Why I am not a democrat

November 17, 2008 17:38 by johnolimbo

Because I just couldn't be in a party with someone like Maxine Waters.

http://www.truthonthemarket.com/2008/11/13/this-liberal-will-be-all-about-socializing-uhhh-basically-taking-over-and-the-government-running-all-of-your-companies/

thanks: Truth on the Market.


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One Positive if McCain Loses the Election

June 17, 2008 16:59 by johnolimbo

Obama won't be able to deliver.  Even if he does deliver, the consequences will be so disastrous that ... are you ready for this?  Young Americans have to learn the Jimmy Carter lesson all over again.  We need to see why liberals are bad for the country's government.  Those of us who have learned economics and public policy (for the most part) know this.  But you know what?  I'd trade four years of this incompetent demagogue for 8 years of a 21st century Reagan followed by another H.W. (who would have won his second term if not for Ross Perot).

This guy thinks he is a demi-god.  Check out his lines from his speech in Detroit (http://www.examiner.com/a-1444760~Obama_tells_rally_he_ll_revive_Detroit_automakers.html), "We are going to build the cars of the future right here in Detroit, right here in Michigan, right here in America," the Illinois senator told supporters in a town that for generations had been the auto capital of the world.  "We're going to create alternative fuels for our plug-in hybrids," he said. "We are going to help the auto companies. If you are ready for change, we are going to create a brighter energy future right here in America." 

So you're going to plug in cars?  That means you need more electrical power... which means... AHA you guessed it we need to burn more fuels.  And you end up spitting in the wind... Of course if you used nuclear energy this problem could be avoided but, hey, he is a democrat - he doesn't come with common sense. 

Let me continue with this uh manure:

Speaking before Gore and Obama, (govenor Jennifer) Granholm said Obama would help Michigan go from leading the nation in unemployment to leading the way to a new era of clean energy and fuel-efficient transportation.

"We'll have a new president in the White House, a president who'll be Michigan's partner, a president who'll fight for us," Granholm said. "We in Michigan, we will build and sell the 100 mile-per-gallon vehicle. ... We have the skill, we have the will, and we'll have a president who's committed to a national energy policy to create those jobs here."

That's exactly what the state needs, 51-year-old Brian Dunn said after Obama's speech.

The Detroit resident has taken a buyout from struggling auto parts supplier American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings Inc.

"It's time. It's time for healing the whole country 100 percent," he said.

Obama said he hears "a cry of desperation across the land" from those struggling through the country's economic troubles, those who have lost jobs, health coverage and hope for the future.

"Everywhere I go I hear it. I hear it from the single mom who can't afford insurance for her children," he said.

Obama said he especially hears it from the laid off factory worker.

"Not only has he lost his job and his health care, he's lost his sense of dignity and self-respect because he can't afford to support his family anymore," Obama said.

Obama said he also would help those who have lost their jobs because of the economic dislocation.

"We're going to make sure every worker gets training they need to function effectively in this new economy," the candidate said.

The problem is that, again, Amerians just don't understand economics - especially those under 40.

BUT THE BIGGEST PROBLEM HERE IS THIS IS ALL TALK.  NO DETAILS.  NO PLANS.  JUST TALK.

I wish I could tell B. INSANE Obama: STOP RUNNING YOUR MOUTH AND START TELLING THE TRUTH.  STOP BEING DISHONEST OR AT LEAST DISH OUT SOME PLANS YOU ARROGANT BLOWHARD.

You know I started this blog with the intention of being post partisan and interested in only the fair discussion of economics, but that would be like a human rights activist trying to be fair and calm while comparing Hitler and MLK jr.


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Windfall Taxes on Oil Companies

June 14, 2008 10:50 by johnolimbo
Let's use common sense here.  Green energy expansion will be miniscule, and won't meet a major proportion of our needs for a long time.  Is it a good idea to invest in it?  I suppose so, but it is NOT a panacea.  Green energy accounts for less than 2% of our energy today.  As for possibility of expansion maybe 10% at most?  No one has indicated that we could go much higher... I'm open to new ideas and new data.  I hope for the answer to be higher.  Enlighten me.
Obama's plan is to tax oil companies via a windfall energy tax.  If any of you older people read my blog you'll probably remember that Congress already did that back in the late 70's and early to mid 80's.  The plan backfired.  Our domestic production dropped and we became even more dependent on foreign oil.  The price of oil went down, but not because of this tax, more in spite of it.  How?  OPEC pumped more, plus other countries began to export oil.  The oil companies pay a lot of their revenue in taxes already.  Exxon Mobil pays 44% of their revenue to the government already.  Exxon Mobil has invested more in finding more oil than they have made profits in the last ten years.  Stock prices btw are effected by profits – the lower the profits the lower the stock value.  Because 52% of you who have IRA’s 401k’s etc. have this in your portfolio your retirement or investments will take a hit.  Now to get the profits up to where they were an oil company has to trim from somewhere else – guess where?  One area is the search for more fuel/oil, aka discovery.  That means less oil pumped in the future.  Less oil pumped means, you guessed it higher prices at the pump.  Congress let the oil windfall profits tax die in the mid 80's and essentially said: Bad idea - won't do that again.  And now here we are again two decades later and what is the plan?  Let me ask you this: if high food prices are a problem, do you think robbing your grocery store's cash register is the solution?  If you said yes you should run as a Democrat for government.  If you said no you shouldn't vote for Obama!
Now this tax money would be put into green energy projects.  The problem with this is 0) remember this is the piggy government handling our tax dollars – think about the government’s record here!  1) The best way to save energy is to make buildings, factories, houses, and cars green.  2) He is opposed to nuclear energy.  3) The gains in green energy might not outweigh the cost of lower oil production and discovery. 4) He would be building inefficient projects - projects that cost millions of dollars that don't do a whole lot.  For example even though he doesn't specify he could be talking about projects like rail lines.  Yes we could/should be building rail lines for domestic use, but think about this.  For all the human rail transportation Europe has, it only accounts for 5% of the human transportation there.  More-so because of the government mandate that many railways be for passenger use only their freight has to go by highway.  More than 75% of our freight goes by train.  Their corresponding % is less than 25%!  That means virtually 75% of their freight goes in trucks via the highway.  Our highways are already overcrowded and need help badly – especially highways in densely urban areas.  Remember that the less time we spend in traffic the more fuel efficient our cars are.  Besides it’s not like most of us have a choice anyway.  I wouldn’t drive more if there were less traffic.  The incentive structure for most people without a choice won’t result in more driving or more GHG emitted.
So, the best ostensible way to combat global warming via transportation is that you would have to add rail lines - specifically for domestic passenger use only... maybe subways instead of rail lines?  And any of these solutions would have to be in the dense urban areas.  Anyway - this whole thing is going to be pretty complex, and it will have to be done ala carte or city by city.  Big cross country rail lines are a waste of space, time, money and energy - no one will use them.  The best rail systems are like the ones in the Washington to Boston (including philly, NYC, Baltimore) - metros, regional metro lines.  They are the most efficient and effective.  The problem is that is an intra-state issue for the most part and NOT an inter-state issue, and hence not a power of the federal government unless you make the argument that GHG pollution needs to be regulated by Congress and the only way to do that is by instituting metro rail lines.  Or they could make this a voluntary program where if a city signs up and builds a plan it could be approved by congress and paid for...  See how amazingly complex this could get?  And does anyone else smell pig cooking?
Worst thing: neither Obama nor McCain has a detailed comprehensive energy policy.  It's sad.I got a book a week ago called Gusher of Lies.  Let me read it.  I need to explore sustainable energy.  So far my best guess is nuclear and perhaps algae oil?

 


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Two Quick Reads on Oil and Gas -- Make it Three

June 12, 2008 20:31 by johnolimbo

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/do_the_right_thing_start_drill.html 

Highlighted quotes:

But a paradox is that most environmentalists think of themselves as egalitarians. So, instead of objecting to the view of a derrick from the California hills above the Santa Barbara coast, shouldn't a liberal estate owner instead console himself that the offshore pumping will help a nearby farm worker or carpenter get to work without going broke?

Another paradox: American laws and technology ensure a rig off Florida or in Alaska has far less chance of springing a leak than one in the Persian Gulf or the Russian tundra. If there really is a shared "planet earth," then aren't we all its collective stewards? By locking out energy exploration in the United States, we are encouraging it almost everywhere else. 

We should stop talking about suing the OPEC cartel, jawboning the House of Saud to lower prices, blaming the oil companies or adding yet another massive tax on sky-high gas prices. What we don't need right now are more pie-in-the-sky sermons about wind and solar saving us all or about millions of new jobs in green technology that can be almost instantly created.

That all may be well and good in a generation. But in the here and now, we still need to tap the abundant conventional energy we already have in the United States. And in large part that means building, mining and drilling.

and

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Gouging+Big+Oil+means+gouging+you&articleId=8b2912b9-27c3-49c2-82fd-4be7a174b4ee

The latter being crystal clear.

Read it and weep:

The truth, however, is that the case for this new tax is nonexistent.

First, oil company profits are not "unreasonable," however one might define that term. Oil and gas companies earn an average of 8.3 cents per dollar of revenue, compared to 7.8 cents for the Dow Jones average, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in April. And those huge oil company profits are big in dollar, but not percentage, terms.

Exxon-Mobil has earned more money than any other American company in the past five years. But last year, it's most profitable ever, its profit was only 10.9 percent of revenues, Fortune magazine reported last month. Bank of America's profits were 12.6 percent, Pfizer's were 16.8 percent, Coca-Cola's were 20.7 percent, Google's were 25.3 percent, and Microsoft's were 27.5 percent. Whose profits are "unreasonable"?

While Exxon-Mobil was earning 10.9 percent profit last year, it paid 44 percent of its revenues in taxes, The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch reported on Tuesday. Forty-four percent! The government took four times as much from Exxon-Mobil's revenues as shareholders did. "Big Oil" isn't paying its fair share? Hogwash.

You might also be interested to know that 52 percent of Exxon-Mobil's stock is owned by fund investors such as mutual and pension funds. That means you. If it is slapped with a windfall profits tax, your retirement plan might be the one paying the price.

And if all that weren't enough, there is the evidence from the 1980s. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter advocated and Congress imposed a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Guess what happened? Domestic oil exploration dropped, and the promised tax revenues did not materialize. It actually made us more dependent on foreign oil. Isn't that what Congress wants to prevent?

In their push to tax oil companies even more for the sole reasons that they have made record profits lately and the public wrongly suspects those profits of being responsible for high gas prices, Sen. Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are trying to move us back to the failed thinking of the late 1970s. That would be economically harmful, not helpful.

The idea that imposing confiscatory taxes on oil companies will somehow reduce the price of oil has no basis in fact. It shows the flawed economic thinking of a party that still assumes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that high taxes help the country, low taxes hurt, and the government can make everything better by asserting greater control.

 

 

And finally see some eye candy propaganda from the Republican Party.  http://republicanwhip.house.gov/UploadedFiles/GAS%20CHART%20TEMP%20PDF.pdf
2.07 after... what... a year or two?  four years?  If they listed the year this price would get there then we could take that number and apply the laws of supply and demand to it.  Like say they estimate that after their plan gas will be at 2.07 per gallon in four years.  I could say yeah BUT, global demand for gas will be going up and global supply won't match growth in demand, in fact growth in supply even with their gas pumping plans is still not going to be close to feed emerging markets... so yes, all things being held constant 2.07 a gallon if everything goes perfect.  But with supply, demand, and other snags - oh and not to mention TIME to drill and refine and get stuff up and running and to the market - the most I think they could shave off the price is $1.00ish. 
And you want to know the worst part of that column?  We would be paying $-0.136 for gas if all the saving measures had their estimated maximum effect.  Add up all the savings, it is $4.195 per gallon.  Price of gas in the example is $4.059. 


Do I support their plan and hate the Democrat plan?  Hell yes - but let's be a bit more realistic guys.  In the words of Dubya, "That's fuzzy math"


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