Category Archives: Energy

UPDATED: An Ass With Ears

Barack Obama, China, Economy, Education, Energy, Politics

OBAMA IS. You can coast to the presidency absent any understanding of economics. The rise of China Obama put down, in his pep-talk to the nation, to the child-rearing methods of the Tiger moms (http://barelyablog.com/?p=33597). Sinophobia notwithstanding (http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=584), as American society is increasingly silhouetted by the State, China is undergoning considerable economic restructuring and market reforms, the consequence of which is a 300 million strong Chinese middle class, and poverty levels that have receded from “53 percent in 1981 to 8 percent in 2001. Only about a third of the economy is now directly state-controlled. As of 2005, 70 percent of China’s GDP was in the private sector.” The Chinese financial system is duly being liberalized—banking is diversifying and stock markets are developing. Protections for private property rights are being strengthened as well.

Obama thinks that a nascent China owes its increasing economic strength not to this liberalization, but to the fact that they “started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science,” and that the government is “investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer,” he added.

The truth is that the US is in the red and getting redder, not China.

***

The central planner-in-chief also denounced his subsidies to the oil industry—he did a lot of denouncing of policies he had either put in place, or could have repealed—while, in the same breath, recommending that we “invest in tomorrow’s energy.”

In other words, state planning is a “subsidy” when it is applied to “bad” energy, but an “investment” when applied to the “good” energy source.

The Goods on Gas for Asses: The more efficient the source of energy, the less waste and pollution are involved in its conversion into energy. Think of the totality of the production process! The fewer resources expended in bringing a fuel to market, the cleaner and cheaper is the process.

Oil is the second most efficient, cheapest source of energy, Obama’s wish is our demise. For ordinary folks, the biomass-based economy means life without the basics.

UPDATE (Jan. 27): In reply to Bob’s comment: Neither do I hold China to be a capitalist society, if you read the article I cited. But neither do I think the US is capitalistic any longer; we just pretend we are. My comments spoke to a trend: China is growing because it is liberalizing its economy; we are shrinking because we are centralizing ours.

UPDATE II: The Law Of Rule Doubles Down

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Energy, Free Speech, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Correctness, Race, Racism

A member of the South African opposition (as I have already mentioned) characterized the effects of the ANC’s deployment of law as living under the law of rule rather than the rule of law. This characterization applies equally to Big Man Obama and his posse.

According to Fox News’ Megan Kelly, who does some fine reporting, the decree to dismiss the New-Black-Panther voter intimidation case originated with 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Recall: the thugs who received a reprieve flanked the voting location in formation shouting variations on “kill crackers and their kids.”

A note to libertarians celebrating free speech and the beauty of an exhortation to kill in a “free society”: I’m sympathetic even to the last, believe it or not. But this is not about free speech. this is about a legal apparatus under which some are better than others. Don’t get me wrong: we’ve always lived under such an apparatus; my new book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot, (completed now and being prepared for publication), records this very reality. However, it has become manifestly obvious that things have gotten way worse (albeit on the same continuum) under the racial rule of Brother Barack.

To those interested in the law’s position on speech, here it is stated in one of my columns:

American jurisprudence allows the regulation of speech only under very limited circumstances. .. the jury would have had to find that … [the] speech posed a “Clear and Present Danger.” While the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment doesn’t protect words that are likely to cause violence, the required threshold is extremely high. And so it should be.

However, speech that falls under the rubric of civil and voter rights law seems to get different treatment—when uttered against the pigmentally privileged.

UPDATE I: To prove this post’s point, the White House is threatening another lawsuit against Arizona. I believe it will try, this time, to make the racial profiling fiction stick. Is this an attempt to prosecute an infraction that has yet to occur? You see what I mean by the law of rule. As I write, coverage of this is hard to come by on the Net, so please do some digging.

UPDATE II: BHO will not abide by a “no you can’t!” The Law had ruled against the Rule in the matter of a moratorium on deep-water offshore drilling.

“[J]udge, Martin L. C. Feldman of United States District Court, issued a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of a late May order halting all offshore exploratory drilling in more than 500 feet of water. A ‘blanket, generic, indeed punitive, moratorium … with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger,'” is how the judge justified smacking BHO. (Here is District Judge Feldman’s decision.)

But the law of rule wants an outcome of its own. And so, th “Obama Administration Issues New Moratorium on Offshore Oil Drilling.”

UPDATED: Where Have All The Oil Rigs Gone? (Too-bin The Tit)

Barack Obama, Business, Economy, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Economy

Under what authority does this president make it illegal for business to do business? Under the same grant of power that allows him to force individuals to buy a product, presumably. The result of BHO’s six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is that companies are beginning to depart. After all, it costs millions to sit idle. Wait a sec, perhpas the next step the encroaching state can take is to forbid the companies to leave. Ludwig von Mises warned that the road to socializing the means of production was paved with interventionism.

Yahoo News:

“Already, three rigs have left or are in the process of leaving the Gulf of Mexico,” Chett Chiasson, executive director of the port commission for the town of Port Fourchon, which services 90 percent of deepwater activity in the Gulf, told AFP. “If this moratorium goes for six months, these rig operators and these oil companies will have no choice but to go somewhere else,” with a devastating impact on jobs and the economy of Louisiana and the rest of the United States…”

WND reports that the scary James Carville “told CNN’s John King, ‘This president needs to tell BP, ‘I’m your daddy, I’m in charge. You’re going to do what we say.'”

Carville has tapped into a dominant sentiment among Americans—unless the networks are interviewing an unrepresentative minority.

To explain why he wanted money and lots of if from BP, one such mundane mind told one of the networks, “We are the parent; PB the child. We want to punish the child but not to make him leave the house.”

The other reason he gave: we live day-to-day here. I guess this will be a valid basis upon which to join the claims process. Right there you see what the problem is with a Chicago-style shake down, as opposed the legal claims process, where at least some evidence must be presented.

The “goose in folklore laid a golden egg a day until its greedy owner killed it in an attempt to get all the gold at once.”

UPDATE (June 22): TOO-BIN THE TIT (tit as in a “despicable or unpleasant person). Last night, the Alpha Female of CNN, Anderson Cooper, called on his legal analyst, Jeffrey Too-bin, to confirm what is known to every left-liberal with an opinion on how the law should work, but no knowledge of how it works (that’s tit Too-bin).

Too-bin was to predict whether New Orleans District Court Judge Martin Feldman would leave or lift “the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.”

Tit was ponderous. He shook his curly pelt and indicated that BHO’s decree was so reasonable he could not envisage its overturn. And, in any case, the Powers That Be had wide discretion such as was seldom challenged by the Courts. It was all good, promised Too-bin. I made a mental note to revisit the tit when Feldman rendered the right ruling.

Contra the Too-bin, my instinct (located in my head) was that Judge Martin Feldman would indeed do what he did:

Issue “a temporary injunction Tuesday, lifting the moratorium and accusing [Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar of ‘arbitrary and capricious’ behavior that will cause ‘irreparable harm’ to 33 other deepwater oil rigs that the government unfairly assumes are unsound, despite the fact that all of them have been reinspected since the BP blowout on May 28.” [Washington Examiner]

Here is the Cooper/Too-bin tet`-a-tete´. Coming from an analyst, the Us vs. Them language is unbelievable:

Sorting it out tonight: CNN’s senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, who joins us from New York.

Jeff, what the companies bringing this suit — what do they have to prove to get the moratorium overturned?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: They have to prove that the action by the Obama administration was arbitrary and capricious, it was simply an irrational act to do this. That’s a very tough standard to meet but that’s what they have — that’s what they’re trying to show.

COOPER: And Bobby Jindal, the governor here, he filed a brief along with the plaintiffs, saying the moratorium basically will turn an environmental disaster into an economic catastrophe. Those were his words. That’s really an economic argument he’s making.

TOOBIN: That’s right. It’s important to remember that the judge has a very narrow function in this case. He doesn’t have to decide whether it’s a good idea to have this moratorium or not. Judge Feldman’s (ph) job only is to decide whether the Obama administration was legally within its rights in establishing this moratorium. And it is legally within its rights as long as it acts in a rational way. That’s a very broad standard.

The economic arguments that Bobby Jindal made, you know, 4,000 jobs lost directly, 10,000 jobs lost indirectly. Those are arguments to be made to the Obama administration saying, don’t do this, it’s a bad idea. I don’t see how a court is going to take those arguments and say, well, that makes this beyond the pale legally.

COOPER: Yes. Essentially you’re saying the judge isn’t ruling on whether these rigs are safe or not, or whether that even matters. All he’s ruling on is the state of mind that the president had when he made this decision?

TOOBIN: Well, it’s not so much the state of mind — about whether there is a reasonable justification, whether the act of establishing this moratorium is a reasonable response. And when you have an economic — an environmental catastrophe like we’ve seen, shutting down these rigs for six months does not seem to me — and I suspect will not seem to the judge — as an irrational response.

Now, the companies — and Bobby Jindal points out, that a lot of these rigs that are being shut down, have passed their safety inspections. So why shut them down? That means it’s an irrational act to shut them down.

The government responds to that by saying, look, the Deepwater Horizon, it passed its inspections. That shows that the safety inspections aren’t good enough. We need the six months to fix the system. That’s an argument I think that’s going to be very tough to respond to.

COOPER: So, you think the judge is going to leave the moratorium in place?

TOOBIN: I think it’s very likely. When it comes to these sorts decisions where an administrative agency has a lot of discretion, judges are very reluctant to step in at the last minute and stop it, because they figure the agency has the expertise. The law gives the agency a certain amount of discretion. It would take an extreme irrational act to get a judge to stop it, and a six-month moratorium — and remember, it’s only six months, it’s not forever — I think is not something that the judge — that most judges would view as irrational.

COOPER: All right. Jeff Toobin, I appreciate it.

[SNIP]

We’ve gone from Too-bin to too-good. Yes!

Regulation Wrecking Ball: The Gulf & The Jones Act

Energy, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Regulation, Science, Technology

REGULATION WRECKS. The point was made in “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann,” with reference to the Federal law limiting liability under which BP was operating. The regulation wrecking Ball is still swinging over the Gulf. In particular, The Jones Act. The scandal is beyond the grasp of such stupidity as is exhibited by “Hollow-Wood”:

“Foreign companies possessing some of the world’s most advanced oil skimming ships say they are being kept out of efforts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf because of a 1920’s law known as the Jones Act — a protectionist law that requires vessels working in US waters be built in the US and be crewed by US workers.

Joseph Carafano of the Heritage Foundation has been studying the matter and wonders, ‘Are we accepting all the international assistance in the maritime domain that we can, and is the Jones Act an impediment to that?’

The Coast Guard and the Administration are quick to point out that some foreign technology is being used in the current cleanup effort. Including:

– Canada’s offer of 3,000 meters of containment boom

– Three sets of COSEQ sweeping arms from the Dutch

– Mexico’s offer of two skimmers and 4200 meters of boom

– Norway’s offer of 8 skimming systems

But that is largely technology transferred to US vessels. Some of the best clean up ships – owned by Belgian, Dutch and the Norwegian firms are NOT being used. Coast Guard Lt. Commander, Chris O’Neil, says that is because they do not meet ‘the operational requirements of the Unified Area Command.’ One of those operational requirements is that vessels comply with the Jones Act.

‘Yes, it does apply,’ said ONeil, ‘I have heard no discussions of waivers.'”

READ ON.

[SNIP]

“A Jones Act waiver” is not something the state workers involved in the pitiful clean-up—his Admiralty Thad Allen included—are eager to obtain.

The We-Are-The-Best-In-The-World chauvinists ought to take note: America is no longer cutting edge. But The Golden Calf will get us there again, right?