A Second Stimulus: Much Bigger Than the First, and Focused on Infrastructure
It will soon dawn on Congress (although it may never dawn on the White House) that we need a much larger second stimulus package than is now being contemplated in order to give the economy the jump-start it needs and fill in for consumers who can't and won't spend more. My guess is that this second stimulus plan, including infrastructure, will ultimately reach $200 billion or more.
A special word about infrastructure spending. Not only is the nation sorely in need of it -- given deferred maintenance on roads and bridges, water and sewage systems, levees, and many of our ports, and the increasing need for public transportation -- but spending on infrastructure generates much more growth than cutting taxes. (This point, incidentally, was stressed in a paper earlier this year by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com and, not incidentally, an economic advisor to John McCain.)
A special word about infrastructure spending. Not only is the nation sorely in need of it -- given deferred maintenance on roads and bridges, water and sewage systems, levees, and many of our ports, and the increasing need for public transportation -- but spending on infrastructure generates much more growth than cutting taxes. (This point, incidentally, was stressed in a paper earlier this year by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com and, not incidentally, an economic advisor to John McCain.)
posted by Robert Reich | 9:38 AM
169 Comments:
I'm glad you're bringing up infrastructure as always. I've been a fan of yours since you did a PBS show many, many years ago discussing the need for investing in the infrastructure and in the people of this country.
I love your discussions on socialized capitalism too.
Hey, what happend to the video blogs with the frumpy hair and clothes. Those were so awesome, and straight to the people and fans.
Please keep blogging for your fans. We all need sound economic analysis free from the mainstream media lunacy.
Cheers, and thanks as always.
"Spending on infrastructure generates much more growth than cutting taxes."
This statement assumes that the return from the infrastructure build exceeds the return yielded from the tax savings by tax payers (unlike the proposed ‘bridge to nowhere’).
Continued deficit spending will only depreciate our savings and lead to inflation. Our government will never tell us this truth.
A bunch of roads and bridges won’t help any of us if our dollars continue to depreciate so low that we can not afford gasoline.
The truth that no one wants to tell us is that if we as a nation have been consuming more than we have been producing for too long, and now we are paying the price. Our elected leaders will not tell us (because they want our votes) that if we want to be able to consume more, then we must produce more…it is that simple. They instead tell us that if we elect them they will solve all our problems. To produce more, we have to allocate resources as efficiently as possible so that our efforts yield the highest production possible. Infrastructure projects that are really needed, undertaken efficiently, and yield positive economic returns are what we need. Pork barrel waste is not. We the people must hold our elected leaders accountable to their job performance. That means vote them out of office when they are not fiscally responsible with our money.
Mr. Reich,
Yours is an “interesting” proposal to offer on the very day that CPI was reported to have risen by 1.1% (driven by energy costs).
Recession ain’t happening. Inflation, driven by a global oil imbalance, could become a concern.
Drill Here, Drill Now (or global economies will continue to be sluggish for decades to come).
P.S.) See this chart to put today’s CPI data in context.
We may need some infrastructure work, though the roads I drive seem fine. The drivers on the other hand...
I'm not sure I agree with the infrastructure spending as stimulus idea, though. The make work programs of the depression gave me the nice trees I have in my backyard, but didn't materially help the economy at the time. A more recent example is Boston's Big Dig, which was rife with corruption, is falling apart, was 500% over its original budget (that's inflation adjusted) and created only 5,000 jobs at its peak (vs. $15b of spend). I'm not saying 5,000 jobs is anything to sneeze at, but applying the same math means that creating 100,000 jobs would cost $300 billion. Assuming these are $50K jobs, you end up with $5 billion of salaries and let's say $750mm of taxes (including payroll) in return. So (again, using the Big Dig as an example), for a net cost of $299 billion I get a shoddy 20% of the original project. I don't like that math.
Maybe we should just think about cutting government spending.
AM
Anybody who is eager to recreate FDR’s Folly should read this book.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to relive it:
“[FDR] hired advisors and cabinet secretaries who were convinced that the free market was doomed, that central planning was the wave of the future, and that state monopolies were superior -- economically and morally -- to large private companies. Many were impressed by Italian fascism.”
“Many were impressed by Italian fascism”?
Hmm, that has a familiar ring to it.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR!
Our country was VERY fortunate to (barely) survive FDR’s folly.
We might not be so lucky next time.
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Sorry for the duplication. Blogger.com screwed up.
Spending on infrastructure enriches landowners.
We must recycle that spending: collect it from the lucky landowners, instead of allowing it to lodge tightly in their pockets.
Best of all, this should be collected at the local level, via the property tax.
Localities ought to be reassessing every couple of years, adjusting their millage rates downward, but rebalancing the load so that those who benefit the most from infrastructure spending -- in the form of enhanced land values -- get to pay their fair share of the taxes, and reduce the load on those less favored. Dennis Hastert would understand this well.
Increases in land value ought to be socialized. They are not rightly private property. We create them by our common spending, and leave them in private pockets -- individual, corporate, philanthropic, pension fund, whatever -- at our peril!
Even the "Bridge to Nowhere" would have required only a 50% increase in land value on that island (ignoring any increase on the mainland!) to make it a worthwhile investment. But I don't see why the federal taxpayer should be asked to make such a generous gift to the local landholder, and the local landholder not be required to return it to the commons!
And spending on public transportation creates increases in land value sufficient to fund public transportation. We just have to collect it! See Fred Harrison's Wheels of Fortune at http://www.osmose-os.org/documents/39/Wheels_of_fortune.pdf
and Chuck Metalitz's Retrieving Transit's Benefits, at http://www.hgchicago.org/rn05a.pdf
Robert said...
"A special word about infrastructure spending. Not only is the nation sorely in need of it -- given deferred maintenance on roads and bridges, water and sewage systems, levees, and many of our ports, and the increasing need for public transportation -- but spending on infrastructure generates much more growth than cutting taxes."
Good idea but I would hope that the very next thing they do to stimulate the economy is to increase food stamps for our most marginalized. This would jolt the economy but far more importantly provide the poor something to help offset the recent bruising and dramatic increase in food inflation.
According to Zandi, “the boost to GDP from a dollar spent on new bridges or schools is estimated at $1.59.“
But keep these projects far away from the parasitic financial speculators on Wall Street.
Silly comment nutters,
You think the only reason infrastructure spending is beneficial is because the roads themselves will carry more goods and cause more trade? Really?
That's rather daft.
The real point is that money spent on working class jobs generates trade over and over and over. Construction workers aren't big savers. Those jobs lead to important spending. Even Carly Fiorina recently was trotting out the vast importance of small business recently. Large business may generate the largest revenue numbers, but small business spends more if it on salaries. So you pay a construction worker, she pays her waiter a good tip, and he gets a haircut, and the barber spends it on a micro-brew. That paycheck doesn't pay one person, it pays lots of people, over and over. It's this neat thing called "trade." It keeps circulating until some rich jerk gets it and drops it into the bank, where it basically just sits there. (Yeah, the bank might put some fractional amount of it to work, but the difference is waterfalls and raindrops.)
Not to mention that most of the infrastructure work is needed anyways, and actually costs more if we wait until the roads are completely trashed, than it does to do the work now.
So it's a way of saving money later, to generate more trade right now. Win/win.
Oh, and BTW, that anti-FDR propaganda is just pathetic. Most Democrats and Republicans that I know consider him one of the greatest Presidents. The Depression didn't just get bored, and waltz off, you know. And yes, I know you can trot out a bunch of slander, but most Americans know that the government stepping in and providing jobs, kickstarted trade and got us back on track.
If you want to argue the point without being a nutter, you'd argue instead that FDR's programs were no longer needed after things were going strong again, and that dire times are the only times for such things. I'd still disagree, but at least you'd have a debate point, instead of hateful drivel.
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No, it's not going to dawn on the White House, given Bush and Chao have rarely made their jobs creation targets per month.
The BushCo Oil Cartel is getting some message, given that oil prices declined again today, and there's no new massive oil discovery. Read the oil price increases during each month before a presidential election in November. Oil prices go up every month, as if the Republicans are skimming off the top to fund the campaign. Then after the election, the oil prices trend down again.
The IRS tax code does need to be reformed to tax asset bubbles as they form. Tax the bubbles while they rise, and put money into the IRS coffers, to avoid the zero when the bubble bursts. Supposedly the big investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the hedge funds associated with them, lost big. Some of that asset bubble should be sitting in IRS coffers. Don't wait until Obama rolls back the Bush tax cuts.
Yes, we need a second stimulus. We also need credit card interest rates to decline to the 2% rate, because banks are extremely unlikely to collect on credit card assets currently on their books.
It was great to see Nancy Pelosi propose a second stimulus package.
This is akin to having your driveway redone when you are 5 months behind on your mortgage payments.
Yes. We've let America infrastructure rot yet we will spend over a trillion on Iraq.
How can we afford to spend money to blow up Iraq and then spend money to rebuild Iraq and not get a dime of Iraq oil reserves which have quadrupled in value?
Oh, and did I forget to mention all the debt forgiveness the world has give Iraq...how much have we been given?
Several years ago, The Economist magazine had a brief article on oil countries, stating while Saudi Arabia has the most oil, Iraq has the easiest to get to.
This week the magazine has an article on Matthew R Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.
Simmons, an investment banker who started his fortune years ago by investing in offshore drilling, recommends that the Saudis submit to modern geologic surveys by an independent team to assess the Saudi oil.
Maybe George W. Bush can devote himself to persuading his Saudi kingdom pals to open up to independent inspection of the oil fields. Bush did so well with the UN inspections for Iraq's WMD and outsourcing Bin Laden's capture to the war lords.
The United States currently can produce about 80 bbl per day (and no, drilling in the US would not produce many more barrels per day; if the US had oil, obviously the US would already be exploited). Iraq can produce 300 bbl per day. Knowing what the Saudis can actually provide in the future would be a great factoid and would give direction to the US Congress and middle class.
Rubypanther wrote: "It keeps circulating until some rich jerk gets it and drops it into the bank, where it basically just sits there."
Funny.
We are right now in a significant crisis due to the fact that Americans have indebted themselves many times beyond what they can pay back. Still, you want people to spend spend spend, and you lambast the person (you assume that only the rich are smart enough to save? What an assumption!) who wants to save some money. Unbelievable.
I wonder how Mr. Reich proposes we pay for these infrastructure improvements? Will not the large contractors and building corporations be the net winners of such projects? Does he really think the revenue generated will be passed equitably to the ditch diggers and heavy equimpment operators? If so, how can corporations simulatenously be a benefit, and detriment?
“if the US had oil, obviously the US would already be exploited”
You’re joking, right?
If not, you might want to check your facts:
OCS + ANWR
OCS + ANWR + Oil Shale
Peak Oil & Oil Shale
Russians Aren't Stupid
I'm afraid I have to disagree;
We're in a world of declining resources of which the most obvious is fossil fuels. To spend on bridges and roads that promote more driving is very short sited. If you want stimulus, spend it on something to reduce our fossil fuel usage, like solar tax credits, gas guzzler trade-ins, wind generation tax credits, ... And get the most bang for the buck, I'm afraid trains go to the back of the line.
The returns on alternative energy stimulus far exceed the old build bridges and roads approach. Lower trade deficit, lower fuel costs, global warming reduction, national security...
The last tax cut stimulus which did nothing but add to our national debt was a complete failure. For Nancy Pelosi to suggest another is a disgrace.
The Republicans are simply hopeless and haven't had a reasonable thought in the past 1/3 century. But the Dems appear to be stuck in the world of FDR economics where if you transfer money from rich to poor, somehow more oil, more NG, more copper..., will just appear out of nowhere and everyone will be happy! FDR economics were fine for the 1930's, but things have changed dramatically. I'm not seeing any sign from Obama that he gets it (although being in the middle of a campaign is somewhat distracting), only a few dems in the congress seem to get it. The only ones I've seen that seem to really understand are Al Gore, and some futuristic thinkers like Amory Lovins and just maybe TB Pickens (yet to be seen).
Come on folks, the world has changed! We transfered money to the Chinese and they increased demand for oil and drove the price up. Trying to give money, through tax breaks or jobs programs, or unemployment benefits... to those in the U.S. who have been forced to cut back on fossil fuel usage, so they can resume there old consumption is doomed to failure. Gas, oil, and natural gas won't appear out of thin air for these people to use. Help them by passing laws and adopting policies that move us quickly to a more efficient, renewable resource society. GIVE them the efficiencies that will help them maintain a reasonable standard of living without trying to go back to simply consuming more fossil fuels.
Dr. Reich,
Very astute observation. I'm glad I'm not the only one saying that our infrastructure is not what it should be and investment is needed. Isn't it curious that some people seem to equate repairing roads and bridges with Italian Fascism and Marxism? Strange times we live in indeed.
I'm not convinced that a huge public works program would help us now. This would require an increase in resource consumption as resources production is becoming limited by stagnant energy growth.
The problems cause by chasing infinite growth on a finite planet, can't be solved forever by chasing after even more growth.
Ending the war and the runaway spending would likely give us more benefit than embarking on a new spending adventure.
Sbvor, you are a funny person. You argue that left wing environmental whackos have dominated our government and industry for year. that the Bush family, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other left wing liberal whackos have kept us from consuming America's infinite oil supply.
The lefty envirnomentlists Bush I and Bush II for instance, signed executive orders to keep caustal drilling off limits. Whacky lefty Jeb Bush himself lobbied for the legislation.
You hate every that the whacko left wing Republican party does.
But when these whacko leftist organization and governmental bodies publish statistics, you buy them hook line and sinker. So long as they say things that you want to hear.
We need to build infrastructure and logistics to bring Iraq oil over here for war debt recovery.
Remember the Bush chant that the we are world's great liberator and decider.
Well, let's decide that we can get payment for our efforts.
Getting Iraq oil at the cost of $30 a barrel will stimulate the economy.
Rubypanther:
In your analysis, you seem to be neglecting the depreciation effect of wasteful spending on the US dollar. You are correct that the infrastructure build will result in a multiplying effect as workers receive and spend the wages from the stimulus. Unless productivity is enhanced by the investment, the currency, and therefore those very wages paid to the workers, will buy less and less. With a current national debt of over $9 trillion, this is exactly what is happening to our currency now.
"The Great Moderation". Here's hoping that there are, indeed, broader safety nets for us regular folks. I wondered about welfare. The last time I really paid attention it was called Welfare to Work. I guess it's now Nothing.
I like your "Modest Proposal". And the odds, svbor, that it'll work? Come on, don't be afraid. You know it nevah would work. The meer pay of the Prez. Would never fly.
Infrastructure spending would create jobs and at the same time fix the infrastructure. Duh. It's a win-win.
It's never been clear to me WTH's with Republican's being so proud of NOT raising taxes and always spending like drunken sailors. What in God's name do they think will ultimately happen?
Here it is. It's happening. They got theirs, and we get depression.
tt
WeaselDog,
In case you missed it:
Bush lifts oil drilling ban, wants Congress to act.
We’re waiting!
Oh, here is a little history lesson for you.
price of oil = related to fed rate cuts and the value of the dollar.
i heard that each time the fed cuts rates, the price of oil increases b/c it is extremely dependent on the value of the dollar. because we have devalued the dollar to deal with the credit crises, the price of oil has increased for those who use US Dollars. I don't think the cost of oil has increased because of an oil shortage, though it is true that there is a limited supply of oil.
I actually like higher oil prices because it causes Americans to be less wasteful. I believe we are ranked # 10 in the world in terms of the price per gallon we pay. Europeans pay a much higher price and this causes them to be more aware of alternative energy, public transportation, etc.
WeaselDog,
Click here for a more comprehensive history lesson (including some very recent history on your Democratic Congress making it ILLEGAL to develop our ENORMOUS Oil Shale resources).
ucla> cal,
The value of the dollar is one factor, but not a major factor. This is a cyclical phenomenon. The rate cuts are over. Fed tightening, though not on the immediate horizon, is the next phase of the cycle. That will strengthen the dollar.
High gasoline prices are a simple and well documented matter of demand exceeding supply.
As the demand/supply ratio predicted, crude prices have dropped of late. One year from now, my guess is they will have set new records.
If you love high gas prices, I suggest you move to France.
More rebates = giving tax monies BACK. The implication in what you are saying is that we are being taxed too highly to be able to support our economy. Hey, I agree with you! How about not not taking so much to begin with, and the gov't will not have to spend so much on checks and envelopes.I promise I won't waste my own money too much...
And as for your comment, we_are_toast, unless your alternative forms of energy are going to be exclusively powering hover-cars and transporters (as seen on Star Trek), we will always need the infrastructure. Are you proposing we just stop going anywhere or shipping anything? Didn't think so. No matter what I put in my tank, I have to be able to roll somewhere on something hard and smooth and be able to cross rivers. Heck, even joggers and those crazy bicyclists like to use roads and bridges! Here I do agree with Dr. Reich, without the sarcasm
Yes Sbvor, I'm aware that Bush flip flopped from liberal to conservative.
I'm still a registered Republican, but the party has gone somewhere that I don't wish to follow.
The party used to court folks on a conservative platform. Fiscal conservation and conservation of the environment.
It used to court sportsmen by protecting the wilds for hunting and fishing. But no more.
It used to at least pretend to stand for rational economic policies and frugal taxation, borrowing and spending.
Now the party just stand for consuming everything as fast as possible while generating the maximum amount of waste. While doing so, the party borrows but does not earn funding. It blows money on whomever gives the best bribes. It sells everything, including it's values ethics and our Constitutional rights.
I understand your desire to scapegoat, and call Republicans like George Bush, environmental whacko liberals, because you need a bogey man. you're paranoid and you feel that 300 million Americans are possessed by demons, while you're the only right winger alive.
Perhaps, just perhaps, if 300 million Americans including all of the Republicans, Democrats and Independents are too liberal for you, maybe the USA is the kind of country you want to live in? There are other countries with more rigid military regimes that believe in the things you do. they believe in total military control of the government and citizenry. You would like that I think. Perhaps you just live in the wrong country?
Sbvor, high gas prices are good for the Republican Leadership.
If you love George Bush, then celebrate high gas prices. His family is making record profits on them.
Only a liberal would want the Bush family harmed by low gas prices.
And yes, demand destruction, ie economic destruction is helping to bring prices down.
engineer:
As I stated, in this time of crises we need to invest where we'll get the most bang for the buck.
I just heard what Al Gore had to say today, and he is 100% on target! Everyone here should go look up what he said. Once we get the alternative energy electric infrastructure built, the move to electrical transportation will follow. We certainly need work on on roads and bridges, but to divert resources from getting off fossil fuels to road construction would be a grave mistake.
In 10-20 years, I may be driving my electric car on pothole filled streets, but you absolutely won't be able to afford, or maybe won't even be able to get, the gas to drive on the immaculate highways you just built.
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Sbvor, yup, I'm no Britney Spears, that's for sure!
Let's hear the music you perform.
WeaselDog,
Oh, trust me, my performance would be substantially worse (if that’s possible).
The difference is, I know I have no musical talent.
Now these Texans ROCK (and innovate)!
And, they’re not girliemen!
WeaselDog,
This is how a real Texan (native to Oak Cliff) plays guitar.
You’ve GOTTA be an import!
Ahh, so what you're saying Sbvor is that you don't do anything that you can't do at a professional level.
You don't do stuff for fun, if you aren't doing it at a professional level?
I can't imagine avoiding activities, just because I haven't mastered them. At least for me, all I'd be able to do is work. No swimming, bicycling, hiking with my dogs. No gardening as I'm not a professional farmer.
I'd be bored out my skull.
Yeah Sbvor, Stevie and I had a number of mutual friends in common. He and Jimmie played out of the garage for years before they got their first record deal.
I got a few invites to came play with them, but never got around to driving over. There were more garage bands back then. Not so many now.
weaseldog:
There is one thing we know sbvor does that he does not do so professionally.
How to pay for this infrastructure investment?
Ending the war would save between $120-$240 billion per year (higher $ includes interest and health care costs).
Let all Bush tax cuts expire. Remove remaining deductions and credits that benefit comfortably middle-class and above. New president offers tax relief only to those who are truly needy. Sorry middle-class but if we want services we must pay for them. This would also produce enough revenue to seriously begin offering universal health care.
Weasel,
If (and I do mean IF) you were invited to play with Stevie (even in his earliest days), it darn sure wasn’t owing to your musical “talent”.
Sing the blues, Stevie!
Sbvor, you sure are good at driving a point home! It's funny, that I never claimed to be great musician, yet you seem to think that should be important to me.
You say you don't do things that you aren't great at, yet here you are, submitting thoughts on things that you clearly don't have PHDs for.
Here you are playing at being a music critic, and you're screwing that up to.
Why do you engage in activities when you know you suck at them?
Is this because you're a professional hypocrite? Is that the other point you're trying to drive home?
WeaselDog,
Dang, you got one thing right!
Let’s try that again:
Sing the blues, Stevie!
weaseldog:
Sbvor is a professional idiot, par excellence.
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The old ways of so-called “Liberal” totalitarian orthodoxy are (musically speaking) “Up Against The Wind” of REAL change away from the politics of “NO” solutions.
Lyrics here.
At least oil dropped for the 3rd day; Bush as head of the Oil Cartel must be on the telephone and Blackberry. There have been no new major oil discoveries in the past three days, similar to how oil goes up even though there are no new disasters.
80% of automobile polution comes from 20% of the automobiles on the road; maybe we should limit the gas guzzlers: the military and the oil they use, then the domestic vehicles and the oil they use. We should have the usage quantified in several PowerPoint slides.
Given the US Congress is awash in special interest group money, and given there is no place to replace the US Congress during a catastrophic event, why not set a timeline to disband them? They do not represent their individual constituents, by definition they have morphed.
Dr. Reich,
With burgeoning Deficits and a recession plus need to reinvest in our infrastructure, educational system, health care, and fossil fuel energy independence, storing up weak banks, etc., you've got to take a more Integrated look at the Money Inflows and Outflows of different strategic options to come to a financially clever and prudent set of plans. A priority should be to go for those investments that will deliver more jobs in the intermediate term 4-5 years.
Popping out with a stimulus package here for $200 billion and a stimulus package there for $150 billion is a bit too chaotic for my financial nerves. Why not a come foreward with a simple list of spending priorities and another list of how to pay for them tied together with a four year cash flow effect?
“At least oil dropped for the 3rd day”
Click here and learn why that is and why that trend may not last over the next year.
Drill Here, Drill Now as CRITICAL PART of a comprehensive energy strategy that will help to prevent world economies from remaining sluggish for DECADES TO COME!
Like it or not, the world economies run on hydrocarbons. And, despite loads of “Wishful Thinking” that is NOT going to change for DECADES to come!
We can live in a fantasy world where global economies slowly go down the tubes for decades to come. Or, we can face facts and generate the economic growth which will be CRITICAL to generating the venture capital which will fuel the innovations necessary to move the world beyond petroleum as a transportation fuel (knowing, full well, that we will need and want a healthy supply of oil well beyond that point.
Today, the most important speech of the 21st century, and possibly the last 1/2 century, was given by Al Gore. Dr. Reich, you MUST comment on this challenge!
Those who ignore this proposal operate from the same level of ignorance that got us to this most critical crises. From Republicans who operate from greed and selfishness, to Democrats who live in the past, all must share the blame.
This is the one proposal that can avoid the coming depression and the resource wars which will surely follow. This is a turning point in history, and windows of opportunity do not stay open for long. If this proposal is not adopted, you should take any financial resources you currently have, buy gold, and add it to the gold you should have been collecting since Nov 2004 when Americans also displayed a level of ignorance that put us on a course of self-destruction.
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Toasty,
Al Gore is second only to you as the biggest nut job of the last century!
But, don’t believe me.
Believe:
1) The directly cited peer reviewed science
2) Interviews with dissenting IPCC scientists.
3) The audited individual signatures of some 32,000 dissenting American scientists.
4) The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change.
5) Many more prominent scientists who are, in rapidly increasing numbers, coming to recognize the alleged Man Made Global Warming Crisis for the ABSOLUTE FRAUD that it clearly is!
Everybody should read up on “The Post's series on scientists who buck the [so-called] conventional wisdom on climate science.”
Sbvor, I'd put real money on oil going higher next year, but I don't believe you'd pay up.
I just looked to see which video you were ragging on.
What specifically was wrong with the song?
Keep in mind that I fancy myself a songwriter, not a musician.
And you like blues? That's leftist liberal music. To be a real (TM) Republican, you have to be a twangy country fan and worship Toby Keith. All the bitter angry and paranoid musicians go for country.
Blues is full of tolerant interracial stuff. All the blues musicians I hang with are color blind. Coming from New Orleans, they are all very liberal.
WeaselDog,
1) Pathetic lyrics aside, let’s just say that you singing or playing anywhere makes me want to file a human rights violation with the United Nations.
2) I compartmentalize entertainment and politics. I loathe his politics, but this fella is still an interesting entertainer.
A high profile musician friend of mine once asked me what I liked about her/their music. My immediate response was “the emotive quality”.
Technical prowess is useless without the ability to express emotion. I see it all the time. What made Stevie the best Blues guitarist EVER is that he combined unparalleled technical prowess with an unprecedented ability to express emotion through his guitar. It’s like his emotions were hard wired to his guitar.
This is a good example of the emotive quality I speak of.
This is a more subtle, but equally powerful example.
This is less subtle, but still powerful.
New Orleans ain’t got nothin’ on Texas. And, politically, for the very reason you cite, New Orleans is a basket case. But, it has produced some good sounds.
Here is another Socialist imbecile who came up with at least one good song and made it interesting in at least two different ways.
3) As I said, I too think oil may set new records next year (owing to a simple matter of supply and demand).
4) Those who are truly color blind don’t feel the need to proclaim it to the world or prove it to anybody.
5) Democrats have, on balance, done tremendous harm to people of color. The party of Lincoln has served people of color (and everybody else) far better. And, now that the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party no longer has an absolute monopoly on the dissemination of information, that charade will slowly begin to crumble to bits.
Before you go toting Democratic Civil Rights legislation, go back and review the vote counts from the two parties. Even when Democrats did good, it was Republicans who outvoted them. Of course, your propaganda arm will never mention that.
At the risk of wading in when the comments of this blog have devolved so badly, I would like to note that there are a lot of people who became good at construting during hte housing boom. Using their talent to make America whole again - be it bridge, road, metro, train, school, art venue and maybe even library -- seems like a wise plan to me.
More low down funky jazz/blues Cassandra style (much more interesting than anything dip/dlp has to say).
Thank you Sbvor.
You've made a good case for preventing people from playing music for fun.
And if people can't p-lay at a pro level, they shouldn't play. Stevie Ray Vaughn once sucked at thge guitar, and as you point, out he should've stopped there.
Perhaps you lead a drive to stop music lessons and classes.
Then again, I believe I'd hate a world were3 people had to be perfect at something before they could do it. Not everyone arrived in this world whole and complete, and finished like you.
BTW, I don't recall you giving me any money for my music. So your interest, fascination and drive to have me play styles that I enjoy but am not interested in playing is confusing.
So let's nip this in the bud. I'm married, I'm not interested in an affair and your approach is a turn off anyway. Further, I assume your male, and I only become involved with women. So if you're looking for someone to court, I'm not your man.
I'm glad that you believe shale is solving our problems today. As Bush and McCain pointed out, our problems are all mental anyway. Gas prices are just mental.
During the time of Lincoln the Republican Party was the liberal party. The Dems were conservatives. But you knew that.
I think it's a bit hilarious and hypocritical (but that makes it funnier), that you went looking for my music so you could whine about it.
Yet here you are, parroting Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity with a sucky intellect and personality.
Further, though you admit you pretty much suck at music and everything else, you come here to impose your suckiness on us.
As you suck at being human being and there are many people who are better than you, I wonder why you go on? Or why you come here to demonstrate how much you suck and shove it in our faces.
If you took your own advice, you'd kill yourself. But my advice is that you just leave the internet, avoid people that you annoy and seek professional help in reshaping your personality and intellect.
Though it may suck for you to listen to my guitar playing, I know it sucks more to be you. And that I believe is your problem.
Folks:
The question of the value of waterboarding continues to be arguable. Sbvor is living proof that brainwashing WORKS!
One can only come to the conclusion that sbvor never had an original thought in his life.
Weasel,
Sing and play all you like.
But, please, lest you be charged with assaulting the senses, do it in a soundproof room!
Write all the material you please. But, for the sake of your own dignity, don’t show it to anybody.
sbvor:
The ever constant "real truth" machine of the movement conservative, always giving us, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth:
sbvor said:
Before you go toting Democratic Civil Rights legislation, go back and review the vote counts from the two parties. Even when Democrats did good, it was Republicans who outvoted them. Of course, your propaganda arm will never mention that.
The Senate Chamber, presenting facts:
To cut off debate required a two-thirds vote, or sixty-seven senators, and since southern Democrats opposed the legislation, a substantial number of Republican votes would be needed to end the filibuster. Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic whip, who managed the bill on the Senate floor, enlisted the aid of the Republican minority leader, Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois. Dirksen, although a longtime supporter of civil rights, had opposed the bill because he objected to certain provisions. Humphrey therefore worked with him to redraft the controversial language and make the bill more acceptable to Republicans. Once the changes were made, Dirksen gained key votes for cloture from his party colleagues with a powerful speech calling racial integration "an idea whose time has come."(emphasis added)
On which side of the aisle do we now find those representing states which comprised the southern Democrats of 1964? Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) never bought the Democratic ideology in total, only those aspects which benefitted their states. After the passing of a variety of civil rights legislation some changed their party affiliation and others were replaced by Republicans due to anger over civil rights legislation. They certainly didn't become Republicans because they were enamored of that party's votes on civil rights.
Barry Goldwater, considered the founder of modern conservatism, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
All in all, had it not been for the masterful handling of the process by Mike Mansfield and the vigilance of Hubert Humphrey in working the legislation it would never have gotten past the filibuster. At best, Republicans were a mixed bag; some proponents, some opposers and many ambivalents; motivated to support by Dirksen and Hickenlooper.
Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a Democratic initiative and victory.
Voting record for the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
The original House version:
Democratic Party: 152-96 (61%-39%)
Republican Party: 138-34 (80%-20%)
The Senate version:
Democratic Party: 46-21 (69%-31%)
Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%)
The Senate version, voted on by the House:
Democratic Party: 153-91 (63%-37%)
Republican Party: 136-35 (80%-20%)
Bottom line:
Far larger percentages of Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
As I said before:
“Even when Democrats did good, it was Republicans who outvoted them.”
Infrastructure investment...
Jason Furman, Obama's top economic policy advisor doesn't like infrastructure investment as a stimulus. btw: He also appears to be somewhat of a Robert Rubin clone so expect the same coziness with Wall Street we saw with the Clinton administration if Obama wins and Furman becomes influential within his administration.
According to the Tax Policy Center, Obama's tax plan would reduce Treasury revenue by $900 billion in his first term and increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion by 2018. McCain's numbers would be $1.1 trillion and $4.3 trillion.
Tax cuts always sell with voters but we've entered an era that's going to require honesty and dramatic tax increases not tax cuts to pay for the things we want.
NotSoFast,
1) Do you have a link?
2) Does this analysis factor in the impact on the economy? I SERIOUSLY doubt it!
3) Similar pontifications were made regarding the Bush tax cuts. But, we now have hard numbers to prove the benefits.
4) I guess Dems prefer higher unemployment rates.
Here's a link for those who want to read the analysis.
tpc
NotSoFast,
1) Your source admits:
“McCain’s reduced individual and corporate rates could improve economic efficiency and increase domestic investment”
then goes on to say:
“but the larger future deficits would reduce and could completely offset any positive effect.”
I see no evidence that they factored in the consequences of economic growth on the one hand and decline on the other in arriving at their numbers. In particular, I see no evidence that they factored in the consequences of economic growth in concluding that McCain’s proposals would ultimately result in “larger future deficits”.
It appears to me that all the calculations were done with an assumption that the economy remains static. That constitutes a bias in their analysis. Of course, the bias is even more evident when they refer to McCain’s tax proposals as “gimmicks”.
When they suggest “larger future deficits”, it appears they have projected that conclusion without factoring in the impact of economic growth. They also seem to ignore the fact that, when taxes are raised, tax evasion goes up. That too results in lower revenues.
2) Again, the benefits of tax cuts are quantified here (not with biased pontificating projections, but with objective historical data).
3) Bottom line:
Can you find even ONE economist (Mr. Reich is not one) who recommends raising taxes in the context of whatever label you choose to apply to our current economic condition?
sbvor:
Again, only half-truths from you. In your insane attempts to prove your overarching brilliance you obscure and avoid. In my post you avoided the implication that discounting the "southern Democrats", truly not Democrats and now Republicans, for the most part, that Democrat support was much greater than Republican support. From your same source:
Note : "Southern", as used in this section, refers to members of Congress from the eleven states that made up the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. "Northern" refers to members from the other 39 states, regardless of the geographic location of those states.
The original House version:
Southern Democrats: 7-87 (7%-93%)
Southern Republicans: 0-10 (0%-100%)
Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%-6%)
Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%-15%)
The Senate version:
Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%) (only Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%) (this was Senator John Tower of Texas)
Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%) (only Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia opposed the measure)
Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%) (Senators Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Edwin L. Mechem of New Mexico, Milward L. Simpson of Wyoming, and Norris H. Cotton of New Hampshire opposed the measure)
Hickenlooper voted against the final bill but was instrumental in overcoming the filibuster which was the real battle. Passage of the final bill was never really a big issue, getting past the filibuster was.
It is the constant problem with conservative arguments; they are fallacious, fraudulent and fatuous because they don't attempt to tell the whole story only their myopic view.
Most of the posters here are bright, well educated and serious thinkers who present sound arguments. You are the starkest exception.
Art,
Yes, I understand the “logic” of the modern Democrat:
1) If a Democrat places an inconvenient vote, they are “truly not Democrats”.
Contrary to your conventional propaganda, the Southern shift from Democrat to Republican was not rooted in a racial agenda; it was rooted in an economic agenda.
2) Any objective, non-partisan, quantitative data which contradicts the totalitarian dogma of the Dems is, a priori, “cooked”.
Your party is TRULY SCARY!
sbvor:
Read the tea leaves. Obama is proposing a tax cut for the middle class. The Bush tax cuts, "by law", are due to expire. Obama will not be instrumental in that action.
I'm sure any further tax actions he has in mind will be predicated on the state of the economy at the time.
A vote for Dems in 2008 is a vote for higher taxes.
A vote for higher taxes is a vote for:
1) A weaker economy
2) A higher unemployment rate
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR!
sbvor:
You are truly a trip. I do wish there were some kindergarten blog sites around. They would fit your level of intellectual capacity much better.
Now we have a reams of books, articles, dissertations, etc. asserting, correctly, that the move away from the Democratic party of southern politicians was primarily due to civil rights and race relations. Granted nothing is absolute.
You run out and do your google search and come up with one book, written by a couple of scholars, and with only the blurb to look at you determine that you have discovered the Holy Grail that proves the shift was due to economic developments. While the book may contain some other valid considerations, no one is suggesting that civil rights was the only motivator, just the major one.
In any case, one book does not a resurrection make. Most fifth graders would have enough sense to realize that proof should be made of sterner stuff.
You are so shallow and thinking impaired that you likely do not have the sense of a fifth grader.
sbvor:
A vote for Dems in 2008 is a vote for higher taxes.
A vote for higher taxes is a vote for:
1) A weaker economy
2) A higher unemployment rate
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR!
Sbvor must be right. Look what happened after the Clinton tax hikes.
Watch out folks here comes the dot.com bubble argument again.
Everyone knows that all the growth in tax revenues, GDP and new jobs coupled with the incredible decrease in unemployment was entirely due to the dot.com bubble. Of course sbvor hasn't found a link yet to provide actual numbers but that doesn't stop him from floating straw men.
Don't forget sbvor, that heinous detriment to our economy was a product of the "free market" at work.
“A consistent finding in the academic literature about the effects of tax cuts on the economy is that these effects are typically modest.”
tax cuts:myths/realities
economist joke of the day:
A civil engineer, a chemist and an economist are traveling in the countryside. Weary, they stop at a small country inn. "I only have two rooms, so one of you will have to sleep in the barn," the innkeeper says. The civil engineer volunteers to sleep in the barn, goes outside, and the others go to bed. In a short time they're awakened by a knock. It's the engineer, who says, "There's a cow in that barn. I'm a Hindu, and it would offend my beliefs to sleep next to a sacred animal." The chemist says that, OK, he'll sleep in the barn. The others go back to bed, but soon are awakened by another knock. It's the chemist who says, "There's a pig in that barn. I'm Jewish, and cannot sleep next to an unclean animal." So the economist is sent to the barn. It's getting late, the others are very tired and soon fall asleep. But they're awakened by an even louder knocking. They open the door and are surprised by what they see: It's the cow and the pig!
lol
NotSoFast,
Are you often in the habit of citing what is, objectively and quantifiably, the single most biased think tank in the entire country?
See page 11 (as Adobe Acrobat sees it) of this source. Higher numbers indicate greater Left Wing Bias.
Your source is a religious cult for the advancement of higher tax rates!
How about reducing government spending, starting with the big three entitlement programs?
notsofast:
I am appalled that you would cite less than reliable sources. After all sbvor never does that. Well, only sometimes. Well, ok lots of times. Damn, ok most of the time.
What's that you said? Sbvor only cites objective sources when he doesn't understand the data? Oh my, that wasn't nice.
You do have to have a better understanding of these bias organizations. Sbvor directs you to a source that put together a bias list using a scientific approach and that would help you know which sites you can get your information from. Now of course their methodology is just a methodology that may or may not be as objective as one would like.
I mean their methodology might merely reflect that liberals are more interested in seeking out objective sources than conservatives and therefore would rely on some of the oft mentioned sources as presenting more accurate data.
Please just clean up your act. If you have doubts about the bias of sites on any subject just go to sbvor's blog site, he has links to all kinds of purely objective sites.
Keep in mind though that if you come upon any data that proves sbvor wrong that should be your first clue that you are looking at biased data.
art a layman:
haha-that’s a good one. I’m a socialist so I’m naturally going to be more sympathetic to left-leaning sources but in reference specifically to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the truth is that while generally incisive and scholarly, their politics is too mainstream and conservative for my liking. My belief is that economics is largely an artifact of the mind and rooted in ideology. I distrust those who try too hard to make it something it isn’t.
Okay, we have one commentator (NotSoFast) who admits to being a Socialist.
That’s a breakthrough!
Anybody else want to fess up?
You know what they say…
Confession is good for the soul!
This post has been removed by the author.
consumer debt levels have reached all time high's and Robert Reich wants the gov't to spend more money that it needs to borrow.
Please can't you be a bit more forward in your thinking?
Sbvor since you believe that socialism is bad for our country clearly you do not think it is a good idea for our government to use your hard earned tax dollars to bail out large companies who have run themselves into the ground. Especially when the CEO has a 20 million dollar compensation package.
CFOF,
Which “bail out”, using my “hard earned tax dollars” are you referring to?
Proceed with caution, lest I easily prove you to be a typically propagandized, uninformed idiot (aka Democrat).
But, yes, hypothetically speaking, I would, in virtually all circumstances, oppose that.
concerned:
Fear not! So far sbvor has yet to prove anything let alone anybody as anything but brighter than him.
Did everyone see the recent clip of the reporter asking McCain whether he thought it was fair that insurance companies cover Viagra and not birth control?
The moment Viagra came out of the reporter's mouth, it was like a deer in headlights. I think he thought she was about to pry into his personal life, but it was actually a very fair policy question. Gotta keep those cards a little closer John!
I mean, if you can't get it up, how you gonna fight terrorists?
Dr. Reich,
I've decide to add a TABLE 14 to my other TABLES 1-14 showing the historical financial performance of our government under various Presidents.
The following TABLE is a shocker as it gets to my often repeated advice that Added Taxes/Tax Cuts/Tax Incentives/Tax Credits/Debt Financing VERSUS Spending priorities on infrastructure/education/health care, fossil fuel independence/supporting financial institutions in their liquidity problems (e.g., Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie), increasing unemployment compensation ,etc. must be BALANCED properly so as not to skyrocket further our annual DEFICIT levels above $500 billion annually for too long.!
Following TABLE 14 shows how utterly consistent Republican administrations have been in ESCALATING annual government Deficits since the start of the 1970s.
Democrats are also responsible in not working with Republicans to put Soc. Security and Medicare/Medicare past and future Inflows/Outflows on a strong footing ... and in not fighting successfully Tax cuts going to top 10% of income earners while at same time exploding Defense expenditures (which has occurred during Reagans'and Bush Jr's administrations). It doesn't take an Einstein to see this is a formula for getting far over our heads in DEBT ... as TABLE 14 factually illustrates.
Let's not repeat this track record with a potpourri of Stimulus Plans that overextend our finances by trying to do TOO MUCH ...with resultant negative boomarang effect on Deficits and Dollar's value. We need some clever, precisely informed thinking here that balances OUTLAYS of various actions with programmed INFLOWS and expected INFLOWS from job regeneration.
___________________________________
TABLE 14 GROSS FEDERAL DEBT AT BEGINNING/END of EACH PRESIDENTIAL TERM ... ALSO AS % of GDP
___________________________________
...............DEBT.....% of GDP
JOHNSON
1963..........$302.9.....43.7%
1968..........$358.7.....33.4%
Ave. Annual
Increase......+2.9%
NIXON
1969..........$358.7.....33.4%
1973..........$466.3.....26.1%
Ave. Annual
Increase......+5.5%
FORD
1974..........$466.3.....26.1%
1976..........$629.0.....27.5%
Ave. Annual
Increase.....+10.5%
CARTER
1977..........$629.0.....27.5%
1980..........$909.0.....26.1%
Ave. Annual
Increase......+9.6%
REAGAN
1981..........$909.0.....26.1%
1988........$2,601.1.....41.0%
Ave. Annual
Increase.....+14.0%
BUSH Sr.
1989........$2,601.1.....41.0%
1992........$4,001.8.....48.1%
Ave. Annual
Increase.....+11.4%
CLINTON
1993........$4,001.1.....49.4%
2000........$5,628.7.....35.1%
Ave. Annual
Increase......+4.3%
BUSH Jr.
2001........$5,628.7.....35.1%
2008 est....$9,676.5.....38.8%
Ave. Annual
Increase......+7.0%
Source: White House Office of Management and Budget: Historical Tables
___________________________________
SUMMARY: Ave. Annual Percentage Debt Increase
Democrats:...............+4.0%
Republicans.............+10.1% !!
___________________________________
COMMENTS:
As I've said before, starting in the 70s our country has lost complete touch with our traditional conservative principles (read David Brook's article, "The Coming Activist Age" in recent NYT) of being PRUDENT financially
and PROGRESSIVE Socially.
We can't do EVERYTHING now. We are sitting on too much Debt and a very sensitive Dollar. So we have to balance the STIMULUSES wisely.
Already, any significant savings in our excessive Defense spending in Iraq and other places appears to be an ILLUSION as we have to divert Iraq troops to Afghanistan and OBAMA is, of all things, talking about increasing our Marines troops by 60,000.
Our current 2008 annual Deficit is running in the +$350 billion range ... excluding recent +$300 billion possible loan support to Freddie and Fannie, if needed.
Possibly, for our internal priority spending investments noted above, we can handle growing this Deficit to +-$500 for 2-4 years until the benefits of a Well-Integrated Stimulus program takes effect by generating more tax revenues through job growth and steady Consumption in 65-67% range of GDP. This also calls for some good public relations work for international financial community to build trust in our new directions and aggressive efforts to put our Financial house in order.
We are in New Territory requiring some very constructive cooperation of both parties to dig America out of the deep hole we're in. This calls for the best brains on both sides of the political spectrum as well as the independent advice of a brilliant group of people from the Humanities, the Sciences and the field of Economics.
We'll never succeed if we don't put politics aside and exploit the finest of our liberal and conservative ideals and ideas.
No one group can possibly have all the right answers. The interlocking issues and solutions are complex. I share entirely David Brook's summary of the priority investment problems to correct over time the imbalances and severe inequities in our Social-Economic model.
Frank Thomas, The Netherlands
Dr. Reich,
The imbalances I refer to above, among other things, refers to my thesis that our Economic Model is two dependent on very high Consumption in 70-72% of GDP range ... which has helped bring Savings to ZERO ...which has been reducing overall system Liquidity for Investments... which has exploded our Current Account Deficit so that we are entirely dependent on foreign Savings to finance our Deficits.
Frank,
Compare your tables against outflows in the big three Entitlements and tell me what you find.
Until we curb Entitlement spending, deficits will continue to grow. It is an objective, quantitative, historically verifiable FACT that higher taxes will only make matters worse. Higher taxes will generate slightly LESS tax revenue, weaken the economy and drive the unemployment rate WAY UP!
So, based on all these objective, quantitative, historically verifiable FACTS, I am sure you will join me in calling for reductions in the big three Entitlements. YES?
Sbvor,
You're another one of those obsessed `One-Cureall´ soothsayers I´ve witnessed my entire life who have never had much credibility with me.
I´m analyzing the so-called Entitlements now in my own independent way. These Entitlements are a tragic joke on the American public compared to the much lower cost and better coverage programs I´ve experienced in Europe and read about in Canada.
Are there basic flaws in the Medicare system? Yes, indeed. As I´ve said in posts weeks ago, there is a U.S. Health Department team looking closely into the Swiss and Dutch health care systems to learn how they offer more to the public at half the premium cost. Obama is on top of this.
With aging of population and fewer working people supporting payments to retirees, there´s a problem here to that has never been transparently addressed by Republicans or Democrats.
If you´re suggesting we cut these benfits and everyone will live happily ever after, then there´s really nothing to discuss. Suggest you write up a good story how to do this and sell it to the general public.
I´m off with my wife for some vacation ... but one last word.
I have finished a summary of our government´s historical spending excluding Defense, Soc. Security and Medicare. Republicans do badly here also in average rate of increase including Presidential terms from Johnson to Bush Jr. Plan to also look closely at the Soc. Security and Medicare/Medicaid hsitorical data to see what the factual trends are here.
In general, the robotical propaganda the gullible public and uninformed media have been fed for so long by domatized conservatives that Democrats are the `Big Spenders´ is patently FALSE.
Students and experts on the economy and economics will want to read this:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/15961
Anonymous 3:27PM
Thank you for reference information. Reading this 10 page analysis by Mike Whitney clearly is not the best way to start a vacation.
It bears out some warnings I've been making about our system's serious out-of-balance structural flaws for some months now. It's a wake-up report for those in denial of the potential severity of what we are facing.
Fred,
1) Those who open their thesis with an unsubstantiated, utterly false personal attack “have never had much credibility with me”. It is a certain sign of a weak and indefensible position.
2) Today, neither party can claim to demonstrate a proper degree of fiscal discipline. But, PARTICULARLY at this stage in our economy, for Obama to advocate substantially higher taxes coupled with gigantic new Entitlement spending is just plain insane!
3) Selling reductions in the big three Entitlements would be simple for anybody with more than half a brain. The only thing required is a TV ad accurately noting that we have two choices:
A) Reduce spending on the big three Entitlements.
OR
B) Cut the throats of our children.
3) Your beloved Socialism is certainly NOT the path to better fiscal discipline.
4) We began to lose control of government spending shortly after the implementation of LBJ’s massive new Entitlement programs (Medicare & Medicaid) took hold.
5) Prior to those new Entitlements (excepting for World War II, which is not covered in this database), only two recessions produced ANY deficit spending.
6) Subsequent to LBJ’s Entitlement binge, deficit spending became the norm. The only significant exception to this new norm was brought about by the single largest speculative bubble ever known to humanity (the dot.com bubble). Clinton was the unwitting beneficiary of unprecedented revenues from day traders paying a small fortune in short term capital gains taxes.
7) The substantial decrease in “Net Government Saving” from 2000 through mid 2003 was directly related to:
A) The years long deflating of the NASDAQ bubble.
B) The terrorist attacks of 9/11.
C) The associated recession.
P.S.) This chart more clearly shows the correlation between LBJ’s entitlement programs kicking in and the loss of control over government spending.
It also clearly demonstrates that the only significant exception to deficit spending as a function of Entitlement spending was brought about by the single largest speculative bubble ever known to humanity (the dot.com bubble).
If we do not reduce spending on the big three Entitlement programs, it WILL kill us!
Creating NEW Entitlement spending (under Obama) will kill us that much faster!
Not if the rich pay their share of taxes.
If you catch my drift. 90% is good with me, how 'bout you?
Anonymous,
We already tried that.
It didn’t work.
Click here and learn why.
If you think “the rich” don’t pay ”their share”, you are badly misinformed.
I'd put a loaded question here but I'm pressed for time. So, how's everyone doing?
Anyway, if we drill more wells, how will that flow to the pumps if we have no excess refining capacity to refine that excess production? That is, once the rigs are built, the shafts are sunk, and the transporting infrastructure is created to meet the new source?
Provided, of course, the new source is proven to be large enough to offset the oil market, which IS an international market, NOT a domestic one (meaning one would need enough production to really outstrip excess production of ALL current sources in the world, not just in the US) in order to show up as savings at the pump.
Looking at those hurdles, it's probably easier to let price and demand fight each other over the consumer. With higher gas prices, folks will take "MPG" into account when purchasing a new vehicle, or exchanging their current vehicle. With this comes growth in the auto industry if they choose to meet the demand for efficient vehicles. If efficiency goes up while deiving habits stay consistent, fuel demand will go down as far as gasoline (one of many distillates) is concerned. And fundamentally, decreased demand is met with decreased prices until they meet an equilibrium.
Thomas Boyko,
If our domestic Eco-Nuts won’t let us refine at home, India is more than happy to pick up the slack. Yep, gasoline is also a global market.
Crude is the bottleneck. Here are some facts for you on global supply and demand for crude.
Just don’t tell the Eco-Nuts how much CO2 is emitted transporting the gasoline from India to the USA (as if that mattered).
If you think global demand (on an annualized basis) is going to slow anytime soon, you’re dreaming. Our Domestic Eco-Nuts have already assured of us years of pain to come at the pumps. Every day the U.S. House of Extremists further delays is one more day of pain we’ll pay.
I am not sure how infrastructure investment may help. I have always thought that a growing economy sets the need for infrastructure expansion, not the other way around. In the 90's West Germany invested heavily in East Germany's infrastructure, but that did not jump start their economy. Nor in Greece, where I saw huge infrastructure investments prior to the Olympics, while I saw very little growth, if any, after that.
I understand that maintenance is vital and it will provide some relief, but I am afraid, temporary relief will be all that we will get.
As for the gas prices, given the huge international market, I can not possibly see a drop in the prices by drilling a bit more here in the US. My perception has been that to a great extent a good part of the consumers' demand is fuelled by pure cultural predispositions. We allow 16 year-olds to drive, which means that millions of kids, during the last two years of high school, do not take the bus but instead drive their old cars to school. Car pooling has not caught on because convenience comes first, saving energy last. Here in Florida I need to wear a jacket when I am at work or at a restaurant or even at some people's homes because of the AC being set to Siberian temperatures. Every morning and afternoon I see dozens of SUVs parked by the gate of my community so young moms can wait with their precious offsprings for the school bus. These moms live less than five minutes walk away from the gate. And they all own treadmills so they can drive home and walk on a machine.
I believe that there is huge room for saving energy. What will push us to act that way? High taxation on gas. Punish irrational behavior. At the same time,these taxes could finance research and development of alternative sources.
Athena,
It appears to me that you may have an erroneous perception of our domestic energy resources (as revealed by your phrase “a bit more here in the US”).
If so, this chart, this chart and this chart should begin the process of correcting that impression.
This editorial may help as well.
This post is also very relevant to that specific topic.
Here you can find out the health or illness of your bank/credit union or any others.
I still have an account in NY. But it took some doing to research it so that I could put the correct location into this. It used to be called Marine Midland, as it was from Upstate NY and had to do with shipping, and was taken over by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), and it's not located in NY like it mostly says but in Delaware.
http://www.bankrate.com/gookeyword/safesound/ss_home.asp
tt
Short term needs vs long term needs:
Can anyone on this forum find fault with this 2003 article that is suggesting that our way out of the energy crisis is to point all of our nation's resources at creating a hydrogen-based economy?
It's not a long read but it sure makes sense to me since it involves nearly every player in the game today: from the global energy companies to the automotive companies to the hardcore environmentalists to local governments and consumers (US tax-payers).
http://tinyurl.com/63xu83
So if we want positive investment returns on infrastructure spending in the current environment, why not stimulate the greatest number of companies, communities and consumers at the same time working on building a new energy-based economy?
I'll argue again though that the next White House needs a scientist as top level advisor (physicist would be helpful) helping direct the decision-making at the Cabinet level. Not a figure-head position but a policy-maker and leader above even the DOE head who can also explain the laws of nature when it comes to net energy production.
If you had your choice of investing in more oil refineries, more oil drilling/exploration in our natural reserves (as well as squeezing it out of sands and rocks) vs investing in a hydrogen-based future (which also means more nuclear plants; no way around it; do the physics) and it also means it won't impact the price of gas for years to come; what would you do?
Would you pick hydrogen over oil as your future fuel of choice? Should we bet on everything on oil or hydrogen at this moment? Would you call for a "man on the moon" scale project to enlist every possible resource available to make it happen in the next ten years?
It's possibly the most important leadership challenge facing our next president since it's directly part of the health and security of our nation. Sure, Wall Street as well as main street banking are a mess right now and will likely mean more bail-outs but energy security has got to be job number one if we're to turnaround the economy at the same time. Energy and food costs are soaring daily. And the dollar is 60 cents to the Euro these days if even that. Since conservation doesn't seem to be a national priority, new energy production has to be the answer.
=======================
NOTE: For those of you who think investing in big energy programs isn't necessary; go sit down with TJ Rogers of Sun Power (also the CEO of Sierra) and ask him how his solar cell panel business would do if we didn't have renewable energy incentives right now. Even Germany's dominant solar industry is subsidized. But within ten years, solar could be subsidy free and competitive with current energy sources. Seems like a good investment.
http://tinyurl.com/6x97n5
BTW, I would pay to see sbvor in the same ring with TJ Rogers debating Peak Oil timelines. TKO for TJR.
RS Love;
"Can anyone on this forum find fault with this 2003 article that is suggesting that our way out of the energy crisis is to point all of our nation's resources at creating a hydrogen-based economy."
Sure, I can find lots of problems with this article, and so can Scientific American which had a nice article about the hydrogen economy last year.
Your authors simply dismiss the 2 major problems with hydrogen (storage, transportation) by suggesting a few $billion will solve the problems. Not so, in the 5 years since this article was written, they haven't made much progress at all in solving these problems.
"which also means more nuclear plants; no way around it; do the physics"
Physics has nothing to do with it, but if you do the economic and security analysis, nuclear becomes a joke.
Have you seen the price of Uranium lately? Usable uranium is found in fewer places than gold! Going from one scarce resource to another, and it most likely will come from foreign sources, makes no sense to me. Not to mention what it will cost to mine and process Uranium, transport the nuclear garbage, and have a standing army protect the garbage for the next 10,000 years! Talk about security problems! Every nuclear reactor and every train transporting the radioactive material might as well have a big target on it where the terrorists will fly their next airplane. And when a wind generator breaks, you don't have to evacuate 100 square miles around it, or worry about your kids getting thyroid cancer.
The new energy economy will be far more varied than oil, natural gas, and coal. Solar(both photovoltaic and thermal) where the sun shines, wind where the wind blows, hydro, geothermal, and hydrogen slowly growing in importance.
Solar and wind are here now. No new technology needed to get us started down the road. Al Gore is right again. But it takes an informed public(which I'm not seeing yet) to develop the political will to lessen the personal suffering while we make this unavoidable transition to the renewable economy.
Tiptoe: thanks for the link about the banks. I've been looking for something like this. Got anything similar for brokerage firms?
RS Love,
If more people had a more rational perspective on “Peak Oil”, do you think T.J. Rodgers (world class hypocrite) would receive a larger or smaller gravy train of easy money in the form of government subsidies for his company (SunPower)?
The LAST thing we need is for government bureaucrats to select, via subsidies, winners and losers in the quest for the post-petroleum transportation energy sources. Venture capital performs that task FAR more effectively and FAR more efficiently. Government subsidies will, at best, slow the process. At worst, government subsidies will fatten the wallets of a bunch of friends while ensuring we NEVER make the energy transition!
Start here to begin your education on the current viability of alternative energy and the role hydrocarbons MUST play in getting us there.
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anonymousmensa,
If you have objective, quantitative data which contradicts mine, I would be more than happy to examine it.
But, if you had any, you would have presented it rather than merely offering a silly personal insult. Right?
All this utterly unfounded hysteria over Man Made Global Warming has made WAY too many Americans WAY too myopic with respect to our own tremendous domestic energy resources.
Although IBD has, I have not yet scratched the surface (pun intended) with respect to our coal resources and their potentials.
But, don’t believe me, believe Barack Obama’s spokesman Tommy Vietor when he said:
“Illinois basin coal has more untapped energy potential than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined. Senator Obama believes it is crucial that we invest in technologies to use these resources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”
But, that’s just the Illinois basin. To begin to understand how much energy we have right here in the USA, in the form of coal, download this spreadsheet from this page (International Data, Coal, Reserves).
But, Obama’s “investment in [CO2 sequestration] technologies” is just another outrageously expensive pie in the sky fantasy pursued to no useful end (as we learned in the NPR interview associated with this section of my presentation). We are already making good use of our tremendous coal resources in a VERY environmentally friendly way. We need to do more with coal! And, there is absolutely NO NEED to sequester CO2!
anonymousmensa:
I beg to differ. Svbor is stupid!
Just look at the chart he proposes substantiates his claim about the impact of Medicare/Medicaid spending. Could the sharp declines taking place in the eighties/early nineties have to do with increased defense spending?
There is no doubt that M/M spending had and is having an effect but that chart tells you nothing of cause and effect. This is true across the board with sbvor's charts he suggests prove his points.
There is no other conclusion to come to other than that he is stupid.
Sboor,
Typical inadequate reasoning and conclusion. It really is about you and your inadequacies and not about “objective and quantifiable” data.(I followed a few of your links and ended up in tears from laughing so hard) You’re genuinely a boor! No need to infer some other motive as you suggest.
About hydrogen and its progress:
The Honda FCX stores its hydrogen at 5,000 PSI now. That's actually a dramatic improvement and their real-world trials in Torrance, CA (USA) are underway albeit pricey (celebs got the first ones). This is a good site to review if you're interested in what Honda has accomplished; a lot more progress than anyone predicted...
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/
Hydrogen itself is not a fuel but an energy carrier so my statement that we need more nuclear energy plants is based on what it takes to build up the hydrogen supply required to power vehicles' fuel cells. Certainly wind and solar could also be used to generate hydrogen. Think of it as a battery system. I think infrastructure costs are coming down especially if you imagine highway I5 in California with generation- refueling stations every 300 miles.
Same physics equation is applied to creating solar and wind technologies as manufacturing takes energy so they are not energy free technologies. Everything has an energy cost or equation. Even the uranium we mine has a cost as has been pointed out. But we will need a lot of energy generation if we do switch to hydrogen as the carrier/battery of choice.
As for threats from terrorists, that's present irrespective of the technology we choose to use. You should be more concerned that our US Air Force transported fully armed thermo-nuclear missiles across the heartland of the country this year. Talk about threats to our safety. We could spend an entire forum on threats. That's life. Katrina was predicted and yet our government under Bush did nothing to prepare for the disaster.
As for sbvor, I have a simple global pollution test for you to try... go into your garage, close all the doors, get in your car, lock it and then start it up and call us back in a day or two about whether you feel the affects of the tailpipe pollution it's generating in a closed space like our planet Earth.
You know the deadly answer so stop telling us that our cars don't pollute or that Beijing doesn't have a pollution problem that will make the Olympics a poster-child for global warming. You're as stubborn as the next Luddite voting for McCain.
And by the way, burning coal puts more radiation into the atmosphere than you realize. Wonderful isn't it? All those coal-fired plants generating radiation along with the other gases being released.
So, who is for drilling more oil and building more refineries? Step forward and tell us how that will lower the cost of gas or help us stabilize energy costs? We need a future plan, not a band-aid about short-term drilling. Hell, national conservation would have more impact on supplies than any amount of new oil we could extract from North America. That's a fact. Even NASCAR understands this. When was the last time we got a new CAFE standard through? 2007, just took 30 years I guess for the brain trust in Congress to see the light.
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From RS Love:
“As for sbvor, I have a simple global pollution test for you to try... go into your garage, close all the doors, get in your car, lock it and then start it up and call us back in a day or two about whether you feel the affects of the tailpipe pollution it's generating in a closed space like our planet Earth.”
I often wonder how many times I will wind up debunking this oft repeated simpleton argument.
1) It’s the Carbon Monoxide that kills you, not the Carbon Dioxide.
2) I’ve done the calculations. We could burn all the known hydrocarbons on the planet and not even come close to reaching the point where either compound would so much as create a sensation of minor irritation in the very most sensitive of individuals, much less reach a toxic level for either compound.
The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is currently about 380 ppm (or 0.038%). CO2 becomes “immediately dangerous to life and health” at 4% (or 40,000 ppm). It is believed that the entire industrial revolution has added about 80 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere. Thus, to reach toxic levels, would require us to duplicate the entire industrial revolution 495 times over. Meaning, we would have to burn fossil fuels at our present rates for about another 49,500 years. If you think we’ve got another 49,500 years of fossil fuels left, I have some swampland to sell you!
3) To get a read on the Air Pollution trends, examine the last chart in this link (and the associated EPA report.
P.S.) The problem with China is that, unlike us, they have no emission standards. If you want to transfer some useful technologies to China, start with Coal Scrubbers and Catalytic Converters.
OK, let's see your calculations and what scientific journal has published them. If you think you're right then you're smarter than the leading US global scientists who completely contradict everything you're stating.
Are you a scientist? May we see your credentials please? You have calculations so let's look at them.
For the rest of the board, you can read the transcript from Dr. Hansen and judge for yourself if global warming is just a silly notion or actually a real human threat of our own making. One thing you've failed to state is that CO2 alone (which you're also wrong about) is not the only harmful gas we release into the atmosphere. And, the calculations you're using for CO2 are flawed as well.
I have no axe to grind with anyone about religious beliefs but global warming is based on real science. Gore may be a wind bag but the scientists are not. I suppose you live next to a coal-burning plant and that's why your thinking is clouded.
Dr. Hansen writes: "The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation."
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf
Or you can take the next hour to read the latest from this site:
http://carnegieinstitution.org/news_releases/news_2007_0521a.html
RS Love,
1) Where is this audited list of the individual names of “the leading US global scientists who completely contradict everything you're stating”?
It does NOT EXIST! It is a bald faced LIE!
2) Dr. Hansen is probably the only scientist on the planet that comes even remotely close to agreeing with Al Gore. Hansen did, after all, collaborate on “An Inconvenient Truth” (perhaps the single most dishonest propaganda film ever made). But, even Hansen has distanced himself from Gore.
3) You can examine the names and credentials of about 32,000 scientists (from the United States alone) who disagree with Hansen right here. You can find all the usual attacks on the OISM petition debunked right here.
You can find more on the single biggest BALD FACED LIE regarding Man Made Global Warming Hysteria right here.
P.S.) Review this link and associated sub-links in order to better understand why about 32,000 American scientists (over 31,000 of whom have been audited, credentialed and named) disagree with Dr. Hansen and the purely political IPCC.
Or, continue to blindly believe your media induced fantasy about “scientific consensus”.
You're not answering the question. You don't have the data, the calculations or the qualifications to back-up your rants.
You're a fool if you don't think we're polluting the atmosphere. Why do you think China has to turn off its factories a month before the world arrives in Beijing? Pollution from man-made activities. Or the 3 million cars or so they drive around the city.
Post all you want, scream all you want but it's not going to change the data. Unless you think the instruments are flawed and that we don't know how to measure anything then please give it up.
Go find a blog site that completely agrees with your nonsense and give them your vast wisdom and make a donation to their campaign to keep the rest of us quiet. Let me give you a suggestion on where to find like-minded people that will adore your kind of non-reasoning:
http://www.rnc.org/
For the record, I don't belong to either party and never will. Obama is in the pocket of Wall Street too so don't assume anything. Maybe you're not a party member either.
Sboor,
Why do you ignore and avoid his question about your credentials? To determine legitimacy and whether your posts represent anything beyond agenda-driven gibberish, we need to know your exact qualifications.
RS Love,
For the record, I addressed your China issue in the last paragraph of this comment.
As for the United States, the hard data from the EPA is found in this chart from this report.
If the hard data contradict your dogma, I guess you’ll have to include the EPA in the ever expanding list of those at the center of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
Why not? After all, in the “finest” tradition of totalitarians throughout history, other commentators in this blog have already added the BLS, the BEA, the Federal Reserve and countless other objective, quantitative, non-partisan sources to the list.
anonymousmensa,
I present substantiated evidence so that nobody has to take my word for anything.
Which part of “anonymous blogger [who intends to stay that way]” does your pea brain not comprehend?
If you don’t like my evidence, either offer your own evidence or GO POUND SAND!
Sboor,
Your silly circular reasoning begs the question of why you post here if you can’t be taken seriously.
Lots of comments about whether or not drilling for more oil or pulling it out of oil shale will help lower prices today.
Let me, someone who supports doing all of those things assure you, it won't make a lick of difference for a minimum of three or four years (and probably a few longer than that).
Drilling for oil isn't like it was on the Beverly Hillbillies. You can't just run down to Home Depot, pick up a Makita and start drilling. These things take years to build and come on line.
Corporations call projects like these capital investments. The accounting treatment for capital investments enables a company to put a portion of the expenses incurred to build the infrastructure on the balance sheet (as opposed to recognizing it all now) and to recognize depreciation expense over time. The theory behind this is that an asset has a useful economic life and that the use of that asset depletes its value.
So, if we assume for a minute that oil companies are allowed to build platforms to pull oil out of these locations OCOS, Shale, ANWR, etc., we all have to realize that it will take several years before we can expect material benefit in terms of lower fuel prices, etc.
But, that isn't why we need to do it. We need to do it to prevent prices from rising further in the future.
Now, before everyone on the other side of this issue goes crazy, let me also say that we need to be working on alternative energy, plug-in hybrids, etc. at the same time.
This is an economic and a security issue.
The other thing I would like to head off is the "but they're not even using all of the land they've leased" argument. Seriously? What kind of profit-driven company wouldn't exploit every economically viable resource at its disposal when the prices for its product are at an all time high? I'm not defending anyone here, but you've got to believe that the rational corporate response would be to invest the dollars in the extraction if there was a profit opportunity. Taking that a step (especially at $140-$150 bbl) further inexorably leads to the conclusion that there musn't be enough oil under those leased lands for it to be worthwhile to spend the hundreds of millions required to get it out of the ground.
Anonymous Matt
Do we have to read and analyze for you too? The 2005 EPA study itself is regionalized for sampling air quality. However, go to page 32 Sherlock and read what the EPA report verifies about overall CO2 changes. We pollute like no one else on the planet and it's increasing by their own measurements. Do we have to tutor you in reading instruments and graphs? What next: Are you going to tell us that thermometers don't work?
Figure 38 shows the trends in domestic
GHG emissions over time in the U.S. The
dominant gas emitted is carbon dioxide
(mostly from fossil fuel combustion).
Total U.S. GHG emissions increased
16 percent between 1990 and 2005. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
has concluded that the Earth’s climate will
continue to warm as global GHG emissions
increase. Figure 38. Domestic greenhouse gas emissions in teragrams of carbon dioxide equivalents (Tg CO2 eq), 1990-2005. (Source:
http://epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/usinventoryreport.html)
Notes: A teragram is equal to 1 million metric tons. Emissions in the figure include fluorocarbons (HFCs, PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).
So thanks, your EPA study (from 2005) proved our point. The planet is getting warmer. Why? Probably because we're playing a significant role in dumping so much man-made pollution into the atmosphere and the natural "sinks" are filling up at an alarming rate. Ask Norway if their oceans are changing?
Anyway, you're about out of fossil fuels if that's the best you can offer up here.
Here is an interview worth listening to since it's both fair and balanced about the future of global warming models:
http://tinyurl.com/ytnqoo
This is yet another scientist that should be advising the White House when the new Cabinet is announced in 2009.
As previously stated, new drilling is not going to make any difference in the short-term demand (supply).
The most immediate action all of us can take is conservation and mindful practices if we want to impact demand (prices). Buy hybrids, keep your tires inflated properly and just drive less. What else can we do individually? I'm sure everyone here has there favorite strategy to reduce energy demand. We're unplugging our electrical equipment when we go on vacation. Turning down everything.
At any rate, I would still argue that a national energy policy initiative should be demanded of our next regime. Staying hooked on oil is not going to cut it.
RS Love sez:
“go to page 32 Sherlock and read what the EPA report verifies about overall CO2 changes”
I have. But, the directly cited peer reviewed science proves and IPCC Lead Authors confirm that CO2 is nothing to worry about. Another 32,000 American scientists agree.
The only people concerned about CO2 are the faithful who belong to the utterly unscientific, purely political, religious cult of Man Made Global Warming.
If you've been around various energy a political blogs, you'll notice that each has one person and normally one person only, that posts just like Sbvor.
It's exactly as if some entity cloned him and assigned each one a few blogs to spend his day on, posting exactly the same arguments, consistently all over the internet.
It's no coincidence. Netvocates hires people to patrol blogs in order to promote corporate and political views. There are probably other corporations doing this now, be ut Netvocates has dire3ct ties to both the Republican Party and the oil industry.
Netvocates brags about how their computers monitor millions of blogs and are able to take an operator straight to any blog that trips the triggers on topics that matter to their clients. Then their operators can post opposing propaganda, anonymously.
Odds are, Sbvor is here because Netvocates pays him $10/hour to be here and promote corporate agendas.
Matt:
What kind of profit-driven company wouldn't exploit every economically viable resource at its disposal when the prices for its product are at an all time high? I'm not defending anyone here, but you've got to believe that the rational corporate response would be to invest the dollars in the extraction if there was a profit opportunity. Taking that a step (especially at $140-$150 bbl) further inexorably leads to the conclusion that there musn't be enough oil under those leased lands for it to be worthwhile to spend the hundreds of millions required to get it out of the ground.
We accounting types often get all wrapped up in our ability to assume. It's part of the "art" of accounting. Your statement with its attendent conclusion is based on one big assumption. I have seen nothing from the oil industry, specifically stated, that suggests that there is not economically viable, sufficient oil reserves in the lands/seas currently under lease. Keep in mind that many of these leases were issued when oil prices were much, much lower.
If your premise were true do you not think that oil companies would be pounding Congress to hold hearings on that issue? Do you not think that they would have been lobbying hard for the House bill defeated just last week that would have forced the issue? With all the brouhaha going on right now about drilling on currently leased lands/seas do you not think that these "rational" corporate execs would not be screaming at the top of their lungs: "There is no, or not enough, oil on these lands to make it profitable to extract!"?
Leases for oil exploration come with geologic surveys suggesting technically recoverable oil reserves. Oil companies are not pikers when it comes to evaluating potential oil supplies in given areas of land or the OCS. One could premise, with no less logic, that if they didn't believe in the existence of economically recoverable oil from those lands or oceans they wouldn't bid for the leases in the first place.
If they have explored the leased areas and have made that determination do you think they would not be lobbying Congress to cancel the leases and make them available to others? Your argument appears to be the conventional wisdom assumption, not expressed by the oil industry but by politicians and journalists citing no specific sources.
I could offer a premise, I actually have, and it may be no less inane than yours, that at $140 - $150 a barrel, it is not in the best interest of oil companies to rush to increase oil supplies sufficiently to drive down prices. First of all, there are only a handful of companies with the resources, assets and money, to explore or drill on any lands/seas on a major scale, so they don't have to worry about a lot of competition beating them to the punch. Secondly, they know that demand in China and India and many other emerging economies will be heavily dependent on fossil fuel energy supplies for decades. Managing to secure sufficient supplies that maintain the current supply/demand paradigm ensures them that prices will remain high, and so to profits.
They are also aware that the Middle East is likely on, or near, the downside of the oil reserves curve, so the future of any US oil reserves looks brighter, in a present value sense, if dribbed and drabbed as opposed to gushed.
Given the overseas current demand and growth potential, the oil companies are less concerned about alternative energy or conservation in the US. The oil in the ground is not going anywhere so there is no need to rush exploration and drilling, especially if the net result will be lower prices.
Your "rational" corporate premise would be true in a purely competitive market. The oil industry is far from that standard. My scenario is no less "rational" when viewing a market with very few players in the production/distribution process coupled with an almost infinite demand.
Did you consider that the problem might be a limited supply of exploration/drilling, equipment/personnel?
Lastly, if your premise is true, and since there has been no appreciable exploration of those areas currently off limits, then what is the likelihood that once explored all these new fields will prove economically unviable as well?
The answer is holding Congressional hearings and having the leaseholders present evidence that currently leased areas do not appear to offer oil supplies with sufficient profitability. That would further narrow the problem definition and better establish necessary alternatives. Right now, your premise and its proponents are merely barking at the moon.
weaseldog:
Damn! Where can I go to get on the payroll? Hell I can lie with the best of them for $10/hr. In my working days I would never have considered such an option. I have far too much integrity to sell my soul for money. My body is a different question but having tried and gotten no takers I gave up on that.
Since I am retired on a fixed income, a little embellishment here and there for $10/hr seems innocent enough.
Now if my signing up requires agreeing with svbor even $100/hr is not enough. I'll have to be satisfied eating my beans.
Art a Layman, you'll have to check with Netvocates on all of this.
I don't know how much they really pay, for selling your soul, but I doubt it's high end pay. and yes, you'll have to agree with Sbvor, as he repeats the corporate line.
I've noted on a few Mondays that the troll clones all came up with exactly the same talking points and arguments on a different blogs, after all simultaneously disappearing for a few hours. It's circumstantial evidence that they were tied up in a Monday morning meeting, getting their marching orders.
I had an online correspondence for a time with a guy that claims he was doing a similar job for a firm out of Tel Aviv, posting on behalf of AIPAC, but I never got him to tell me who he worked for.
Consider also Art, there is a political value to keeping those leases undeveloped.
So long as they aren't being exploited, the story that liberal environmental whackos are keeping them from being exploited can be freely circulated.
Once the leases are released, the public will want gasoline prices to come down. When they don't come down, who will their ire be diverted to next?
Considering that Bush signed an order resuming the trapping and hunting of Yellowstone Wolves, after a heroic effort by left wing environmental whackos to reestablish them there, I'm a bit doubtful of the environmental movements authority over the Republican Party.
The left wing environmental whackos that used to lobby on behalf of hunting and fishing, no longer have the clout in the Republican Party that they once did. Preserving the wilds is no longer a priority with corporate canned hunting, replacing the hunting of actual wild animals. It's easier to hunt domesticated animals, than wild animals anyway.
There are multiple reasons for keeping these leases off limits, without ever bringing up environmental concerns.
If the oil industry really wanted to drill there offshore, you can bet that Congress would be happy to let them destroy our commercial coastal fishing industries to get at that oil. We've seen them do it in South Texas. The coastal waters there were filled with marine creatures when I was a child in the 60s, and now those waterways are barren of most of that life.
As oil supplies get tighter and food prices go up, you can bet we'll consume every last morsel this planet can give up, before we go down. We'll strip the planet bare.
weaseldog:
Well hell! Guess I won't be traveling that road. It's one thing to sell my soul, quite another to have to come across as a blithering idiot. I do enough of the latter for free and wouldn't want to lose my amateur status, just in case they make it an Olympic sport.
It is heartening to know that sbvor is part of a grand conspiracy and not just a standalone imbecile peddling inane BS. Kinda restores my faith in we Americans; we are not stupid but will be for a price.
Art:
I'd be fine with hearings to figure out what is and is not beneath the ground in these leased and non-leased locations.
It would be a damn sight better for our country than trying to figure out it Clemens was on the juice.
Matt
Anonymous Frank Thomas said...
“With aging of population and fewer working people supporting payments to retirees, there´s a problem here to that has never been transparently addressed by Republicans or Democrats.”
Conservatives have been trying to dismantle the crown jewel of the New Deal since its inception. Most recently, Bush’s vision of an “ownership society” had as its central theme the systematic destruction of social security. This was the one thing that started the gop into their steep slide and may well make them irrelevant for 20-30 years. Social security is hugely popular and politically radioactive. The gop made a colossal mistake in proposing to fundamentally change it.
They were quite successful in convincing media that the system is nearing bankruptcy and that later generations would have nothing to show for after decades of paying into the system. They in essence manufactured a crisis to promote the ownership society agenda.
No doubt demographic and economic factors will begin to stress the system in several decades if changes aren’t made to shore up its solvency. But disintegration is hardly on the horizon as the propaganda suggests. From the SSA 2008 Trustees Report:
“For OASDI, interest income will first be needed to pay a portion of benefits in 2017, although the trust funds will continue to accumulate assets. In 2027, trust fund assets will begin to be depleted and are projected to be exhausted in 2041, after which continuing tax income would be sufficient to cover 78 percent of scheduled benefits. Tax income would cover 75 percent of scheduled benefits in the final year (2082) of the 75-year projection period.”
This assumes no program changes are made. What exactly does this mean? It means that even after 2041, benefit recipients would always receive a higher benefit (adjusted for inflation) than what current retirees receive although payment would represent roughly 75%-78% of presently scheduled benefits.
Make some modest changes and scheduled benefits can even be enhanced. Wall Street is drooling over the trillions of dollars they could control and the enormous sums they could swindle if privatization was allowed. We’ll definitely be reminding people of what the financial speculators did with mortgage securitization and the resulting systemic failure if privatization revives.
btw: baby boomers aren’t going to forever distort and gobble up financial resources. Most will be dead by 2040-2045. lol
weaseldog:
Am well aware that solving problems is not the goal of conservatives and even some liberals. Much better to keep the ball in the air and gain mileage than to resolve a problem and then have to conjur up a new panic.
Have known that for a long time but just reinforced by the ranting to open up ANWR and the OCS without asking the question of why not drill in current leased areas. What amazes me even more is why aren't the Dems asking the question. They are in a sort of backhanded way but why not just blurt it right out? Why not tell the American people that no one has asserted a problem with already leased areas. Get a clamor going in the public and then let conservatives have to come up with those answers; with, pardon the expression, objective and quantitative proof.
I tend to agree with the environmental whackos but they do seem to be following the labor union model, some of their complaints and remedies and getting rather extreme. I would be hard pressed to make an argument against turning the whole damn planet back to nature and the animal kingdom. They seem to have done a much better job with it historically. Mankind, in inimitable fashion, destroys for the sake of convenience and profit.
As with so many other good things any influence the envrionmentalists had with the Republican party went by the way side with Reagan.
Who knows what secrets to life and health were held by those marine creatures that no longer exist?
notsofast:
Some of us who are age impaired do not take kindly to being reminded of our mortality.
After a lifetime of believing that we were immortal, reality strikes us hard, yet we remain sure that if we ignore it, death will pass us by.
Art said:
"yet we remain sure that if we ignore it, death will pass us by."
Death won't pass us by if we ingore it;
but LIFE will pass us by if we dwell on death.
Matt:
Thanks for your willingness to seek answers as opposed to asserting assumptions of cause and effect.
One would think that your experience, in our field, would have taught you not to hypothesize until you have viewed the detail.
Baying at the glow of "rational" corporate behavior often presents as one with a vivid imagination and talents for science fiction.
Little is ever gained by assuming your way to conclusions in the absence of factual details.
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art a layman...
woody allen has some humorous advice..."Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily as lying down." haha
notsofast:
That is especially good news. One of the things I do best is lying down. ;)
"There is always death and taxes; however, death doesn't get worse every year."
Sorry... can't remember who said it.
athena:
Such sick humor from an educator? What is this world coming too? ;)
sbvor (or whatever you call yourself),
You're out of your league here. One of the world's leading authorities on climate change (Dr. Schneider at Stanford University) not only has the data but states clearly that CO2 levels have elevated beyond norms and have contributed to planetary changes in higher measurable temperatures. It's not up for debate. What isn't know is what impact the higher temperatures will have on the eco-system going forward. We know the oceans are having to absorb our pollution at an alarming rate. That too is a fact.
You're not even comprehending the studies and data that you're so eager to link to. We can't help you with your ignorance at this point.
Just go along doing what you do which is fine. Consume all the expensive oil and gas you want, pollute as much as you want but don't tell us there isn't a problem. Pollution alone is a problem. Are you willing to move and live next to a coal-fired plant or an oil refinery. I didn't think so.
From what I can tell, this forum is actually rational and mostly reasoned in its posts. You seem to be doing mental self-stimulation on this forum to everyone's annoyance. And you're not convincing in your arguments.
I'm interested in solutions and what we CAN do while balancing the concerns for profitable change that benefits everyone. Drilling oil at this late stage seems foolish to me. Conservation will provide immediate results. Go ask NASCAR drivers. IRL is already on an alternative fuel. Change is happening whether you like it or not.
RS Love sez: “CO2 levels have elevated beyond norms”
Yes and no. Norms of the last 600 thousand years? Undoubtedly. Norms of the last 600 million years? Not even close. Does it matter? NO!
RS Love sez: “[Anthropogenic CO2 has] contributed to planetary changes in higher measurable temperatures”.
Maybe, maybe not. It is theoretically possible, but not proven by any means. At worst, humans may have elevated temperatures by 0.7C in the last 100 years (with generally beneficial effects). If we drive CO2 up to 600 ppm (from the current 380 ppm) the best and most recent peer reviewed science indicates anthropogenic CO2 could contribute about 0.4C of additional warming (with generally beneficial effects).
But, there has been no warming in the last 10 years. And, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is predicted to ensure we will see no warming in the next ten years.
The undeniable facts on temperature are:
1) The current interglacial warming period has yet to produce temperatures as warm as ANY of the four previous interglacial warming periods.
2) The apex (or climactic optimum) for the current interglacial warming period probably occurred 5-10 thousand years ago during the hypsithermal (which, even the most recent IPCC report agrees, produced higher temperatures than we see today).
Also understand that all the hysteria revolves around computer model predictions which all assume a water vapor feedback mechanism which recent peer reviewed science is now proving not only incorrect, but upside down.
Furthermore, if you believe human beings are responsible for the warming observed in the 20th century, you need to explain why Mars witnessed almost an identical warming. Did we cause that too? Or, was the sun more to blame than CO2?
If CO2 is such a powerful temperature forcing agent, how was it possible, about 460 million years ago, for the world to fall into one of the three coldest ice ages of the last 600 million years at a time when CO2 levels were about 12 times higher than today?
Are you even aware that we are currently in one of the three coldest ice ages in the last 600 million years? Are you aware that the only reason there is year round ice ANYWHERE on this planet is because we are currently in an ice age (albeit also in one of at least 100 interglacial warming periods know to have taken place during the last 2.5 million years)?
Now, if you would like to learn something other than cultist dogma, read what the directly cited peer reviewed science proves and listen to what dissenting IPCC Lead Authors have to say.
Or, just keep drinking the Kool-Aid.
Instead of visiting svbor's sites when seeking real science about climate related issues, I suggest that you visit RealClimate.org
If you have a question about climate change, someone there will certainly answer it.
If you want the party line on climate alarmism, you will certainly find it at RealClimate.org.
Almost any claim made by RealClimate.org has been thoroughly debunked at The Reference Frame.
This search will allow readers to find at least some of the occasions when The Reference Frame has exposed the folks at RealClimate.org for what they really are.
Readers can use that search as a template for narrowing the search to a more specific topic related to either RealClimate.org or any other topic discussed at The Reference Frame.
In my view, the primary driver of the extremely minor surface temperature variations over the last 100+ years have been the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).
Readers can find charts of all three all over the net and see the obvious correlations. This chart, from this page combines the AMO+PDO and maps it against surface temperature.
Since 2002, CO2 has shown a negative correlation with surface temperature. Over the last 100+ years, CO2 has, in general, shown a very poor correlation with surface temperature.
See this IceCap post.
Both the AMO and the PDO have entered a cooling cycle. That is why we:
1) Have seen a slight cooling trend in the last 10 years.
2) Are likely to see a continued and more pronounced cooling trend for at least another 10 years.
P.S.) IceCap.us is a very good site for real science related to climate change.
Notsofast''
Agree fully with your remarks about Social Security. Holland and Scandinavian countries are dealing openly with the increasing future stress on liquidity of their systems by passing and/or in process of passing adjustment such as raising entitlement age to 70 with less benefits paid out if one exercises right to retirement payments at 68.
A very simple, effective adjustment that recognizes extended productive healthiness of western peoples and guarantees system solvency through 2060 easily. Of course such minimum protection benefit funds will never be privatized to the ultimate reward of the money market investment management sharks... who I call the Middle-Men Robbing Hoods.
Netvocates hires people to watch blogs on behalf of industry and the Republican Party.
They advertise that they have a hi-tech bank of computer systems that monitor millions of blogs, so that an operator can be instantly taken to a blog where a key phrase has been entered, so that their advocates can argue for their client industries and the Republican Party.
From bouncing around a bit, I've noted that each blog has a commentator that might as well be a clone of the commentators found on other blogs with different names.
They argue the same. They have the same data at their fingertips. They have similar writing styles. They are disruptive in similar fashions.
Further, I've noticed that after extended gaps in their posting, they all simultaneously begin pushing the same talking points as if they have a shared hive mind, or they attended the same meeting.
Sbvor resembles in many respects these Netvocates clones. Whether he works for them or someone else, I don't know. But I think it's safe to think of him as an industry advocate. He isn't here for truth, but to push the positions of his employer's clients.
So don't get too worked up over what he writes. There's no reason to believe that he believes what he posts. He's just doing his job, pushing lies for money. Selling out the USA for cash.
This post has been removed by the author.
This post has been removed by the author.
Regarding the conspiracy theory postulated here, here, here and here:
Visit this page, click the link offered for the dreaded Netvocates and see what you get.
Netvocates is either just another paranoid fantasy from the nutty Left or another dot.com failure that no longer exists.
LOL! Thanks Sbvor!
That is genius!
I didn't realize they changed their name!
Now they can work to debunk themselves! Really, I am impressed!
so what did they change their name to Sbvor?
So they've merged with or become the Rendon Group? Is that what happened?
http://www.rendon.com/
It's a fantasy of a corporation that actually existed, but doesn't exist now?
Sort of like Braniff is a fantasy of an airline that is no longer in business, proving that airlines don't exist?
Is this your logic Sbvor?
So who do you work for? Are you based out of Tel Aviv?
It seems that on social security, simply eliminating the tax ceiling or raising it significantly, could make a big difference.
It makes sense to me that the limit shouldn't remain static over the decades as inflation and wages have risen.
I’d be very skeptical of the science behind the claims of the warming advocates as well as the science behind the claims of the deniers. Science usually gets stuff like this very wrong. I’m not a science expert and have only a modest background in the history of science and the philosophy of science but it doesn‘t take much to put this in some context. To get an idea of how science is not at all what it seems, read this paper: lipton You’ll need some understanding of Popper, Kuhn and scientific realism and the author will walk you through this.
Despite doubting the science of the warming advocates, I do support their efforts because doing what they recommend will help reign in widespread exploitation and a general rape of the environment.
notsofast said:
"I’d be very skeptical of the science behind the claims of the warming advocates as well as the science behind the claims of the deniers. Science usually gets stuff like this very wrong."
With all due respect;
This demonstrates a lack of understanding of what science is or how it works. Comparing the overwhelming evidence compiled by the many different fields of science studying man made global warming with the distorted claims, deliberate misinterpretations, and lack of a single bit of evidence of the people denying global warming in unfortunate.
It leads to the claim that you practice factual relativism. That is; there are no true facts, there are only opinions. Which now calls into question any opinions you might have. There are informed opinions based on facts, and there are uninformed opinions base on anything the person might want to come up with. Maybe dreams, maybe alien abductions, or maybe conversations with one or more Gods?
Saying the deniers practice science, is like calling faith healing, or alchemy, or therapeutic touch, science. The science is overwhelming and denying it is the same as denying gravity, or the earth being round, or the sun rising in the east.
I read the link to the disgruntled philosopher with the grudge against science. Richard Feynman had a dislike for philosophers which I had trouble understanding until now. Opinions are not facts.
It is one thing to say you lack enough information to make an informed opinion about global warming, it's quite another to admit an inability to distinguish factual information from BS. Please do not disappoint your readers by clinging to the latter while denying the former.
we_are_toast said...
“It leads to the claim that you practice factual relativism. That is; there are no true facts, there are only opinions.”
Not at all. Lipton (linked paper) says it better than I can:
“In the seventeenth century, this distinction between primary and secondary qualities was typically employed in aid of realism: the fact that secondary qualities such as colours have a peculiar anthropocentrism is taken to be the reason that science should not appeal to them. Scientific theories should appeal only to primary qualities, since these are the objective and mind-independent features of reality that science is out to describe. This was a central part of the ‘corpuscularian philosophy’, however, towards the end of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant (1783) turns this on its head. According to him, we can neither experience nor represent properties of things in the world as they are ‘in themselves’, but only as they manifest themselves as secondary properties. Kant held that all the properties that science might describe—including size, shape and mass—are secondary in approximately Locke's sense.
This is a version of projectivism. When a bridge is constructed, it cannot be built in any way one likes: the world constrains what materials and designs are possible. At the same time, a bridge is dependent on human activity: it is a human construct, if anything is. In that sense, a bridge is a joint produce of the human world and the world quite apart from human activity. Similarly, although that analogy will only go so far, on Kant's version of projectivism, the properties that science attributes to the world are real, but are joint products of the things in themselves and the organizing, cognitive, descriptive activities of scientists. This view of science is not easy to articulate or indeed to contemplate, but it is an important alternative to both realism and instrumentalism, and one to which we will return below, when we discuss the views of Thomas Kuhn.”
The last word is yours if you want.
Notsofast, I don't see how you addressed the main point.
If I understand you correctly, you're not sure if the global warming proponents or opponents are correct, so you believe the middle ground to be true.
This is not a scientific judgment.
The best you can determine in such a situation is that you don't know anything about it.
You've argued that you don't know enough to come to a conclusion and from that you came to a conclusion based on false logic.
You logic is:
if only A or B is true
then (A + B) / 2 is true
Confessed Socialists (and other Dims) may call it “widespread exploitation and a general rape of the environment”.
Everybody else calls it common sense!
To comment on the "LBJ budget" bla-bla, I can assure you that I worked in a program created by LBJ's War on Poverty. When the Basic Equal Opportunity Grant (BEOG, then name changed to Pell Grant) was created, several academic support programs were created along with it: Student Special Services, Talent Search, Upward Bound, to provide academic support because the BEOG was given to first generation college students. I myself am a first generation college student. My father considered attending law school, but after fighting in WWII he visited a law school campus, decided it was much too tame after fighting, and went into business.
Our BEOG and related programs budget cost only a fraction of the total US budget at the time. We traveled to Washington, DC, to remind Congress that cutting our programs would absolutely not balance the federal budget, especially considering the military portion of the budget.
We saw on 9/11 that none of the Reagan Star Wars miliary defense outlay worked to protect America from a terrorist attack. The one site in the northeast could barely scramble itself after 4-6 hours. The one FBI agent, Collen Rowley, who question why foreign born young men were taking flight instruction absent landing and take-off instruction was ignored by Robert Mueller when she hand-carried her concerns to Washington, DC. Rowly was named a Time Woman of the Year and then soon after, ahem, took early retirement so she couldn't embarrass the boss, the FBI, and the Prez. We have also seen that the Star Wars defense system does zero for spotting Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Almost total waste of money.
The joke now is that for people who didn't want to spend in the United States, the US is now spending trillions in Iraq, and no one in the US will see the benefit, other than trillions gone and $4 a gallon gasoline.
I think we need a US President who will evaluate the near-term (10 years or so) terrorist threat to the US, then budget for the 10 years, as opposed to "the kitchen sink up in the sky" budget we seem to have now. Evaluate, then spend the money wisely, and re-evaluate before further spending. Somehow I think only Obama understands this.
Vietnam, a quick word to say I saw a sentence that Vietnam has peace, prosperity, and its own stock market, more than anything the US military-industrial occupation conspired to accomplish.
weaseldog:
Sorry if I didn’t spell it out better in my first post. I’m saying both sides probably have the science wrong. This is based on general issues related to science raised in the Lipton article and many other sources and methodological issues in climate science specifically. Scientific expertise isn’t necessary to question scientific conclusions. I may have missed posts here on this board but don’t remenber seeing a post by a Ph.d in a relevant science.
Kayxyz sez:
“I saw a sentence that Vietnam has peace, prosperity, and its own stock market, more than anything the US military-industrial occupation conspired to accomplish”
Spoken like a true so-called “Liberal”.
Tell it to the “mere” 4 million Asians who were MURDERED IN COLD BLOOD as a direct result of the Congressional Democrat engineered abandonment of our sworn ally.
That figure is based in the scholarly mid range estimate between Vietnamese Communist Democide & Cambodian Communist Democide as provided by Dr. Rummel of the University of Hawaii.
We’re not talking about casualties of war; we’re talking about cold blooded murder (aka Democide).
But, had we not fought Communist aggression in Vietnam as long as we did, the Democide rate would have been far, far, FAR higher.
Ultimately, President Reagan navigated our way to victory in The Cold War (which Vietnam was a proxy for) without a nuclear holocaust.
But, don’t expect so-called “journalists” to ever tell you ANY of that.
Be proud Kay! You’ve got the blood of FOUR MILLION INNOCENTS on your hands!
The global warming debate is not about science per say but about predicting the future based upon having informed knowledge in the form of historical data, empirical observations and then some computer models to look at probabilities about possible outcomes. One side says we're doomed while the other side says we're not doomed. However, in between the extreme views are the rest of us. At least, that's how I view it.
What is not up for debate is that the CO2 levels have increased dramatically along with other gases that can cause warming. Temperatures have gone up. It's a fact that can't be ignored.
However, no one knows what will happen in the future if temperatures increase another 2 to 3 degrees. The reasoned climate scientists and researchers are trying to approach it in an unemotional way while be responsible. Had the Bush Administration listened to prior warnings about New Orleans, we might have been prepared for Katrina's certain destructive force.
Humans tend to ignore the weak signals until it's too late. There is a terrific new book about this very subject, Flirting with Disaster by Marc Gerstein and Michael Ellsberg. I highly recommend it.
Oopsie!
A so-called “Liberal” let slip the TRUTH about the REAL APPROACH their camp takes to the investigation of Climate Change:
Quoting RS Love:
“The global warming debate is not about science”
Of course, I’ve know all along that theirs was a religious cult that does not care one whit about science!
Anybody else want to fess up?
Like I said before …
Confession is good for the soul!
Meantime, I caught a faint whiff of “the precautionary principle” in the argument from RS Love. Shall I rip apart that argument as well?
Let’s just say that banning DDT and, thereby condemning 35 million (and counting) Africans to a needless death is a great example demonstrating why abiding by “the precautionary principle” is ill-advised!
P.S.) Are you willing to utterly waste $45 TRILLION in a completely futile attempt to calm an utterly unscientific, totally irrational fear?
Kyoto has already wasted OVER $0.5 Trillion and look what the world got in return!
That is $0.5 TRILLION that the private sector could have used to find VIABLE energy sources to move us beyond petroleum as a transportation fuel.
But, HEY! Kyoto made LOTS of people feel good! And, in truth, THAT what this nonsense is ALL ABOUT (nothing else)! Isn’t it? Be honest!
I love your blog and just wish more people were reading it to get the idea of what should be done to get our economy moving. The emphasis on the infrastructure is what helped the Depression years and we still benefit from what was built then.
More government spending? Folks, our government has us in the hole now for about $10 trillion. That's why those dollars in your pocket don't go very far anymore. Do we honestly believe that licensing government to spend even more will help our situation? We Americans better start using some common sense.
Could you explain your remarks to Congress where you stated that your stimulus plan should be target for specific groups, leaving out white construction workers and professionals?
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