Severe Weather

Associated with Global Climate Change

Brings Potential Dangers

                 There's good news, bad news, more good news and more bad news.  Positive:  mankind still isn't powerful enough to dramatically affect the global climate patterns.  However, negative:  global climate shift is real (and driven almost totally by Mother Nature herself) and capable of bringing us truly nasty weather as a constant new emerging pattern.  Positive:  there is no need for the green-tech "emergency the liberal contingent is trying to drive down our throats.  Negative:  the madman in charge and his cronies are showing great industriousness in doing all the wrong things to our economy in the name of green, clean and obscene.

                Loyal readers of Rajjpuut’s Folly will notice that Rajjpuut’s take on so-called global warming is nothing like the Al Gore liberal feeding frenzy (“An Inconvenient Truth”) nor is it anything like the ultra-conservative’s “denial” that anything at all is happening that ‘s heard from many here at TownHall. Near as reason can surmise, the science in the U.N.’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is real science and not just a propaganda ploy such as Gore’s interpretation. The U.N. Report which deserved the Nobel Prize, Gore did not, basically says Global Climate Shift is going on and says, “yes,” man is contributing to it via greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere. The report also says that global climate shifts have happened all throughout earth’s history and have been driven entirely by natural forces up to now so it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly the size of the deleterious effect mankind is creating. That is a very reasonable and scientifically based assessment. 

Rajjpuut, however, believes that the IPCC missed a bet by not relying on more of the research into areas shown in the History Channel DVD “Little Ice Age, Big Chill.” After examining both the DVD and the U.N. report, as stated a couple times already on this site: Rajjpuut concludes that the real effect of the global climate shift going on will be more frequent and more intense weather extremes (i.e. more lows set; more high sets; more hurricanes and tornadoes and more powerful ones; more flooding; etc., etc. and no significant global warming at all. Now this is not necessarily happy news if true. And one small, perhaps even tiny, beneficial approach to limiting any climate effects would indeed be the “green-tech” approach favored by liberals. However, creating five million impermanent green jobs at a cost of eleven million real jobs from the rest of the economy (according to statistics from a Spanish study of that nation’s green tech program) for an overall loss of six million jobs is clearly not an intelligent answer. 

In any case the liberals’ latest study of the climate phenomena contains this one chart that seem s to back up the Rajjpuut conclusions 100%:

                The chart taken from the Obamaites recent Global Climate Change Impacts 170-page report:

http://downloads.globalchange.gov/usimpacts/pdfs/climate-impacts-report.pdf

A.     The accurate term is "Global Climate Shift" or "Global Climate Change" and it is real, but

B.     Most likely our puny human efforts are nothing as compared to the planet’s natural forces at work. 

C.    The most probable results are: more record hot temperatures and more record cold temperatures (more extremes in winter and summer) and most importantly: more severe storms and more frequent storms like hurricanes and tornadoes as the effect of greater greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere . . . these effects becoming far more noticeable in the Northern Hemisphere where the largest population centers exist. 

D.    None of this is desirable, but starving people are not desirable either and putting huge segments of the populace out on the streets by creating impermanent green energy jobs is NOT the solution.  The History Channel's "Little Ice Age, Big Chill" dvd presents a balanced and scientific look at all this far superior to Al Gore's propanda and indicates that gradual shifts in weather are quite common and quite recent (five or six hundred years or a thousand years is small potatoes in the global scheme of things). 

E.     The power of these kinds of shifts over, say, 200 years should not be underestimated. For example:  the Vikings discovered Greenland and Iceland and colonized both areas during the "Medieval Warm Period" immediately prior to the Little Ice Age.  This was a time when Greenland was virtually clear of glacial ice as it is becoming today.  During the Little Ice Age, however, the hardy Vikings were frozen out of Greenland.

F.     The problem in all the liberal green-tech notions . . .  is that with the exception of "curvy light bulbs," solar panels, and fewer polluting emissions, present green initiatives have not yet arrived at a point where using them to replace present human jobs and present human energy is a viable alternative. In a phrase:  we need a green energy Edison NOT green energy government pork.  Rajjpuut suggests that instead of diverting needed funds to green energy jobs now:  a reward of ten billion dollars upfront and $100 million per year for life plus normal patent rights be offered for viable green energy that can more or less "seamlessly plug into the present energy grids." 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Bob

We need a green energy Edison NOT green energy government pork.  Rajjpuut suggests that instead of diverting needed funds to green energy jobs now:  a reward of twenty billion dollars upfront and $100 million per year for life plus normal patent rights be offered for viable green energy tech that can be more or less "seamlessly plugged into the present energy grids." 

Key Lessons from “The Little Ice Age” DVD 

            As the French saying goes, “The more things change, the less things change.” In other words, whatever’s going on now . . . it’s all happened before. The History Channel DVD “Little Ice Age, Big Chill” paints a different story from Al Gore’s much hyped presentations on “global warming.” The correct term is “Global Climate Shift” or “Global Climate Change” as it was labeled by the U.N.’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which presented a much more balanced and thoughtful picture than Gore did. 

While Gore and the IPCC shared the Nobel Prize, the IPCC report was much deeper and more detailed, documented and much closer to the big picture gained from watching “Little Ice Age, Big Chill” than from watching Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” While the IPCC concluded that man’s contribution to global climate change via polluting green house gasses was definitely a fact . . . the U.N. panel also pointed to the fact that “natural” climates shifts were frequent and might even dwarf our own human results. 

            The real results of “global climate shift” (the best term to use since it connotes a pattern of historical import) are:  more record hot temperatures and more record cold temperatures (more extremes in winter and summer) and most importantly: more severe storms and more frequent storms like hurricanes and tornadoes as a result of greater greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere . . . these effects becoming far more noticeable in the Northern Hemisphere where the largest population centers exist. 

None of this is desirable, but starving people are not desirable either and putting huge segments of the populace out on the streets by creating impermanent green energy jobs is NOT the solution.  "Little Ice Age, Big Chill" presents a well-balanced scientific look at all this far superior to Al Gore's propaganda and indicates that gradual shifts in weather are quite common and quite recent (five or six hundred years or a thousand years is small potatoes in the global scheme of things).  For example:  the Vikings discovered Greenland and Iceland and colonized both areas during the "Medieval Warm Period" immediately prior to the Little Ice Age.  This was a time when Greenland was virtually clear of glacial ice as it is becoming today.  During the Little Ice Age, however, the hardy Vikings were frozen out of Greenland.

            The problem in all this is that with the exception of "curvy light bulbs," solar panels, and fewer polluting emissions, present green initiatives have not yet arrived at a point where using them to replace present human jobs and present human energy is a viable alternative.  We need a green energy Edison NOT green energy government pork.  Rajjpuut suggests that instead of diverting needed funds to green energy jobs now:  a reward of twenty billion dollars upfront and $100 million per year for life plus normal patent rights be offered for viable green energy tech that can be more or less "seamlessly plugged into the present energy grids."  

When liberal propaganda goes well the outcome is that the gullible public gets a picture closely akin to a last-minute cavalry charge rescuing the wagon train from imminent massacre. However, propaganda is just that, propaganda. The truth is much more likely this: there’s the baby, there’s the bathwater, and now both are simultaneously thrown out as "inconsequential" and any benefits to their actions result from normal market forces or normal forces of nature doing their normal things and Democrats immediately claiming credit. 

            The "Democratic instantaneous reverse pattern" is what happened in 1998 when Bill Clinton and his liberal allies made a thinly disguised attack on the landlord class (70% conservatives) with a mortgage guarantee law designed to get everybody into their own homes regardless of their Inability to afford the mortgages. Although James Stack of Investech.com was warning of a mortgage-related meltdown as early as late 2003, the problems didn’t actually come into easy public viewing until 2007-2008 and this time the Democrats deflected "credit" onto the Bush administration.

The green-tech boondoggle is a less-thinly disguised attack on the oil industry and the internal combustion engine (ICE). Since green-tech is not yet ready to assume the load now carried so very well by oil and ICE you can quite confidently expect the result of the Dems initiatives will be the same as if huge amounts of 1865 federal money were diverted to creating an “auto-mobile” because the methane gas emissions of horses were troublesome.  As always, the liberals are masters of "positioning" strategy.  It looked good to be in favor of homes for everyone in 1998.  It looks good to be in favor of green-tech and clean energy now.  It always looks good to be in favor of more jobs.  Republicans and Libertarians like Rajjpuut, need to build a career on continually reminding the short-attention-spanned public that the Democrats never tell anyone what the real and more profound costs are for their boondoggles:  e.g. 11 millions real jobs lost in creating 5 million temporary green ones. 

Ya'all live long, stong and ornery,

Bob

         The man should learn a thing or two about statistics.  Europe has gone nuts for green-tech for many years now.  The Spanish not only participated eagerly, but after 10-12 years they did a study on the results of their green-tech efforts.  Results of that study were that for every job created by green technology 2.2 jobs were lost.

         At only $775,000 to create each Spanish green job . . . it's a pity that only one job in ten so created was permanent, don't you think?

                Every once in awhile Public Relations and Marketing can work wonders. But it’s rare. People get used to “hype” and mentally subtract it from their projections. Two of the most telling stories (one positive and one negative) along this vein are these:

A.       Advertising was NOT a powerful force at the turn of the 20^th Century, here’s one reason it became so: A New York marketing firm was visited by a representative of the fishing industry. For a long time commercial American fisherman had been plagued by a “pest- fish” that was always fouling their nets.  The fish wouldn’t sell. In Britain, he was told, the poor would wait on the piers to be thrown the unpopular fish which didn’t sell there either. At first the marketing man wasn’t sure he could help. He thought he understood part of the problem with this pest-fish, horse mackerel, however and did his research. No, he wasn’t able to discover any applications for the animal’s oil and it wasn’t looking good for the idea of converting it to fertilizer. A couple weeks later, just on a hunch, he said, “Say, what’s this stuff taste like?” After a few tentative bites, he decided he could tolerate it. 

Further research showed him that the fish was extremely popular in Japan and the Far East and much beloved in the Hispanic world where it went by the name “atun.” In a few weeks he had a marketing campaign underway, and in 1903 they began canning under four different item labels:  “tuna,” “tuna fish,” “tunny,” and “tunny fish” and it’s right now the most popular food fish in America. So words, particularly names, can be powerful influences to behavior and marketing is often crucial to success.

B.      On the other hand, a smart-aleck agricultural extension agent was sent into an impoverished New Mexican community in the north central part of the state about 1965, with golden notions of winning over the locals, transforming their economy, and making an immediate name for himself.  He brought with him a wonderful new technology in the form of a rugged, disease-resistant hybrid corn that he foresaw as the answer to the locals’ foundering agricultural commerce. As he explained in tolerably-good Spanish at the first meeting, their old corn was OK for at best 80 or 90 bushels an acre in the hard-scrabble soil they had to work with; but this hybrid he called “Maiz-Maravilloso” (Wonder-Corn) was tough and did well despite the semi-arid conditions the farmers faced. 

He confidently guaranteed them 180 bushels an acre (smiling smugly when he said that, because he fully expected 240 bushels per acre the very first year). He was taken aback when only about 15% of the farmers took the free seed, but confident in three or four years he’d have 100% participation. The new corn was everything he said it was and the next year participation rose to almost 25%. In five years, however, no one was using wonder-corn, things went back to the way they were and he left with his tail between his legs. 

The extension agent who replaced him asked a few questions about Wonder-Corn and found out “the flour’s much too hard to cook with, and it makes terrible-tasting tortillas.” Clearly, it’s always best to truly understand a problem, rather than just wading in and swinging your sword. 

So it is with “green-tech.” There’s been enormous hype and a few great results, but generally speaking not much has been accomplished. The promise has seriously outrun results and in some cases the hype is still being sold long after the sad truths are known. The truth is sad, of course, because a more pristine earth, water and air benefit us all immeasurably in health, joy and lifestyle;  and like it or not global climate change promises to cause us some huge problems even as early as 2025. But, BUT, there are some big “buts” with the notion of ‘green tech’ as used by the wily Mr. Oh’ Bummer. Off his tongue, the words “green-tech” become ‘snake oil.’

The trouble with Mr. Obama is that while he knows a tremendous amount about getting people excited about something, he knows almost nothing about science and less than nothing about economics. The trouble with science and with economics is they both own the nasty habit of forcing you to abandon starry-eyed notions and wishful thinking in order to deal squarely with reality.   In economics we call those realities “inflation,” “supply and demand,” “management and labor,” and various “free-market forces;” in science those realities are known as chemistry, physics, biology, thermodynamics, metallurgy, industrial arts, etc., etc.   The man should also learn a thing or two about statistics.  Europe has gone nuts for green-tech for many years now.  The Spanish not only participated eagerly, but after 10-12 years they did a study on the results of their green-tech efforts.  Results of that study were that for every job created by green technology 2.2 jobs were lost.  Creating five million green tech jobs, as he promises, threatens to cut 11 million jobs elsewhere in the American economy.  The cost of creating one Spanish green-tech job was $775,000.  At only $775,000 to create each Spanish green job . . . it's a pity that only one job in tens so created was permanent, don't you think?

The “Infamous Dreamer” (who likes to go around to environmental meetings saying, “Hi, My name is Al Gore and I used to the ‘next-president of the United States’) and Mr. Oh’ Bummer  love to make you think it’s all so much easier than it is. In their version of Perfect-Tomorrow, you just wish it’s so, and PRESTO-CHANGE-O, it is so! Well, how do you like that!  

After forty-fives years of promises, however, exactly three green-technologies have truly panned out: windmills, the “curvy light bulb” known as the CFL or compact florescent lamp, and solar paneling.   And there is often a downside to green-tech that makes it unpopular: those beautiful new curvy light bulbs cost 8,000 GE employees their jobs.  On the other hand, new carbon-fiber technology is promising to make dramatically more efficient windmills and also when used in car bodies: a lighter, stronger, more gas-efficient automobile.

The bigger present reality is unfortunately this, unless you’re a back-to-nature advocate and willing to live somewhat like the pioneers; or you’re a modern Howard Hughes willing and able to cover several acres in solar paneling and build a $1.5 million 200-foot modern windmill on your property . . . . then green-tech is probably not for you. Green-tech works wonders for the lunatic fringe of survivalists and the very rich but it’s just not practical for the 99% of American families who’re earning  between $1,500 and $2 million a year. It just doesn’t get the job done. If a single word were chosen to describe the problems with green-tech, that word would be “impractical.” If a defining phrase were needed, that sorry phrase would be, “sometimes environmentally even worse.” 

This is not to say, that a whole lot of progress hasn’t been made. 1) The acid-rain problems so serious in the northeastern United States and nearby Canadian provinces in the 60’s and ‘70’s is pretty much taken care of 2) Even though our automobile fleets deliver less efficiency than China and many other nations are requiring, nevertheless, automobile mileage today in America is dramatically better now than it was even twenty-five years ago 3) a whole lot of toxicity problems and emissions problems associated with manufacturing processes have either been eliminated or dramatically reduced 4) many of the toxic dump sites with the greatest pollution have actually been cleaned up and restored. 5) also, on the jobs level, a whole lot of jobs are now a whole lot safer both in the short-term and the long run because of green tech and common-sense adaptations.

As a general rule, however, the technologies resulting from governmental encouragement and subsidization of (or tax-breaks for) ‘green tech’ have proved to be expensive, dangerous and most importantly, in many cases WORSE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT then the technologies already in place. Almost everything has proven to be will o’ the wisp at best.   All these detractions to green tech are sadly true, but a whole lot of the problem lies squarely with us, WE THE PEOPLE, and with worldwide expectations. While energy demands, per capita, have sky-rocketed since the middle of the 20^th Century and expectations with them, green-tech is still at a level where it can on a practical and reasonable expenditure basis supply the energy required to live at, say, a 1912 lifestyle.  The challenge is to make green-tech capability practical for supplying the energy needs of 2015 and beyond.

The history of man has been one long UN-interrupted journey up the energy-use ladder. A million years ago, the energy required for a man to flake a few flint tools and weapon points, then walk, jog or run ten miles throughout the day, and carry a deer over his shoulder for the last two and a half miles of it, plus the heat from a cooking, warming, and danger-shielding fire was all the energy anyone could ever imagine. Today, counting the many unseen manufacturing processes that go on in the background to give us all the myriad of products we use, the enormous energy required to lift a communication satellite into space, and little niceties like air conditioning, central heating, powerful automobiles and computers, none of which even existed in 1912 or even in 1972, the average American in a day, expends perhaps 11,000 times as much energy as our Neanderthal ancestors did.

So, where did today’s misty-eyed but misplaced optimism about green tech come from? It came from our glorious past. Hunkerin’ down and quickly toolin’ up the United States twice transformed itself from sleepy apathy into the mightiest industrial and military power of the age to help win both world wars. When given a time-table (“before the end of the decade, we will put a man on the moon”) by President Kennedy, we stole back the prestige lost to Sputnik and became the dominant power in space exploration. Unfortunately, those feats while difficult were certainly in the realm of straight-forward possibility. 

Today, the hype about green-tech vastly outshines the reality.   Often it’s a simple case of trading one problem for a much worse one. This shows up in ethanol which Mr. Oh’ Bummer is still pushing fiercely. Ethanol takes needed acreage from food farming and drives up food prices while dramatically depleting the soil. Ethanol takes huge fleets of trucks to move the corn to manufacturing plants and huge amounts of pollution is generated. And most importantly, ethanol destroys automobile engines, increasing our need for greater manufacturing and even more pollution. Pull your head out, Mr. Oh’ Bummer!

The technology to bring us highly efficient florescent bulbs to light our business with is another boondoggle. Unfortunately, the new bulbs are terribly expensive and while they do last a long, long time and use a tiny bit of energy, they carry poisonous mercury in them that is such a severe toxic hazard that if one is broken you’d need to clear out a whole floorful of office workers for a couple days to allow the cleanup progresses.

This particularly shows up in hybrid cars that Mr. Oh’ Bummer is absolutely crazed about. Hybrids are awfully expensive. You might buy one because the government gives you a tax break, which means you and other tax-payers subsidize their use on top of the purchase cost to you. It typically takes seven years for a hybrid to return in savings from fuel what the excess cost of the vehicle costs. But most of all, the original hybrid automobiles are an environmental disaster. If one is wrecked, a whole lot of bad environmental toxins can be released. The making of the original huge nickel-cadmium rechargeable batteries creates a toxic sludge that leaves whole acres polluted for an estimated forty years. 

Heck, even old lead batteries are terribly dangerous: long-term exposure to their lead damages heart, brain, kidneys, the nervous system, etc., etc., ad nauseum and creates severe learning problems in children. The latest hybrids use something called “nickel-metal” batteries; the very latest something called “lithium-ion batteries.” Understanding toxic impact: lead is worst, the original lead is worst, but just a bit worse than nickel-cadmium; nickel-metal is next worst and lithium-ion batteries are the worst. All reports are that both nickel-metal and lithium-ion batteries are on a volume basis, much less environmentally nasty then either conventional car and boat batteries or then the old hybrid nickel-cadmium batteries. However, what’s not said is this: the volume of today’s batteries is much greater than the volume of yesterday’s batteries; and the only way the new batteries are expected to stay environmentally friendly is IF 100% of them are recycled back to the auto-making plants at great expense to the car-makers. There just are no easier answers so far.

All this doesn’t mean answers aren’t coming. It doesn’t mean absolutely no good will come of Mr. Oh’ Bummer’s green-tech initiatives. It just means, that on a practical level there is nothing yet  in sight to get us anywhere close to where he’s promising to take us. The technologies do NOT presently exist. If they did and it were a matter of hunkerin’ down and toolin’ up, that would be one thing. But that’s presently NOT the case.

Take the idea of having virtually green fleets by 2020, balderdash! I am presently aware of only one technology that might, MIGHT, carry us there and because I’m a health educator not an industrialist, I could be dead wrong. It’s called Aquygen ®** and purportedly works by taking small amounts of water and converting it to HHO gas for fuel use. In theory, with tiny amounts of ordinary fuel and a tiny gas engine serving as the “primary-system” to provide the power needed for the Aquygen ®-powered “secondary-system” we’d have ourselves a full-sizes automobile capable of (the kind of gasoline mileage now reserved for motor scooters) 80-120 miles per gallon and SUV’s capable of 70-90 MPG. Unlike, Mr. Obama, I’m a-gonna tell you flat out, I may NOT know what I’m talking about, industrial arts is NOT my area of expertise. I will only say, the technology has been bantered about for about six years now so there are undoubtedly problems in turning promise into reality; but to my limited (car-nal, ha ha) knowledge: this is one thing that has a good chance of working. And with that revelation, we see both the promise and the frustration with green-tech. I only wish Mr. Oh’ Bummer would disappear and his replacement, Mr.  President Obama, would shoot straight from the hip instead of selling us a bill of untrue goods. We don’t need cheerleading, we need facts.

Ya'all live long, strong and ornery,                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Bob

**http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&p=aquygen&SpellState=n-1219415753_q-OdJInmG0g67D8iUsT.iMhwAAAA%40%40&fr2=sp-qrw-corr-top        will give you about 32,000 hits on HHO technology but virtually all will be dead ends.

Item: It took 220 years for the national debt to reach the level it had when George W. Bush left office.

Item: Barak Obama has set in motion fiscal forces that will double the national debt in his first year in office.

Item: Obama has promised us (threatened us with) programs that will double that debt again in roughly nine and a half years.

Item: When Obama took office the public expressed a 45% “VERY favorable” impression of him on surveys and a 15% “VERY UNfavorable” impression. In less than five months he and his administration are now perceived as 35% “VERY favorably” and 32% “VERY Unfavorably.".

Item: The amazing +30% very positive approval gap, the president enjoyed on January 20^th has slipped to a +3%; his honeymoon with the American public  is ending.

Item: Spain like much of Europe was very enthusiastic about green-tech subsidies. The figures from a recent Spanish survey show: each green-tech job costs 2.2 other jobs in the economy; each green-tech job cost $775,000 to implement; only one green-tech job in ten was permanent in the Spanish study.

Item: Barak Obama has promised to create five million green-tech jobs. 

               Very early on in the Obama administration, we’re already seeing signs that things are getting out of control . . .  Even that cretin Franklin Delano Roosevelt is a piker when compared to the Liberal policies of Barak Obama. Obama is the most Liberal American president ever.  The great weakness of Liberal "economic thought" is tied up in four misconceptions and Barak Obama exhibits everyone of these weaknesses, in spades:

B.      A cavalier attitude toward capitalism, business, and the U.S. Constitution (just a piece of paper that often gets in the way of doing “good”) 

C.      A huge disdain for the value of traditional institutions and the people who espouse them

D.      A shocking willingness to ditch the baby with the wash water 

Obama is definitely at the crossroads. For example, if he goes ahead with his planned five million green-tech job creations and it costs eleven million jobs in our already tenuous economy: that’s definitely ditching the baby. He would be saying in effect, “I am all-wise, I know there can be a little pain and sacrifice involved (for you, not me, of course LOL), but I know best and in the long run you’ll lay laurel wreaths on my head as the savior of the economy and designer of a much better Socialist nation.”

Bob

** http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/i-pencil/

^^ http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Teddykins

If you’ve followed the “Cape Wind” project that aims to use 130 windmills to reduce carbon emissions in the areas around Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, Massachusetts, you were probably bemused to see one wag’s wonderful headline: “Ted Kennedy Tries Mightily, but Fails to Break “Wind!”   The Cape Wind Project is a lovely example of the chubby senator’s hypocrisy on all fronts. Purportedly the 130 towers hit by constant blustery ocean breezes would dramatically reduce the area’s electricity needs to 25% of present levels and reduce local carbon emissions by almost ¾ million tons each year. Teddy and his plutocratic buddies are now talking about “visual pollution,” disruption of seabird habitats, desecration of ancient Indian burial sites, and would I go too far to claim they’re considering adding “access pollution to favored yachting lanes"^ while seeking to block the project. Apparently green energy is all the rage for Liberals except when it’s in their own backyard. If the Cape Wind and Tidal Projects see fruition someday soon, the building of fifty tidal turbines between Chappaquiddick and Nantucket may some day block Teddykins’ view of the spot where he and Mary Jo Kopechne splashed down on the very same night that his brother Jack’s space program landed on the moon.

At present the Washington Post (which never seems to cover Teddykins’ hypocritical lifestyle and continuous taxpayer rape), is as usual, portraying inept Teddy as some kind of hero for sponsoring a new piece of health care legislation.  Their article ran under the headline:  “Kennedy Secretly Crafts Health Care Bill” or something similarly nauseating, while repeatedly praising his courage, dedication, etc., etc. Of course during this moment of economic upheaval and stress, Kennedy's new masterpiece would require the employer to uniformly provide health benefits for his workers or face a fine. What a finely tuned brain! Wow, Teddyboy aims to bankrupt the country and eliminate all employment in one fell swoop.  That’s “neat” but I think, I liked him better when he was bombed, cheating on his wife, driving like a reckless fool, and later swimming, running and lying himself away from the tragic mess he'd made and otherwise serving as an upstanding inspiration for the lesser idiots of the world. 

Live long, strong and ornery,

In our last missive, we explained how Barrack Obama was not only flunking his American Constitution class, but had obviously not even cracked an economics book nor even started his econ homework. Hopefully you’ve been more diligent than the president and taken a close look at the assignments you were given:  You read "I ,Pencil"and appreciate the incredible natural balance of the free markets.  If you missed the last blog:

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2009/06/04/the_greentech_fallacy_or_how_barak_flunked_economics.thtml

Today is the 4^th of June, 2009. 67 years ago today began the three-day naval engagement in World War II, the “Battle of Midway.” Occurring only six months after Pearl Harbor and a bare month after the naval encounter known as the “Battle of the Coral Sea” ended in a standoff between the United States and Japan, “Midway” was the most decisive battle of the war in the Pacific. There is something about warfare that excites the imagination of most people. There is also something about warfare that addles the brain of politicians and confuses many economists. Whereas it’s not too hard for most people and most economists to understand Hazlitt’s straightforward “Broken Window” fallacy which “in a hundred disguises is the most common and persistent in economic history.”

http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

perhaps the most damaging myth in modern day economics is the idea that “WAR  IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS.” Hazlitt describes this idea as “merely our old friend, the broken window fallacy, in new clothing, and grown ‘fat’ beyond recognition” with the support of a whole bundle of related fallacies.

Let us not even belabor the point that IF you lose a war (how many nations enter a war expecting to lose?) the cost of the devastation to the economy can be overwhelming, not to mention the morale of the people, the cost in lives lost, bodies crippled, minds traumatized, careers set aside and life plans jettisoned. Instead, as students of economics, let’s just concentrate on a typical U.S. war, where our country enters it to set right a perceived wrong (rather than to conquer territory, or gain resources) . . . so there’s not even the normally enjoyable raping, pillaging and plundering plus the gain of more land to brag about. It’s obvious to any thinking person looking with any depth that war is a loss for both sides, yet the myths persist that war is good for the economy. Hazlitt (as he did with the single fairly obvious broken window fallacy) easily dismantles all the twisted and convoluted and compound fallacies tied in with the single statement that “All we need is a good war, and the economy would boom,” in his next chapter, “The Blessings of Destruction,”

http://jim.com/econ/chap03p1.html

In doing this, Hazlitt attacks the very root of muddled Obama thinking that pervades the airwaves right now. 

You see while Mr. Obama was very eager to say that the “War on Terror” was an unacceptably and politically incorrect term which he and his administration would no longer use  . . . he was not so eager to announce the “War on Fossil Fuels” that he’s gone and gotten us into. Unannounced wars can be very dangerous. For example in roughly 1991, Obama declared a war on the United States, ‘Jihad’ he called it. Our government chose to ignore this and not announce to American citizens that somebody wanted to destroy us. You know how that one went, don’t you? We got “Pearl Harbored” again on September 11, 2001. The very last unannounced war** we were in began in 1998, let’s call it the “Unannounced War on the Landlords” or the “War to Get all the Poor People into Their Own Homes.” You know how that one turned out right?   For a brief shining moment, the politicians in Washington (more Democrats than GOP, but both parties were involved) were crowing from the church steeples that home ownership, which had stayed at a healthy 64% for about 56 years, now stood at 69% (while the owners of rental properties were devastated); and in the next instant we were up to our ears in the mortgage-guarantee crisis and our hither-to healthy economy was in shambles as banks, stock brokerages, insurance companies and related financial institutions began to fall like a row of dominoes.

Mr. Obama’s plan is that rather than dropping expensive bombs in this new unannounced war, we’ll just drop money (on the green-tech industries). Since a recent Spanish study of the impact of green-tech in that country showed that A) each green-tech job came at the cost of losing 2.2 jobs from elsewhere in their economy B) only one in every ten green-tech jobs created was permanent C) the cost in Euros for creating each green-tech job was 775,000 U.S. dollars . . . which means the five million green-tech jobs, Obama wants to create, can be expected to come at a cost of losing eleven million jobs from elsewhere in the U.S. economy. Mr. Obama is very big on sacrifices by the citizenry. Much too big, if you ask me.

About now some of you may be thinking, this is a pretty lame analogy: green-tech is a war on fossil fuels, how can you say that?  Your misunderstanding comes from the fact that I neglected to introduce:

Rajjpuut's "First Law of Economic Intervention:"  

ALL GOVERNMENT ACTIONS IN THE MARKET PLACE INVOLVE FORCE.

"That's nonsense!" you say.  Let's look at the simplest possible example.  You own a house free and clear.  Oooops, perhaps not so "free and clear."  You own the right to call a certain piece of  property "yours" so long as you pay your taxes. It's almost like you rent your home, by paying taxes. Should you decide not to pay your taxes, I suggest the real owner will eventually show up, kick you out into the street and run an auction to raise money to cover the taxes you didn't pay and then will "rent" (so long as taxes are paid) "your" home to someone else.  Another example:  if the government declares any kind of war, including the shooting ones, you may be forced to help.  In the shooting war, you might be drafted and if you don't "help" you may be imprisoned.  In the unannounced wars, they just "steal" your income tax dollars and do with them what they want.  Of course, should you omit paying your income taxes, well, you get the idea . . . .

Your homework for next time: Now that you see that an unannounced war is going on, look over the mortgage-guarantee ideas and the green-tech proposals and compare them to the fallacies that Hazlitt reveals in Chapter Three . . .

Do your homework now, don’t be an Obama!

Ya'all live long, strong and ornery,

Bob