…you’re in the Age of Obama!

Edward Niedermeyer writing in the NYT: G.M.’s Electric Lemon

GENERAL MOTORS introduced America to the Chevrolet Volt at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show as a low-slung concept car that would someday be the future of motorized transportation. It would go 40 miles on battery power alone, promised G.M., after which it would create its own electricity with a gas engine. Three and a half years — and one government-assisted bankruptcy later — G.M. is bringing a Volt to market that makes good on those two promises. The problem is, well, everything else.

I heard Obama hawking the Volt today:

“This car doesn’t use a sip of gas for forty miles and then keeps going after that!”

Nah! That’s not misleading at all!

For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks … but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.

One of the annoying presumptions people make about electric cars is that somehow they don’t “pollute”. On battery power, it’s not that they don’t pollute, it’s that they shift the pollution somewhere else. It doesn’t come out your tailpipe, it comes out of a smokestack at the power station. And unless the electric cars are more efficient than their older gas powered brothers, it will require even more energy to be generated. And lugging that massive battery pack around can hardly be considered “efficient”. And if your utility is like mine, the power for your car will be “charged” at the highest possible rate.

So, to recap, it’s priced above its value, requiring more cash incentives from the government. It will still pollute the planet, just in a different place. Manufacturing and disposal of the batteries will produce higher levels of pollution. And electricity isn’t free. I don’t hear anyone talking about what the Volt will do to an average family’s utility bill.

Windshield defrosting can be done with wires in the windshields. What is going to defrost your fingers and toes in the winter time…in North Dakota? An electric heater, if available is only going to reduce your “40 mile range” down and start you burning that premium gas that much sooner.

Maybe in another three years they’ll have all the bugs worked out?

Cross posted at Proof Positive

A pallet cleanser for you this Friday, and a bit of nostalgia too. Ronald Reagan tells Soviet jokes:

Have a great weekend.

Because it’s amusing more than anything else.

An explanation for what you’re seeing:

Above is video of New York Rep. Anthony Weiner delivering a screaming rant on the House Floor as he attacked Republicans for questioning why the Democrats in control of the House insisted on a two-thirds vote to pass a bill setting up a long-term compensation fund for September 11 Emergency responders sick or injured as a result of their work that day. New York Rep. Peter King had pointed out the Democrats could have easily used a simple-majority process for the bill, but knew many Republicans opposed it on principle and wanted the two-thirds vote in order to embarrass the GOP and win political points. The bill did not get the necessary two-thirds vote.

My latest Washington Examiner post, which will go up later, is about campaign finance laws and political activities as businesses using the on-going battles in Minnesota over contributions made to a pro-Emmer grou by Target as an example. An excerpt:

Aren’t businesses people too? Why don’t businesses enjoy the same rights to engage in political activity that individuals do?

Take labor unions. We can all agree that union members have a right to organize, and that the resulting organizations have a right to engage in political activity on behalf of their voluntary membership. I’d note that in many areas of this country union membership isn’t all that voluntary (see: non-right to work states), but that’s a subject for another time. The point is that unions can engage in political activity. …

So if unions can do all this, why not businesses too? After all, is a business not another sort of voluntary organization? Do businesses not represent the interests of those that own them? Those that invest in them? Those that work for them? Those that are served by them? If a labor unions can engage in all manner of political activity, why not businesses too?

You can read all of my Examiner posts here.

Headline shameless stolen from The Corner because, well, it’s just so damn accurate.

Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas), chairman of the ethics investigative subcommittee that announced the charges, told reporters Friday that his panel concluded Rangel should be reprimanded.

“The recommendation that we had was that he be reprimanded,” Green said.

Such a punishment might be seen as a slap on the wrist to some. The subpanel could have recommended that Rangel be censured, or that he be expelled from the House.

There was no recommendation for punishment listed in the lengthy report issued by Green’s panel on Thursday.

Green also suggested Rangel was not as close to reaching a settlement as had been suggested.

“There were lots of rumors, but there were no offers [among members] over the last two weeks,” he said.

A deal would have avoided the public trial, likely to begin in mid-September, that Rangel now faces.

Keep in mind that a “reprimand” is the same level of punishment faced by Rep. Joe Wilson for shouting “you lie” at the President during his state of the union address.

What a disgrace.

North Dakota Libertarians are pushing a lawsuit against the state claiming that its balloting requirements are too onerous for third party candidates. Specifically, that candidates that have the nomination of a political party shouldn’t also have to reach a vote threshold on the primary ballot.

That case is making its way through the court system now, but in the mean time the Libertarians want a judge to put some of their candidates that didn’t quality on the primary ballot on the general election ballot this year.

I don’t think that would be fair.

Third parties often see themselves as the victims of a political apparatus that is geared toward promoting only Republicans and Democrats, and while in some instances I think they’ve got a point, in this instance they’re wrong.

The Republican and Democrat candidates, and even the Libertarian Party candidates who made the cut, are on the general election ballot because they met the same requirements that were expected of all the candidates third-party or otherwise. There were no double standards. No special rules for Republicans and Democrats. The requirements were the same for everyone, Libertarian and Democrat and Republican alike.

Now, we can argue about whether or not those standards are appropriate (though as I’ve pointed out before, the bar is pretty low for getting on North Dakota’s general election ballot), but the fact that the Libertarians don’t have as much support in North Dakota as Republicans and Democrats is hardly justification to make a special exception just for them.

I’ve posted about this issue before. Trial lawyers want a change in the rules by which they deduct their expenses. They lobbied for the change in Congress, but got little traction and now they’re pushing the Secretary of the Treasury to change the policy for them.

Senator Thune has sent a letter to Secretary Geithner expressing concern about the potential for such a rule change. From the Senator’s press release:

“While families and small businesses across our country struggle to make ends meet in these challenging economic times, the Obama Administration continues to craft backroom deals that favor special interests over the average American,” said Thune.

“From health care legislation to the recently-passed financial regulatory reform, Americans have witnessed this Administration and Congressional Democrat leadership cut deals with special interest groups. Instead of providing tax relief for political allies, we ought to be providing across the board tax relief for the average, hardworking taxpayer.”

The Treasury Department’s reported policy changes would allow trial lawyers to deduct expenses and court costs in the year in which they were incurred, which could add up to $1.6 billion to the country’s $13 trillion national debt. Current law stipulates that expenses related to ongoing lawsuits can only be deducted in the year in which a case is decided.

This tax change may sound a wash. After all, what would it matter if they deduct expenses immediately or at the end of a case?

There’s a big different, actually. Many cases never actually go to court, and are instead settled out of court. Thus, expenses in those cases aren’t deducted. What’s more, allowing expenses to be deducted up front lowers the expense of filing lawsuits thus, essentially, contributing to a sort of “lawsuit bubble” that would be not all that unlike the housing bubble we saw caused by things like mortgage deductions.

Keep in mind that politicians frequently use the tax code to manipulate our behavior. Things they don’t want us to do are taxed. Things they do want us to do aren’t. When they want to promote hybrid ownership, you’re allowed to deduct hybrid purchases (or parts of them) from your taxes. When they want you to buy a home, you’re allowed to deduct your mortgage payments from your taxes.

It’s a disagreeable practice that causes a lot of turmoil in our markets, but even setting aside that debate consider that changing the manner in which lawyer expenses are deducted would act as a sort of subsidy for lawsuits.

And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think America needs fewer lawsuits. Not more.

But only when tax cuts are counted as subsidies and subsidies for things like production of biofuel crops like ethanol aren’t counted at all.

This is a press release put out by the Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and the number-cooking is so apparent one wonders whay anyone would even bother to take it seriously.

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–New research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance reveals that despite many platitudes and pledges, governments of the world are spending substantially more on subsidizing dirty forms of energy than on renewables and biofuels. In fact, support for cleaner sources is dwarfed by the help the oil, coal, and other fossil fuel sectors receive.

In all, governments of the world provided approximately $43-46bn to renewable energy and biofuels technologies, projects, and companies in 2009, BNEF concludes in preliminary analysis. This total includes the cost of feed-in-tariffs (FiTs), renewable energy credits or certificates (RECs), tax credits, cash grants, and other direct subsidies. (It does not include more upstream support, such as subsidies to corn farmers to grow feedstock for use in US ethanol plants, nor does not include any value transfer due to carbon cap-and-trade schemes.)

The $43-46bn figure stands in stark contrast to the $557bn spent on subsidizing fossil fuels in 2008, as estimated by the International Energy Agency last month.

If you cook the numbers right, you can get them to say anything. I often hear the greenies respond to assertions that their pet projects aren’t viable because they rely on government subsidy by saying that fossil fuels rely on government subsidies too.

Except, the “subsidies” traditional energy sectors get are tax breaks. Meaning the government is letting them keep more of their own money. Now, we can argue about whether or not targeted tax cuts are good policy, but they’re not subsidies.

There is demand for traditional fossil fuels because fossil fuels are the cheapest, most efficient fuels available. And not because of any special government treatment or policies. That’s reality.

Alternative “green” fuels are a pipe dream.

That’s the headline from Ed Morrissey, but I think “Did the government exacerbate the gulf oil spill” would be more accurate. And I think it’s pretty clear they did, and that Obama shares a lot of the blame for it.

The Coast Guard has gathered evidence it failed to follow its own firefighting policy during the Deepwater Horizon disaster and is investigating whether the chaotic spraying of tons of salt water by private boats contributed to sinking the ill-fated oil rig, according to interviews and documents.

Coast Guard officials told the Center for Public Integrity that the service does not have the expertise to fight an oil rig fire and that its response to the April 20 explosion may have broken the service’s own rules by failing to ensure a firefighting expert supervised the half-dozen private boats that answered the Deepwater Horizon’s distress call to fight the blaze.

An official maritime investigation led by Coast Guard Capt. Hung M. Nguyen in New Orleans is examining whether the salt water that was sprayed across the burning platform overran the ballast system that kept the rig upright, changing its weight distribution, and causing it to list.

It’s worth remembering that the majority of the oil spilled came not from the cap but rather from the pipe that ran up to the oil platform and broke when that platform collapsed. And the platform collapsed due to a raging fire caused by explosions.

Efforts to extinguish that fire were ineffective, and one reason may have been the lack of a Coast Guard coordinator on the scene to manage the firefighting efforts. Per the report linked above, the Coast Guard never appointed one.

Specifically, the decision to use sea water to put out the fire on the platform instead of the much more effective foam was critical. Had foam been used, the flames may well have been extinguished before the platform collapsed causing the largest oil leak to open.

Now, the Coast Guard isn’t specifically responsible for fighting these sorts of fires, but again they are responsible for designating an expert to coordinate efforts. And why was no expert designated in this instance?

Perhaps because of big cuts to Coast Guard budgets made by the Obama administration:

These new details raise serious questions for the White House, which has repeatedly pinned the blame on BP. If it turns out the Coast Guard is at fault — either because it didn’t follow proper procedures or couldn’t respond adequately because of a lack of resources — the public has a right to know why we’re just now learning this information 100 days after the disaster began.

The crippling budget cuts President Obama proposed for the Coast Guard also deserve a closer examination. Obama’s spending plan reduced the blue water fleet by a full one-third, slashed 1,000 personnel, five cutters, and several aircraft, including helicopters. According to the Center for Public Integrity, the Coast Guard updated its official maritime rescue manual — advising against firefighting aboard a rig — just seven months before the Deepwater Horizon explosion. That change in policy came at a time when Adm. Thad Allen warned the budget cuts threatened to turn the Coast Guard into a “hollow force.”

That’s some damning information.

Now, as someone who routinely carps about the status of the national budget, it may seem a little funny for me to complain about budget cuts to the Coast Guard. But, as far as I’m concerned, the Coast Guard – up to including rescue operations, disaster response and firefighting – is something our federal government is supposed to be doing.

By slashing Coast Guard budgets, the Obama administration seems to be undermining the legitimate duties of government in order to fuel run-away deficit spending on things like “stimulus” and auto company bailouts. How many union jobs did Obama keep in place by propping up GM and Chrysler?

How many jobs have been lost in the gulf region because the Coast Guard couldn’t effectively respond to an oil platform fire?

That’s right, according to the latest polling Obama has taken a big hit in his approval numbers among women. And 79% of the viewers of The View are women.

With two wars raging and an economy in turmoil, President Obama took his case to the couch at ABC’s “The View”.
When asked why he chose that particular arena, the president joked, “I was trying to find a show that Michelle actually watched.” But it’s not just the First Lady who’s tuning in. According to Nielsen Media Research 79% of “The View”’s audience is female, a demographic that’s started to cool on the president.

Fox News/Opinion Dynamics polling shows Mr. Obama averaged a 59% approval rating among women in 2009, but seven months into 2010, that’s dipped 14 points to just 45%. That’s tough news for a party that is used to benefitting from the gender gap, a phenomenon political analyst Larry Sabato says surfaced in the 1980 presidential election. “It exists in almost all elections, ranging from five to eight percentage points,” according to Sabato.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if that means having to sit next to Joy Behar on a couch.