Maybe Obama Should Have Used Bain Capital?

With every passing month, we learn of another Obama-funded green-energy company going belly up. This last time, it was the solar panel company Amonix which closed its doors only 14 months after getting taxpayer subsidies.   With Obama's lousy track record on funding green companies, it's obvious he and his people lack the skills to pick winners.  Maybe the President should have consulted with a company who's job it is to successfully fund upstart and struggling businesses?  You know.  Like Bain Capital.  The company that Romney started and the one that Obama attacks constantly.

Spain's Current And Future Hikes In Electricity Rates Should Be A Wake Up Call On Obama's Going-Green Initiate

When it comes to going green, Spain is a world leader.  Subsequently, the environmental left just loves them for their "greenness".  In fact, if you view many of the eco websites around the Internet, you will see Spain referred to quite often.

Take, for example, this article, Wind Energy Output Hit Record High in Spain (Kept Electricity Prices Lower than Neighbors’), from the website CleanTechnica.com.  In it, there is nothing but glowing praises on how clean energy has helped Spain keep electricity costs down and created jobs. But, that article was written at the end of February.  By March and based on a prior-year Supreme Court ruling, the Spanish government announced that it must allow electricity rates to rise in order to reflect the "true" cost of energy production.  As a result, Spaniards were hit with a 7 percent rate increase in April.  At the time that the rate increase was announced, their energy minister also indicated that rates should have gone up by 40% to meet the Supreme Court mandate; but, didn't because of the hardship it would impose.  (Click here to see the official announcement)  So, you see, Spain's "lower than neighbors" energy costs just was just a lie; hidden by government subsidies. They are a perfect example of how expensive going green can be.

In the U.S., the average electricity bill is just under $1500 a year. In places like the desert Southwest and deep South, that amount can be twice as high. If President Obama is allowed to proceed with his green agenda for the U.S. by installing wind turbines and solar panels and by killing the coal industry, our rates, too, could easily go up by 40%. For an average family, that's $600 more per year that will have to go to pay the electric bill; hurting the poor and low income families the hardest. And let's also not forget that Spain's debt problems are partly a result of going green. Do we really want to become another Spain? I think it should be a true wake up call for all of us.

Obama Creates Millions of Green Jobs By Just Calling Them Green Jobs

Note: The person responding to Rep. Issa's questions is the top statistician from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If this is the way green jobs are counted, it's no wonder the employment numbers are also so phony.

Obama Administration Thinks High Oil Prices Will Make Amerrica Green

Yesterday, in a Congressional hearing on the current rise in oil and gasoline prices, Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, basically said that he and Obama are OK with high oil prices because it will help "wean U.S. off oil." This despite the fact that lower income working families and people on fixed incomes are getting clobbered by high fuel prices; probably forcing some of those working families to cut back on food and other essentials so they can still get to work.

But, the logic on the part of Chu is flawed. And, you only need to look to Europe to see why. In Europe, the prices at the pump are basically double that of the U.S. at any given time. Yet, that hasn't forced people into buying greener hybrids or electric cars. In fact, despite having had high oil prices for years, 94% of the autos being sold in Europe, today, are still strictly gasoline-powered. On top of that, Europeans hang onto their old gas-guzzlers 40% longer than do Americans. For an average of 13 years. Thus, electing to ignore the higher mileage economies that any newer vehicle would afford them.

What people choose to drive is generally decided by what they need the vehicle for. Beyond that, economics generally forms their final buying decision. Most people understand that gasoline prices at the pump would have to go a lot higher to make it worthwhile for them to buy an expensive green vehicle. But, Chu and his boss can't seem to understand this; proving, again, that economics is not their strong suit. That was obvious from Chu's idiotic decision to blow a half billion dollars in taxpayer money on a failing green energy company: Solyndra.

The reality is that, world-wide, there are 600 million vehicles. Less than three-quarters of one percent of them are hybrids or electrics. In this country, hybrids and electrics only account for 3% of vehicles sales. And, with the average age of vehicles going up each year, it's going to be a long, long time before anyone will be "weaned" off of oil.

Are The Extreme TSA Pat-Downs Another "Green Scheme"?

Just recently, a 95 year old woman with cancer was forced, by a TSA airport screener, to shed her soiled adult diaper for inspection in what can only be considered the ultimate embarrassment in a series of embarrassing tactics being used by Homeland Security. Everyday, travelers are having their "privates" groped by a bunch of non-medical personnel of the TSA. And, if you're not being groped, you're being scanned by a device that literally gives any viewing TSA agent an opportunity at sexual voyeurism because the images are just that revealing.

Call me the super cynic but isn't it possible that there is a more sinister reason behind this intentional embarrassment of our traveling public than simply trying to prevent terrorism?

Initially, it was my belief that all these pat downs and extra screenings were part of a planned move by this labor-supported Administration to grow the overall number of TSA agents; and, I still believe this to be true. This is especially true in light of the fact that the Obama Administration gave the green light for the TSA to unionize.

But, now, I think there's another reason. I think it is being done for environmental reasons in the hope to discourage overall air travel. I know my wife refuses to fly because of these pat-downs and those "nude" scans. When you really think about it, commercial aircraft are big greenhouse gas polluters and Obama and his little green minions are totally fixated on fighting climate change. For sure, any reduced air traffic would definitely fit the bill in saving the planet.

OK, maybe I'm wrong. But, if am, don't you think that the Department of Homeland Security would "cool it" in an effort to avoid all the bad press they've been getting?

Obama's Silly Man On The Moon Argument

In this week's pitiless and pitifully political oval office speech, Obama threw out another one of his patented and idiotic rhetorical questions. In his immature thinking about replacing oil as an energy resource, he said: "Well, if we can put a man on the moon, why not this?".

The stupidity of that comment is that it cost billions to send a man to the moon. Other than through massive and dedicated government spending, that feat would never have seen the light of day. And, no government, since, has replicated that accomplishment. In fact, this very President, earlier this year, scrapped NASA's plans to return to the moon. Why? Because it was too damned expensive!

Obama is no realist. He's a pie-in-the-sky liberal that seems to think that the replacement of the energy complex in this country is a simple legislative task. The reason that we are up to our eyeballs in gasoline and oil, today, is because it is cheap, portable, relatively safe and compactly storable; and, it is ubiquitous in its application. At the same time, the engines using oil-based fuels are reliable, relatively inexpensive, and powerful. No other energy source can, as of now, claim all those attributes. That includes ethanol, natural gas, wind, and solar.

Sure, we can make cars that run on something other than oil, but those cars have to be economical in both cost and operation before the masses of society accept them in their everyday lives. We have oil-based transportation systems today because petroleum beat out the horse and carriage and other technologies like the steam engine, when automobiles were in their early infancy.

If Obama wants us to get off of oil, he should get the automakers of the world together and ask them how we can migrate away from it. For sure, any acceptable fuel source has to be readily deliverable; so, any new fuel must be able to compete with the currently embedded base of millions of pumping stations that already span this country. That's why a fuel like natural gas has been limited to local fleet operations for buses and some trucks. Because these vehicles come back to a centralized garage everyday, they can easily refuel at that centralized point. But, for Americans to accept natural gas or any other fuel, they need to be able to refuel without going miles out of their way to do so.

Getting off of oil is a lot more complex than this naive President seems to think. There needs to be a decision as to what fuel will best suit us in the future. It can't be a hodgepodge of a bunch of short-term technologies. The conversion away from oil is only going to happen when the majority accepts it. People are not going to plop down thousands of dollars on a vehicle that they know can't take them anywhere but from home to work and back. They need cross country capability.

I personally think that the future is in hydrogen as fuel. It can be produced economically by using the electricity produced from environmentally-friendly wind and solar. Hydrogen, when burned, produces only water vapor. For the climate alarmists and the environmentalists, this is pure heaven because there is no CO2 associated with it.

I think that Obama would be smart to develop some kind of regional plan where the government, in cooperation with private industry, establishes a hydrogen production and delivery system in, say, the Southwest (ie. California because of the existing density of cars). Then, too, the auto industry would have to agree to produce hydrogen-run automobiles that would be targeted for that specific region or area of the country. If both properly implemented and economical, hydrogen's usage will naturally spread across the country; just as gasoline and diesel spread throughout the U.S. in the early days of the automobile. Then, finally, America will be free of its dependency on oil. That, to me, would be the smarter plan rather than punish America economically through some dumb Cap and Trade system that has done nothing, elsewhere, to reduce the world's dependency on carbon-based fuel. In fact, counties that fully embraced "green" technologies, like Spain, are in near bankruptcy and, now, forced to back off of their plans for solar and wind. For once, I would hope that Mr. Obama looks to those failing "green" countries before he tries to impose Cap and Trade or some other carbon tax system.