hypocrisy. And in Hollywood, hypocrisy writ large. Those in "The Industry" are even worse than congress. At least the people in congress actually suffered through the whole election process and have to live in DC in summer, doing all the incredibly tedious work of government. Movie stars just flap their jaws on TV, or make a big show of support for poverty-stricken third-world nations -- flying in and out in First Class seats on airliners.
And, actually, if you've tried to listen to liberal movie stars "discuss" their political principles, most of them have almost no idea what a political principle is. Like Cher. Someone asked her why she was a Democrat. Her profound and insightful answer: "Who would want to be a Republican?"
I saw about 10 minutes of Sean Penn on "The Larry King Show" a while ago. I'd heard that Sean Penn was a really serious liberal. So Larry King asked him why he was against the War in Iraq, or something like that, and Sean Penn's response was something like.... "Uh.... hmmm... well...." and then it was time for a commercial break. But Sean Penn didn't seem able to get out a complete sentence when he won the Oscar, either.
Makes me wonder what he gets paid for. Well... reciting words that other people write. Yeah. So it does make sense that he's a liberal.
So anyway, let's hope a good many of these blockheads have surrendered California to the "real" people who live and work there 9-to-5, and who've been required to pay for all the stupid policies the elite rich support.
By the way, for those who don't know anything about 60's & 70's rock'n'roll, the whole line goes: "It never rains in California. It pours."
What a novel idea. Damn, Sam, cut spending? Eureka! Who the heck thought that one up? Put him on the payroll!
The trouble with California is that ever since residents of the state discovered the referendum process, they used it to vote themselves any number of "free" goods and services. I remember when California truly was the Golden State, but that goes back to the days when Reagan was governor.
Now it's bankrupt. And the climate has made it attractive to all kinds of loonies who want a handout, including illegal aliens. I mean, it's a lot more comfortable to live in an old Maytag box in L.A. than it is in Chicago or Boston.
I mentioned before that I have relatives who live in California. I've been there a few times and am not too crazy about it. Too hot and dry for me. Even the flowers out there have all the color scorched out of them (compared to what you see elsewhere), and the "grass" is all yellow and dried up. Kinda like what we'd call "hay" in the Midwest. I do really like the freeways, though, if you drive them in non-rush hours. I could just coast around from Long Beach to Pasadena and be perfectly happy... in non-rush hours.
Anyway, I'd be shocked to learn that Californians voted any other way than the way they did. Nobody wants a tax increase. Now let's see if they'll be happy to see all the government-sponsored goodies disappear. If they do. I suspect that California is like any other government enterprise and usually finds a way to spend four times as much as necessary for any product or service, so maybe the government largesse will be missed by only a very few people, and they might not even be US citizens.
Fox and Republicans have been cautiously optimistic about the vote in California all day. But, as I said, I would have been very surprised if anyone would answer "Yes" to the question: "Would you like to pay more taxes?"
Rather, I suspect that many of the citizens believe that everything that comes from government is free of charge, so why on earth should they be asked to pay more taxes? Duh?
And damn, all those manic-liberal movie stars out there... didn't they vote? Or have they moved to Nevada and Texas where the taxes aren't quite so bad?
I find it very bizarre to hear movie stars -- who won't do six weeks work for less $1 million+ -- whining about the poor. What the hell do they know about it? Or why don't they fund poverty programs themselves? They can afford it easier than most other people.
Same with many members of congress. If they're really committed to helping the poor and disenfranchised, all those millions of people they con into voting for them, why don't they pool their extra cash and open a trade school or co-op pantry for the poor, or a clinic for the homeless? Why do they insist that everyone else pay for these kinds of programs while they horde their bucks in tax shelters?
Hypocrisy. And in Hollywood, hypocrisy writ large. Those in "The Industry" are even worse than congress. At least the people in congress actually suffered through the whole election process and have to live in DC in summer, doing all the incredibly tedious work of government. Movie stars just flap their jaws on TV, or make a big show of support for poverty-stricken third-world nations -- flying in and out in First Class seats on airliners.
And, actually, if you've tried to listen to liberal movie stars "discuss" their political principles, most of them have almost no idea what a political principle is. Like Cher. Someone asked her why she was a Democrat. Her profound and insightful answer: "Who would want to be a Republican?"
I saw about 10 minutes of Sean Penn on "The Larry King Show" a while ago. I'd heard that Sean Penn was a really serious liberal. So Larry King asked him why he was against the War in Iraq, or something like that, and Sean Penn's response was something like.... "Uh.... hmmm... well...." and then it was time for a commercial break. But Sean Penn didn't seem able to get out a complete sentence when he won the Oscar, either.
Makes me wonder what he gets paid for. Well... reciting words that other people write. Yeah. So it does make sense that he's a liberal.
So anyway, let's hope a good many of these blockheads have surrendered California to the "real" people who live and work there 9-to-5, and who've been required to pay for all the stupid policies the elite rich support.
By the way, for those who don't know anything about 60's & 70's rock'n'roll, the whole line goes: "It never rains in California. It pours."
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
An ill wind
Did some research on wind power. Before you install it in your backyard, please check out this website:
http://www.betterplan.squarespace.com/
It's about the experiences of citizens in Mars Hill, Aroostook County, Maine, and in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, who live in the shadow of wind farms -- literally in their shadows.
I never knew those wind mills made noise. At least one manufacturer claims that they make maybe 50 db noise on a windy day. He says that's about the same level of sound you hear coming from your refrigerator when you're in the other room. Well, go to that web site and see if that's true.
One woman in Maine says the windmills sound like "gym shoes in a clothes dryer," and this is documented on several tapes at that web site and in other videos on YouTube. The noise has been best recorded by the people in Fond du Lac. In one taped interview, you can definitely hear the "gym shoes in the dryer" effect -- from a wind turbine 1,100 feet away. It's louder than a car passing by on the highway 800 feet away. You can't even hear the car.
The same man, Larry Wunsch, who taped the Wisconsin noise, adds that when the wind is blowing really hard, the mill sounds "like a jet on the runway." While listening for noise on one tape (that I think is also from Mr. Wunsch) on YouTube, I found myself waiting for the jet to fly over so I could hear the windmill... But that was the windmill.
Then there's Shadow Flicker. Sounds almost pretty, doesn't it? This occurs when the sun is directly behind the windmill so that it casts a shadow -- a really big shadow that flickers over many acres. If I recall correctly, both the people from Maine and Wisconsin likened this to someone switching the lights on and off in your house... continuously, steadily, and for several hours at a time. That could get a little annoying.
In all cases, the people living under the shadow of the wind farms still like the idea of wind power. However, they believe that either the manufacturer of the mills or the seller-installers didn't reveal the whole truth about their downside. In Maine, the town council (or local authority, anyway) saw wind farm installation as a revenue source for the town, which is in a relatively poor area of Maine. The officials accepted the deal with no real discussion with the citizens. And here I thought New England was just over-brimming with town hall meetings.
In Wisconsin, it seems that a couple people did some research and tried to raise their concerns before they signed onto the project, but the seller-installer and/or local officials either explained away their worries or didn't let the naysayers speak.
Don't know if Mr. Wunsch was one of those blown off for doubting the magnificence of the wind farm project, but in one tape, he does reveal that he's done some research. He said that one wind turbine generates 1.2 kw of electricity when the wind is blowing 30 mph. I live not too far from Fond du Lac, and I can testify, 30 mph is a good stiff wind, usually heralding a pretty hefty storm. A bed sheet hanging on a clothesline would be pretty much horizontal. Anyway, Mr. Wunsch has this nice way of putting this in context -- stating that one of the largest businesses in Fond du Lac would need at least 20 kw to operate. So that one single business would require something like 15 windmills churning out peak kw's to get up and running. Mr. Wunsch concludes that wind power is pretty much a scam.
Can't say I blame him.
I looked all this up because of a news report I heard on the radio in the middle of the night last week. In California, one wind turbine had "run away", so the cops stopped all the traffic on the highway -- one of the major highways running between L.A. and Las Vegas. They were afraid the blades would fly off the mill and maybe kill somebody. I was looking to find out what happened. It was in a Bakersfield newspaper.
The "brakes" on the turbine had burned out, so the blades were spinning uncontrolled and couldn't be stopped until the wind stopped. I guess no one was killed; they didn't say.
Then I came across a brief video taken by someone driving past that same wind farm at a different time. She pulled over and videoed one of the turbines that seemed to be on fire, smoke coming out the tail end of it. Don't know what happened with that, but that sounds like a kind of dodgy situation in California, doesn't it? I mean, doesn't California burn down periodically? Didn't think anyone would want to encourage that.
And remember, these things are huge. They're 400-foot towers. The blades are probably at least 100 feet long. Having one of those flying through your windshield might leave a mark.
How I hate this b.s. I don't believe in so-called "Anthropological Global Warming" or, I guess they've changed it now to fit reality more appropriately: "Climate Change." I tend to go with Mr. Wunsch and his scam theory.
You know, Abe Lincoln once said that government should do the projects that are too big for individual citizens to do by themselves. He was talking about building railroads and bridges over the Mississippi, things like that.
Well, there's not much that citizens can't do on their own, amassing capital through corporations and so forth. The USA has proven that. Prior to the Great Depression, not much was built in America unless it was built privately -- including cars, electrical power plants, steel mills, air transportation, etc. Often the government was only a purchaser of these products, and its purchasing power might have boosted private investment, but never entirely replaced it. In fact, if you want to wreck an organization and/or guarantee fraud and inefficiency, invite the government to participate. That's been the true story throughout history, in the US and elsewhere.
So the government had to invent, or least embrace, Anthropological Global Warming (where it's manmade) to justify seizing privately-owned corporations and imposing their will arbitrarily on the entire population. The rationale behind that is that one individual can't change the planet, but the government can.
Not sure how that works, though. Do granite and palm trees recognize the majesty of government and kneel to obey it? Does wind?
But hell, ol' Barry knows so much better than any other person who's ever walked on the face of the earth, doesn't he? He believes his press; he seriously suspects he just might be the new Messiah.
I'm just hoping that in 2012 there will be something left of the USA to salvage, though I doubt it.
Also on YouTube, looking up wind farms, came across a video of a couple teenage girls driving around in Wisconsin near the wind farms. One of them said the very sight of the mills brought tears to her eyes and she started humming "The Star-Spangled Banner" or some rot. So the future isn't looking too bright.
http://www.betterplan.squarespace.com/
It's about the experiences of citizens in Mars Hill, Aroostook County, Maine, and in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, who live in the shadow of wind farms -- literally in their shadows.
I never knew those wind mills made noise. At least one manufacturer claims that they make maybe 50 db noise on a windy day. He says that's about the same level of sound you hear coming from your refrigerator when you're in the other room. Well, go to that web site and see if that's true.
One woman in Maine says the windmills sound like "gym shoes in a clothes dryer," and this is documented on several tapes at that web site and in other videos on YouTube. The noise has been best recorded by the people in Fond du Lac. In one taped interview, you can definitely hear the "gym shoes in the dryer" effect -- from a wind turbine 1,100 feet away. It's louder than a car passing by on the highway 800 feet away. You can't even hear the car.
The same man, Larry Wunsch, who taped the Wisconsin noise, adds that when the wind is blowing really hard, the mill sounds "like a jet on the runway." While listening for noise on one tape (that I think is also from Mr. Wunsch) on YouTube, I found myself waiting for the jet to fly over so I could hear the windmill... But that was the windmill.
Then there's Shadow Flicker. Sounds almost pretty, doesn't it? This occurs when the sun is directly behind the windmill so that it casts a shadow -- a really big shadow that flickers over many acres. If I recall correctly, both the people from Maine and Wisconsin likened this to someone switching the lights on and off in your house... continuously, steadily, and for several hours at a time. That could get a little annoying.
In all cases, the people living under the shadow of the wind farms still like the idea of wind power. However, they believe that either the manufacturer of the mills or the seller-installers didn't reveal the whole truth about their downside. In Maine, the town council (or local authority, anyway) saw wind farm installation as a revenue source for the town, which is in a relatively poor area of Maine. The officials accepted the deal with no real discussion with the citizens. And here I thought New England was just over-brimming with town hall meetings.
In Wisconsin, it seems that a couple people did some research and tried to raise their concerns before they signed onto the project, but the seller-installer and/or local officials either explained away their worries or didn't let the naysayers speak.
Don't know if Mr. Wunsch was one of those blown off for doubting the magnificence of the wind farm project, but in one tape, he does reveal that he's done some research. He said that one wind turbine generates 1.2 kw of electricity when the wind is blowing 30 mph. I live not too far from Fond du Lac, and I can testify, 30 mph is a good stiff wind, usually heralding a pretty hefty storm. A bed sheet hanging on a clothesline would be pretty much horizontal. Anyway, Mr. Wunsch has this nice way of putting this in context -- stating that one of the largest businesses in Fond du Lac would need at least 20 kw to operate. So that one single business would require something like 15 windmills churning out peak kw's to get up and running. Mr. Wunsch concludes that wind power is pretty much a scam.
Can't say I blame him.
I looked all this up because of a news report I heard on the radio in the middle of the night last week. In California, one wind turbine had "run away", so the cops stopped all the traffic on the highway -- one of the major highways running between L.A. and Las Vegas. They were afraid the blades would fly off the mill and maybe kill somebody. I was looking to find out what happened. It was in a Bakersfield newspaper.
The "brakes" on the turbine had burned out, so the blades were spinning uncontrolled and couldn't be stopped until the wind stopped. I guess no one was killed; they didn't say.
Then I came across a brief video taken by someone driving past that same wind farm at a different time. She pulled over and videoed one of the turbines that seemed to be on fire, smoke coming out the tail end of it. Don't know what happened with that, but that sounds like a kind of dodgy situation in California, doesn't it? I mean, doesn't California burn down periodically? Didn't think anyone would want to encourage that.
And remember, these things are huge. They're 400-foot towers. The blades are probably at least 100 feet long. Having one of those flying through your windshield might leave a mark.
How I hate this b.s. I don't believe in so-called "Anthropological Global Warming" or, I guess they've changed it now to fit reality more appropriately: "Climate Change." I tend to go with Mr. Wunsch and his scam theory.
You know, Abe Lincoln once said that government should do the projects that are too big for individual citizens to do by themselves. He was talking about building railroads and bridges over the Mississippi, things like that.
Well, there's not much that citizens can't do on their own, amassing capital through corporations and so forth. The USA has proven that. Prior to the Great Depression, not much was built in America unless it was built privately -- including cars, electrical power plants, steel mills, air transportation, etc. Often the government was only a purchaser of these products, and its purchasing power might have boosted private investment, but never entirely replaced it. In fact, if you want to wreck an organization and/or guarantee fraud and inefficiency, invite the government to participate. That's been the true story throughout history, in the US and elsewhere.
So the government had to invent, or least embrace, Anthropological Global Warming (where it's manmade) to justify seizing privately-owned corporations and imposing their will arbitrarily on the entire population. The rationale behind that is that one individual can't change the planet, but the government can.
Not sure how that works, though. Do granite and palm trees recognize the majesty of government and kneel to obey it? Does wind?
But hell, ol' Barry knows so much better than any other person who's ever walked on the face of the earth, doesn't he? He believes his press; he seriously suspects he just might be the new Messiah.
I'm just hoping that in 2012 there will be something left of the USA to salvage, though I doubt it.
Also on YouTube, looking up wind farms, came across a video of a couple teenage girls driving around in Wisconsin near the wind farms. One of them said the very sight of the mills brought tears to her eyes and she started humming "The Star-Spangled Banner" or some rot. So the future isn't looking too bright.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Roller skates are next
I'm just shocked -- and I thought I was beyond it. I promise, I will try to watch my language.
The Chief Butthead in the White House issued a entirely totalitarian edict today:
We are all to drive around in oversized plastic roller skates. Just because he says so.
Let's hope he's the first to have an accident in one.
What positively blows my mind is the way he dumps all this crap on us with absolutely no debate and consideration in congress.
He's a goddamned totalitarian dictator. There is no longer any question about it.
How is it that the nation is sitting still for this?
That's all I can say right now without getting really profane.
The Chief Butthead in the White House issued a entirely totalitarian edict today:
We are all to drive around in oversized plastic roller skates. Just because he says so.
Let's hope he's the first to have an accident in one.
What positively blows my mind is the way he dumps all this crap on us with absolutely no debate and consideration in congress.
He's a goddamned totalitarian dictator. There is no longer any question about it.
How is it that the nation is sitting still for this?
That's all I can say right now without getting really profane.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Life without people
Maybe it's all the real-life disasters lately, but TV programming currently includes several shows that give us all a look at what Earth would be like if the human race suddenly and completely vanished. I saw an episode of History Channel's "Life After People," or something like that, which is a series, and found it pretty fascinating. The producers of that show go to the actual ruins and remains of abandoned cities and other manufactured structures, and use those findings to project what would happen on a massive scale.
Watched most of National Geographic Channel's "Aftermath: Population Zero," and was quite impressed with a few things. Number One, whoever wrote that show seems to believe that human beings don't belong on Earth. One phrase the narrator repeated a few times -- apparently so we wouldn't forget it -- is "It took 10,000 years for man to impose his will on the planet...."
In your dreams.
I think about Hurricane Katrina and Mt. St. Helens, the last "big one" in L.A. about 10 years ago (I have relatives who lived near the epicenter in Northridge), the tsunami that wiped out whole islands and reshaped coastline in Southeast Asia a couple years ago, and my personal experience of being buried for upwards of three months under the blizzards that blanketed Chicago in both 1969 and 1979. Where I live, the old air raid sirens, designed to warn of the "man-made disaster" of a nuclear attack, now usually indicate that a tornado is likely to touch down dangeroulsy nearby. Tornados last an average of something like three minutes, yet, remarkably, they manage to return us all to a state of nature in that brief span.
In all these cases, it proves difficult-to-impossible to impose the will of mankind upon nature. And note -- many of these events occur in areas that have been highly tinkered with: some of the largest cities on the planet. Despite supposed Global Warming and all the artificial technology, I didn't see any hint of the car in front of my house from early January to mid-March and just got used to struggling through the canyons created by six to eight-foot high walls of snow in temperatures that didn't rise above zero for weeks at a stretch. Twice so far in my lifetime.
My relative in L.A. went outside his home after that impressive shaker a decade ago and said the landscape suddenly included fountains of water spouting from fire hydrants, broken gas mains shooting fire from cracks in the streets, and the cross atop a nearby church was bent and twisted upside down, though it remained on the steeple. His neighborhood, he said, "Looked like something out of 'The Exorcist.'"
But the main thing is, the authors of the NatGeo program work from the assumption that human beings just don't belong here. I suppose they are also proponents of the theory that we are all descended from the Annunaki, extraterrestrial beings who seeded earth primates with their intelligent genes. Else according to them, where did we come from?
Is it that the viewpoint of sociology and anthropology has saturated ecological studies? In sociology, as Margaret Meade and others pointed out, the very presence of the scientific observer tends to modify what they observe. I mean, if you stroll into a thatched-hut village of a pre-agricultural tribe, they're bound to be curious about your cell phone, gym shoes, and video camera, let alone the plastic bottles of Evian water and hermetically sealed packs of trail mix. The very sight of these objects is bound to change their lives forever.
Is this how ecologists study the biological systems on the planet? Sort of a "pretend I'm not here" kind of viewpoint? Just take the human race out of the equation?
That's absurd. Human beings are creatures of nature whether we like it or not. The planet has shaped us vastly more than we've been able to shape it. And I don't think that all of the artificial aerosol sprays mankind has ever injected into the atmosphere have had quite the impact of mankind's "accidental" introduction of a certain kind of flea into Europe in the 1500s, or of bringing African bees into South America, or fire ants into Georgia. And we can't even control these man-made events once they get started.
Have to laugh. When ecologists think of themselves, do they conjure up images of Masters of the Universe who can strike a deathblow to Earth by stabbing an "ozone hole" in the atmosphere with their pinky fingers? Do they believe that they -- or the government, really -- can wave the magic wand of cap-and-trade and return the earth to "a state of nature"? Is the environmentalist's view of a "state of nature" at all desirable? Do you really want to live in a sod hut and hunt buffalo every summer? Or dig a big hole a yard or so from the Mississippi and wait for it to fill up with water, then wait for the mud in it to settle, then use it to make catmint tea over a campfire? Sound like paradise?
You know, a city is one of the most natural things on earth. It reflects and was caused by the biological requirements of a major and pretty successful species. So, we kill mosquitoes. They also kill us. Is the latter more acceptable?
And what, exactly, is the ultimate goal of the environmentalists?
There's a scene in "2001: A Space Odyssey" that comes to mind as an answer to this question. It's rather early in the film, when all these ape-like creatures are huddled together in a cave, terror in their eyes.
I, for one, am very happy that the human race has been able to use its innate survival skills to overcome a small -- very small -- part of that terror.
Watched most of National Geographic Channel's "Aftermath: Population Zero," and was quite impressed with a few things. Number One, whoever wrote that show seems to believe that human beings don't belong on Earth. One phrase the narrator repeated a few times -- apparently so we wouldn't forget it -- is "It took 10,000 years for man to impose his will on the planet...."
In your dreams.
I think about Hurricane Katrina and Mt. St. Helens, the last "big one" in L.A. about 10 years ago (I have relatives who lived near the epicenter in Northridge), the tsunami that wiped out whole islands and reshaped coastline in Southeast Asia a couple years ago, and my personal experience of being buried for upwards of three months under the blizzards that blanketed Chicago in both 1969 and 1979. Where I live, the old air raid sirens, designed to warn of the "man-made disaster" of a nuclear attack, now usually indicate that a tornado is likely to touch down dangeroulsy nearby. Tornados last an average of something like three minutes, yet, remarkably, they manage to return us all to a state of nature in that brief span.
In all these cases, it proves difficult-to-impossible to impose the will of mankind upon nature. And note -- many of these events occur in areas that have been highly tinkered with: some of the largest cities on the planet. Despite supposed Global Warming and all the artificial technology, I didn't see any hint of the car in front of my house from early January to mid-March and just got used to struggling through the canyons created by six to eight-foot high walls of snow in temperatures that didn't rise above zero for weeks at a stretch. Twice so far in my lifetime.
My relative in L.A. went outside his home after that impressive shaker a decade ago and said the landscape suddenly included fountains of water spouting from fire hydrants, broken gas mains shooting fire from cracks in the streets, and the cross atop a nearby church was bent and twisted upside down, though it remained on the steeple. His neighborhood, he said, "Looked like something out of 'The Exorcist.'"
But the main thing is, the authors of the NatGeo program work from the assumption that human beings just don't belong here. I suppose they are also proponents of the theory that we are all descended from the Annunaki, extraterrestrial beings who seeded earth primates with their intelligent genes. Else according to them, where did we come from?
Is it that the viewpoint of sociology and anthropology has saturated ecological studies? In sociology, as Margaret Meade and others pointed out, the very presence of the scientific observer tends to modify what they observe. I mean, if you stroll into a thatched-hut village of a pre-agricultural tribe, they're bound to be curious about your cell phone, gym shoes, and video camera, let alone the plastic bottles of Evian water and hermetically sealed packs of trail mix. The very sight of these objects is bound to change their lives forever.
Is this how ecologists study the biological systems on the planet? Sort of a "pretend I'm not here" kind of viewpoint? Just take the human race out of the equation?
That's absurd. Human beings are creatures of nature whether we like it or not. The planet has shaped us vastly more than we've been able to shape it. And I don't think that all of the artificial aerosol sprays mankind has ever injected into the atmosphere have had quite the impact of mankind's "accidental" introduction of a certain kind of flea into Europe in the 1500s, or of bringing African bees into South America, or fire ants into Georgia. And we can't even control these man-made events once they get started.
Have to laugh. When ecologists think of themselves, do they conjure up images of Masters of the Universe who can strike a deathblow to Earth by stabbing an "ozone hole" in the atmosphere with their pinky fingers? Do they believe that they -- or the government, really -- can wave the magic wand of cap-and-trade and return the earth to "a state of nature"? Is the environmentalist's view of a "state of nature" at all desirable? Do you really want to live in a sod hut and hunt buffalo every summer? Or dig a big hole a yard or so from the Mississippi and wait for it to fill up with water, then wait for the mud in it to settle, then use it to make catmint tea over a campfire? Sound like paradise?
You know, a city is one of the most natural things on earth. It reflects and was caused by the biological requirements of a major and pretty successful species. So, we kill mosquitoes. They also kill us. Is the latter more acceptable?
And what, exactly, is the ultimate goal of the environmentalists?
There's a scene in "2001: A Space Odyssey" that comes to mind as an answer to this question. It's rather early in the film, when all these ape-like creatures are huddled together in a cave, terror in their eyes.
I, for one, am very happy that the human race has been able to use its innate survival skills to overcome a small -- very small -- part of that terror.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Wag the dog
I find it interesting that Barack Obama -- or whoever's running things -- is so biased in favor of unions and unionization. For example, the "Card Check" thing, which makes it very easy for anyone to sign up to join a union -- whether they want to or not -- and makes it very very difficult for them to opt-out. The Obama administration has been really promoting this legislation. Why? In a recent poll, 82% of Americans who are not in a union said they don't want to join a union. Why force them to?
And remember the AIG bonus protests? Mostly SEIU and Acorn members. The SEIU people were the ones in the yellow and purple clothes, carrying yellow and purple signs. They were the people on the news videos in front of AIG headquarters. Did Obama or Geithner or Rahm Emanual hire the SEIU for that or what? And did those union members get a day off of work to go protest? Or is the SEIU simply sucking up to ensure a place at the head of the line for government handouts? Acorn I'll discuss separately somewhere else. Acorn is just scum, corrupt and exploitive.
Then there's the shafting of Chrysler. Bond-holders traditionally have priority for getting their debts paid back when any corporation is on the skids, involved in a merger or acquisition, etc. But not in this deal. The bond-holders were offered $0.33 on the dollar for the debt they held in Chrysler. They held out for more -- and apparently should have gotten more, given their priority status and Chrysler's assets. But the last I heard, the feds have ordered the bond-holders to take $0.29 on the dollar. The UAW gets the rest.
(As far as this deal goes, the UAW may be getting the short end of the stick here. The union was a large factor in the auto-makers insolvency. Let's see if the union as shareholders can figure out a way to fund their promises to retirees and remain afloat. It should be interesting. 'Course, when this proves to be impossible, they'll just saunter back to Obama, hat in hand, and Obama, who apparently loves the unions, will once again screw the rest of the nation in order to fund the UAW's plushy retirement packages. Union members whine, "I worked all my life for those benefits..." Hey, pal -- so did all the rest of us work all our lives. You did not earn my money, OK?)
Anyway, so I looked up unions, just general information. Here are some key points from a news release issued by the US Dept. of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics:
So, Obama's bias in favor of unions translates into a bias in favor of government workers primarily, blacks perhaps coincidentally, and the more urbanized areas of the US.
Is that fair? That is, 12.4% of salaried and/or wage workers in the US are calling all the shots for the nation's economic policies?
You might want to consider, too, who pays these people. To paraphrase Pogo: "I have seen the payors, and they are us." We, citizens and taxpayers, fund all the various levels of government in the US.
Also, as far as Obama loving government workers and putting them before anyone else in the entire universe, the government is one of few large organizations in the country that's actually growing and hiring. Every item in the so-called "Stimulus Package" was funding for one or another government project. The states that accept those funds can't even use the money to pay down their debt -- which would certainly be helpful in California and also in Illinois. But no-o-o-o, they've got to spend more money and hire more people.As Obama himself has recently noted, this is unsustainable.
Actually, I think paying down their debt would be more productive in the long run and solve more economic problems than this manic spending spree. But then I'm not a Democrat. I don't quite "get" Obamanomics: Borrow $2.00, spend $4.00, and somehow you end up saving $1.00. Can someone explain this to me, please? Sounds like some kind of screwy hedge fund deal. Perhaps Obama has put too much weight on George Soros' opinions.
And just about everything else this administration has done -- like nationalizing the banks and bullying executives into towing the line on pie-in-the-sky credit lending policies, elbowing private borrowers out of the credit market, and the forthcoming-but-inevitable humongous tax increase and double-digit inflation, do nothing but discourage private enterprise. Kill it, actually. These policies will prolong any economic downturn and prevent recovery.
I think Obama wants to see us all on a government payroll. But he hasn't quite figured out yet who will fund this if there is no one producing anything that the government can tax. Good luck with that.
See, I'm beginning to believe that Obama is a really pure marxist. I really think so. The collapse of capitalism isn't working quite on Marx's schedule (note in the above, union membership has declined significantly over the last 25 years), so Obama's giving it a few healthy nudges and no doubt he and others of his stripe will call that "historical inevitability."
I call it bullshit, but that's just me. The net result of all this will be an even worse economic catastrophe. However, I'm also counting on the fact that most Americans are not going to just lie down and suck their thumbs and hope for some kind of government check. I think most Americans have brains enough to launch their own black market, cash-only businesses or something like that. (Anything below the IRS's radar is "black market." I'm not talking about selling dope.) We aren't going to curl up and die because our president knows nothing and refuses to learn anything about economics in the real world.
My own take on this: I prefer personal freedom to government dependency, and you can't separate personal freedom from capitalism, no matter how hard you try. And God knows, people like Obama have been trying and trying and trying.... Eventually, they come back to capitalism as a last resort, to fend off revolution if for no other reason.
And remember the AIG bonus protests? Mostly SEIU and Acorn members. The SEIU people were the ones in the yellow and purple clothes, carrying yellow and purple signs. They were the people on the news videos in front of AIG headquarters. Did Obama or Geithner or Rahm Emanual hire the SEIU for that or what? And did those union members get a day off of work to go protest? Or is the SEIU simply sucking up to ensure a place at the head of the line for government handouts? Acorn I'll discuss separately somewhere else. Acorn is just scum, corrupt and exploitive.
Then there's the shafting of Chrysler. Bond-holders traditionally have priority for getting their debts paid back when any corporation is on the skids, involved in a merger or acquisition, etc. But not in this deal. The bond-holders were offered $0.33 on the dollar for the debt they held in Chrysler. They held out for more -- and apparently should have gotten more, given their priority status and Chrysler's assets. But the last I heard, the feds have ordered the bond-holders to take $0.29 on the dollar. The UAW gets the rest.
(As far as this deal goes, the UAW may be getting the short end of the stick here. The union was a large factor in the auto-makers insolvency. Let's see if the union as shareholders can figure out a way to fund their promises to retirees and remain afloat. It should be interesting. 'Course, when this proves to be impossible, they'll just saunter back to Obama, hat in hand, and Obama, who apparently loves the unions, will once again screw the rest of the nation in order to fund the UAW's plushy retirement packages. Union members whine, "I worked all my life for those benefits..." Hey, pal -- so did all the rest of us work all our lives. You did not earn my money, OK?)
Anyway, so I looked up unions, just general information. Here are some key points from a news release issued by the US Dept. of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics:
In 2008, union members accounted for 12.4% of employed wage and salary workers, up from 12.1% a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of workers belonging to a union rose by 428,000 to 16.1 million. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1%, and there were 17.7 million union workers.
- Government workers were nearly five times more likely to belong to a union than were private sector employees.
- Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate at 38.7%.
- Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.
- Among states, New York had the highest union membership rate (24.9%) and North Carolina had the lowest rate (3.5%).
- Government workers were nearly five times more likely to belong to a union than were private sector employees.
I found out from the individual unions' web sites some more specific numbers. Like, the APWU and NALC -- both of which represent postal workers -- have pretty close to 700,000 members combined. AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has 1.6 million members. These are "public sector," that is, government jobs. They also have that squawking goose or whatever it is in their TV commercials. They've been working hard the last couple years to organize, organize, organize!!The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.8%) was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers (7.6%). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 42.2%. This group includes many workers in several heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters. Private sector industries with high unionization rates include transportation and utilities (22.2%), telecommunications (19.3%), and construction (15.6%). In 2008, unionization rates were relatively low in financial activities (1.8%) and professional and business services (2.1%).
So, Obama's bias in favor of unions translates into a bias in favor of government workers primarily, blacks perhaps coincidentally, and the more urbanized areas of the US.
Is that fair? That is, 12.4% of salaried and/or wage workers in the US are calling all the shots for the nation's economic policies?
You might want to consider, too, who pays these people. To paraphrase Pogo: "I have seen the payors, and they are us." We, citizens and taxpayers, fund all the various levels of government in the US.
Also, as far as Obama loving government workers and putting them before anyone else in the entire universe, the government is one of few large organizations in the country that's actually growing and hiring. Every item in the so-called "Stimulus Package" was funding for one or another government project. The states that accept those funds can't even use the money to pay down their debt -- which would certainly be helpful in California and also in Illinois. But no-o-o-o, they've got to spend more money and hire more people.As Obama himself has recently noted, this is unsustainable.
Actually, I think paying down their debt would be more productive in the long run and solve more economic problems than this manic spending spree. But then I'm not a Democrat. I don't quite "get" Obamanomics: Borrow $2.00, spend $4.00, and somehow you end up saving $1.00. Can someone explain this to me, please? Sounds like some kind of screwy hedge fund deal. Perhaps Obama has put too much weight on George Soros' opinions.
And just about everything else this administration has done -- like nationalizing the banks and bullying executives into towing the line on pie-in-the-sky credit lending policies, elbowing private borrowers out of the credit market, and the forthcoming-but-inevitable humongous tax increase and double-digit inflation, do nothing but discourage private enterprise. Kill it, actually. These policies will prolong any economic downturn and prevent recovery.
I think Obama wants to see us all on a government payroll. But he hasn't quite figured out yet who will fund this if there is no one producing anything that the government can tax. Good luck with that.
See, I'm beginning to believe that Obama is a really pure marxist. I really think so. The collapse of capitalism isn't working quite on Marx's schedule (note in the above, union membership has declined significantly over the last 25 years), so Obama's giving it a few healthy nudges and no doubt he and others of his stripe will call that "historical inevitability."
I call it bullshit, but that's just me. The net result of all this will be an even worse economic catastrophe. However, I'm also counting on the fact that most Americans are not going to just lie down and suck their thumbs and hope for some kind of government check. I think most Americans have brains enough to launch their own black market, cash-only businesses or something like that. (Anything below the IRS's radar is "black market." I'm not talking about selling dope.) We aren't going to curl up and die because our president knows nothing and refuses to learn anything about economics in the real world.
My own take on this: I prefer personal freedom to government dependency, and you can't separate personal freedom from capitalism, no matter how hard you try. And God knows, people like Obama have been trying and trying and trying.... Eventually, they come back to capitalism as a last resort, to fend off revolution if for no other reason.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)