The Los Angeles Times says unemployment is falling — perhaps because people are giving up on finding employment, bringing the labor market closer to what Frank Ahrens called “our new normal — unemployment near 10 percent, European levels”. Being like Europe, the ideal of some policy makers, isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. The Independent says there are now nearly 70 graduates for every summer job vacancy in the UK. A university physics graduate said of his 8 roommates, only two found employment. “I had hoped that by taking a master’s I would be at an advantage and the job market might have improved. But I’m concerned that if more people are taking master’s then many others will have one by the time I finish.”
Like Europe, the US job market is losing the race against demography. Glowing assurances economy that the economy is creating jobs conceals the fact that it is being outpaced by New entrants into the labor market. The Wall Street Journal’s Capital Journal explains that “economists say that the country needs to create about 150,000 private-sector jobs a month just to keep up with population growth, and the 33,000 created in May and 83,000 in June fall far short of that threshold. Secondly, the unemployment rate dropped only because about 650,000 people who had been in the job market stopped looking for work last month, apparently due to poor prospects.” This means the job market has to improve dramatically to both absorb those who’ve lost work and those who are looking for the first time.
What are the odds that things will get dramatically better? News stories suggest the prospects are poor. The AP reports that British, German and French stock markets are down over worries that the “recovery in the US will slow down”. Now Asian stock markets fell to their lowest levels in a month over worries that Europe’s economy is in trouble. “The Baltic Dry Index of commodity-shipping rates dropped 2.8 percent in London yesterday. The gauge has lost 47 percent during its 27-day slump in the longest losing streak since August 2005.”
Faced with with these challenges, the administration is responding in an extraordinarily European style way. The Guardian reports that “President Barack Obama, under pressure to stimulate job growth, said yesterday that two solar energy companies will get nearly $2bn (£1.35bn) in US loan guarantees to create as many as 5,000 green jobs.”
Obama has previously made it clear he wanted to create jobs related to green technologies. With Democrats anticipating losses in 2 November congressional elections because of unemployment, Obama said the steps he is taking “won’t replace all the jobs we’ve lost overnight”, adding: “I know folks are struggling.”
Abengoa Solar, a Spanish based company will build the Gila Bend project with the help of US loan guarantees. Abengoa was finalizing arrangements with the US government.
President Obama and DOE Secretary Steve Chu were busy this past weekend approving massive loan guarantees to solar projects in the U.S. as part of the federal stimulus.
The biggest announced project was Abengoa’s 250 megawatt Solana Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) project in sunny Gila Bend, Arizona, 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, which is backed by a $1.45 billion loan guarantee. That slightly surpasses the recent $1.37 billion loan guarantee for fellow CSP player Brightsource Energy.
The project plays to Abengoa’s strengths. The drive to solar comes at a time when the industry is debating whether solar photovoltaic (PV) or huge solar thermal technologies are the most promising paths to efficiency. The big solar thermal technologies are the domain of European giants like Abengoa and Accion, Siemens and Areva, against which the smaller startups can’t compete.
And financing will be especially hard for small start-ups like BrightSource, SolarReserve and eSolar. They will have to convince banks to lay out cash for large-scale projects that require expertise and experience in engineering, design and project management–not a strong suit of start-ups.
These small companies will be competing for financing against European giants with big balance sheets and long histories of building big, complicated projects like Abengoa and Acciona (who have already built and are still building solar thermal projects) and Siemens and Areva (who both acquired solar thermal companies recently). The safer bet is clear.
But “safer” technology is a relative term. The most sought-after margin of safety is financial safety. The supposed benefits of solar thermal are largely calculated on how the projects are financed. Wikipedia explains:
The way of financing has a great influence on the final price [of energy]. If the technology is proven, an interest rate of 7% should be possible. However, for a new technology investors want a much higher rate to compensate for the higher risk. This has a significant negative effect on the price per kWh. Independent of the way of financing, there is always a linear relation between the investment per kWh production in a year and the price for 1 kWh … Finally, there is some gap between the first investment and the first production of electricity. This increases the investment with the interest over the period that the plant is not active yet.
The cheaper you can make the plant in accounting terms the more competitively you can price the energy per kilowatt hour. As Jonathan Fahey of Energy Source put it, “before the sunny days for solar thermal arrive it needs to start raining cash”. That rain of cash has just started with the Obama guarantees. Bloomberg reported that the US government gave the Spanish company terms it could not find on the market.
U.S. government backing will allow Seville-based Abengoa to get a cheaper loan, improving the profitability of the power plant, said Nathaniel Bullard, the lead North American solar- energy analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
“At a narrow spread, less than 100 basis points over Treasury rates, a loan guarantee creates economics simply not possible given finance arranged on the Street or in the City,” Bullard said in an e-mail.
Abengoa’s plant, to be built 70 miles (113 kilometers) southwest of Phoenix, will be the world’s largest solar-power installation, producing 250 megawatts and serving 70,000 families, the company said July 3 in a statement.
The Solana installation, using solar-thermal technology, will prevent 475,000 tons in carbon-dioxide emissions annually, according to the company’s calculations.
But the fact of the subsidy itself, which by definition depends on money lent at below-market interest rates, raises questions about the long term economic viability of the enterprise. Projects which must be protected from economics by special arrangements are suspect vehicles for long term development. This may not bother an administration which believes it is government’s role to “fix” the markets, which hardly seems to take fright at the hemorrhage of jobs. They are not the sort to care about the markets with the future so near. In the end it remains to be seen whether any economic recovery based on subsidies, stimuli and deficit spending can long endure. But now’s not the time to doubt. Not when that long ago promise, riding on the wings of memory, to become like “Manchester England, across the Atlantic Sea” — to become like Europe — is so close that you can touch it. The moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter will align with Mars. It may not work but they’re sure going to give it a try. They’re sure going to give it a try. All together now.
We starve, look at one another, short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new told lies
With supreme visions of lonely tunes …
Silence tells me secretly
Everything
Everything …Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in
The sunshine in
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Anyone else reminded of “Animal Farm” every time Obama gives a speech about wind and solar power?
He’s just bucking for the title of le roi soleil.
1/Publius:
Actually, I think more of the Twentieth Century Motor Company. The innovations and production capacities that were buried and the bickering jackals and hyenas that gained control over the assets. Life imitates art.
Anyone else surprised that this business is going to Arizona? Anti-Obama Arizona? F
or perhaps Le Roi Nu de Soleil?
F #4
Anyone else surprised that this business is going to Arizona?
Considering that Phoenix is now the #2 drug-related kidnapping capital of the world, I wonder whether Abengoa is prepared for serious gunplay:
http://www.drugaddictiontreatment.com/addiction-news/drug-crimes/phoenix-number-two-kidnapping-capital-as-drug-cartel-wars-intensify/
$2bn/5000jobs = $400,000/job
Nice ROI.
Ask who is really getting paid here. Soros maybe?
Our president is authorizing $2 Billion to create 5,000 green jobs?
That’s FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS per JOB!
He’s a a piker; a timid little wuss of a man.
All the guy needs to do is multiply that 400,000 per job
times the 150,000 per month NEW JOBS target…
Hmmmm. That’s 400,000 times 150,000 jobs times 12 months to get an annual figure…
Hey! All we need is $720 TRILLION DOLLARS invested for a year, and we have FULL EMPLOYMENT RIGHT.
(Someone better check my math… Or Congress’s.)
Okay, Everyone!
Empty your pockets, your piggy banks, bank accounts, retirement funds, sell your gold teeth, your Hummel figurines, all those Beanie Babies you thought would be such a great investment, and, oh yeah, those Thomas Kincaid “Painter of Light” framed prints with a couple of strokes of actual paint applied by a bored part-time high-school kid, your timeshare vacation, health savingsplan, and Aunt Tildie’s spinet piano and Singer treadle sewing machine…
Oops.
What’s that?
You say the total cash value of every living person’s private property and savings and cash on hand, and the assets of every business, foundation, non-profit, church, school, Native American Casino, capped oil well and abandoned mine is less than TEN TRILLION DOLLARS????
Hmmmm. Does anyone have a more encouraging current figure?
I wonder if there’s enough paper in the known universe to print that much money.
Well, we just need to start printing bills with the denominations in scientific notation.
The way things are going, pretty soon everyone who gets a paycheck will be getting it from the government.
Another thought: Hmmm, is a U.S. government loan guarantee still so attractive?
I for one welcome our new Green Czar, Kermit the Frog: “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51BQfPeSK8k
Our president is authorizing $2 Billion to create 5,000 green jobs?
Not a plain 5,000 jobs but “as many as 5,000 jobs”. It’s like those labels which promise you can get “up to” X servings from a can of dog food or X miles to the gallon from the advertised car. That is, if your dog is a chihuahua and the route you drive is perpetually downhill. Otherwise your mileage may vary.
Another Hmmmm.
Wretchard’s post includes excerpts from Bloomberg Businessweek article citing loan guarantees of 1.45 Billion dollars to build a 250 Megawatt thermal solar plant that would supply 70,000 families.
Forgive my plodding ways, please.
That works out to $207,143.00 per family served, for the initial investment. According to Answers.com, the Organization of American States’ Office for Sustainable Development tells us that an average American household uses about 10,000 kWh yearly.
Are any Belmont readers familiar with energy consumption / power plant issues enough to tell us whether a thermal solar 250 Megawatt plant can supply 70,000 residences with 10,000 kiloWatt hours throughout the year, even theoretically????
Also, it would be nice to know how that compares with the costs of building a conventional power-generating plant with proven technology, even with all the insane environmental “safeguards.”
Are we also on the hook for cost over-runs?
Is this to be run like the public utilities in so many states, which are GUARANTEED a minimum ROI?????
Will anyone living in the service market area be liable to pay a minimum fee, even if they decline to use the power, like being taxed for public schools that teach badly and spit on parents’ who raise concerns about fifty different issues????
What about the Gila Monsters? The horny toads? The Roadrunners and Coyotes? The wandering feral camels, pigs, asses, and snakes? What about the damage to their dens, ranges and shadey spots? What if they get blinded by the glare? What about all the sharp edges on the frames for the reflecting mirrors? Where will the buzzards and owls and red-tail hawks fly that they won’t be disheartened and starved by the thousands of acres covered by collector panels, where once they could pounce on kangaroo rats and tasty scorpions?
I weep for our desert ecology, and all those doomed noble creatures.
When I move there, I’ll think of them all when I turn on the a/c and watch the European soccer games.
#12 Mad Fiddler
When I move there, I’ll think of them all when I turn on the a/c
Uh-huh. And just what makes you think that the bien-pensants are going to let you keep running that unnecessary Gaia-polluting, GOP-fostering invention?
From Ed Driscoll: “Smitty of the Other McCain blog writes, “Have You Hated Yourself Over Your Air Conditioning Today?” If not, Salon can assist, emphasis and formatting mine:
. . .as science writer Stan Cox argues in his new book, “Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer),” the dizzying rise of air conditioning comes at a steep personal and societal price.
* We stay inside longer,
* exercise less, and
* get sick more often — and
* the electricity used to power all that A.C. is helping push the fast-forward button on global warming.
The invention has also changed American politics: Love it or hate it, refrigerated cooling has been a major boon to the Republican Party. The advent of A.C. helped launch the massive Southern and Western population growth that’s transformed our electoral map in the last half century. Cox navigates all of these scientific and social angles with relative ease, providing a clear explanation of how A.C. made the leap from luxury to necessity in the United States and examining how we can learn to manage the addiction before we refrigerate ourselves into the apocalypse.
Scroll over to the punch line of the Salon article, which is a triumph of hairshirt enviro-hypocrisy.
Incidentally, this isn’t the first time that Salon has used their bandwidth to make this argument. Back in 2008, another Salonite wrote, “I blame A/C for the decline of the labor movement and for decimating the Midwest’s population. Mostly, I blame it for the election of George W. Bush.”
But of course you do.
On the other hand, the argument works both ways. As Jonah Goldberg noted a decade ago, the big big government that Salon takes for granted — their 1950s-era Galbraithian fantasy of Washington DC running the entire country out of Miesian office buildings in DC — was itself made possible by the same air conditioning that Salon now decries. As Jonah Goldberg wrote over a decade ago:
In the 18th and 19th centuries a congressman wouldn’t be caught dead in Washington during July. Well, actually, they might be caught dead, because they wore all those clothes and were so fat that they might have died while trying to get out. The British Embassy, for example, moved the entire kit and caboodle to Maine every summer. The idea is: Ban air conditioning in Washington and you would cut the “productivity” of the government by more than a third (say from late May to late September) and return the United States to the limited government the Founders intended. D.C. is still full of members of this school of thought.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/
So what’s the fuss, Obama said
Four hundred K a job
Will put our nation far ahead
Of that infernal mob
That wants to keep us in the past
With oil and gas and coal
These fossil fuels just cannot last
And freedom is our goal
Freedom from the Middle East
And Chavez and the like
Who think that we will feed the beast
But we’ve a blow to strike
The sun’s the place we put our trust
The sun will never die
It’s solar power now or bust
It’s not pi in the sky
Of course on cloudy days you’ll find
Your TV will not work
And nighttime too you’re in a bind
A-groping in the murk
The cost of green is high we know
We’ll borrow just to start
The fare is steep, the fare we’ll owe
So each must do his part
The bus to the fare future leaves
We’re on it or we’re not
We wear our herz upon our sleeves
We pay the fare or rot
But that’s all right, I say okay
When all is said and done
It’s green and we will gladly pay
The price to tame the sun
That prince of light, of flaming hue
Egyptians knew as Ra
Will bend a knee to masters new
Our fare owe, Oba Ma!
I think Senor Equis (I like it – after I’m gray and the current Mexican beer spokesman joins the Marlboro Man with the Spirit in the Sky I’m gonna be the next one), Josh and all the other ‘go scrub toilets you lazy coddled Gen Yers’ were the subject of this post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U18VkI0uDxE
The Most Interesting Man in the World – extended version
Thanks for the love Wretchard, and thank you for asking Whiskey to leave. Once Senor Equis gets outed in a year along with the other BCers in the Hope and Change Purge I didn’t want to be accused of being a member of the BNP on top of United Russia.
Back to the grindstone, somewhere between Skid Row and Moskva…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-OAwJ2zMeE
Moscow Never Sleeps (Moskva Ni Kagdka Speet)
this is in the Cap-and-trade program, the new taxe that make your future owned by big government.
There was a guy that edited an interesting article on alternative energies (actually wind turbines), costful maintenance and not reliable in the long term
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html
uh can your prince in white house dance? this is essential for being le “Roi Soleil”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMvpvDjFvHA
As Bob already tucked to the end of the pre-previous thread…
Those that had any doubts that we now live in an asylum…
Bolden go where no one has gone before…
NASA
Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.
Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA’s orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.
“This is NASA!”
“No, this is madness!”
#16 Marie Claude
He has been sighted dancing, if you can call it that, on Ellen De Generes’s show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWpvkLCvu4
Mr X/15
I spend a week at the beach and Whiskey is asked to leave? I will miss him. Like Henny Youngman, he was entirely predictable, though not nearly as funny. Am bursting with curiosity to know why.
Wow, $24 per hour times 40 hours per week equals just under 50k per annum, before taxes – all for a $400k investment. Maybe we can all get together and sing Kumbahya? That should help. Sticky fingers somewhere are glomming onto a whole pile of money.
Pat Cat
I tell ya, your prince is a fake, he would only be hired as a “Monsieur Pipi” at the court, even though, if he wasn’t born rightly, he wouldn’t be allowed to see the king’s popol
$400k/job may not be out of line.
Even a pure office job may have a “burdened” cost of easily 3x the salary paid. You also have to pay for the office space, office equipment, startup costs. For engineering jobs, one has to buy equipment and raw materials as well. If the average job pays closer to $100k, and perhaps lasts longer than a year, then the number is reasonble. Plus, it is an understood pattern in any technology that early adopters pay more, they prime the pump for those who come later and will eventually get the same technology at (much) lower cost.
These considerations may not all apply to all stimulus job creation (failures), but seem within reason here.
@12 Mad Fiddler Are any Belmont readers familiar with energy consumption / power plant issues enough to tell us whether a thermal solar 250 Megawatt plant can supply 70,000 residences with 10,000 kiloWatt hours throughout the year, even theoretically????
I don’t have great familiarity, but that’s not needed.
Practically, the answer is probably no, because: The plant can’t supply power at night nor much power far from noon or on cloudy days, and energy storage probably isn’t adequate to make up for that. But this only means that probably no one intends for it to supply the entire 10,000 KWH, and probably no one claims that it will. The authorities are not that much crazy liars, at least not yet.
That said, it sounds to me like you’re confusing watts with watt-hours. 250 MW during (say) some 4 “good” daytime hours, (say) 10 AM-2 PM, supplies 1000 MWH, but we only need 70 MWH (70,000 times 10,000).
This is not to say that the plant would run at 250 MW, even during “good” hours, nor that the peak load wouldn’t be a lot higher than 17.5 MW (70/4); it might be 25 MW. My point is that the plant would have to perform very poorly before it would fail to deliver 25 MW during good hours. So, sure, if the people used all their electricity during 10 AM-2 PM, the plant could do the trick, possibly even on cloudy days, for all I know. It’s even possible that thermal solar provides a decent amount of energy storage.
Actually, this project will cost the economy 10,000 jobs. In Spain 2-3 jobs were lost for each green job created. In fact, this should add significantly to the total of jobs “lost and not created” under Obama and the Democrat Controlled Congress. It signals that the DC Congress will continue with its hyper-regulation and targeting of industry. That means much higher costs in the future.
This applies across the board to “government created jobs.” In the 1970′s they tried lots of “make work” programs and unemployment shot up. It is often said that the recession when Reagan was in office (1981-82) caused unemployment to go over ten percent. But it was 7 percent plus when the recession started.
Mini and micro nuclear power plants are available now. They can power everything from a city block to a community of 20,000 homes for about $1,000 per house. They can be tied together to expand capacity.
It’s idiotic to spend billions on huge centralized electricity generation facilities that a couple day of clouds can take off line, when the alternative is cheaper and better. But what else can we expect from the Age of Idiocy?
The day is coming, and soon I hope, when somebody will figure out a dirt cheap way to pull hydrogen atoms out of your garden hose or maybe even the air.
The societal implications of nearly limitless individual and small community power generation are huge. When communities can get off the grid to pump their own water, grow their own food, and manufacture just about everything they need locally then big government of any kind will become an anachronism and an unwelcome burden.
I wait the day.
@23 myself That said, it sounds to me like you’re confusing watts with watt-hours. 250 MW during (say) some 4 “good” daytime hours, (say) 10 AM-2 PM, supplies 1000 MWH, but we only need 70 MWH (70,000 times 10,000).
Wow, and I tell you, Mad Fiddler, that you’re confused? We need 70 MWH per year, but 250 MW for 4 hours supplies 1000 MWH in 4 hours. 70 MWH/year is 0.19 MHW/day, so we’d only need 1/5000 of the plant’s rated capacity.
I spend a week at the beach and Whiskey is asked to leave? I will miss him.
Walt — You give us so much with your rhymes; I won’t see you deprived –
Obama’s emphasis on solar energy shows the distinct racial differences between “sun people” and “ice people.” Being unaculturated to insustriousness, brown peoples prefer passive means of gathering energy; once installed, the panels will do the work of energy production (much like waiting for cocoanuts to fall from trees) and you’ve got BET all night long. This contrasts with whites, whose DNA requires constructive movement, as in actively “drill, baby, drill,” preferably in cold environments such as Anwar. Few people understand how this Anglo-centric preference for ferocious activity in cold weather climates has influenced our modern energy policy and lead to our world-wide industrial preminence, now threatened by petroleum oriented Chinese factories once powered by rice hulls.
It’s important to note these financial guarantees wretchard discusses are going to a Spanish company, which will build solar complexes in Arizona. Does anyone doubt the majority of jobs will go to Hispanic illegals crossing the border there? It is a little known fact that the University de Taco Frio produces more solar engineers than all of Central America combined. Environmental jobs, anyone? “Green cards,” indeed.
Remember that it was a Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles who tried to initiate a boycott of Arizona to protest that state’s immigration law. And that an Arizona official responded with a threat to cut off power.
It’s clear that Obama has made a pact with Hispanics to return America to its pre 1845 borders. Arizona is being prepped as the first state to secede from the Union and join Mexico in a gigantic solar energy cartel stretching from Phoenix to Panama. Given its porous border and female governor (who will ultimately trade land for security — note Texas with a male governor goes unchallenged) Arizona forms America’s soft underbelly.
Eventually, a great arc of New Mexico — and I don’t mean the state — will sweep from California’s northern border to Texas, forming the spearhead for Hispanic people’s ultimate goal — Nebraska, and an endless supply of corn tortillas to feed their burgeoning Catholic ranks. Further erosion of the once-dominant Anglo American culture will occur as McDonalds begins serving Big McHuevos and Obama becomes secure enough to unveil his velvet painting collection.
That is all.
Ah, Salt Lick’s inner Whiskey! Too funny! Actually, more creative.
“Obama’s velvet painting collection” — Now that would be a great photoshop for FARK.
Mad Fiddler:
“Well, we just need to start printing bills with the denominations in scientific notation.” You are killing me!
Go to http://www.usdebtclock.org/ to watch the debt spiral out of control in real-time.
This is like one of Stalin’s iron foundries, all show and no go.
Salt Lick,
You are nominated for the first annual BC Bulwer-Lytton Prize.
twobyfour,
Obama may be on to something. Maybe we could replace Charles Bolden with Ralph Kramden at NASA and make one billion Muslims very happy by sending them to the moon.
Isn’t the brilliant second iteration of Obamanomics going to be where they get to buy the construction materials for the solar plant real cheap as the collapsing economy drives down the price of materials? That should be followed by the sheer genius of the third iteration when all the loans come due and a few trillion dollars more in quantitative easing are pumped out, resulting in 20-50% inflation. $200,000 a job should be no problem when that barely covers the rent on a shack with no running water.
PA Cat,
With no more environmentally destructive and selfish home air conditioners and plasma TVs the restoration of the glory days of Democratic Party hegemony should be assured. This could result in the revival of two of the key pillars they relied upon.
First the financial and ideological support for the progressive coalition is deeply rooted in the Los Angelas based film industry. Unfortunately that industry has been in decline for decades. By taking away people’s home air conditioners we will induce them to return to the large air conditioned movie theaters. This will not only restore the revenue stream that the Hollywood allies of the Democratic Party need but also facilitate the delivery of a uniform message to large groups, which just feels more socialist.
Second, men would be forced to leave their homes to watch sports games and return to the corner bar which once had the only color tv with a good picture in the neighborhood. The decline of local bar is directly tied to the decline of unionism in America and the restoration of that working class associational institution should lead to a revival of America’s industrial legacy and the Social Democratic coalition that governed so effectively after WW-II. Do you know that there is not a single decent saloon filled with steelworkers in Gary Indiana? No wonder US Steel collapsed.
Huge government loans to unprofitable solar energy companies??? Isn’t that how the Spanish economy ended up in a shambles?
We get more like Europe every day, Southern Europe that is.
Mad Fiddler #8:
Can I count on your support for a proposed bill to limit the US National Debt to being no greater than Avagadro’s Number?
Subsidy Sluts! That’s the nice expression for these unsustainable supposedly “green” solar & wind plants.
“Green” jobs die the day the subsidy music stops. Just look at what is happening to the photovolatic industry in Germany, now that rational Germans have decided they can’t afford to keep on subsidizing. (And if Obama and his crew want to make the US more like Europe, why does that not extend to matching the current European drive to stop spending money they don’t have?)
But even in Obama’s twisted & uninformed world, how does subsidizing an existing large European company help jump-start an American industry? This is like those so-called “wind farms” (wind factories, more like it) in the South West — where the high-tech generators came from China, the turbine blades from Brazil, and the giant steel columns from Europe.
The things people would rather do than build a nuclear power plant!
Whiskey was asked to leave!? (I have been on vacation too.) WTF! I don’t think I ever agreed with anything he ever expressed; but how are we to recognize what we disagree with unless we are allowed to hear it said out loud?? I was sorry to see Ron Rosenbaum “dissappeared” without notice too despite his shabby treatment of his respondants, (including me). (i.e. Was this Ron’s decision or Roger’s?)
Is this still BC or PC???
NASA wants to make friends with Muslims? How about a project to colonize the moon with Israelis? Yes we can! F
Josh,
Burdened cost usually won’t exceed 50% of salary. Or, you won’t get funded by capitalists.
RWE #33
How many moles?
So many excellent comments but let me first praise Walt who is lit up with the Pharaonic aspirations of Dear Leader. Way good stuff. As for the boondoggle and the weird math to justify it: no way could the markets fund this folly without the gummint guarantee. It is absolutely like FNMA and FMAC eating toxic home loans, which worked out so well. So kiss that $2BN goodbye. And lots more; because when a home mortgage sours, it costs hundreds of thousands and the economy walks away from the stupid investment; somebody buys the house in foreclosure at a re-set price; life goes on. But after you’ve poured $2BN into capital costs (including lots of “studies” and “hearings” and then litigation over the impact of the plant on the Two-Toed Sandfly) you have just begun. There will be the operating subsidies, year after year. And the rebuilds because the job was hurried or botched, or just because the technology (being new) gets outpaced. And the transmission lines will need to be built and kept up. All hidden from us in this glitzy announcement. Only consolation is that the checkbook is going to snap shut in November. We can hope.
Did Wretchard “fire” whiskey, adding him to the unemployed commenter totals?
I’ve followed BC for many years as an exercise in independent thought, and recommend it frequently. If BC has become PC, its time to drop it. If Whiskey was “banned”, what were the circumstances? Was it “deserved”, or an exercise of PC? Thanks.
? What was teh reason?
But the fact of the subsidy itself, which by definition depends on money lent at below-market interest rates, raises questions about the long term economic viability of the enterprise.
If the GAO were really into serving the public, instead of the politicians, they’d record and keep track of such ‘subsidies’ in order to inform the electorate what the true cost of that sacred solar electricity is.
There’s been next to no inquiry nor discussion, over the last eloquent decade of assertions of the superiority of solar or ‘alternate’ energies, into the cost of conversion from evil carbon-energy to the warm fuzzy sorts. It’s an article of faith, far above crude discussions of the capital and operating and maintenance costs of new generating and storage and transmission. And to members of that faith, Father Obama is just the leader they wanted – wholly ignorant of the technology and the costs, wholly unqualified to test the costs against the supposed benefits, wholly convinced that ‘we’ must make the pilgrimage.
Too bad they don’t elect an engineer as President every few decades. Herbert Hoover was no ‘community organizer’ (well, he did feed the starving Armenians), but he well understood setting up new technology and the testing of its feasibility.
From the specs I’ve read, it looks like that 5,000 figure is fantasy. I haven’t seen any specs that call for anything near that. Maybe half that, and most of those are temporary employees.
OTOH, since this is an arid desert area, I’m wondering how many people it will take to keep the mirrors dusted daily. I’m wondering how those mirrors are going to stand up to sandstorms. I’m also wondering how long before ELF starts shooting at the mirrors.
Seems like a stupid waste of billions of dollars and land when nuclear would do a much better job in much smaller space. Using three square miles of farmland (probably cotton) to service 70,000 homes with a portion of their energy doesn’t sound very sustainable to me.
SW/42–you’re right; I’ll mention again the book by Bryce, Power Hungry. The mirrors do indeed have to be cleaned, as do photo-electric installations. This takes water … out in the desert?
I call it the Obama Depression!
It’s not some “New Normal Ten Percent Unemployment” or NNTPUP it a Depression!
Let me repeat it is a Depression. When you have the money supply contract to such an extent under Obama it is a depression!
Obama is the Worst President in 100 years. He should have gotten the swift boot to the rear long ago.
In fact, he should own up to his failures and resign now! Even Biden would be easier to handle than the race hustler Barack “Black Panther” Obama. The same swift boot to the rear goes for Eric “Tax Cheat” Holder. He too should resign!
Here is a singer girl that had Obama pegged from the start! She wrote a song about him. And, she is now getting death threats.
http://tinyurl.com/2u5lydk
Singer:
“To elaborate: This song is about how we’ve forgotten the importance of our leaders’ character. The expression, “Obamanation”, (a play on words, yes) is also meant to symbolize a reality where people vote for politicians based upon charisma, instead of the content of their character.” –Soularashs
actual song:
http://tinyurl.com/24omw9v
To show your support for the girl just sign in and give a thumbs up.
Having visited an echo chamber of spoon banging at Breitbart let me say how rare and precious this place of sober discussion is. We have to work very hard to preserve it.
There are people who seriously believe that that they can;
1. refuse to allow a government agent Census worker onto their property,
2. just yell some made up number of residents through the door without identifying themselves,
3. threaten violence and win an argument by yelling insults.
ledger,
Done.
High official in French Finance Ministry just said that France’s financial problems were due to one thing: socialism. yes, France, yes the finance Ministry, yes you heard right.
Dang, Spanish solar, Chinese Wind turbines and off shore electronics for all of them. Then you have your U.S. Taxpayer loans for financing deep off shore drilling for another country (to make Soros more millions) and of course not to forget our continuous cash flow to “The Kingdom”, Egypt, Palestinians and the bottomless money hole which is Africa.
And of course trillions of your money going to the “Shadow government” and their henchmen which are backing Obama. Billions that are and will be used to finance the enemies of our Republic.
Just when is the American Taxpayer (you) going to get pissed enough to do more than just bitch about it?
But hey, since the U.S. Government and our financial institutions won’t help us, but just want more and more from us, now there is a new hope for your everyday Americans. There is finally someone who will do the job our banks and Uncle won’t do.
What? Who? Well look at this: “Sam’s Club will offer small business loans”
So now, in addition to all of the bulk food, supplies and equipment that I buy there – preparing for the downfall of American Civilization – by either the Islamics, the Mexicans or Obama (It is a death race for sure who will win, but I give 2 to 1 odds it will be Obama) I can get a low interest loan from them (that is if I qualify). The program (never forgetting Sam’s is owned by Wally world) has a few stipulations. Such as favoring (meaning almost restricted to) Vets, minorities, women and those who can show that they heart Obama.) I may have kinda added the last part.
Superior Financial Group is the money man dolling out the cash behind Wallyworlds entry into helping the common man gain a step up from oppression by the unfair white majority, corporate thugs and unfair, uncaring, white bureaucrat run banks.
It seems that everybody is pillaging the common man who just wants to feed his family, have a few hours off, get a little more sleep and afford to go fishing or hunting at least once a year. Or maybe a NASCAR event once in his/her life. Or buy that new combination smoker bar-b-que with matchless ignition from China West..er, I mean Wally World.
Oh, I might mention that my application was turned down by Superior. My credit it seems – is not quite good enough – my debt to income ratio is not satisfactory and I checked the wrong boxes on the application regarding “ethnicity and race.”
Oh well, at least I can always buy -
More Ammo there.
Papa Ray
This is the forced deflation of enterprise.
Socialism in the form of social democracy obliterates the margins where new entrepreneurial gusto takes shape.
Rent-seeking unions, obsessive regulations, uncertainty about what the next move will be, more big plans, and always taxes. It all converges, offering dependency that cannot be depended on and a good smothering of private initiative. And the end game is always to blame the people: it’s their malaise or their failure to step up or their refusal to serve.
The creative minority has been pushed even from the margins, and the dominant minority reaches for the cane.
buddy larsen,
Here you go.
We have now entered the Silver Age of Bizzarro World.
To be blogged under the title “Unnatural Acts.”
PR/47–do you buy your ammo at WalMart? I did until they came out in favor of ObamaCare; now I just pay more elsewhere. Too bad, their prices on ammo were good.
I recall being laid off from an auto trim and bumper manufacturing plant back in the gas shortage days of 1975 I found work as common labor, minimum wage shoveling mud off of a drain box in a dry lake behind the dam of the big power plant that was being built.
I worked alongside two graduates from Ga. Tech who found the only job that could be had during those days.
I noticed while I got the square shovel they gave the Ga. Tech boys spades.
And so it went 24/7 with 10 hour a day shoveling mud off the drain box and dumping the mud into the stream of water that flowed through the pipe under the drain box.
I was impressed by the way the tech boys still thought they were smarter than the rest of us mud shovelers due to their graduating from an engineering university, I figured they were but still in the end we all made minimum wage and went home dead tired and muddy each day.
I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.
@ 27: To get back to the subject of the original post, does it trouble you that The 0bama regime has given up on securing the borders AND insists that we “need these people for jobs America won’t do”? Even as job creation fails to keep up with [legal] population growth?
Regardless of whether there will or won’t be McHuevos in the near future, do you believe that importing large numbers of unassimilated peoples from Latin America – some of whom are so primitive they don’t even speak SPANISH – will increase or decrease cultural cohesion during the most economically trying times of the postwar era? Do you believe the newcomers will tend to mix well with traditional competitors (Blacks, working class whites) as they lower average wages in professions that once guaranteed High School educated males a way to make a living? Is the increase in racially-motivated murders of Blacks by Hispanics, and vice versa, an aberration (sp)? Do you think that local police departments will be able to help smooth this mass migration along when multiple states can’t even pay for current services (see Illinois & California)?
Unlike a certain poster I am not preaching inevitable race war. However, I DO fear that there won’t be much to find funny about American demographics come 2015-2020. Especially if Mexico fails to find new domestic sources of oil and its population continues to move north – not in hopes of a “better life”, a la that cliche’d Neil Diamond song, but in hopes of obtaining social services for themselves and extended family members. Things are already getting ugly – one Black female gov’t worker in my city recommended to a Hispanic politician that she and her kind ship themselves back to Mexico. And this was some time before the crisis of 2008 – I can only imagine how she feels now. 0bama’s election papered over divisions between Blacks and poor white Dems on the one hand and Latin Americans on the other – I doubt it got rid of them.
While economic growth didn’t have to be a zero sum game, it’s fast becoming one in the era of our Boss Tweed-esque Chief Exec. Stagnant economy plus disgruntled Black and poor white males plus finite pool of patronage funded by shrinking White/Asian small businessmen equals…? Hopefully our Harvard-educated Wunderkind (“corpse-man”, “profit to earnings ratio”, “Austrian Language”) and his Green Jobs Brigade can find us a way out of it.
#12 Fidler: Wretchard’s post includes excerpts from Bloomberg Businessweek article citing loan guarantees of 1.45 Billion dollars to build a 250 Megawatt thermal solar plant that would supply 70,000 families.
Forgive my plodding ways, please.
That works out to $207,143.00 per family served, for the initial investment. According to Answers.com, the Organization of American States’ Office for Sustainable Development tells us that an average American household uses about 10,000 kWh yearly.
Are any Belmont readers familiar with energy consumption / power plant issues enough to tell us whether a thermal solar 250 Megawatt plant can supply 70,000 residences with 10,000 kiloWatt hours throughout the year, even theoretically????
”
As some earlier replies indicated, an average “residence” uses 1 kilowatt (kW) of power on average, working out to about 9000 kWHr/year on average. Living in a sunny climate and using airconditioning, it is possible to get by with half that with some conservation measures (source: Florida Solar Energy Center); one can easily use over twice that amount (source: personal communication, family member who lives in Florida).
Plants are usually “name-plate rated” around some nominal power output under sunny (for solar) or when the wind is blowing the way you want it (wind). 240 MW rated to produce 70 MW average may seem optimistic, but we can stipulate that the plant is in some sunny desert location.
The other thing these plants may be able to do is use molton salt thermal energy blankets so the plant can still produce power when the sun goes down. Of course you are still limited by the total energy of when the sun is shining, so a 70 MW average output may still be an (optimistic) assumption.
As to the cost of this thing, John Rowe, CEO of Exelon gave a talk where he suggested that a new 1000 MW nuclear plant could be built for “about 5 billion dollars”, or about $5000/base load kW. He also said that the electricity from that plant would go for “10 cents/kWHr — at the bus bar”, which is utility-executive speak for the wholesale price — there is probably a minimum 5 cents/kWHr markup to pay for transmission, answering the phone, the fleet of bucket trucks, etc, to supply that power “retail” to your house. So the 15 cents/kWHr from new-nuke power is probably more than many US customers are paying, but less than what high-price people in CA in other places are paying right now.
I think you are off a decimal point. That solar-thermal plant works out to about $20,000/kW (baseload or average load), or about $20,000/family. Based on John Rowe’s pricing, that works out to about 40 cents/kWHr — at the bus bar — plus the retail markup. This is also pretty much what John Rowe was saying the “multiple” of solar electricity in price over nuclear — about 4:1.
On the other hand, his $5000/kW per new nuke plant may be optimistic — it may be $8000/kW or even more based on recent loan guarantee requests.
With either the nuke plant or the solar plant, there is one more consideration — John Rowe brought this up in his talk. The nuke plant needs to discharge enormous amounts of “waste heat.” Because it operates on a condensing steam power plant principle, it needs large amounts of cooling water for the condensers. So a nuke plant has some restrictive siting of 1) being near enough consumers so you don’t incur big electric transmission losses, 2) being far enough from consumers that they won’t object to it, 3) being near to a lake, river, or the sea, and 4) having a permit to discharged large amounts of warmed water. Some people regard the discharged water as being “thermal pollution”, others think off it as “mighty good fishing.”
If the solar plant is photovoltaic, like, not problem! If the solar plant is solar thermal, which it has to be if it uses the molten salt blanket to extend operation past daylight, like the nuke, it needs to cool its condensors.
Another type of plant that does not need cooling water is a simple-cycle gas turbine — the waste heat is simply discharged into the air, and no one seems to regulate that (yet). On the other hand, almost every other kind of power plant needs cooling water. For an ultra-efficiency combined-cycle gas turbine (natural gas fired) plant, it needs some cooling water. A coal-fired steam plant has lower thermal efficiency and more waste heat — needs more cooling water on a per kW basis. A nuke plant is of yet lower thermal efficiency owing to limits on temperature of the fuel pellets, although the newer designs mitigate this, and needs even more cooling water.
A thermal solar plant may operate at lower peak temperature and hence lower thermal efficiency (hey, the sunshine is free, but there is that waste heat problem) and need yet even more cooling water per unit of electric power.
This means you are putting a plant in the desert, because that is where the sunshine is, but it will have to tap into precious desert water in a big way to cool the condensers. Someone hasn’t thought that one through. I suppose the discharged water is only just warmed a bit and could then go to the farmer — oh wait, the farmers have been cut off too.
geoffgo @ 37: Burdened cost usually won’t exceed 50% of salary. Or, you won’t get funded by capitalists.
well, that explains the cement floors and lack of ceiling tiles traditional in dotcom startups, but it depends what you’re doing. capital costs other than salary are miniscule in such enterprises, very low barrier to entry. when I say “burden” basically I’m dividing the entire budget by the headcount, if you separate out other capital costs you get a different ratio. for any business with real products, simply getting the supply chain going and filling the distribution channel (or in this case square miles of desert), can be very hefty.
47. Papa Ray
Your Sam’s Club carries ammo?
They don’t have any at mine (Detroit Metro, perhaps it is just as well) but I never cared for the Chinese stuff anyways.
I am not very quick, but I am beginning to think that this green economy is really a stand-in for something very silly.
Perpetual Motion
Perpetual motion is still a dream
Pursued by kooks, mad scientists and crooks—
The statesmen of Utopia: a machine
So natural they paint it green. It looks
So good on paper: dark panels unfold
To soak up sun, windmills whirl, and Friction—
The great galactic menace—shivers, cold,
Imprisoned in a cell—in science fiction.
Nothing nuclear, like entropy,
Seems to appear in government designs;
Nor do too many numbers, I can see,
Besides those taxes, surtaxes and fines
We pay to keep Utopia painted
Green, gears greased, politicians sainted.
Paul Milenkovic @ 53: excellent points on likely costs and engineering constraints. Another reason I heart this blog.
Josh @ 54 etc (on burdened cost): In my former life (Fortune 100 corp) we did lots of R&D that required contracted time (FTE’s) from PhD’s and post-docs. Going rate in a seller’s market was $250K/FTE/year fully burdened. In today’s buyer’s market, and where apparently all the high-tech stuff has already been done (or will be done) offshore by the foreign tech providers and general contractors, leaving these workers to do site prep and unpack/bolt up the stuff made in Spain or China, I would think $400K/job is just insanely high. Probably half the total spend is going for “special consulting” or some other pork pie.
Salt Lick/27
Terrific stuff! Pure distilled 100 proof Whiskey. Thanks. Did not tumble till the fourth paragraph.
Buddy @ 46, RE France’s awakening: Gee, one widdle prod of M.C. in Wretchard’s thread, “the Demons,” and Paris jumps?! Is Wretch’s commentariat that influential?
There’s a picture I cannot get out of my mind these days. It’s of W massaging Merkel’s shoulders. Of course, the MSM picked up on the faculty lounge gossip angle (he’s touching her, RAPE! Wah!), BUT…what was really goin’ on was, Bush was buckin’ her up for the task she’s undertaking today.
And if Germany’s government could be likened to a heavy anchor holding a ship tight against a rogue tidal surge, that Merkel’s got recurved hooks and a shaft of leaded steel.
StAz/59; –i’m sure the Merkel initiative is what’s pulled that comment from the French ministry –if you think about it, it’s logical that two four to five year old center right leaderships WOULD finally make the move –i guess they ‘needed a crisis’ –seems that the only way to govern these days –damn –makes it rough –
steveaz,
Bush was Merkel’s Thatcher?
To echo waht others have said here:
Why are we financing a Spanish “green” company after the huge “green tech initiative” fiasco back in Spain?
I’m asking a really stupid question, aren’t I?
they could get twice the power for half the cost and a fraction of the land with portable nuclear power plants.
there’s even american companies that make them.
however the output is going over seas because the USA doesn’t have the regulatory ability to handle the portable nukes.
Lifeofthemind @ 45
“Sober discussion” indeed.
Not so fast, cleverboy; may I refer you to your comment @ 133 on the topic “Age of the Demon” of July 2nd directed, apparently, at a woman commenter of your acquaintance.
That was the most cowardly and malicious comment I have seen on this site. I am surprised and disappointed that Mr. Fernandez let it stand without repremand.
I apologize to that woman on your behalf.
#13 PACat: I don’t suppose he addresses how our increased lifespans may be attributable in part by A/C? Somehow I don’t see enviros giving up A/C so much as trying to force “those other unwashed” to give up theirs.
#7 Peter, et al., I wonder how many jobs will go to Americans vs Spaniards. And of course research/development pays much better than utility service so the technology will always be “just one more grant” away. Anyone want to wager this will not need additional funding, at any odds?
#Gordon: cheaperthandirt.com – Fairly good prices on bulk ammo. Or go to a gun show in NC.
oMan @ 57: (on burdened cost): In my former life (Fortune 100 corp) we did lots of R&D that required contracted time (FTE’s) from PhD’s and post-docs. Going rate in a seller’s market was $250K/FTE/year fully burdened. In today’s buyer’s market, and where apparently all the high-tech stuff has already been done (or will be done) offshore by the foreign tech providers and general contractors, leaving these workers to do site prep and unpack/bolt up the stuff made in Spain or China, I would think $400K/job is just insanely high. Probably half the total spend is going for “special consulting” or some other pork pie.
Well, but the point of this exercise is green jobs here in the US. Not sure how long ago your experience is, PhDs even in the US today are lucky to get $120k. Adjust your numbers for inflation, and – assuming there is something (anything!) to the claim for US jobs, some engineering involving some advanced degrees in the mix, and an average salary around $100k is quite possible.
But how much is foreign and how much pork, well, no doubt there’s plenty of both. I’ll overlook it as “overhead” if even 2/3 goes to US workers. As it probably doesn’t.
I can never be sure if the Lefty/Greenie crowd pushes this sort of thing out of a pure irresponsible wishfulness, the feeling that it must be true because they so deeply want it to be so; or a near complete lack of any serious knowledge of either economics or technology, the idea that because they have commanded it to be, so it MUST be. More magical thinking. They probably think there is some evil oil-billionaire throwing a spanner in the works to keep it from being succesful.
Either way it reflects a deep immaturity, an inability to recognize an outcome different from what is dreamed, and desire to bend others to their will. This is behavior commonly seen in a spoiled three-year-old.
So much for being led by the “Smartest President Ever!” I would happily take those “first thousand names” in the phonebook right now. The probability of this sort of culpable idiocy would be far lower.
Back to the opening paragraph of the post; Wasn’t education supposed to be the answer to unemployment? There are tens of thousands of unemployed auto workers here in Metro Detroit that have been force-fed all sorts of “high-tech education” and still unemployment remains at a stubborn 15% or more.
Pity the poor kid that believed them when they told him a “good education” would land him a high-paying job, now he has a staggering bill and has to try to pay it off working at McDonald’s!
Perhaps the real crime isn’t some silly solar power idea, but the fact that the current administration has been so successful at implementing Socialist nonsense that we will soon join the rest of the communist nations on the “ash-heap of history”.
Walt, Flying Squirrel, et al: Wretchard said a few posts ago in response to other commenters wondering where Whiskey went that he asked Whiskey to either tone down his rhetoric or refrain from posting if he could not do so. Whiskey naturally chose to stay true to his beliefs and succumbed courageously to the new PC standards of this blogs. Apparently if you call a committed commenter such as LOTM cowardly for the views they proffer, you are forcing Wretchard’s hand when he has to deal with LOTM whining about you behind your back that his feelings were hurt on the playground.
I have already stated what I know personally to have occurred in previous threads, and I regret that esteemed commenters such as yourselves were not able to address the issue then. But- quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit. As I stated then for my reasoning for outing LOTM’s cowardly and censorious behavior, he is someone I know in the real world, someone who claims to value his privacy to such an extent that even knowing him on FB I’ve never learned his patronym, and someone who is more than OK with posting my REAL NAME on his blog without my permission or without any reason to do so and REFUSING to remove ANY and ALL traces of my name from his blog when it is brought to attention that my real name googled leads directly to his blog. Among other ‘creepy old man’ acts that I have email documentation as proof along with these other serious allegations I have made inter alia Whiskey’s violation of his first amendment rights on the BC and what I suspect was a coercion of Wretchard’s authority.
@64 Thank you CB I appreciate you and other BC commenters who have tempered their support for my taking a stand. I simply will not allow myself to stand idly by when I have first hand knowledge of what really happened to Whiskey. I am not looking for any sympathy because it was my own fault for ever continuing a correspondence with LOtM after the job we worked at together ended. But I think Wretchard should take it seriously that LOTM is denigrating his detractors by bringing their ‘physical conditions’ into play. I have never read such a misogynistic implication that because I am pregnant I am not behaving rationally.
Someone else thought it was ‘rich’ of me to find that to be an ad hominem attack, or to find me accusing LOTM of ad hominem attacks since in his estimation what I have done to LOTM is not telling the truth but attacking him as a person. No my friends, to stoop to his level I would have said things like ‘at least Whiskey knows the difference between the preposition ‘to’ and the adverb ‘too’ and thus reading comprehension is never an issue with his posts.’ Instead I made the salient point that Whiskey never incited invective against another commenter, Whiskey WAS NOT asked to leave because he violated commenting policy and in fact violated one commenter’s ego, and Wretchard’s hand was forced by that commenter who feels he can police everyone else’s behavior while violating their rights with his own.
ETA The autofill put my commenter name in wrongly and it’s too late to edit, but this is Stephanie.
I want to thank the folks that responded to my PLEA, even the ones that teased me unkindly… >;-)
It’s one thing to use the abacus to fumble through sorting out investment dollars per worker-job or cost per kWh per household… But obviously there are bunches of other factors that need to go inta the reckoning. We can’t trust Opimple and his worthless crew of pickpockets to give us a thorough and truthful report, not in a geologic epoch.
Well, there is that guy Saul, and the road to Damascus…
Gotta get some callouses on the knees.
just a thought -
green energy supply is to energy capability as
hot-air balloons are to mass transit.
A couple of props for Rush Limbaugh today. I’ve been very critical of his understanding of economic issues generally, but he seems to have at least brushed up majorly regarding large scale macroeconomics, made some very strong points today about growth being the issue rather than deficit, and about the details of the Kennedy/Johnson tax cuts way back when.
Meanwhile, some more mean and snotty noises out of POTUS about “calling the bluff” of people worried about deficits.
71. f47
“just a thought -
green energy supply is to energy capability as
hot-air balloons are to mass transit.”
Again I am cleaning coffee off of my monitor due to something I read here (my co-workers think me mad), that is sooo perfect.
#65 SpeakEasy
Somehow I don’t see enviros giving up A/C so much as trying to force “those other unwashed” to give up theirs.
I’m sure that was Stan Cox’s agenda. Just think of the savings to Medicare when seniors’ life expectancy drops sharply during heat waves; Ezekiel Emanuel would certainly approve.
On the other hand, Harry Reid would find that the smell of “those other unwashed” tourists visiting Washington in the summer would be even more offensive to his pampered nostrils.
Steaz, funny when he reads or hears “french”, he pulls out his gun ;-/
Of course I know what is a Steveaz : a worshipper of the “conservative german revolution”, but he might have forgotten its connection to the Bismarckian “völkisch” movement, relayed by the popular national socialists,
we still remind how the events followed.
Germany ain’t what you prefer to believe she has become, she is still what she was pre 1914, a provincial xenophobic power:
http://www.eurointelligence.com/index.php?id=581&tx_ttnewstt_news=2833&tx_ttnewsbackPid=901&cHash=fd4d019649
ah, and that, this is your best presbyte contribution:
Marie Claude (and much of France, by extension) would do well to ponder an arborist’s appreciation of her nation’s Socratic imprisonment: a healthy oak tree survives to great age by abandoning its dead wood.
It’s my humble opinion that MC’s reflexive defenses of France’s aged Imperial monuments should stimulate some introspection in her and her fellow citizens. What could be more “Conservative,” really, than “Liberal” France’s unthinking fixation on her “fixed” historical monuments? Is this constipation France’s idea of “hope and change?”
I’m embarrassed for her, in fact. The more I think about it…it’s like Linus’ fixation on his baby blanket. Or, an eleven-year old thumb-sucker! Or, someone who peeks in the toilet-bowl before he flushes: all exemplify a pathological nostalgia for events that belong in the past.
Not pretty: Me thinks it’s time for France to grow up! She should jettison her Napoleonic, Pan-European pretenses and regroup around her Celtic heritage and administrable, national borders. Always good capitalists, eaters of lots of pig, her warriors unmatched – France’s Celtic marrow, her traditional reserves, is still retrievable. And Mohammedan vegans won’t stand a chance ‘gainst ‘em.
France should reach for what works! Look inside, MC. Fix France!
you’re obsessed, I don’t bring my cultural background on scene (except when it is falsh interpreted, and that I contest the errors, or the volontary erroned assertions) and this is not nostalgy of a supposed past “grandeur”, just a trivial objectivity worshipping), but it’s you, who still are repproaching us them. Im sorry if Arizona is a desert, though, I read somewhere that there are some remains of a particular indian civilistion along the Grand Canyon caverns. He, sure you can’t refer to it, too bad that you suffer from uour own blank background in the aeras.
Buddy, The problems that we have in France are caused by socialism, Mitterand made a great dammage, he is who put retirement at 60, that created so many state jobs… anyway, the babyboomers are going to pass the relay, so things will get in order in the next years
It will be really interesting to see how the feds’ new lawsuit, U.S.A. v. Arizona, is going to affect the Gila Bend project.
The irony of the concluding section of the document is truly rich:
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, the United States respectfully requests the following relief:
1. A declaratory judgment stating that Sections 1-6 of S.B. 1070 are invalid, null, and
void;
2. A preliminary and a permanent injunction against the State of Arizona, and its
officers, agents, and employees, prohibiting the enforcement of Sections 1-6 of S.B. 1070;
3. That this Court award the United States its costs in this action; and
4. That this Court award any other relief it deems just and proper.
DATED: July 6, 2010
Full document here: http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/usa_v_arizona.pdf
from my above link must read the topic on the left “Germany is unfit for the euro”
@69 I remember the Whiskey/LOTM argument and felt that LOTM was wrong and kept pounding away. That said, this is Wretchard’s blog and he can do what he wants. It is not a first amendment issue.
My only problem with Whiskey is the way he would start some posts with, “Wretchard has it all wrong…” or some variation. This is Wretchard’s house and while he is kind enough to invite discussion I think POLITE disagreement should be expected. If you want to strongly disagree with Wretchard – take it to your house. I will miss Whiskey.
re: America’s lack of numeracy, printing money using log10 numbers.
A great idea. Our lack of ability to reason easily and comparatively about large numbers today is having a much greater impact than, say, English v. metric units (note that even Airbus is still, indeed must use English units lest a metric part wander into the maintenance bin and be responsible for a disaster). People tend to think all very large numbers are equal (ditto for very small). Discussions about energy (and environment, and pollution, and risk) are nothing but exponentials – where solving the equation often settles the postulate immediately (as in “gee, that doesn’t make any sense at all.”)
Richard should do one of those online poll embeds (Google docs has some) – and have people report their monthly power bill and KWH used – be wonderful to collect KWH equivalents as well, natural gas and gasoline).
What we’ll see is the average monthly use is closer to 2 KW per hour – electricity only (and much higher during the working day). Systems have to be built for peak.
Consider that the average “light office work” 10 story building consumes 1 MW per hour (during the working day). School buildings tend not to be built to commercial code and are even less efficient. Don’t forget to add this (the fact that most people have two places they occupy) into the home numbers.
What’s amazing about today’s nuke price is France built their plants for roughly $200M each in the 70s. Amazing price inflation (really regulatory / insurance costs we’re willing to bear for something much safer than coal or oil – similar to the gasoline engine v. the horse). (note that France’s EDF still has their “Los Alamos” mission (or v. v.) – at least their weapons folks have something to do, unlike the U.S. labs for all our investment.
Consider where we’d be today if we had taken off the regulatory shackles back then (and not just nukes) and told them the target was 50% of price at demarc (could be as low as 2cents today a KWH given full exploitation of proven NG fields). fyi, the reason GE is so excited about wind is because they know that any alternative power installation has to buy one of their NG power-sets for every equivalent amount of transient power installed (can’t have folks freezing in the dark).
Also missing in the analysis is the only reason prices are high is regulation that reduces, if not removes, competition and more rapid exploitation. As soon as there is competition to fossil fuels, the price they charge will fall (along with their currently phenomenal revenues and profits) to the marginal cost (similar to what price an airline is willing to settle for of the last empty airplane seat a minute before the plane leaves). Which is well under 1cent a KWH – or $2 per barrel at the wellhead. In the case of the airline the minimum price is (just) regulation – they have to charge enough to pay the government per-head fees (else it pays to leave it empty).
It’s interesting to note that these per-head fees on international travel are around a third of a discount ticket. Which is much less than the fees currently imposed on energy (explicit and regulatory). This brings back the arguments of the 1930s – where who owned and controlled the generators meant money and political power. Which led to the TVA disasters – slowing innovation and deployment of power throughout the south, and taking of property without market-based compensation.
(The cost of) energy is a special commodity – the economists seldom get it right – it’s the missing denominator in their equations. The more it costs, the more we sweat. The less it costs, the farther our reach (distance and time). And we’re never wealthier than when a Boolean order of magnitude more producers are competing for our pocketbook (network effects), and we have the opportunity to compete ourselves for a power of two more customers. Consider that there is no poorer individual that the yeoman farmer, dependent on only what he (and family) can produce. 2×2, 4×4, 8×8, etc. are what determine our quality of life, and are what makes us free-to-choose of an abundance of options and opportunities. “Sorry son, you’re going to be a (subsistence) farmer like I and my dad and granddad, because we can only market what we can carry on our backs.” (without an energy multiplier). The bit world changes this a bit, but not by much. Perhaps half of today’s energy use can be virtualized (though the “singularity” folks believe that we become bits in that era – but it’ll be some time before Moore’s law or it’s replacement takes the world-wide computing and communications power budget (which has yet to exhibit “singularity” behavior) and reduce it to our current (total energy consumption per U.S. person) of the equivalent of 10-20KW per hour (depending on what distribution losses are assumed).
Want a recovery? Want to “save the world?” Reduce energy costs by a factor of 10 as delivered.
Meanwhile, some more mean and snotty noises out of POTUS about “calling the bluff” of people worried about deficits.
Worse, potus essentially said (recently): FU suckers.
He’s done what he promised to do during his campaign. There is no lying on his part. And it is not HIS fault that people wanted to believe otherwise (hopeychangey type).
Stephanie and Ari Tai, thanks for describing what “happened” to whiskey. I had a similar experience with LOTM’s gigantic ego when I posted notice of delisting of Belmont Club by goofball twerp reasoning (not an ad hominem attack, but statement of fact). LOTM rudely claimed to be highly offended that he was put to the trouble of having to scroll down through my post to reach worthwhile posts. Wretchard later dealt with the lefty-internet-cleansing issue in a separate topic.
If there was a choice between Whiskey, who is eccentric but not rude or egobloated, and LOTM, why did Wretchard chose LOTM? Indeed, why was a choice necessary?
Marie Claude,
Come visit Arizona sometime. You’ll find only a third of the state, the part below 4000 feet elevation, is desert. That is, only a fraction of the state receives less than 10 inches of precipitation all year.
The rest is semi-arid steppe, temperate pine/juniper woodlands and even wet conifer rain-forests at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Really, the state’s climate and geography are very similar to the Tyrolean Alps, the sea-ward Pyrenees and the pine/oak covered mountainous regions North and East of the Mediterranean. Most Europeans familiar with the climate from Austria and Armenia southward would feel very much at home here. Turkish and Persian folks would recognize the seasonal shifts here, too.
Right now we’re gearing up for our Summer rainy season. It rained over 7 inches in two days at my house in August of ’08. Really…Arizona’s nothing like the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons (or the mainstream media for that matter) portray it.
Folks should get out more!
Gila Bend is in the middle of nowhere and gets lots of sun. There are already some natural gas fired powerplants there that sell their output to California…
Anyway, I believe that the solar farm will be built within Ed Pastor’s (D-AZ) district since it is solidly Democratic and has a large Hispanic population. Ol’ Slimy is safe in his seat until he retires so I am sure Zero is throwing him a bone for his steady support.
The funny thing is, about thirty miles to the north is the largest nuclear powerplant in the US (Palo Verde Generating Station) which has plenty of land for expansion. I don’t see a rush to add reactors there though…
steveaz
true that we mainly know your state through cartoons and movies
uh you could make a good Tourism Minister
Ari Tai @ 79: “Want to “save the world?” Reduce energy costs by a factor of 10 as delivered.”
It already happened. A blink of a geological eye ago, people who were every bit as intelligent as we basically worked full-time feeding themselves. Today, the number of hours most of us in the West have to work to feed ourselves is minor. And that success was mainly due to harnessing energy, then using some of the time saved to develop even better ways of doing things.
Take away low-cost energy, and people as intelligent as us (maybe us) will be once more spending most of our waking hours trying to fill the never-ending hole in our bellies.
Yes, absolutely — we need low-cost energy, and lots of it; for us, and even more for those in the developing world who are still suffering from energy starvation. Subsidized high-cost intermittent wind factories or subsidized expensive intermittent solar power plants are taking us in exactly the wrong direction.
If we dig deep enough, the reason the technology miracle machine is slowing down in the West is our own excessive regulation. But the West is not the world. Who would have guessed in 1970 that the Chinese would beat the Japanese in manned space flight, or that the Indians would land a satellite on the Moon before the Europeans?
Either we in the West deal seriously with our own regulatory excesses, or in the future it will suck even more to be us.
@ 27: To get back to the subject of the original post, does it trouble you that The 0bama regime has given up on securing the borders AND insists that we “need these people for jobs America won’t do”? Even as job creation fails to keep up with [legal] population growth?
Nine of Diamonds #52 — Sorry for the late reply; I just got home from work.
Yes, those things trouble me, also. I support Arizona Governor Brewer’s new immigration law. I oppose Obama’s solar energy initiative in the same state.
My comment was meant to amuse and thank Walt for the pleasure of his poetry.
Not sure if this will work or not;
http://www.miseryindex.us/customindexbymonth.asp?StartYear=2001-03&EndYear=2010-05&submit1=Create+Report
In March of ’01, shortly after after G.W. Bush took office, the misery index was 7.22. When he left office, it was 8.22 ( I went with March of ’09 since it takes a little time for the new administration to get a grip )
That is a jump of 1 point over 8 years.
In May ’10, it was 11.72.
That is a jump of 3.5 points in 14 months.
President Bush’s first 14 months say the misery index (Unemployment + inflation) go from 7.22 to 6.98. A DROP of .24 points.
Is this the change we were promised? I hope not.
One of the 4th worlders from PJM wandered thru the other day claiming it was all President Bushes fault.
One of the more outrageous lies posted lately.
Play with that misery Index. Note that when it’s past 10, Presidents don’t get re-elected. I didn’t study it but that is my quick impression. Clinton took over at 10.59 (bye-bye Bush) so he did a good job grinding it down to 7.22.
I want a new stat. DJ average divided by the Misery Index. Anybody know where I can get that? I hate re-inventing wheels and I know somebody has to have already done this.
Stephanie, Jaybird…
I take Richard’s explanation of the matter as the factual description of “what happened”. Anything else is a conjecture. Though LotM may have been one of the “voices”, indeed it is rather certain, I don’t think that he was instrumental for Richard’s decision. Thus no forcing — Richard can keep his own counsel.
It is quite possible that the complaints came mostly from readers (lurkers), not from the contributors (commenters). If I remember correctly, the ratio of readers to contributors is about 100 to 1. Bear that in mind. Some of the readers may be people of influence. I know, sucks, we do not live in an ideal world.
Whiskey was presented with options and he took one. The blogroll.
That should be that.
Stephanie, no need to elaborate. Anyone can read the #133 on the topic “Age of the Demon”. It speaks for itself. It is as Cosmeau Bugleweed stated in #64.
If LotM has any integrity left, he may think hard about taking an option too. Up to him.
And that should be that.
Rosinante/87
Works.
2008-12 7.49 Bush
———————————————
2009-01 7.73 Obama
2009-02 8.44
2009-03 8.22
2009-04 8.16
2009-05 8.12
2009-06 8.07
2009-07 7.30
2009-08 8.22
2009-09 8.51
2009-10 9.92
2009-11 11.84
2009-12 12.72
2010-01 12.33
2010-02 11.84
2010-03 12.01
2010-04 12.14
2010-05 11.72
Very likely more misery down the pipe. The last 6 months may be relatively “nice” figures in comparison with what’s coming.
#65 – Speakeasy, re http://www.cheaperthandirt.com for ammo – thank you! Assume trustworthy goods? I’m new to the gun world, but becoming a good shot – for 9mm – I was told to practice with rounded practice rounds and for defense, to load with hollow point – price here (State of Washington) was @ $14 for 50 founds of practice; and $35.00 for hollow (50 rounds).
Now that Whiskey has ironically been tetotalled by an intellectual decendant of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, like Salt Lick #27, we are compelled to ask ourselves “What would Whiskey say”. Here’s a try.
As Wretchard suggests, it is absurd for the US to fund foreign companies to compete against us. Surely there are US companies that could design and point a bunch of mirrors at a boiler in the desert. Surely there are US companies represented by a lobbying firm such as PMA that could bribe our politicians to get earmarks that at least would go from US taxpayers to our own US crooks? Maybe foreign companies pay bigger bribes? How much bigger does a bribe need to be for US politicians to choose to give US taxpayer money to a foreign company instead of a US company? Maybe Whiskey would point out that because it is PC to hate the US and its corporations, perhaps a US company’s bribe has to be larger than that of a foreign company?
Whiskey might point out that at a more basic level, our political and intellectual classes do desire to favor foreign competitors over US citizens. For example, Pennsylvania used to have a strong industrial economy. Its taxpayers generously funded a number of universities over the years, including Penn State, with expensive engineering and science departments. But now, over 60% of Penn State’s graduate students in engineering and science are foreign students, the majority of whom we know will return to their home countries to compete economically and militarily with the Pennsylvania and US citizen taxpayers who funded their education. That funding could be saved, or used to educate and employ Pennsylvania and other US citizens. And build businesses in the US, not in Spain or Iran or China. But that would be wrong according to the politically correct view, because US citizens are evil, and US companies must be destroyed.
Why do Pennsylvania citizens accept being forced to buy and nurture the seed corn for their commercial and military competitors? Why do Pennsylvania citizens permit Penn State to refuse to plant and nurture their own student seed corn? Is it a silly thought that US-funded universities should help US citizens and US industry compete in the world ecomomy, rather than focusing majority resource on foreign citizens? Obama giving money to foreign tech companies says “yes”, it is a silly thought.
University hatred of our US military and refusals to even permit Department of Defense recruiters or student activities on campus are well known. That was outrageous. It is more outrageous that universities fought being denied federal funding if they continued discriminatory treatment of US military recruitment on campus. Obama nominee Kagan thought this was a good idea (as Dilbert says, “we’re doomed”). But it is even more pernicious in the long run, that like other universities, Penn State has refused research work from the US Department of Defense which is limited to US citizens, or which might have prepublication review to keep the results out of the hands of our enemies. It is legitimate that DOD would want to have US citizens trained in critical technologies with DOD research funding rather than our enemies, but Penn State and other universities have refused to give US citizen research staff and US citizen graduate students the academic freedom to use their talents to do government research limited to US citizens. They want the money for their foreign students, but don’t want the inherent responsibility to support and protect the US and its citizens.
Penn State is now the home of Michael Mann, noted inventor of the famous “hockey stick” graph trick that Al (sex poodle) Gore used to get a Nobel Prize. That hockey stick has been shown to be questionable at best. But more revealing hocky stick graphs result from a plot of the loss of industrial economic base in Pennsylvania, and the percent of Penn State’s foreign science and engineering graduate students, over time. These are the more relevant Penn State graphs.
Growing foreign competitors with US taxpayer funds should be prohibited. What would Whiskey say? Could Whiskey imagine large Chinese grants to US companies to compete with Chinese companies in building infrastructure in China? What would Whiskey say about massive, expensive federal and state funding for majority-foreign-student graduate schools, at US taxpayer expense?I think Whiskey would say it needs to be prohibited. Universities with over 10% foreign graduate students need appropriate budget cuts from taxpayer funds. For example, with over 60% foreign graduate students, Penn State’s state and federal taxpayer funding needs to be cut 50%. This includes state, NSF, NASA, DOE, and DOD funding. Why should Pennsylvania and US taxpayers, at a time of high unemployment from loss of industrual jobs to foreign countries, be forced to support graduate science and engineering training to citizens of other, competitive countries?
University administrators are pretty highly paid (because they are so smart?). But if there are smarter foreign graduate students than US citizens, surely there are smarter and cheaper administrators in other countries. Pennsylvania and US taxpayers could save a lot of money by outsourcing all university administrative jobs to India and China, while keeping professors and others who actually teach or do useful work on campus.
Meanwhile, Obambus and Netanyahu had a bagel summit.
Good coverage at Powerline: Obama and Netanyahu — the end of Round Two:
…
Meanwhile, the best thing about this meeting may be that there probably won’t be another one for a while.
That’s My POTUS!
#91 jaybird
University administrators are pretty highly paid (because they are so smart?).
That ain’t the half of it. How about a little double dipping?
From a Seattle newspaper:
Greg Royer ranks among the state’s top-paid employees, with a salary of $304,000. But that’s just part of his income. For nearly seven years, he’s also collected an annual pension of $105,000.
Royer, the vice president for business and finance at Washington State University, tops a long list of college administrative staff members who’ve been able to boost their incomes by up to 60 percent by exploiting a loophole in state retirement laws.
A Seattle Times investigation has found that at least 40 university or community-college employees retired and were rehired within weeks, often returning to the same job without the position ever being advertised. That has allowed them to double dip by collecting both a salary and a pension.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2012217904&zsection_id=2003904401&slug=retirerehire27m&date=20100626
Photos of two of the perps at the link.
Josh @ 92: I think the reason that Powerline says there is unlikely to be another Hopey-Bibi summit any time soon, is that the Israelis are going to be busy with Iran and its proxies. Either they get smacked by the ayatollahs’ new toys; or they strike preemptively; and/or there is a lot of hurtin’ with Hamas/Hezbollah. Hopey won’t want to be seen associating with them until that’s all over. After which, I figure there is only about 50-50 odds of there being anyone with whom to associate.
jaybird@91/
I guess the standard reply to your pov (though not totally MY view) would be that a) we don’t produce enough homegrown PhDs of our own in these fields (due to our piss-poor K-12 educational system and modern-day slacker cultural attitudes) so we need these people whether they stay here or via the goods/services they provide us once they return to their home countries (e.g.,via inventions they develop that produce things we need that otherwise wouldn’t have been invented–either here OR overseas) and b) many will elect to stay in the US once exposed to our welcoming society–so we shouldn’t forgo this source of brainpower, and c) even if they return to their native countries the good-will that is engendered by their experience in America pays dividends long-term.
How would you answer this critique of your position?
PS:This is NOT a trick question.
Knight1@90,
Between 1998 and 2002, I bought a lot of camping gear from cheaperthandirt; no ammo. They delivered what I ordered promptly and as ordered.
Actually, I got through Y2K just fine by getting a little stamping machine and re-stamping extended expiration dates on all my canned food.
(Tee-hee!)
I wonder if the LA Times thinks unemployment is tapering off because enough people are moving away from it (California) to somewhat counter-balance the balance sheet just the least little bit?
I love that, the Brits put us in the basket
When talking politics, however, the French, like the Americans, tend to go for the more formal notion of justice. But fairness appeals to the British political class, for it has a common sense down-to-earthiness which avoids the grandiosity of American and continental European political discourse while aspiring to do its best for all men—and of course for maidens too, fair and otherwise, for one of its virtues is that it does not discriminate on grounds of either gender or skin colour.
http://www.economist.com/node/16485338?story_id=16485338
Naturally, the Best are t’em !
And now onward to the kicking of people in the playground.
Cosmeau (#64): “Not so fast, cleverboy; may I refer you to your comment @ 133 on the topic ‘Age of the Demon’”
“Age of the Demon”? That sounds familiar… Ah, yes! That was the thread in which you made the preposterous statement about a certain former poster: “I cannot recall him being offensive about non-whites”.
“That was the most cowardly and malicious comment I have seen on this site.”
Really? Especially since it was presumably a response to comment #103, first paragraph?
Stephelyn/Stephanie (#69):
Oh for the love of God! I don’t know just what happened between you and LotM, nor do I care. For all I know, he may be a reprehensible person in real life. All I know is what happened here:
1. Wretchard, following communications from several people, asked you-know-who to stop commenting.
2. We know that LotM was among several people who openly criticized said individual for his posts here.
3. Therefore … you are justified in repeatedly bringing in all this dirty laundry!
Huh? This is what you call “behaving rationally”?
(To be charitable, this might make some sense. If you think that wretchard is a wimp and a liar, and that he was intimidated into this action solely by LotM. Is that your contention?)
“Whiskey’s violation of his first amendment rights on the BC”
Your knowledge of the Bill of Rights is as impressive as your mastery of grammar.
You folks are correct on the regulatory burden for new energy. Might I also add to that cost the legal burden – with non-approved (by the current intelligentsia) projects (coal, nuclear, big hydro, etc) being dragged thru innumerable courts via myriad green and nimby complaints.
Worldwide, the cheapest electricity is out of coal, nuclear and big hydro – all in the neighborhood of 2 cents/kwh delivered. The new small nuke plants (Toshiba 4S for instance) ring in at 7-9 cents/kwh. This will work for places off the grid like most of rural Alaska. They are not competitive for anywhere else.
On the other hand, if you believe we are in a historic solar minimum, then ANYTHING that produces excess heat is indeed a Good Thing, as you can do a lot with excess heat (greenhouses, fish hatcheries, etc).
Rule of thumb is that a reactor will produce about 3X the amount of heat as its electric rating – ie) a 1 GW electric reactor also produces 3 GW of heat. If you want more heat out to do somethign with, you get less electricity. If you want the reactor to produce hydrogen (very useful in biomass to liquids – synthetic diesel) you also get a commensurate reduction in electricity delivered.
Finally, light water fission reactors are not the only game in town, as the Indians are now working toward thorium fueled fission reactors. And there is a LOT more thorium in the world than uranium.
The Obamanation has also skewed the playing field by refusing permits or loans for any new coal or natural gas fired generation – which opens the door for the states to take over the permitting process in response.
Solve the permitting process and get the electric utilities out of court, and you will see capital costs for new generation drop by at least a third if not more. You will also cut at least a third off the time to build a new generation facility – whatever it is using to generate.
In the words of Walt Kelly: We have met the enemy and he is us.
Wretchard,
If Whiskey were to make a brief return and quote/discourse from the Apostle Paul, (Titus 1:12-13)
“One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.’ This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith.”
Who would you find more offensive, the blogger or the Apostle?
2nd question, which would you hold in higher regard, our modern PC culture and the well nigh universal kowtowing thereto, or rather this frank and discriminating “Apostle’s Screed”, addressed to Titus with a view toward shaping up the Cretans toward soundness in the Faith and Life Everlasting?
79. Ari Tai
Want a recovery? Want to “save the world?” Reduce energy costs by a factor of 10 as delivered.
……..
agreed.
Virgil #97, its not necessarily “my position”, but an attempt to imagine “what Whiskey would say” because he has been banned. But here goes:
First, I ppersonally agree that our K-12 education has degenerated to consist largely of deplorable propaganda, and it is my personal opinion that television and the values/behavior it promotes are a truly destructive social and cultural force. Putting the two together, there is nothing more depressing than seeing the intellectual display of union teachers on television demanding this or that. The kids don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.
1. Whiskey’s possible answer to “we don’t produce enough PhD’s of our own”:
Why would a US citizen undergraduate want to apply to science or engineering graduate school? They have had their fill of not being able to understand the foreign lecturers, in foreign-culture dominated departments. And there are less tech jobs because we have been training foreign competition for many years. How many companies would pay to train their competitors employees in all their trade secrets? And refuse to train their own employees? Our universities, like deep long-term foreign stealth agents bent on our eventual economic destruction, have trained others to take technologies invented in the US, and to take our jobs and expertise. First Japan, Taiwan, now China, Malayasia, India… With few exceptions, almost all integrated circuits and electronics are no longer made in the US. Same for increasing amounts of software. And industrial and scientific equipment. Our universities insist on publishing all research they do with US industry, as their “academic freedom right to publish” other peoples ideas and funded work. This of course prevents a sustainable competitive advantage for any US company employing US citizens that would want to work with a US university. Universities in other countries are not so stupid or malevolent as to be destructive of their own industrial base. And increasingly, US companies are forced by dire economic realities to work with universities, which are becoming monopolists in the reeaarch business through government subsidies. Universities don’t just teach and grade papers anymore. They want to be BIG BUSINESS at taxpayer expense. Universities correctly advertise that they do research much less expensively than US industry. This is because they are very, very heavily subsidized by US taxpayers. They have virtually “free” grad student labor (paid for by US taxpayers, remarkably including the majority of foreign students) and salaried professors paid for by taxpayers, and very expensive facilities and equipment paid for by taxpayers. This drives US companies out of the R&D business. So less jobs for US graduates – particularly when the taxpayer subsidized grad student jobs are preferably given to foreign students competing with US citizens for research work. Whiskey would probably say US taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize such massive non-core university operations that compete with US industry, particularly when universities refuse to work with or cooperate with US industry (which they have the luxury of hating beccause they are taxpayer-funded) without publishing their technology.
So, from Whiskey’s (imagined) analysis, the graduate school choices for an honest US citizen student don’t look very good. But for the smart and dishonest, the way to go is into banking or lobbying or other direct bribery political corruption, where you can get a piece of the declining taxpayer’s hide. In a declining society, “crony capitalism”, access to government power and largess, are the only remaining route to success.
2. We need goods/services the foreign grad students (who US taxpayers paid to train), will “provide us once they return to their home countries”.
Whiskey would see right through this PC argument. As a nation of womyn studies, criminal justice and sports announcing majors that can’t invent or make anything anymore, we need foreign PhDs and their home companies to make things for us. Having taught them our Yankee ingenuity, while stiffeling to our own citizens, you argue that it is a good thing that the foreign PhDs will “develop inventions that produce things we need”. We can pay them in burgers and womyn’s studies memoirs. This is so pathetic and so lacking in stratecic and business reality that Whiskey would suspect that you have been subjected to a PC edumacation. Or are a public employee? Or a politician? That is the kind of reality that spells absolute doom for us as a country.
3. Many of the foreign PhDs US taxpayers pay to train better than their own children, will elect to stay in the US” once exposed to our welcoming society–so we shouldn’t forgo this source of brainpower”.
As I initially stated, less than half stay. It is true that US universities were intellectual backwaters prior to World War II, and that the War and the forced influx of European intellectuals (most but not all Jewish) propelled US universities to premier stature. That, coupled with the general devastation of Europe and Japan after teh War. And Whiskey would point out that it is much better to have loyal intellectual, skiled, immigrants than the illegal unskilled immigration forced on us by vote-seeking politicians and modern slave-wanting businesses. But most foreign grad students are not driven here, and don’t have intense loyalty to our founding principles. Most go home to compete commercially or militarily. Many hate us, and learn to hate us from the university culture that teaches hatred ofthe US and Western Civilization generally. Chinese and other asian grad students rtain very strong home-country loyalties. That’s the way it is. And US taxpayers arte funding this suicidal idiocy so universities can run a BIG BUSINESS at taxpayer expense with very high pay.
4. When the foreign PhDs, who US taxpayers paid to educate better than their own families, go home as most do, “the good-will that is engendered by their experience in America pays dividends long-term”
Whiskey, of course would say this is an idiotic PC statement. He would (I think) disagree that there are any good-will dividends at all. When we are broke and incompetent, as we are quickly becoming) how much “good will” will we receive in our destitution for having trained our competitors and other countries, rather than our own citizens? Certainly this nebulous PC dividend is not worth the damage done to our economy by training competitors to take our jobs. Can Whiskey spend this dividend to buy the things that we can’t make anymore because our companies are out of business due to foreign competition in technologies we invented? Is this like the good-will dividend that universities get for demanding publication US corporate- and government-sponsored research so we have no competitive advantage to support US salaries?
It is betteer to have real dividends, from real companies that are thriving with productive employees. We used to have the respect and “dividends” of respect for our accomplishments and restrained power that presented a bastion against tyranny. But our universities have taught hatred of our culture and accomplishment, have traained our competitors at public US taxpayer expense to enrich and aggrandize themselves, and have nothing but contempt for our military and and private economy that make their poisonous behavior possible. If our universities intended to damage us, what would they have done differently? Just asking on behalf of the departed Whiskey.
To summarize an imagined Whiskey point of view, universities, in their greed and crazed quest for power and funding, are consuming scarce government research and education funds to train noncitizens to compete with us, with a consequence of directly and indirectly destryoing US research and engineering jobs. Much damage has already been done. Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to continue to pay for their own suicide. University funding for foreign graduate students and noncitizens without a loyalty connection to this country should be cut dramatically, and at least some saved research funds should go to US companies, not Spanish or other foreign companies.
Whiskey was quite a guy. We will miss his eccentric, but thought-provoking, points of view.
Hyphenated Texan (#101):
The Apostle Paul, eh? As in Saint Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, so named because of his mission to “bring Christ” to the Gentiles? As opposed to the not insignificant current of thought that would have pretty much limited “Christianity” to the Jews?
Do you understand why that makes your comment so laugh-out-loud incongruous?
jaybird @ 103: Why would a US citizen undergraduate want to apply to science or engineering graduate school? They have had their fill of not being able to understand the foreign lecturers, in foreign-culture dominated departments. And there are less tech jobs because we have been training foreign competition for many years.
There are “less jobs” for US citizens because we import both students and foreign PhDs, I suppose for PhD the US-trained still predominate. But the main thing chasing Americans from STEM jobs is the fact that salaries have plunged by 75% from thirty years ago. Strictly as a monetary proposition, you’re better off completing high school and opening a sandwich shop, or even becoming a cop, or even a civil service BA accountant.
No money, no science. No more US innovation. No more US defense industry. Isn’t this too close to what supposedly killed Rome? They couldn’t maintain their infrastructure, tried to import labor until they were hollowed out and then gone.
Follow the money.
103. jaybird
Virgil #97, its not necessarily “my position”, but an attempt to imagine “what Whiskey would say” because he has been banned. But here goes:
…………..
This is what really ticks me off. There is a piece of this conversation that is missing without Whiskey. There was real economy to his words. Now there’s extra stuff I feel compelled to write to fill in the Whiskey spot. Its just more time out my schedule.
PA Cat #93. Looks like your university administrators got their graduate school training in Mayor Daley’s Chicago school of political science, with a concentration in double dipping. As smarter-than-us university geniuses, they recognize that only way to succeed in a declining society is manipulation of government largess and corruption.
From you PA moniker, I thought about what your take might be, when describing Penn State’s massive use of taxpayer funds to train competitors of Pennsylvania’s once-proud, but declining industrial base (declining in step with the rise in use of Pennsylvania and US taxpayer funds to train competitors).
I’ll now sink back into obscurity, probably having lost my interest in the site for its PC banning of words and ideas. I havent followed the Kagan hearings, but I recall something about her belief (much stronger than Learned Hand’s classic restriction limitation on yelling “fire” in a crowded theater) in severe limits on speech and media. Kagan going to the court that is supposed to protect us against government power, and Wretchard banning words and ideas. We are doomed.
Bob, so are we now to engage in jostling whose fallacy trumps anothers’?
You are trying to beat his straw man with non-sequitur!
Josh (#105):
Foreign STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workers have indeed exerted a downward pressure on US STEM salaries. So what’s the alternative? If the rest of the world’s best and brightest remain in their countries, how long will it be before American companies are faced with Chinese/Indian/Israeli/etc Microsofts, Apples etc? And how will the American companies compete then?
I’m open to suggestions, but I tend to conclude that we’ll have to accept globalization’s negatives as well as its positives, and that there is no returning to the short-lived, unsustainable, and mythical Golden Age. (Which hardly means that that we can’t improve our handling of this process.)
Josh #105 and Charles #106 – you each said it better than I did. I withdraw my comment #103, and apologize for the lack of economy.
twobyfour (#108): “are we now to engage in jostling whose fallacy trumps anothers’?”
No contest here. I’ve got the biggest fallac-y!
Bob/111
Ah… well, then can’t imagine any better reply than this.
twobyfour (#112):
And here‘s an example of Michael Palin being on the receiving end.
So who would be harder to imitate? Whiskey or LoTM?
We need a contest. Winner gets a box of Norinco .455 wad cutters.
i wonder, can you play Russian Roulette with a semi-auto?
Rosinante/114
A tough one.
Someone mentioned a discourse economy and a word flashes before my eyes–”overrated!”. I’d have a hard time to stretch my verbiage output to match Whiskey’s.
OTOH, I have a lot to learn from LotM as invectives and innuendo go. I simply don’t have the… fiber. Let alone his output and syntactical constructs. The constructs–he can truly trademark them.
Maybe if I used the chomskybot, I’d have a chance… naw.
Thus I have to decline the participation, with my battle cry: “Semper snarkaecum laconicae!”
Addendum: Buddy/115, Now that’s economy!
i think it’s for if ya want to play but don’t have a revolver with a cyclinder to spin. if you just have the auto, you load the bullet into the clip, then spin the clip on the table, then snap it into the pistol, work the slide, and play russian roulette!
(adult humor, kiddies, not to try!)
That seems to have taken surprisingly no time at all.
Sightings included.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp3ywhOEDgc&feature=PlayList&p=590177CE1C8960AA&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=30
vidéo — Ole Ole Ole Ole http://youtu.be/L0GmxnlXv3s
#96 Mad Fiddler – laughter – having just bought a Foodsaver and a deep freezer, I wholly appreciate your stamper. Thanks for the feedback re the site.
buddy larsen @ 115
Easy question.
Of course – once.