Month: March 2012

Today I fueled up both cars at once. Yikes! $107.28 and they weren’t even really empty! To add insult to injury, I got the gasoline for 30 cents off the posted price per gallon. It should have been nine dollars more.

How did I get it 30 cents off? I had 300 fuel points at Kroger grocery stores and they give you 10 cents off per $100 at their gas stations. What a deal! But I was surprised because the last time I took both cars and filled them up at once it cost about $60.00.

All of which brings home (again) that gasoline prices have doubled during the Obama Administration. Of course now we are told by the Main Stream Media that the president can do NOTHING about the price of gas.

Well, I guess they’re right about THIS president.

But when George W. Bush was president and gasoline spiked to just a little more than it is right now, it was all his fault, according to the media and even Barack Obama, who was running for president at the time.

Of course it is true that the president doesn’t have COMPLETE control over the price of gasoline or any commodity, which is the way it should be in a Free Market (if only we could go back to those days!). The market is global and is very complex.

The president scoffs at those who say he should “drill, drill, drill” (see “Duh! Duh! Duh!”), saying there is no “silver bullet” concerning the price of gas. However, at every turn the president has done the opposite of what he should have to increase supply and moderate prices at the pump. In fact, I have said the the president’s superhero name should be “Opposite Man”.

Today I also saw a little of “Bulls and Bears” on Fox News and heard a former Finance Director for the Democratic National Committee insist that regulations such as those imposed by the EPA, Dept. of Energy, OSHA, etc., etc., (ad nauseum amen) have NO effect on fuel prices, it has to be those evil speculators.

To this DNC has-been Finance Director, I’d like to recommend a movie from the 80’s called “Trading Places”. He could actually learn a LOT about commodities markets from that movie.

But at the same time that the president and the MSM are telling us there is NOTHING he can do to influence the price of gas, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York is pleading with the Saudi Arabians to increase their production so the market will force the price of gasoline down. It works if they do it but not if we do it (see “I’m So Confused”).

No, it’s the speculators, I tell you! The speculators; they’re the problem!

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This week the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments about the Constitutionality of the Health Care law known as “ObamaCare”. The main liberal assertion, articulated better by Justice Ginsburg than by the Obama Administration lawyer, is that, since it costs us all money when uninsured people get health care services, the government should be able to FORCE everyone to buy health insurance.

If all else fails, use force.

Big government liberals have no compunctions whatever about using the Guns of Government to force people to behave the way they think they should. But that is, by definition, antithetical to freedom.

Justice Kennedy, who is the moderate, swing vote on the court, said of the mandate that forces everyone to buy insurance: “This fundamentally changes the relationship between the individual and the government.” I guess that’s what the President meant when he said he would “fundamentally transform” America.

It is becoming increasingly plain that the love of freedom hangs by a slender thread in America. More and more people hear “Freedom” and cheer, but they are thinking “Freedom From Responsibility”.

At the end of the day, that’s what the Health Care debate is about. Those in favor of ObamaCare believe that they shouldn’t be responsible for paying for their health care services. Someone else, their employer, the insurance company, the government, the “one-percenters”, anybody else, should pay for their health care, just not them.

That’s what the Occupy Wall Street “movement” is about, too. They demonstrate against the unfairness of Capitalism, when in reality, nothing is more fair than a meritocracy, where you get and keep what you earn. But you can’t just coast in a meritocracy. You have to get up every morning and boogie.

But it’s sooo haaard!

Yep. It takes hard work to be successful in a free market. Freedom means shouldering responsibility and that IS hard. It would be so much easier to coast through life with someone else paying the bills, making sure I didn’t scrape my elbows on the sharp rocks as I float down the lazy river.

But the price of such freedom from responsibility is slavery. The children of Israel told Moses they were better off back in slavery in Egypt than in the desert where life was hard. Many slaves stayed on their plantations after Emancipation because they didn’t know how to live in freedom. Even some criminals who are released from prison commit new crimes in order to return to prison where they don’t have to earn three squares a day and they are told every move to make.

And if we desire freedom from the difficulties of living a responsible life, the government will gladly make our lives easier. All we have to do is surrender our freedom.

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Growing up, I was a fan of the Peanuts comic strip. It was always a joy to see Snoopy aboard his Sopwith Camel, Schroeder channeling Beethoven or Linus quoting Kirkegaard.

It was also Linus who annually lamented the failure of the Great Pumpkin to appear: “How Can We Fail When We’re So Sincere?”

I had reason to think of Linus again after an interesting exchange  with some Chevy Volt enthusiasts after my “Chevy Volt: RIP” post, which was my feeble attempt at humor after GM suspended for six weeks production on the high profile “green” car. Linus’ lament seems like an apt metaphor for the whole green energy mania (see “Solyndra”).

Via Twitter, the first question was “Have you driven a Volt?”

I had to answer that the question totally missed the point of my blog, in which I stated that I’m in favor of the development of alternative energy sources, but they must be practical, cheap, and plentiful. In other words, the Free Market must be allowed to decide.

Of course the Central Planners who currently reside in the government consider the Free Market to be an obstacle to be overcome, rather than the path to success for any endeavor.

For the life of me I can’t understand why the Central Planners (liberals, leftists, socialists, communists, fascists, et al) insist on going against nature. As I said in a post a long time ago (actually a “pre-blog” essay) “Natural Capitalism”, Capitalism is natural because it works WITH human nature. Central Planning is unnatural because it works at cross purposes with human nature.

I’m reminded of Saul of Tarsus and his Damascus Road vision in which the Lord says to him, “Why do you kick against the goad?”, referring to an oxen bound to a wagon but which stubbornly continues getting stuck by the sharp stick rather than go with the flow.

My point about the Volt was that if it’s really better, it won’t need government subsidies and artificially increased gas prices in order to succeed. But the fact is, the economics don’t work. Hybrid cars are getting about 50 miles per gallon. But my six-cylinder Toyota Avalon, the biggest car they make, gets 26 in the city and 30-33 on the highway! Hybrids need to do a LOT better than they currently do.

And in practical tests the Volt has only been able to go 25 miles without a charge. Plus, since the sticker is north of $40,000, only the true believers — who make more than $170,000 — are buying them.

In other words, you need more than Sincerity.

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According to New York Senator Charles Schumer, the fact that the Saudi Arabians are increasing oil production is good news, because that will lower gasoline prices in the United States.

Huh?

This in an article in The Hill, during the same week that President Barack Obama has been out NOT campaigning, giving scoffing speeches about those who criticize him for not encouraging domestic drilling to moderate the price of fuel. In fact, Obama said those who believe that increasing drilling can lower gasoline prices are like “Flat Earthers”.

So let me get this straight: according to the Democrats, increased drilling in Saudi Arabia will lower gasoline prices the US, but producing more oil in the US will not?

How does that work exactly?

Well at least we have algae.

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In spite of how it might appear sometimes (previous post), I’m not at all opposed to developing alternate energy sources. Yes I wrote a novel (“Backlash“) that follows a fictional Big Oil company executive who is the heroine (!) of the book. But that doesn’t mean I’m all-in for oil as the only fuel source for transportation.

There’s also natural gas.

But beyond that, nothing has come to the fore as a PRACTICAL alternative to the gasoline-powered, internal combustion engine.

Yet.

At some point, an alternative to fossil fuel might emerge, but before it can be considered a practical alternative, it will have to prove that it can be reliable, cheap, and plentiful, since the energy needs of the world are expanding each and every day.

President Obama has made alternative fuels a centerpiece of his administration from day one, but there are wasted tax payer dollars and  idled factories all over the landscape, because he, like most liberals, idealistically assume that people will embrace these technologies out of altruism, pocketing their doubts rather than consulting their checkbooks.

Solar-panel maker Solyndra was the first of several companies which took tax-payer money, then promptly folded. This week, General Motors announced it was “temporarily” suspending production on the plug-in hybrid Volt, which Obama had trumpeted as THE answer to energy independence.

But the car costs $40,000+ which even a $7,500 tax credit couldn’t make palatable enough for many people to buy them. GM had planned to build 60,000 this year, but that meant they needed to sell 5,000 per month. So far, they’ve sold less than 1,700. So they wisely pulled the plug.

But even worse is the Fisker Karma, another plug-in hybrid which got half a billion dollars in Federal money but promptly closed its American plant and is manufactured in Europe, which must really fry the United Auto Workers’ calamari.  The Karma is a really cool looking car, which has a sticker price north of $100,000, so it’s just for “one percenters”, but it has had “mechanical” problems, including simply not starting on a Consumer Reports test track (DOHHH!). About 500 have sold.

Of course the point that the Obama Administration Energy Department, which made the loans to Solyndra, GM and Fisker, fails to emphasize is that 48% of electrical power is generated in coal plants, so a hybrid electric car is still at minimum 75% fossil-fuel powered.

Henry Ford didn’t get Federal loans or subsidies when he was pioneering the internal-combustion engine in this country, but he succeeded because he was able to produce a product that was better and cheaper. The automobile had its detractors in the beginning (“It’ll never last”). The Model T produced a mere 20 horsepower, but think of the problems of hitching 20 horses to a wagon (that’s a LOT of methane “exhaust”!). The “auto-mobile” was much more efficient.

So something more efficient and cheaper than the gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine will probably come along, and when it does it will be enthusiastically embraced, IF it is better, cheaper and more efficient.

The vaunted wind and solar power industries combined so far produce less than one percent of the electrical power required in the USA, so it’s probably a little early to be putting all our eggs in those baskets.

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