Uncommon Common Sense

The essence of conservatism is common sense, which is why I support increasing parcel taxes to fund increased urgent care coverage. In fact, it’s a pleasure to choose where and how much of our tax money goes for a good use. Regardless of age, income, family size, or the other factors that divide and separate us, expanded urgent care coverage benefits us all now and our futures as we face the needs of aging. Alice and I want to live here as long as we can; there is no better place we want to move to.

Concerning common sense, the Keystone XL pipeline should be approved. Pipeline or no, Canada will produce and ship oil from its oil sands somewhere, somehow. A pipeline is safer and more economical than trains, boats, and trucks, and won’t be routed through town centers. One negative is that pipelines produce far less plant-feeding CO2 emissions than other means of transport. Another is that the Keystone oil will displace heavy oil from the Middle East, Venezuela, and other areas that do not have Canada’s substantial greenhouse gas regulations in place. For those who are thick as oil sands, please note that my negatives are dripping heavy sarcasm, just as foreign oil producers are dripping oil all over their pristine landscapes.

California has many droughts: in 1953; in the late 1950’s early 1960’s; the mid-1970’s; from late 1986 to early 1991; and several since 2000 including another five-year drought from 2006 to 2011. However, Californians have been extremely lucky “since the past century was among the wettest of the last 7,000 years.” 

Common sense indicates we should be aware of all this, but obviously we’re not since California’s population centers are far from its water sources and growing rapidly.  It’s not climate change, it’s history.

The Keystone Pipeline Will Be Built

This is from a post by Willis Eschenbach, Bodega Bay. He reports that the train with a load of crude oil that derailed and caught fire in Lac-Mégantic, Canada, didn't derail from overspeed or failed brakes or a crash or the usual stuff, but took off on its own. In terms of safety in moving crude oil, railroads are safer than highways, but less safe than tanker ships. Pipelines are the safest.

"There is a proposed expansion of the KeystoneXL Pipeline, to handle an increased amount of heavy crude from Alberta. Opponents of the expansion think that stopping the pipeline expansion will somehow stop the flow of Canadian heavy crude into the US. This is not true for two reasons.

"First, the existing Keystone pipeline is already bringing Alberta heavy crude into the US. The expansion will just, well, expand that amount.

"More to the point, however, is the fact that large amounts of Alberta heavy crude is also being moved into the US by railroad. And not by just any railroad. It’s mostly coming in on the Burlington Northern Railway.

"And by what can only be considered an amazing coincidence, the Burlington Northern Railway is owned by a major Obama donor. And by an even more amazing coincidence, the major donor bought the BNR just three years ago.

"And this was not just any major Obama donor, but Mr. Warren Buffett, a key money supplier for the Obama re-election effort."

This link is to Willis' complete post.
w
This Canadian crude is going to market, pipeline or no. If Obama panders to environmentalists and blocks the Keystone, it's transport will be more hazardous and expensive and increase, not decrease, atmospheric CO2. Only plants will benefit.

Gay Marriage is a Non-Issue

Gay marriage should be a non-issue. Government has no business being in the marriage business; remember separation of church and state? In this instance, all government should be involved in is domestic partnership contracts, and all who desire a formalized contractual relationship with another would have to meet legal contractual requirements: basically that each party to the contract has the legal capacity to sign a contract - meet minimum age and mental capacity standards. Of course, individuals may live together without a contract, have children and raise them, and purchase property, and it seems today that such arrangements are more common than marriage or contractual alternatives.

As far as marriage itself, it is a religious act. If any couple can find a church that will marry them, may their gods go with them.

No Automobile Bailout!

I had to think hard about this – almost a minute – well thirty seconds anyway.

A bailout would be the worst thing we could do to American manufacturers, including the automobile ones. Instead of biting the bullets and remaking themselves into modern competitors, a bailout would prolong their agony, but the end would be the same, and a lot of taxpayers’ money would be gone along with the companies.

I saw a very succinct explanation of the problem by Mitt Romney (Let Detroit go Bankrupt, New York Times, November 18, 2008), son of the former president of the former American Motors. He knows the auto business, and he saw the right and wrong things done to try to save American Motors, and later Chrysler.

The biggest problem facing American car manufacturers is their cost structures make them uncompetitive. Their pensions and health care costs are about $2,000 per car higher than their foreign competitors building cars in American factories. As Mr. Romney pointed out, the foreign competition can sell a car for the same price that has $2,000 more value in it, and shows it.



Another article (A British Lesson on Bailouts, by Nelson D. Schwartz, New York Times, November 17, 2008) illustrated the point of the failed bailout of British Leyland in the late 1970s, when poor management, shoddy workmanship, and intransigent unions merely prolonged the agony and to the British taxpayer and delayed the inevitable. It was so bad that soon every MG automobile sold in the United States resulted in a $2,000 loss. Eventually all of British Leyland was liquidated or sold off, and in one of its many dumb moves, Ford bought Jaguar and operated it long enough to lose over $10 billion. Now Tata of India owns Jaguar and Rover, and I have a feeling that they will be able to do much better than the previous British and American ownership because they can rid themselves of the institutionalized high costs.

Al Gore’s parents may have sung him to sleep when he was 27 years old with “Look for the union label” as his lullaby, but don’t you look for the union label unless you want to subsidize expensive failure. It’s bad enough we have to pay top dollar for a mediocre public education system, so when you do have choices, choose wisely.

The San Francisco Chronicle Chokes over Nuclear Energy

"If only there was a viable reliable alternative source of energy that is low in greenhouse gas emissions and plentiful..." says the Green.

The San Francisco Chronicle editorialized that “The EPA chokes” concerning its recent reduction of ozone limits from 80 to 84 parts per billion down to at least 75 parts. Citing a scientific panel’s recommendation that the standard should be reduced to at least 70 parts per billion, the Chronicle tore into the EPA for not implementing the full recommendation, and added that it had “signed off on lax standards for mercury pollution, refused to allow California and other states to set tighter tailpipe emission rules and dragged its heels on acknowledging global warming.”

Aside from the fact there are many good, scientific grounds for skepticism about global warming, I have yet to see a Chronicle editorial about how the environmentalists have choked by not acknowledging that nuclear power is the only viable means towards meeting environmentalists’ goals of greenhouse gas and air pollution reduction.

This is an interesting oversight on the part of the Chronicle’s editorial writers, since just a day before the Chronicle ran a front page article “Green energy is making big money.” It would seem that the analytical minds of the Chronicle editors would have immediately noticed the obvious in that article: that there is no way of replacing the energy generated by oil, coal, and natural gas by developing solar, wind, biofuels, fuel cells, and the other fringe energy alternatives.

Hidden in the article were little tidbits of awareness: “Worldwide sales for companies specializing in biofuels, wind farms, solar panels and fuel cells grew 40 percent in 2007 to reach $77.3 billion” – on the other hand - “Exxon Mobil, the world's largest international oil company, reported $404.5 billion in sales last year - more than five times the entire alternative energy industry combined. And that's just one company.”

And that doesn’t include coal or natural gas.

Another tidbit: “(I)f Congress doesn't renew tax credits used by renewable energy developers, companies that specialize in solar and wind power will be hard hit.”

"If these (renewable energy) credits are not extended by the time they expire at the end of this year, we could see the growth of solar and wind come to a standstill in the U.S."

A “cap-and-trade system (for limiting carbon dioxide emissions) would increase the cost of energy derived from fossil fuels and make alternative energy sources more attractive.”

Tidbits the Chronicle missed:

The alternative energy industry, at its greatest scope of development, wouldn’t be able to meet more than a fraction of the rapidly increasing worldwide demand for energy. In fact, it could not meet the needs of just one country, China.

In fact, due to China’s rapid and continuing growth in energy needs, the only way of satisfying China’s burgeoning energy requirements is through adding coal-fired generation plants, and China is adding a plant every ten days large enough to power San Diego.

The same increased cost for oil and gas makes nuclear energy much more cost effective than alternative energy.

Alternative energy companies will go belly up without tax subsidies, whereas nuclear energy is thriving without subsidies. If you doubt this, look to France and Japan.

Even with the high cost of oil, the alternative energy industry is highly inefficient. The production of ethanol and hydrogen require more energy to make than they produce.

Solar and wind power require huge acreages, are difficult and expensive to maintain, must be supported by 100 percent conventional energy backup in a constant state of readiness, cause incalculable environmental damage such as killing protected birds, destroying fragile habitats such as deserts, and are visual pollutants (just as Ted Kennedy and his family about a proposed wind farm off the Hyannis Port coast).

Biofuels drive up food costs, compete for scarce water resources, require more energy to produce than they provide, compete for natural gas to make fertilizers, and release such copious quantities of greenhouse gases when land is cleared for planting that it takes 93 years of CO2 savings before any positive result is accrued.

All this information, of course, is readily available to the Chronicle. However, it’s not the sort of information the Chronicle or its targeted readership is comfortable knowing, so they remain willfully ignorant. Fortunately for the Chronicle its readers are ecstatic to be surrounded in ignorance in their Liberal Fool’s Paradise, and the Chronicle is pleased to be a constant contributor to their growing lack of knowledge.

The motto of the alternative energy industry: “Anything is possible when you know nothing.”

The Immorality of Proportionate Response - Israel and Gaza

Hamas continues a daily rocket barrage on Israel from Gaza, and is stockpiling Syrian and Iranian rockets in Lebanon to resume attacks from there soon. This is the thanks Palestinians give to Israel for leaving Gaza to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state by Palestinians.

As should have been expected, it didn’t take long for the Hamas war-lords to drive Fatah, the incompetent and venal followers of Arafat, out of power and, for the most part, out of Gaza. Then began the only “peace” process Hamas is capable of, incessant attacks on Israel launched from populated areas of Gaza to provoke a military response with civilian casualties.

At that point, also as anticipated, the nations of the world take the stage to criticize Israel for making a “disproportionate” response to Hamas’ provocation. Apparently it’s unfair to try to take effective action to stop the Hamas rockets.

My criticism of Israel is that they have made a proportionate response, and I suggest they should try a disproportionate one. Israel obviously has the military might to obliterate the areas Hamas uses to launch rockets. Israel also has the military strength to turn off electrical power and stop fuel, food, and other necessities at the Gaza border, and should make total use of it.

Israel owes its citizens nothing less than security against Hamas (and Hezbollah) attacks. It doesn’t owe any one in Gaza immunity because Hamas is using them for a shield, even if involuntary. Just because Hamas chooses to hide behind Gaza civilians doesn’t mean they must be given sanctuary by Israel. After all, the Palestinians in Gaza did vote Hamas into power.

If Israel does not retaliate, will Hamas stop the attacks?

No, of course not.

If Israel retaliates, will Hamas stop the attacks?

No again.

So what stops Hamas attacks?

The deaths of Hamas leaders and fighters.

Oh.

It’s very simple. Hamas wants nothing less than the destruction of Israel. That’s all they and their ideological progenitors have wanted for decades. Will Hamas change or compromise?

No.

Is that a fact?

To answer a question with a question, when have Hamas ever said otherwise?

So what is this dream of peace between Israel and the Gaza Palestinians led by Hamas?

Idiocy, kept alive by people who know better, but won’t admit its reality.

Also known as fools.

Just because you dream it, doesn’t mean anyone else does.

Instant China Expert

Shanghai by Night

Alice and I just returned from three weeks in China, and as you might expect, I am now an expert in matters Chinese (at least as how China will impact the future).

The first point is that China is not going to risk or provoke war with the United States, for the simple reason that China has nothing to gain, and everything to lose. To paraphrase Kris Kristofferson, “Freedom (to take risks) is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Where is my proof?

One word. Shanghai.

Our incredibly competent, hard working, and industrious (entertaining, too) tour director, Comrade David (a Party member), informed us that the city bird of Shanghai was the crane – the construction crane. In twenty years Shanghai went from a city with its tallest building 26 stories high, to a city with over a thousand buildings over 26 stories. Most of the building boom, which continues, occurred between 1995 and 2000, causing a world-wide shortage of construction cranes.

More proof needed? Beijing, Chongqing, Xi’an, Guilin, Hong Kong, Macao, and hundreds of places in between and around. Places I’ve heard of, more that I hadn’t, and a huge number that I still know nothing about, and all of them putting a “Chinese face on socialism.”

As Alice gently chided David, the Chinese socialist face looks decidedly capitalist.

David, his modest salary augmented by generous tips (which he richly deserves), smiled inscrutably.

The old state-owned businesses, many owned and operated by the People’s Liberation Army, have failed or are failing. Many Communist Party bosses are known more for ineptness and corruption than enlightened management. So who or what is responsible for China’s spectacular growth?

Quite simply, the Chinese people.

They have a remarkable capacity to work hard at difficult jobs. China’s rapidly growing per capita GDP of about $2,000 is still very low (in the bottom half) among world economies, but the private sector already produces 70% of the total and its share is steadily increasing.

Of course, Chinese growth is not occurring in an economic vacuum. Those high rises on the Shanghai waterfront house banks and businesses with familiar international names. The Chinese economic miracle is built on foreign investment, and exports to fill the West’s demands to consume prodigiously, but inexpensively.

The Chinese themselves are reluctant consumers, just as the Japanese were during their brief period of seeming economic invincibility. Chinese reluctance to spend is understandable. David grudgingly agreed with Alice that the United States fits the model of socialist welfare state much better than China. Chinese government pensions are and will continue to be nasty jokes on China’s elders that thought Communism would reward their sacrifices and provide for them in their Golden Years.

(Most of the old State-Owned Enterprises are operating at a loss, and can barely meet their obligations to pay current retirees. When inflation is added to the picture, the payments to current retirees are rendered meaningless.)

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

Right?

Old people have diminishing abilities coupled with increasing needs. So how does Communist China take care of them in their Golden Years? By passing a law that children must support their parents (and parents can sue if they don’t). Of course, prior to passage of this law, Communist leaders also passed a law that basically limits each couple to one child (with some exceptions, so don’t nit pick me). So now you have two elderly parents depending on one child (who, with a spouse, is also supporting themselves, a child, and the spouse’s elderly parents).

The typical Chinese young working couple is also paying into a pension fund, which is being eaten by inflation while being squandered though corruption and mismanagement.

No wonder all but the wealthiest Chinese save all they can, and why Chinese consumption alone can’t power economic growth until the Chinese can see that their savings and investments will secure their futures.

The Chinese will have Privatized Social Security long before we do, and for the right reasons – principally, economic necessity. And while they’re doing the thing right, our bankrupt Medicare system will be joined in a decade by our already actuarially bankrupt Social Security system, and ruinous tax increases, benefit cuts, financial means testing, and rationing of medical care will be required in a vain attempt to avert total government-funded retirement system failure.

However, the tax increases and benefit cuts necessary to attempt to salvage Social Security and Medicare will only kill our economy and make matters worse.

To bring it all down then, in three short weeks I learned that China is not a military threat, but thanks to the West is an economic juggernaut. I learned that China will not sacrifice the economic progress of its predominantly impoverished citizens on the altar of environmentalism – every place we went in China had air pollution worse than Los Angeles at its smoggiest.

Things I knew before the trip – China has Pandas, the United States has pandering politicians.

The Chinese are doing all they can to save their endangered Pandas.

Our industrious citizenry are continuing to create and grow our incredibly strong economy, but our politicians are not doing anything to prevent it inevitably drowning under a sea of unsustainable social welfare expenditures.

Long before natural global warming floods our coastal cities, we’ll drown under a sea of red ink.

When Al Gore was VP, he didn’t do anything to forestall future disasters, and he still isn’t.

The fact that he was an inept leader uniquely qualifies him, in the eyes of the Nobel Prize committee, for its Peace Prize.

Just as the Nobel previously saw fit to award the corruption of Yasser Arafat, and the ineptitude of Jimmy Carter.

In China, Chairman Mao is turning over in his mausoleum.

Chairman Mao: “If inept leadership is all it takes, I deserve one for the Cultural Revolution. One decade of Cultural Revolution set back Chinese industrialization two decades. Not even Jimmy Carter could screw things up that bad.

Kim Jong-Il deserves one.

Fidel deserves one too.

Jimmy Carter has the credibility in the inept leadership realm to write the nominating letters.”

Note to the Nobel Prize Committee. You should award Chairman Mao posthumously. He would graciously share it with Fidel and Kim Jong-Il.

Dead totalitarians are very accommodating.

We Lost the War a Long Time Ago

I began my nine-year, seven-college odyssey at Humboldt State, Arcata, California, in September, 1960. Thanks to my fellow freshmen, it was the first year Humboldt State enrollment passed 2,000.

As modest as it was, Humboldt State seemed very large to me. I had just graduated from Point Arena High, enrollment 140, and my graduation class totaled twenty seven, both numbers the highest in school history.

I was on a record setting roll.

Inexplicably I was selected for Honors English, which combined required Freshman English and Speech into a two-semester course taught by two professors.

My first combined paper and speech was inspired by news about Mafia involvement in illegal drug trafficking. My research soon convinced me that our efforts to stomp out illegal drugs were doomed to failure.

In today’s parlance, it was a no-brainer.

Illegal drug profits were huge, and were employed to pay off police, judges, politicians, and anyone else who might have involvement in illegal drug trade prevention. Those that could not be bought could be intimidated or killed.

Even in those more innocent, simpler years, the cost of illegal drugs to society was huge and growing. Our legal system was being corrupted, addicts constantly committed crimes to feed their addictions, productive lives and families were shattered, and social services and medical care for addicts were overwhelmed.

The illegal drug trade made crime international. Large areas of foreign countries became lawless and ungovernable. Poppy farms flourished in Turkey and Afghanistan to fill the demand for opium. Italian and French Mediterranean cities became hubs for processing raw opium into heroin and shipping it to the United States. Some years later, when cocaine became the drug of choice, coca cultivation became and remains the dominant economic and political force in Columbia and Bolivia.

American public pressures led President Nixon to declare a War on Drugs in 1971.

The War on Drugs is a prohibition campaign undertaken by the United States with the assistance of participating countries, intended to "combat" the illegal drug trade - to curb supply and diminish demand for certain psychoactive substances deemed harmful. This initiative includes a set of laws and policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of targeted substances.

Of course, the illegal drug trade has built-in dynamics that guarantee any war against it will be a losing effort.

First, the demand for illegal drugs remains high, because the very fact that their possession and use is illegal discourages their users from trying to get help to end their addictions.

Second, the fact they are illegal makes them costly to produce and distribute, and drives their users to commit crimes and traffic in drugs to be able to afford the expensive drugs for their own use.

Third, high prices generate huge profits and assure a steady supply of persons eager to work with, compete with, or replace existing drug dealers.

Fourth, on the supply side the opium poppies and coca leaves are grown by farmers in areas where it is very difficult to compete against modern farming methods and subsist on legal crops.

When I did my research in 1960, and now 47 years later, the efforts to prevent or discourage drug abuse haven’t changed. They continue to be the “in-the-box” approaches that didn’t work then, and don’t work now.

You could say they are evidence of insanity in our approach to drug abuse prevention – doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome each time.

What could – should – we have done to win the war on drug abuse?

Amazingly, I had the answer to that question 47 years ago when I was only a couple of months past my 18th birthday.

I didn’t come up with the solution all by myself.

I had a little help from the Dutch.

Simply, all that needs to be done is take the profits out of drug use and abuse. On the demand side, you give free drugs to addicts in a supervised environment, and instead of jail time, you provide them medical, educational, counseling, and job training services. The key is to identify and treat their addiction through primarily medical means, with no judicial or penal component.

On the supply side, you purchase all the opium and coca leaves that farmers produce at fair market prices, which should be reasonably low since the free issue of drugs to addicts has taken the profits out of illicit drug trafficking.

The resulting savings from de-criminalizing drug addiction, and the reduction of crime when addicts are given free drugs, would be far more than needed to pay for clinics to provide and maintain services to addicts.

The best way to win a war is to identify why you are fighting before you start shooting.

In the case of drug abuse, we want to prevent and cure addiction, not to create and sustain a criminal growth industry.

So far we’ve done just the opposite.