Barking Up Wrong Trees

Government attempts to solve problems inevitably leads to “barking up the wrong tree”. The most expensive example is fighting global warming through energy deprivation, i.e., reducing fossil fuel use without viable replacements (wind and solar aren’t). Thanks to years of recession, the United States and most European countries have reduced their “carbon footprints”, but China and India, and other developing nations, are very rapidly expanding theirs. To do otherwise is senseless. As Bjorn Lomborg logically demonstrates, more energy use increases global prosperity, prosperity facilitates adaptation, and adaptation is far more cost effective (there is ample proof that climate change is natural, and will be as beneficial as previous warm periods).

Other examples of “wrong tree barking”:

Conducting a “War on Drugs” instead of decriminalizing drug use. Didn’t we learn anything from Prohibition?

Passing and defending the “Defense of Marriage Act” instead of separating church and state – civil unions are a state responsibility, marriage is religious. Since about 40% of children have unwed mothers, it’s obvious same-sex unions didn’t cause the crumbling marriage rock.

Fighting gun violence by banning “assault” rifles. In 2011, less than 6% of gun homicides were by rifle (679 of 11,780); unlicensed hand guns wielded by minorities on minorities accounted for almost all gun violence. However, young white male registered Democrats committed almost all the mass murders, NRA members didn’t commit any, but you couldn’t tell that from the news. (I messed up by adding this italicized part, and admitted my mistake in the following post)

Providing government of the people, by the people, for the people, by only taxing a few of the people. Providing unsustainable government employee pensions that can’t be reduced.

Not taxing employer-provided health care as compensation but allowing it as a business tax deduction, while non-covered employees probably won’t be able to deduct health insurance costs paid from their taxed income.

We’re up the tree without a ladder.

War on Drugs Lost before First Shot

Fighting for lost causes is an expensive American indulgence. If we have a problem, and our fix doesn’t work, then we do even more of what doesn’t work. Exhibit A is the “War on Drugs’, a lost cause before the first battle.

Just like the war on natural climate change.

During my 1960 Freshman year at Humboldt State in Northern California, I chose my first Honors English paper and speech project on why we should decriminalize drug use. It was obvious then, and much more so now, that treating drug addiction as a crime was futile and wasteful; wasteful of legal and financial resources, but even more wasteful of human lives.

Human lives.

It’s totally logical, but we can’t see it. A young man in the inner city has role models: they’re on his street everyday, they’re unskilled and uneducated just like him, but they’re well qualified to deal drugs. It’s illogical to expect he won’t join them and help Oakland maintain its title as California’s most dangerous city with a violent crime rate of over 15 per 1,000 population.

Humans tossed on the garbage heap.

A young professional with spouse and children is arrested for possession, with their house in foreclosure and threatened repossessions because they can’t afford both drugs and keeping up their other payments. Drug illegality makes drugs exorbitantly expensive and fills our expensive jails.

Human potential destroyed.

If the United States bought drugs – opium for heroin, prescription pain killers, methamphetamines, etc. - and distributed them at cost or free under medical supervision, billions would be saved, crime and government corruption would fall dramatically, and thousands of lives would be spared; 120,000 Mexicans died in drug cartel wars in the past five years alone to feed our habit. Drugs play a huge part in our 38,000 suicides and 11,000 homicides annually, the horrific collateral damage of our war on drugs.

Humans die painfully, not like in video games.

When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Wasted Effort - Abolishing Corporate Personhood

Don Quixote tilting at windmills makes more sense than Measure F “to amend the Constitution to clarify that a corporation is not a person and money is not speech.” In a previous letter I highlighted facts that corporations do not have the rights of persons, only the rights granted other groups of individuals. The Citizens United Supreme Court ruling was in no way based on corporation “personhood.”

However, there is a simpler more basic reason (beyond the fact that Measure F is only advisory) that it is a waste of time. To amend the Constitution requires: in the U.S. Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate approve by a two-thirds supermajority vote, a joint resolution amending the Constitution. Amendments so approved are sent directly to the states to be ratified by approval of three-fourths of state legislatures. Passage in the House would require 290 votes, certainly all of which would have to be Democrats, so Democrats need to pick up at least 96 more. In the Senate Democrats would need 14 more now, or 18 or more after this election.

Ratification by 75% of state legislatures is not a slam dunk either, since Republicans effectively control 30 and 38 are needed. Of course, two-thirds of the state legislatures could ask Congress to call a national convention to propose amendments, and then ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states could approve it. In this scenario California’s Liberal hordes will have the same number of votes as Wyoming: 1.

Since Romney is heavily favored to win the popular vote, the “grassroots-driven movement” to amend the Constitution has already lost whatever traction its supporters thought it had. Measure F is a foolish and futile effort, as delusional as Don Quixote’s “Impossible Dream” without its innocent charm.

 E

Easy Way to Make a Small Fortune

How do you make a small fortune?

Invest a large one in biofuels.

Biofuels only make sense marginally because of large government subsidies and mandated use. At best they only make a small dent in demand. If all the vegetable oil and animal fats were thrown into biofuel production, it would satisfy less than ten percent of demand. At worst biofuels drive up the cost of food and fertilizers, increase water scarcity, and cause huge tracts of forests and marginal farm lands to be put into crop production.

Although they studiously ignore biofuels enormous negatives, all the problems created by biofuel production – scarcity and rising food costs, wasting water, vast additions of CO2 to the atmosphere from clearing land – are the things that environmentalists have pledged to prevent.

“They have met the enemy, and it is them.”

The Achilles heel of biofuels won’t go away. Whenever the subsidies end, or the price of oil reflects its abundant global supply versus sluggish demand growth, biofuels are a horrible investment. Biofuels are not like oil. Oil is already there. You find it, extract it, process it, and use in a mature infrastructure. Oil production is not labor intensive.

Biofuels don’t exist until they are planted, grown, and harvested, all at great expense and consumption of resources – labor, water, land, fuel – and then are processed in enormous physical plants. When oil prices are at their normal levels, all biofuel production is uneconomical: each gallon is produced at a loss. If taxpayers absorb that loss, the plant stays in production. If not, its investors get their just desserts.

Fools and their monies are soon parted.

Joe Biden and Miss California Should Both Resign

"It’s time for Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean, to turn in her crown or get fired." So says John Tantillo, Marketing Expert/Founder and President, Marketing Department of America, in Miss California USA Should Quit or Be Fired, and he's right.

As Mr. Tantillo clearly explains, Miss Prejean should not resign or be fired because of her position on gay marriage, but because by stating that position in the way she did she was not upholding the "Brand" of Miss USA.

And he's right. We wouldn't hire someone to be the president of Harley-Davidson if the candidate was on record stating that motorcycles are an extremely dangerous and wasteful form of transportation. And Miss USA represents a product, one which is incompatible with the personal views Miss Prejean presented.

It's not politics, it's marketing.



Now we observe Joe Biden, Vice-President of the United States. Even more than a Miss America, Mr. Biden represents a product, and does it badly. Just as with Miss California, Joe's supporters can say that he is just being honest. And just as he did with Miss California, Mr. Tantillo could say that Joe Biden, since he can't be fired, should resign.

Joe, the Vice-President of the United States doesn't tell Americans not to take subways and aircraft when the medical threat is small and the economy is hurting enough already. I can't say I thought you were smarter than that, because I was amazed you got the job, knowing how prone you are to saying these sorts of dumb things.



No Joe, you're meeting expectations, which is reason enough to call on you to resign.

We Republicans will miss you, Joe.

Democrats will sigh their relief, and say, "Joe who?"

Ant Breaking Wind in Hurricane

What is the sound of an ant breaking wind in a hurricane?

I think the California Air Resouces Board just duplicated it.

The Air Resources Board adopts a landmark regulation expected to slash gasoline consumption by 25% and encourage development of low-carbon fuel sources for cars and trucks.

Ethanol is a proven disaster, causing food prices to increase while releasing copious quantities of greenhouse gases (which I care not about), guzzling scarce water resources, and costing more in energy to produce than it delivers in usable energy.

Other biofuels are just as bad or worse, demanding water, land clearing, fertilizers, and burning lots of coal to produce electricity to make biofuels.

Hydrogen as a fuel is even worse, requiring even more electricity while delivering very little in useful product. Hydrogen at its best will be a totally impractical fuel for transporation.

My state, California, as usual leads the way in idiotic approaches to solving the problems of the future.

And as usual, most of the other states will follow California in a stampede of idiocy.

Idiots, like birds, flock together.

Obama's 100% Middle-Class Tax Increase

After promising that he will reduce taxes on 95 percent of Americans, the Obama Administration’s budget establishes a $646 billion energy tax hike that will impact anyone who uses electricity, drives a car, or relies on energy in any way.

A little background on taxes. First, a minority of Americans pay significant income taxes. The bottom 50% of taxpayers only pay a total of 2% of income tax revenues, while the top 5% pay 60% (up from 50% ten years ago, and roughly 40% thirty years ago).

Therefore, Obama's promise to cut income taxes for 95% of Americans doesn't mean much, because little or no taxes will be saved by a majority of "taxpayers."

However, the energy tax hike will be paid by almost 100% of Americans, including almost all non-taxpayers. Just one item in Obama's program, a cap-and-trade system to make manufacturers pay for creating CO2 in a vain attempt to solve a non-existent problem, anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming, will increase everyone's costs for fuel, travel, heating and cooling, and just about every manufactured good or service they buy. Further, it will reduce American global competitiveness, reducing exports and making imports more attractive, while killing American jobs.

After all is done, natural climate change will do as it has for millions of years, never noticing or caring about the puny efforts mankind takes to forestall the inevitable. During the much warmer Medieval Warm Period of only 1,000 years ago, mankind probably prayed for its return as the climate changed to the Little Ice Ages of 1300-1850 AD. Our ancestors would think us daft to be so upset and concerned by natural warming, when they suffered so grievously during the 550-year calamity of global cooling.

Now Obama's Administration is going to extract money from almost all Americans to squander accomplishing nothing, while returning a pittance.

Obama is betting that you will all notice the extra $300 you save on your yearly taxes, and not the $2,400 you pay for the hidden taxes on energy.

Knowing the economic-knowledge level of Americans, Obama is betting on a sure thing.

Liberal Plan to Save Social Security

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article by a particularly ignorant writer entitled, Federal waste we can end, by Susan Alexander, January 28, 2009. I don’t know how her article could have gotten through an editing process, so I’m assuming The Chronicle’s editors are equally ignorant.

Ms. Alexander used Senator John McCain collecting Social Security payments as an example of what she considers Federal waste. Ms. Alexander admits her essential ignorance of the system she is writing about when she states: “How many working Americans are even aware that wealthy retirees receive Social Security checks? I didn't know until the 2008 presidential campaign, when one very prominent "retiree" revealed that he cashed a hefty Social Security check every month.”

Before I go on, I assume Ms. Alexander realizes that many wealthy Americans now contribute 6.2% of their income (12.4% if self-employed), and have contributed to Social Security all their working lives.

I shouldn’t assume too much about Ms. Alexander’s awareness of what I thought was common knowledge of Social Security. She further paraded her ignorance of Social Security when she continued:

(Senator McCain’s) earnings in the Senate, where he contributes 6.2 percent of his income into Social Security, apparently entitled him to this handsome sum on some bureaucrat's chart, but isn't there something wrong with this picture?

Ms. Alexander, Senator McCain contributed from 3% to over 5% of his income into Social Security during each of his many years of military service. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised if you didn’t know that military members pay into Social Security.

For many years Congressmen didn’t pay into Social Security, even when military members like Senator McCain did.

Under a law enacted in 1983, all members of Congress both contribute to and receive benefits from the Social Security system. Apparently all of them, not just Senator McCain, are what you, Ms. Alexander, consider too wealthy to receive Social Security.

Where would you draw the line, Ms. Alexander? The top one percent of American households make over $350,000 a year, or about $175,000 per person, which is roughly a Senator’s salary. In the wealthiest one percent there are approximately 380,000 Americans over 65 drawing Social Security, receiving a total of about one billion dollars per year (assuming each wealthy recipient received at least the Social Security maximum of $2,323 per month starting at age 66).

Would stopping Social Security payments to the wealthiest one percent of households save Social Security? The $1 billion saved would be almost 0.2% of the over $600 billion paid out in 2008, or an extra $2 per month to each of the less wealthy recipients.

Do you really consider that meaningful progress towards saving Social Security, Ms. Alexander? Your answer has to be “yes,” or why would you write your article? Or perhaps you assumed that The Chronicle editors and readers would be too dumb to do the numbers. It appears you got that right. Thousands will have read your erroneous article and, like The Chronicle editors, not be able to make a common sense evaluation of your position.

A few will read my blog post and realize the truth, but most of them will be conservatives too. To us it is obvious that Social Security is an enormous waste and, by the way, its unfunded liability is roughly $16 trillion (a couple of trillion dollars more than the United States annual GDP).

If the United States was a business, the government of the United States would take it to court for misstating its liabilities, and shut it down for insolvency.

The Big Global Warming Cover Up!

Alice showed me an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Hashem Akbari's cool anti-global-warming plan" by Justin Berton (Chronicle Staff Writer, Friday, February 20, 2009), that really had me puzzled.

After getting past the concept of cooling the Earth by painting roofs white and roads a light color, the first real puzzler was the claim of benefits from so doing.

In September, Akbari and his team published a study in the academic journal Climatic Change, which found for every 100 square feet of black rooftop converted to white, a building owner could offset about 1 ton of carbon dioxide.

Add to that all the world's paved urban surfaces (Akbari recommends converting black asphalt to an aged concrete color instead of white), and the team concluded enough cooling benefits to offset 44 billion tons of CO2.

Put another way, that's roughly the same amount of CO2 the planet emits every 18 months.

Where did the Akbari team get the above amount of CO2? Sources I've checked show the Earth emits 180 billion tons of CO2 per year, and mankind produces another 6 billion tons a year. Apparently Akbari is claiming his scheme would save all of mankind's CO2 emissions for over a seven year period. How does he do that?

About Akbari's suggestion to retard global warming by painting all roofs and roads a light color:
I don't think you can do anything about the color of the oceans, and they cover 70% of the Earth's surface. Ditto Antarctica - but it's already white anyway. A scan of a globe shows that the less than 25% of it that is neither ice nor ocean appears to be over 99% free of buildings and roads - and huge swaths of it, such as most of Canada, Greenland, and Siberia, don't require air conditioning (or much heating either, since hardly anyone lives there).

Almost all of Australia is uninhabited, and New Zealand too - plus its many glaciers and sheep are already white. Other huge, relatively uninhabited areas include the interiors of South America, North America, North Africa, Saudi Arabia, and the mountain, steppe, and desert regions of Asia.

Alice reminds me that many of the roofs that are candidates for painting already host solar panels. They won't work well covered with white paint, and Alice has forbidden me to paint over the 800 square feet of glass in our sunroom ceiling.

Which brings me to another point. The Sun spends little time directly overhead. In fact, for much of the year, particularly here in Northern California and more northerly, the Sun's rays strike the sides of houses as much or more than the roofs - and none of us have air conditioning - and it's been getting colder the past ten years.

I appreciate that Mr. Hashem Akbari is a big thinker, and he would be a boon to painting and road surfacing businesses. However, I don't think he's noticed how tiny an area he's dealing with in relation to Planet Earth.

I'm afraid Mr. Akbari has spent too much time out in the sunshine without his hat.

This is another solution in search of a problem.

Carbon Offsets, the Pet Rocks of Environmentalism

San Francisco has come up with a great idea to tap into the idiocy that once fueled the Pet Rock buying craze, combined with the ancient Catholic Church malpractice of selling indulgences: purchasing carbon offsets at kiosks at San Francisco International airport to atone for the guilt of flying.

The carbon offsets are even an improvement over purchased indulgences and Pet Rocks. Unlike an indulgence, purchased to take away a sin you don’t want anyone to know about, that you also promise not to repeat, the carbon offset can be proudly displayed. Rather than hiding your sin, you want the whole world to know how environmentally sensitive you are. Another improvement over purchasing indulgences, you really don’t have to stop flying – you just keep flying, and keep buying.

And the Pet Rock? After the first chuckle, most people realized what a dumb waste of money they were. The joke got old fast. Carbon offsets, on the other hand, are a constant reminder to others that you are “holier than thou.”

All you have to do is pay your money and play the farcical game that what you are doing “makes a difference.” Forget that the developing nations of the world are going to keep pouring out CO2 at ever increasing rates as they progress. Ignore the fact that man-produced CO2 is a tiny component, a fraction of one percent, of the natural greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (water vapor is over 95 percent). Be oblivious that ice core records cited by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth” actually showed temperature increases preceded, not followed, increased atmospheric CO2.

Most of all, be clueless that carbon offsets, unlike Pet Rocks, are a monumental scam because there are no effective mechanisms to measure and audit their promises.

However, in this time of economic travail, let it not be said that I tried to discourage the efforts of sincere individuals to pump some of their excess cash into the economy. Pet rocks, indulgences, and carbon offsets are proof that some fools have too much money.

And that a fool and his/her/its money are soon parted.

Califonia Budget Stupidity is like Oil Drilling Bans

California’s budget crisis reminds me of our energy problems. When oil prices went up to $147 a barrel, our dependence on foreign oil was bemoaned by Democrats as evidence that President Bush’s energy policies were no good. When Republicans (like me) pointed out that Democrats were opposed to drilling for oil in ANWR and offshore, where most of our oil reserves reside, Democrats said that it would take ten years to bring the oil to market.

Ten years ago they said the same thing. If we had drilled then, it would be on the market now.

Now California has an enormous budget problem, and like most of California’s problems it came as no surprise. For many years, through both Democrat and Republican governorships, the Democrat-controlled legislature spent wildly during high tax revenue years. However, all California legislators, and most California Republicans, know that California’s taxation system is fragile since it is built primarily on personal income taxes. When the economy is booming, tax revenues really jump, but when it slows down, revenues fall fast.

Unfortunately, California legislators spend everything during the good times, and then Democrats scream to raise taxes during the bad. “We just can’t cut programs like that,” they cry, then trot out all the “victims” of proposed cuts. Just like our oil supply, if we would show foresight during the fat years, we wouldn’t be in such dire straits during the lean.

As it is, our crises are perpetual, and self-perpetuating. The increased spending buys votes and empowers Democrats to increase taxes to sustain high rates of spending during economic downturns. The higher taxes drive away capital and wealthy individuals until another burst of prosperity and higher income tax revenues starts the increased spending cycle again. First spending, then taxes, ratchet higher, and Democrats in the legislature never think that there is a limit to how much they can raise taxes on the rich and businesses.

Californians, always willing to believe in smoke and mirrors, still haven’t figured out that they are paying the business taxes. As any accountant knows (even Democrat accountants), business taxes are simply passed through in the cost of goods sold to the ultimate consumer of goods and services, namely you and I.

So we support having our taxes raised because we think someone else is paying them.

But that’s another story.

Mayor Bloomberg Full of Wind

It’s no surprise a politician would be for wind power. Of course, you could get all the benefits of wind, without the negatives of high cost, scenic pollution (just ask the Kennedys about windmills off Hyannis Port), unreliability and need for constantly spinning back-up power generators, and bird deaths, if you just installed nuclear power stations.

(It didn't take long for even dense Mayor Bloomberg to find out how dumb his idea was, as this article shows. These photos are courtesy The New York Daily News. Click here for more.)

Da Brooklyn Bridge


The cost would be much lower, and instead of providing only ten percent of New York’s power needs in ten years, you could supply 100%.

"When it takes to producing clean power, we're determined to make New York the No. 1 city in the nation," said Bloomberg.

Why not make it the No. I city in the world and go all nuclear? Right now Paris, France would probably be No. 1, because France generates 80% of their power needs from nuclear, which is much more environmentally friendly than wind and solar.

Skeptical? How about this example.

To generate the equivalent peak power of a small nuclear plant, solar panels require 12.5 square miles of pristine desert land. Even then, because the sun shines at varying degrees of intensity during the day, and not at all during the night, total output is only one-third of that small nuclear plant.

Or how about this example? On a 100+ F day when electricity demand was at its afternoon peak, Texas' 6000 MW of installed wind generation was supplying only 600 megawatts (MW) of power to the grid, whereas a generic nuclear power plant would produce almost double the MW using less than one percent of the land required for wind power, and would produce it much more cheaply and closer to its users, instead of a thousand miles distant.

The higher the percentage of power provided by solar and wind, the more critical the need for back-up power generation to make the grid 100% reliable. Both Mayor Bloomberg and T. Boone Pickens ignore or gloss over this inconvenient truth.

If you’re concerned about greenhouse gasses (I’m not), nuclear produces far less than wind or solar, because far less earth is disturbed during its construction, and less energy is used in its fabrication compared to wind and solar equipment.

In fact, although Mayor Bloomberg’s advocacy of these impractical schemes can be credited to typical political pandering (and monumental ignorance), the position of environmentalists is a model of unprincipled hypocrisy. At the same time they are frantic to prevent drilling in 2000 acres of mosquito-infested tundra in ANWR, they are rapturous over the prospects of solar projects covering hundreds of square miles of scenic desert, requiring enormously expensive and visually polluting transmission lines.

At the same time they vehemently oppose off-shore drilling for oil, they want far larger and more numerous wind turbines all over New York City bridges and skyscrapers, in the Hudson and East Rivers, and off the coast of Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island.

There is no rational explanation for such schizophrenia. The environmentalists’ overriding principle is to save the environment, but they can’t bring themselves to even mention the most obvious means available, nuclear power. In their mad rush to protect so-called pristine wilderness, i.e. ANWR, they have no compunctions about polluting far more scenic and fragile habitat with huge arrays of solar panels and turbines, and enormously expensive and intrusive transmission lines.

In order to pursue their anti-corporate, anti-Republican, and of course anti-Bush agendas, they are willing to sacrifice those things that just a few years ago they considered sacred: the untrod desert, vistas without visible power lines, and bridges and buildings celebrated for their pure architectural beauty.

San Franciscans recently voiced their opposition to building a higher suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge because it would detract from its esthetics. I wonder how they would vote on a suggestion to put turbines atop its towers and to cover its surfaces with solar panels?

I wish Mayor Gavin Newsom would follow Mayor Bloomberg’s lead and suggest it.

Mayor Newsom can commit adultery, blame his failings on alcoholism, use sanctuary-city polices to hide illegal alien felons from federal law, and still be considered a viable Democrat candidate for governor. However, if he messes with the Golden Gate Bridge, he’s toast.