Category Archives: Energy

Another Storm in a Tea Cup, Apparently

Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Government, Ilana Mercer, Media, Private Property, Regulation

This blog title replicates one written in 12.19.06. The repetitiveness reflects the lack of change in the media status of the people of the “provinces.” Thanks for asking, Robert, we are okay, having weathered a major ice storm that hit the Pacific Northwest. But we were without power for close to three days.

FoxNew reported only yesterday that “250,000 electric customers around Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia were without power Friday because of a winter storm that coated much of Washington state in ice, swelled Oregon rivers and brought the expectation of more flooding in both states with warmer temperatures and rain.”

Scratch that: Power went out on Thursday morning. By nighttime, the temperature inside my home had plunged to 52 degrees. Even though we have a generator (purchased after the 2006, first “Storm in a Tea Cup”), we were caught with practically no fuel, having listened—and heeded—the weather reports. No warnings were issued. If anything, our weather experts predicted a big thaw come Thursday.

However, cold air and an arctic north wind saw temperatures drop into the 20s across much of the region. Fluffy snow (20cm, at least), on which I had jogged happily a day before, was soon covered in a thick sheet of ice. All through the night we listened as clumps of the stuff fell from the giant ceder trees onto the house. Fortunately we had had the trees windsailed, so they seemed stable, but the weight of the ice saw big branches snap off like twigs.

We had been thinking of having a few trees felled, for safety. But, as you know, your property is not your own, and each such consideration demands a letter from an arborist and a hefty shakedown “baksheesh,” paid to the local goons at the municipality. Such regulation is probably responsible for loss of life.

Indeed, sadly, a falling tree killed an unknown neighbor, RIP: “The tree fell on a person backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a shed this morning near Issaquah, said King County said King County sheriff’s Sgt. Cindi West.”

This post reflects upon the stasis among the statists and media sycophants. And since any oscillation in the form of a learning curve is absent from the system called the state, local and federal, I will repeat the questions I posed after the 2006 storm in the Pacific Northwest:

Utilities are only nominally private and are heavily regulated. How have regulations affected their response times and, most crucially, the maintenance of the power grid?

The grid and power lines suffered mostly tree damage. In this part of the world, the trees everywhere are intertwined with the cable. Why? Why isn’t a wide tree-free swath maintained around these vital structures? Why are trees not chopped back?

I suspect the explanation lies in the self-defeating dementia of tree fetishists, and “Watermelon” legislation — green on the outside; red on the inside. However, as usual, the “Watermelon” worldview creates more havoc than it prevents. Because of wood fires, the usually pristine air in our part of the world resembles the air above the shanty town of Soweto. The resources and energy spent–and the lives lost–because of this mess are many times the cost or worth of a few thousand trees.

On a less personal note, this week’s WND column was an especially hot one, but there is no point in posting it to the blog now. I will, rather, post the column once it goes up on RT. My “paleolibertarian” column now features on the Russia Today broadcaster’s website. I ask all my BAB readers to “Recommend/Like” the RT column, each week, and retweet it. RT deserves your support for its support and interest in ideas other banal minds won’t touch, don’t you think?

And on a funny note: It was a struggle to keep our African parrots warm, but they settled into the routine. When T. Cup awoke this morning to warm, normal house temperatures and light levels, he demanded happily, in his old cute voice: “yummy-yummy.” And then he quickly comforted himself, “It’s coming, it’s coming.”

A recent image of T. Cup and his “mommy” is on the gallery. To view TC, wait for the page to upload all the images.

UPDATE III: ‘That’s How Ron Paul Rolls’ (Tosses & Gores Trump )

Energy, libertarianism, Liberty, Republicans, Ron Paul

Finally, Ron Paul takes the gloves off and goes hard-core. Yes, we want to drain the swamp. Yes, we are tired of the Tea-Party bark which has turned into the whimper of little Shih Tzus (or is it shit-so-and-sos). Department of Education? Gone. Interior, Energy, HUD, Commerce? Gone. Later bureaucrats. That’s how Ron Paul rolls.”

Excellent ad (thank you Roy Bleckert for sending the link). Give me more. If Ron Paul shakes off the shackles of the Beltway libertarians, and sticks to his original Old-Right instincts, we’re there. One problem: My man Ron forgot the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The goons must go. That is the first peace offering any candidate of mine must offer up.

Now how does a president do all this without his party taking both Houses? And how does he do all this as a pragmatic matter?

UPDATE I: JT (on Facebook): We need a uniter in this fractured country of ours. If Ron Paul can drum some sanity into the Nation of Islam, what’s wrong with that? Today I heard the Left speak fondly of him, on MSNBC, and joke about Paul’s cutting everything. Good. We want the Left neutralized. Paul is the candidate most likely to remain on the Right, and unite all factions.

UPDATE II: Newt; Serial Hypocrite and worse—serial statist. I feel a visceral urge to vomit each time I see that sanctimonious so-and-so. Still, this anti-Newt ad is unfocused and confusing. It’s hard to tell that its subject is Ron Paul. The new ad above is in a new mold.

UPDATE III (Dec. 6): Paul tosses and gores Trump. Needless to say, BAB won’t be covering the upcoming Idiocracy debate—and not because Trumpt promised to attend, but was a no-show at the Republican Party of Iowa’s annual Reagan Dinner:

“The Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee rejects the selection of Donald Trump as moderator for the Republican presidential debate to be held on December 27th in Iowa.
“We have conferred with our Iowa campaign chairman Drew Ivers and vice-chairmen David Fischer and A.J. Spiker who are all RPI State Central Committee Members, and they concur with this decision.
“The selection of a reality television personality to host a presidential debate that voters nationwide will be watching is beneath the office of the Presidency and flies in the face of that office’s history and dignity. Mr. Trump’s participation as moderator will distract from questions and answers concerning important issues such as the national economy, crushing federal government debt, the role of the federal government, foreign policy, and the like. To be sure, Mr. Trump’s participation will contribute to an unwanted circus-like atmosphere.
“Mr. Trump’s selection is also wildly inappropriate because of his record of toying with the serious decision of whether to compete for our nation’s highest office, a decision he appeared to make frivolously. The short-lived elevation of Mr. Trump’s stature as a candidate put him on the radar of many organizations and we recall that last spring he was invited to keynote the Republican Party of Iowa’s annual Reagan Dinner, yet at the last minute he left RPI holding the bag by canceling. In turn, RPI canceled its biggest fundraising gala of the year and suffered embarrassment and in addition RPI was required to engage in refunding measures. Our candidate will not even consider participating in the late-December debate until Mr. Trump publicly apologizes to Iowa party leaders and rectifies in full the situation.
“Therefore our candidate Ron Paul, the champion of the Constitution, has advised he will not attend.”

UPDATED: Barnanke is Stealing Your Wealth by Stealth

Debt, Economy, Energy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation

As Terence Corcoran of Canada’s National Post puts it, “The Fed’s claim … is that all that is happening in the world economy—rising commodity prices, a falling dollar, rising bond yields, price increases in developing nations and Europe—have nothing whatever to do with the Fed’s unprecedented trillion-dollar quantitative easings and monetary expansion.”

“The Fed has a bit of a credibility problem,” concludes Corcoran. My countrymen (I’m a naturalized Canadian) are known for the understatement. Corcoran continues:

It wouldn’t be the first time in economic history that growth and employment dragged while prices -due to monetary inflation -rose. This year, U.S. consumer prices in March rose at an annual rate of 6% and were 2.7% higher than a year ago. In a recent speech, Fed vicechairman Janet Yellin called the CPI gains “transitory” inflation. Meantime, producer prices are up almost 6% year over year and import prices -thanks to a falling dollar -are up almost 10%.
Despite this evidence, the Fed sees no real inflation and is waiting to see if price increases begin showing up in “inflation expectations.”

[SNIP]

The enormous increase in the stock of money—a deliberate and destructive policy pursued by Ben Bernanke, the man with the reverse-Midas touch—is responsible for the steady rise in the prices of all commodities, crude included.

Prices are rising because mounds of paper money are printed and credit expansion policies promoted in order to fund the government’s profligacy. More fiat currency in the system means that every unit is worth less. This is the essence of inflation—it is a hidden tax, another way for government to steal your wealth by stealth.

According to the post hoc illogic of others (Bill O’Reilly and Attorney General Eric Holder, for instance), you ought to blame gas speculators, “profiteers” or foreign producers for gas prices—anyone but your government. Apparently, they believes that the price of fuel is causing prices to rise.

This topsy-turvy chain of causality should not make a lick of sense to a sane individual.

UPDATE: Herschel, on Facebook, wants to know, “who has all this new money? Certainly not the people who are suffering under high prices.”

Exactly: When money markets are flooded, the first counterfeit down payment goes into the coffers of the selected government contractors and employees. And also to all the DC hacks. It spurs artificially created demand, causing suppliers to raise prices. It’ll take time, but the new money will generate price hikes throughout the economy. By the time you and I, politically unconnected suckers that we are, experience a meager rise in money income (but not in tangible wealth), rising prices will have obliterated the tiny gain.

UPDATED: “Are We Running Out of Resources?” Hell, No!

Barack Obama, Economy, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Free Markets

Most “resources” in nature are useless lumps of nothing. If not for man’s ingenuity, iron, aluminum, coal and oil would lie purposeless and pristine in the wildernesses; the matter and energy abundant on earth would come to naught. The ability to discover and transform natural resources into usable goods, and continue to develop “resource-enhancing and sustaining technologies,” is, after all, unique to man. At least to some men.

Watch this wonderful YouTube clip courtesy of economist Steve Horwitz, who demonstrates that, provided we allow profits and prices to serve as the street signs of the economy, we will not run out of resources. If only the “brilliant” Barack Obama, who keeps looking for ways to curtail production, would watch with you (or, at least, read Henry Hazllit’s Economics In One Lesson, which even BHO could grasp):

And this from “THE GOODS ON GAS”:

Purchasing patterns drive prices up or down. Through their “competitive bidding” people raise the price of a commodity. In an unhampered market, rising prices would have signaled to established oil companies and other entrepreneurs and investors that there are profits to be made in the industry.
Absent legislative barriers to exploration, enterprising capitalists would have defied central planners and turned from tinkering with ethanol to drilling for—and refining—oil. Forecasted profits would guarantee accelerated production. Had Exxon and the others been allowed to satisfy their only overlords, consumers, they’d have long since increased the production of oil. Increased supply would have brought down prices—and profits, eventually.
The much–maligned price system works not only to secure supply but to conserve. The price system—rising prices in this case—signals to consumers to adjust their consumption. …

UPDATE: Hybrid hypocrites. Yes, “State-sponsored ‘sexy’ technologies in the West have decidedly ugly outcomes for worker bees in the East. The Copenhagen Crowd’s cravings must be sated, but not by despoiling California, if you know what I mean. Enter the Chinese worker. Read “NIMBYs: Not-In-My-Backyard Environmentalists” for what’s involved in the screwy, skewed Prius production line.

As for the gaseous Bill O’s Theory of Oil, which Bob below alludes to by way of the reference to the cartel: Purchasing patterns drive prices up or down. The particular price of fuel, concomitantly, is determined by supply and demand. The general trend of price increases is a consequence of government-generated inflation. I understand that Bill O’Reilly believes otherwise, but the natural laws of economics cannot be suspended, not even by “Bill O.”