With Energy Policy, President Schlemiel Tries the Same Thing Again
Do you have one of those hapless characters in your life? They are so incompetent in their everyday endeavors, but they smile a lot. They’re incredibly likable, but they really have nothing of substance to add to any conversation. They have no clue, but you still pull for them, hoping that one day they’ll get it, or at the very least that good fortune will smile on them.
Unfortunately, our entire nation has one sympathetic character like this in our lives, and good fortune certainly has smiled on him. He’s the author of two autobiographies, and with no business experience — or any experience in building anything whatsoever — he’s managed to become a multimillionaire. The beauty of our capitalist system, said Walter Lippmann, is that the good fortunes of our countrymen can multiply our own.
But this is one of those rare cases in America when the good fortune of one leads to misfortune for all. Our entire nation is poorer because of “often wrong” Obama’s success.
I listened to the president’s vision for America in the State of the Union Address last month. Amazing — President Obama’s policies have failed by almost every measure, yet he continues to press on with more of the same. The part about how he believes this is the nation’s “Sputnik moment”? I just about fell out of my chair — he was still pushing the taxpayer-funded green agenda. It became clear in that moment that all of the accusations about this president being an empty suit are true. The man that liberals told us is the smartest man ever elected president has no ability to reason beyond his own ideological preconceptions.
His call for even more government spending, cloaked by the word “invest”? Brilliant, aside from the fact that the United States is $14.2 trillion in debt and we don’t have the money. The president is married to his mantra: that government is the only way.
Mr. Obama is showing his experience, or lack thereof, every day he’s in office. The president has never had to meet a payroll, he’s never run a business, and his entire life experience is a delightful journey in idealistic theory. To be fair, his chosen reading material didn’t quite prepare him for his current job: Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, Cloward and Piven. How could Mr. Obama be expected to chart a course to continued prosperity for the United States when the aforementioned paragons of liberal thought have just the opposite in mind?
But one need not do much reading or research to see the disastrous outcomes from policies the president keeps pushing. Spain currently has the highest unemployment rate of the industrialized nations at 20%, or one in five Spanish workers. Their current economic woes are directly attributed to the meltdown caused by their so-called “green economy” initiatives. It does seem to be a pattern among left-wing ideologues — no matter how miserable the failure of leftist policies, they still believe they can follow the same strategy and get a different result.
Here’s my suggestion to the president on converting America to a green economy. If America wants it done quickly and efficiently, let a conservative do it.
The most inefficient way to spend money is through the federal government — I ask anyone to show me a government-sponsored initiative that outperforms the same endeavor in the private sector, “outperform” referring to the cost and speed through which the desired result is achieved. History and a fundamental understanding of human nature tell us that human beings working with self-interest in mind always have an incentive to perform their very best, which stands in stark contrast to the larded and layered bureaucracy that exists in our federal government. Efficiency is a foreign concept in government, as evidenced by every federal program to ever come into existence — none I’m aware of have ever been cost effective. Aside from the taxpayer money skimmed by bureaucrats, politicians, and union thugs, the drive to excel just isn’t there. No matter how hard the government worker tries, his lot is the same as other unionized workers that may or may not work as hard as he does. The worst way to foster innovation is through government, and the only prayer America has for a successful transition from an oil-based economy is the private sector.
One part of Mr. Obama’s speech had a sliver of merit — no conservative worth his salt advocates taxpayer funded corporate welfare. Oil companies, or any American company for that matter, ought to thrive or die on their own merits. Taxpayer money ought to be given for results, not for the promise of future results. The subsides and tax breaks currently given to oil companies ought to be converted into contracts for desired technologies. The companies that start to roll out said technologies should get the money or the tax breaks. The cash can be used to keep the cost of these products lower.
Conservatives really do value the “all-of-the-above” approach. Hybrid cars won’t do it alone, but hybrids, electric, biofuels, nuclear fission, and, yes, more oil, can solve our energy woes. Unlike the president, most non-ideologically driven people understand that even if these alternative fuels and energy sources become widely used and available, man will still need oil. The applications in plastics alone are immense. And if American companies received incentives to make the products we need and want, those products would saturate the market much faster than could happen from any government mandate. No crushing anti-business taxes or corporate welfare are needed in a truly capitalist system untainted by government bureaucrats.
The simple truth that the schlemiel administration doesn’t understand is that we will need the titans of industry if we are going to pull off a transition from an oil-based economy. The president summed it up about oil companies: ”I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own.” Indeed they are. And we will need their capital. We’ll need their innovation. We’ll need their entrepreneurial spirit if the United States is ever to get off of oil.
But these companies will need to make money to help finance this costly conversion. Our government can help by allowing our companies to find those resources right here at home. That means we’ll need a government that will reduce our reliance on foreign oil so our national security and the pocketbooks of everyday Americans aren’t put at risk. We’ll need a government that can see beyond blind hatred of success, success they can’t tax or control. We’ll need a president who has experience in building things up, not tearing them down. We’ll need a president who isn’t a reactionary to a “Sputnik” or any other moment. We’ll need a leader that instead sets the trend. We’ll need a man of action, one who recognizes and isn’t ashamed of America’s strengths.
In short, we need a conservative in charge if we’re ever to see a vibrant and prosperous green economy for the United States.
“To be fair, his chosen reading material didn’t quite prepare him for his current job: Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, Cloward and Piven.”
None of these authors had any interest in America being the wealthy, capitalist “shining light on the hill” superpower your country has been for so long. Exactly the opposite, in fact. Maybe it is time to look at Hussein not as a bumbling nitwit, but as a quite succesful underminer of America’s power in the world?
Let’s hope the grown-ups take over in 2012!
You are exactly correct – he is succeeding in the goal he has for the USA, to ruin its economy, destroy its jobs, gain power by causing crises, and take advantage of the preparations that liberals before him have accomplished: dumb-down the students, remove the history of our once-proud nation, and promote anti-Americanism. Now all that remains is to convince jobless poor to elect more Big Government candidates to office so they can survive more easily. If you don’t believe such could be the plan, read Holly Swanson’s book “Set Up & Sold Out.” It shows how much of the job has already been accomplished and what the end result will be. All the better that he probably isn’t eligible to be President, was educated on the taxpayers’ dollars, and can make a fool of the USA in the process.
Utopia requires the “mostly-white, Christian, Conservative/Libertarian, self-sufficient, armed, independent, skeptical” culture to be wiped from the earth in favor of a slave culture built up on the backs of mostly-brown, submissive, foolishly superstitious, and easily dominated cultures that make far better slaves and drones.
These cultures have no tradition of standing up against authority and only following those who both show them a stronger hand and a promise of effortless joy. The Plantation owners have created a whole system of manipulation to control their sheeple and as soon as they get rid of those who refuse to submit then they can take over.
Comrade Obama is a the perfect tool for their needs. It doesn’t matter what he says or does in public save for the moments when he suddenly sends up a flare to the Utopian minions start the next conflagration that will put them in control of another power center.
Chaos is their stomping ground – their home turf. Radicals – eco, ararchist, Islamist are their foot soldiers. Bankers, elite families, think tanks, and college professors are the Foundation of their house of rule.
They are the Plantation Owners, the Enlightened Despots, the New Feudalists – endowed with the genocidal visions of Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich, the societal ideals of Marx and Engels, the plans of Cloward and Piven, the tactics of Saul Alinsky and Osama bin Laden, and the morals of Che Guevara and Adolph Hitler.
And we little crackers and our USA are the only thing that stands between them and Earthly Paradise.
ararchist = anarchist oooopppsss
Well said. Especially the schlemiel. It fits perfectly.
We have changed from a nation of entrepreneurs (I am thinking the advent of electricity) who extolled the joy of cheap energy for all —
finally, for the first time in human history, warmth in the cold winter and heat to cook with — to a constipated agenda of punishing with high prices so we will use less. Why? People are cold because the money has gone into feeble, massively expensive, intrusive and environmentally damaging “green” technology that sucks up huge carbon footprints to build and maintain, if anyone paid any attention.
Follow the damn money. I say let’s move on to pocket nuclear plants and provide cheap energy so we can be a nation of abundance, not self-induced scarcity.
[sarc] They’ll get it right next time round. [/sarc]
“The president is married to his mantra: that government is the only way.”
Of course this is his mantra. It is the European socialist view of the world, and we all can see right now how well that’s working out, especially in countries like Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and, oh yes, England. Funny how liberals and socialists never seem to follow any economic models that actually WORK. Nope, it’s “social justice” or bust for these people and, unfortunately, we’re about to go bust because of them. Time for a change and 2012 will give us an opportunity to get that change we so desperately need.
Drill, Baby, Drill!!!
Anything the reduces consumerism and deindustrializes the US is considered to be part of his “essential transformation”. This isn’t even covert. He has been quoted supporting $4.00 gasoline and bankrupting coal-fires power plants – causing energy costs to skyrocket.
He is the abandoned child of a 60′s radical, influenced by the extreme radical left. He has demonstrated his willingness to trample any law that gets in his way to accomplish the above. He is the perfect storm of unprincipled beliefs, faulty instincts and incompetence.
Elections have consequences.
We need Herman Cain for president in 2012. He understands what it takes for businesses to thrive. He has signed the front of checks not just the back like our Check-Casher in Chief sitting in the White House. Don’t know about Hermain Cain? Google him. Watch his videos. He’s been a speaker at over 50 TEA Party events and has been well received.
This author just doesn’t get it either. It isn’t the government’s place to try to get industry to create new technology. There is nothing in the constitution that allows the government to spend money on “research”. Let the market place run free and when it is economical to develop new energy sources the companies will do so. Let the oil companies drill for oil in the mean time. As it becomes less profitable to drill deeper and deeper eventually a tipping point will be reached that solar and wind actually will be profitable, unlike the subsidy ridden solar and wind companies of today who go bankrupt as soon as the subsidies go away. The same market place forces of need and competition will do our “healthcare” industry a lot of good too.
Excellent article. Mr. Obama will not change – that is obvious. Oh yes, he’ll be like a chameleon and utter the right words occasionally to make it appear as if he’s seen the light. But this man is a dedicated socialist and he works for the day when all men will be equal. That is equal in standard of living and wealth. Remember his statement to “Joe”: We want to spread the wealth. That was his most revealing moment. Yet he still won the presidency. Shame on us for voting this anti-American into office. We are paying dearly for our folly.
You might ask, how can Idiotboy continue to press for even more government spending? Because there really haven’t been any adverse consequences to the horrendous deficits and promiscuous borrowing we’re doing. Not YET.
The day of reckoning is coming. When our creditors turn off the spigot, these days will seems like what they are: The Good Old Days. And any doubts left about whether Obama is IdiotBoy will vanish.
Coal.Nuclear power.Natural gas.
And dams. Great big hydroelectric dams.
Precisely! What other nation has such abundant energy resources as the United States and chooses to bottle them up? It’s preposterous.
Leaving the possibility open that I might be wrong, yet, I think The O is so dumb he needs help going pottie in the W H latrine. But I might be wrong.
We have come to such a sorry state in America that people who know how to read and write think it is a mark of keen intelligence to pant over an unlimited role for central government, and to question that undefined aggregation of power is a blemish indicative of blank stupidity.
So you have Sarah Palin stupid, Joe Biden intelligent. That’s bad enough, but this brain dead, stumbling, so far in over his head hapless fool that you can’t even see his ears, as president ??
I daresay America is dying.
“They’re incredibly likable”…really?
Why do people keep writing this BS?
Best article on the energy situation I have ever read.
Obama is not incompetent. He is deliberately crippling America. That’s not hard to see. Why is it so hard for so many to acknowledge?
ricpic, I agree with you, of course he wishes passionately to seriously hurt, if not ruin, America. But he also happens to be just plain dumb.
His brain dead comments after the November elections, the seriously maladjusted talk about making more speeches & going on the road, the only thing he knows how to do, is a clear & depressing sign of his stupidity.
Stupidity and hate are not mutually exclusive.
“The simple truth that the schlemiel administration doesn’t understand is that we will need the titans of industry if we are going to pull off a transition from an oil-based economy.”
And why is it necessary to pull off a transition from an oil-based economy? What is wrong with burning hydrocarbons? Surely you’re not worried about global warming?
At some point the economically obtained oil will be gone. The same goes for coal. When will this happen I haven’t a clue. It would, however, be nice to have other energy sources up and running. That said, having the government in the middle of the process insures they will not be available when we need them.
Can we once and for all stop talking about “getting off of oil” and “solving our energy woes”? I’m sorry, but it isn’t going to happen any time soon, if at all. Regardless of how much dishonest politicians, green fools and other half-witted environmentalists talk about it, you cannot throw enough money at wind, solar, tidal, hydroelectric, and geothermal energy to make any major impact on demand. Even if you embrace nuclear power and pursue the holy grail of cold fusion until the cows come home, none of these myriad alternative energy forms have any presently realistic prospect of replacing, and perhaps not even substantially supplementing fossil fuels. This idealistic myth simply ignores the numbers and the ever growing consumption of energy. Yes, we need to pursue new sources. Yes we have to hope major breakthroughs are possible; sooner rather than later, but today and for the foreseeable future only hydrocarbons in one form or another give more than 6 billion people some of what they want and need. Worldwide, carbon based forms account for more than 80%. Without hydrocarbons some people will starve,others will freeze, goods will not move, the world’s economies will simply collapse and die. To continue to talk about this subject as if the solution is just around the corner, that with a little more subsidy and R&D, some added feel-good kumbaya common will and some more “hope” and “change” is simply moronic ignorance. It is beyond bone-bendingly stupid. The evil oil companies, grasping oil despots in the Middle East and around the globe, the nefarious coal companies, and the occasional ecological disaster spill are not going to disappear, I don’t care how many unicorns fly out of Obama’a butt. Wake up!
Man 0 Man…that was good. You da man Mike.
Mr. Salcedo,
Like yourself with this piece, The People’s Cube’s creator, Oleg Atbashian put the following article into perfect perspective as well:
http://thepeoplescube.com/current-truth/soviets-list-of-barely-socratic-questions-to-american-progressives-t6617.html
Warning: Do not read with food or coffee within arms reach..
We’ve seen lots of breakthrough technologies that had their basis in government research, including via funding arms like DARPA and NSF. But they too can lose their usefulness when their focus is politicized – granting research funds to researches looking to “confirm” global warming, for example, but not to those that question it. Or look at stimulus money that goes to favored groups – to those making electric cars or their batteries, for example – but not to those making advanced internal combustion engines. When government is involved, we get the Chevy Volt or toy cars like the Fiat 500, rather than cars running natural gas, clean diesel or “split cycle” IC engines.
Progressives are like little kids screaming “We want green energy”. No matter how much the Parents tell them “We can’t afford it”, “It violates the laws of physics”, and “It’s not practical yet”, they want it anyway.
MIKE D,
I advocate for green technologies only as a means of choice. If gas becomes too expensive I want, as a consumer, another choice. The best hedge against a monopoly, which oil happens to be, is choice. If Americans have a plentiful, viable alternative to gas, we won’t be put over a barrel when we g0 to the pump…so to speak.
MikeD (#16) is absolutely correct(except for the part about unicorns). At the end of forty years of energy engineering, ending with a decade searching for the State of the Art technologies of the next generation, I am certain of several things.
The chemical reaction of carbon into carbon dioxide is widely hated among powerful people. This hatred of chemistry is bizarre to me, but it is a fact.
The US has the more deposits of high grade coal than any nation on earth. We have far more fuel than the oil rich Middle East. Depending on usage projections, we have centuries of carbon in solid form.
The US created, based on President Eisenhower’s leadership, a conversion of the technology of atomic fission from a weapon of mass destruction, to atoms for peace. This old warrior predicted that if we did not change, the technology would kill us all. Last year, the Department of Defense spent more money, in a few months, than the sum total of the price tags of all US nuclear power plants.
About 50% of the fuel in our nuclear power plants comes from “watered down” USSR bombs. This is the only technical way to pull their atomic fangs.
The US federal government has killed off the entire profession of coal and nuclear power plant engineering. Our experts are retired or dead. The best and brightest are now offshore. China is building four massive nukes with a speed that is impossible in the US. These plants will power states before we finish the licensing paper work.
None of the alternate energy technologies can economically support our society for base supply. They all cost too much, and will for the next generation. (Niche markets, e.g. solar powered calculators, will pop up.)
Our electric infrastructure has gotten creaky. Texas is being forced to make decision whether to send electricity to the Super Bowl or hospitals.
The above are facts, what follows is my judgment.
If politicians decided to power the US with wounded up rubber bands, and poured subsidies all over this technology, an instant profession, inside and outside government, would take the money. Full professors of Physics would sit in nice corner offices, knowing, with certainty, that the technology violates the laws of physics and will never work. But take the money. Fat people, in offices on K street, Wall Street, the US Capital, and regulatory agencies, with far less knowledge, will overview the failure.
Like Egypt, we have a problem, a different problem, but one which “might” destroy our nation. It “might” occur in Al Gore’s life time. (Technical people once did not say might, but it has become common place in today’s science.)
You have clearly explained the situation as it really is. It seems that this generation that collectively has the most education ever has the least common sense.
I do not have degrees in engineering or physics, but it does not take a genius to see that coal, oil, and natural gas contain energy in concentrated forms that can be transported to a place near where the energy is to be used and then the energy can be released as needed.
“Green energy”, wind and solar, are forms of energy that are scattered over a wide area, must first be collected then transmitted great distances to where they are needed; they cannot be stored so they are available only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing,which is something the “green energy” advocates have yet to figure out a way to control. A considerable disadvantage.
I think that “green energy” advocates might do well to put solar collectors and windmills on their own houses, disconnect them from any external power supply, adjust their lifestyles to the amount of energy they get and then tell the rest of us how much they enjoy it.
Wrong. We have plenty of youngins in college or recently graduated, as well as many Navy vets, who know how to design, build and operate a nuclear reactor. The Navy will give us the model for running nuclear power plants going forward: one or two old guys supervises the plant while the bulk of the operations are done by guys under 30. Oh, and that overseas personnel? Many of them work for GE and Westinghouse. They’re overseas now only because that’s where the projects are, but bringing them back here is a cinch provided there is work to be done.
Good article. The Congressmen and Senators of both parties offered polite applause for Obama’s State-of-Obama speech. Only a fool would believe that most of it was sincere.
Most Democrats are under no illusion that Obama is a living, breathing disaster. Except for his capacity to cause the country further harm few of them take him seriously anymore. But they can’t say this in public. They’re stuck with this turkey until early 2013.
But the good news is that dems up for reelection next year—the sane ones anyway—will break with Obama so completely to get reelected that sometime during their new term many of them will switch parties. But even before this happens the potential party switchers will help responsible Republicans put the brakes on some of Washington’s and Obama’s more inane policies, with Odumbacare at the top of the list. But even with this rosy scenario to look forward to we’ll still have to keep our fingers crossed.
Mr. Salcedo,
I believe that the problem you mention regarding oil company subsidies is not that simple. I agree that such corporate subsidies should be eliminated or at the very least based on results. The oil companies, however, are already playing on a field that is stacked against them through govt regulation and prohibition. It’s not a level playing field and the subsidies bslsnce that out to some extent.
The greatest downside to subsidies is that they allow the govt to pick winners (who gets a subsidy) and losers (who doesn’t) and as we all know, that has more to do with cronyism and politics than with imoproving the lot of the American public.
Eliminate the oil company subsidies? Fine. Then eliminate or at least retrench the govt regulation and prohibitions that restrict their production as well.
Hmmmm. What about the Manhattan Project? No, wait, that was a conservative president.
First of all, the Manhattan project was not a project to generate power. It was a wartime project to produce a weapon before the enemy produced a similar weapon. It was a money-is-no-object existential project, and the end result was to produce a few devices. The power system, OTOH has to produce a product for the masses at a reasonable cost.
Secondly, because it was a wartime existential issue, it was a gamble, with the outcome unclear. The physicists suggesting that it could work believed that it could work, but they couldn’t guarantee it. The other side of that coin was that if the US couldn’t make it work, no one else could, either. So it was a sensible gamble. We can’t do that with the electric system. We’re already dependent on it. Putting in something that might work, or might be economical is unacceptable.
So the Manhattan project is not a viable model on which to base the evolution of civilian power technology. To make something work is difficult enough, to make it work economically for mass consumption is beyond the ability of government.
And please spare me the moon landing project model. It’s even stupider. Sputnik, indeed.
And btw, Franklin D. Roosevelt was anything but a conservative.
Duvid #24 Are you sure it’s Duvid?
Roosevelt was a conservative, sure! He also could jump over the moon and had a tail. And stop with that very, very stale and overused, “no, wait” crap, it’s indicative of a tired & limited mind.
The United States, per our own federal government, has more fossil fuel resources than any other nation on earth. We could, if we wanted to, be net exporters of fossil fuels and thereby control the world market prices and the roguish regimes that currently dominate the oil market. We could pay off our national debt, create hundreds of thousands of good paying, skilled jobs, and truly be energy independent. What prevents this all is Liberalism, a philosophy dedicated to shutting down our country and Western civilization.
US Tops in Energy Resources: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34233
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=f7bd7b77-ba50-48c2-a635-220d7cf8c519
I would like all those that voted for John McCain to jump off the nearest cliff. McCain says that the Pres has seen the light and is a new man.MY GOD,I think he is sufferering shellshock.
Sir, we do not want nor need a “green” economy. Petroleum in all its forms, coal, nuclear power, hydro-electric power are all keys to human enrichment and progress.