Government Does not Create; it Destroys

When Missouri achieved statehood in 1821, tens of thousands of immigrants rushed in looking for a better life. Many were escaping political, religious and economic oppression in Europe. Missouri's abundant and virtually untapped resources attracted large numbers of immigrants from Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria and eventually Italy. The rich soils, expansive waterway connections, timber and abundant game made Missouri a veritable Eden for the poor and the landless.

In 1824, Gottfried Duden, an optimistic traveler from Germany, arrived
on Missouri soil. He believed that many of Germany's woes resulted from overpopulation and poverty. Thinking emigration was the solution to these problems, Duden and his friend Louis Eversmann had set sail for America
to study the possibilities of German settlement in the United States.

Arriving in St. Louis, Duden and Eversmann found Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone and surveyor of government lands. Boone led them on a tour of the Missouri River valley.  For almost three years he lived in a cabin near Lake Creek, recording the weather, growing conditions and daily doings on his farm. In 1829 Duden published his findings back in Germany and it soon became a best-seller. To struggling—even starving—Germans back home, these words offered an almost irresistible allure of freedom and plenty. Feeling the oppression back home, the promotional writings of many Germans, including Duden's glowing account, inspired thousands of Germans to emigrate to the "New Rhineland."

As German settlers pushed westward, many carried carefully-wrapped clippings from their old world vineyards. Many of the groups traveled down the Ohio River from Cincinnati, to the Mississippi and up to the mouth of the Missouri River at St. Louis, right in the footsteps of Gottfried Duden.

Moving to a new land caused a deep yearning to preserve their heritage. In 1836, the German Settlement Society was intent on establishing a new "Fatherland" in America. They selected some land on the south bank of the Missouri River, west of St. Louis, and founded Hermann. The original town was laid out with some plots originally sold as wine plots, beginning in the 1840s. Though their settlement met with many hardships and the soil on the hills nearby wasn't appropriate for many forms of agriculture, by 1846 they had produced their first wine from locally cultivated grapes. In 1848, the town's wineries produced 1,000 gallons. By 1855, 500 acres of vineyard were in production and wine was being shipped to St. Louis and beyond. 

By 1870 Missouri led the nation in wine production and the North American Norton grape produced a wine made by a Missouri winery which won a gold medal in a Vienna competition in 1873. Five years later, another Missouri Norton Wine  Gold in Paris.  Norton wine was lauded not just for its taste but also for its presumed healthfulness as “the best medicinal wine in America.”  Missouri wines won eight gold medals at world fairs between 1873 and 1904

By 1900, Stone Hill Winery, which the German immigrant Michael Poeschel began building in 1847, was the third largest winery in the world (second largest in the U.S.), producing more than a million gallons of wine a year.

Before 1920, there were wineries in 48 Missouri counties. Long before anyone had ever heard of Harry Truman, Independence MO was known for its wine production. In fact, Missouri's Wine region grew to include more than 100 wineries.

It all came to an abrupt halt in 1920 with the passing of the Volstead Act and the addition of the 18th amendment to the Constitution.  Prohibition dealt a fatal blow to Missouri's wine industry. Many families lost their livelihood. The destruction of Stone Hill Winery completely ruined the local economy.  A full decade before the stock market crash of 1929, Hermann was plunged into the Great Depression.

It is said that when the Government Agents, “Revenuers” came to Stone Hill and began pouring the wine out, it flowed through the streets from three in the afternoon until two in the morning in a river three inches deep down the street and into the Missouri River.

But they didn’t stop there.  They destroyed all the equipment in such a way it could never be used again.  In most cases the only wine making equipment that survived was that which was taken to local churches, because they were exempted from the act so they could make their sacramental wines.   In fact, the only Missouri winery to survive this dry period was St. Stanislaus Novitiate, located in St. Louis, where the Jesuits continued to produce sacramental wine.

Following repeal of the act in 1934, Missouri's wine industry was nothing but a memory. High liquor taxes and license fees discouraged the industry's rebirth. People’s tasts had shifted as well to hard liquor as a result of the speakeasies, bathtub gin, gangsters, and moonshiners. A few dozen wineries did reopen, but much of Missouri remained legally dry, and a there was little demand for anything other than sweet, dessert-style wines. 

Some Norton vines survived in Missouri in what has been described as the vineyard of a bootlegger.  Prohibition’s destruction eradicated the Norton grape entirely from Virginia, its birthplace.

In 1965 Jim Held, a legitimate vintner obtained cuttings and started bringing the vine and Missouri winemaking back. Winemaking is on the rise in Missouri again, but the industry as a whole was probably set back one hundred years.  One article at the time says that a billion dollars (1920 dollars, second only to US Steel) was lost in the US in an instant due to the complete and utter destruction of the Alcohol Industry and lest we forget that is not just breweries, distilleries and vineyards. 

It is farms, labor, equipment manufacturers, bottlers, distributors (rail, sea, and highway), salesman, advertisers, retailers…everything: gone or greatly reduced.

But think about this, whether you like wine, or even don’t drink a drop of alcohol at all; this was a big big industry.  This was people’s culture, it was their livelihoods and their life’s work.  They came HERE from somewhere else to live their dreams.  They built something from nothing. The came to the US to build something and to make their families’ lives better and believed in the promise this country held enough to risk their lives to come here.  They were the leaders in their fields the champions of the industry.  They did it here, it was in America.  It was a legacy.  If not for prohibition Missouri, and by extension US wine, could have eclipsed all French or Italian winemaking.  We will never know.

How many of us would like to see our life’s work run through the streets and into the river and be gone; destroyed simply because of political pressure and authority?

We lost our history, people lost fortunes.  And it wasn’t an outside force that did it.  It was well meaning do-gooders who thought they could legislate morality.  We did it to ourselves, and we used our own government against us.

Think of all the other things that the US was or is known for being truly exceptional at.  Would you like to lose those simply due to government involvement?

The Automobile industry?  Oh, wait….nevermind.

The Fast Food and Soft drink industry…under assault

Possibly the best example:  The oil industry and our dependence on foreign oil.

The cost of gasoline in this country today is a direct result of us allowing political pressure to mandate economic and industrial reality based on a set of beliefs that are held by a certain set of people to the detriment of us all.  It is because of climate change alarmists and what amounts to a Volstead Act on the Oil Industry in this country.

Government is only force, fire, and destruction; it cannot create one thing and it is a power that doesn’t care who it is directed at.  It is simply a monster of destruction and chaos and you can never control it, and it would just as soon hurt one group as it would another.

Our only defense is in understanding what has been done with it in the past.

Suspension of Air Traffic Could Raise Temperatures Across Europe

Found this over at Coffee Milk Conservative: Suspension of Air Traffic Could Raise Temperatures Across Europe, I just started following her blog and have added her to the blogroll.  She is a reformed Leftie, so we know it can be done. 

As the drumbeat for Cap and Tax starts up again it is important not to forget how silly the whole Anthropogenic Climate Change argument has become and this post highlights that very well.  Apparently Air Traffic cools the planet.  Who knew?  The little vapor trails off of airplanes actually make temperatures go down planet wide (OH, COME ON!)

Correlation is not the same as Causation.  Grounding planes after 9/11 did not change WEATHER and it damn sure did not change CLIMATE. Following this logic I could say this: “ I ate a peanut butter sandwich yesterday and the sun shone all day long; therefore eating PB sandwiches makes the weather sunny and bright”. Secondly the GIANT ASH CLOUD *should* make it slightly, if not quite a bit, COOLER; despite the lack of contrails off of airplanes “making it hotter” (never mind that according to their standard fantasies jet exhaust makes the planet hotter).  So I guess the question in their minds (as if they used their minds to question anything) is:  Will the Man Made warming caused by Jet Exhaust be completely counteracted by the cooling effect of the Volcano (I am waiting for them to figure out a reason for the volcano eruption to be man-caused), and will the absence of the Jet Contrail water vapor contribute to more of a warming effect that the absence of jet exhaust will contribute to a cooling effect?   OH MY DEAR LORD -

Anyway, read on:

According to a report in the UK Mail online, the widespread grounding of planes in Europe – due to the eruption of Iceland’s Mount Eyjafjallajokull – could lead to an increase in temperatures across that continent. From the article:

A study conducted after commercial flights were grounded for three days following the September 11 terror attacks found the average daily temperature range in the U.S. rose markedly - exceeding the three-day periods before and after by 1.8c. (or it could have been all that fuel that caught fire… big fire you know, could have made it warmer- hey it is more plausible than their ridiculous “theory”)
The grounding of flights in 2001 gave scientists a 'tarnished but golden opportunity' to study the impact that jet planes have on the climate. (WEATHER WEATHER WEATHER, and the answer is: imperceptible)
They matched the weather over those three days with similar weather in September over that period, and found that the difference in daily high and nightly low temperatures in the absence of planes' contrails was more than 1c greater. (also in the absence of Unicorns, meteor showers, UFO landings, all manner of things that also have no effect on the temperature)
Scientists claimed this showed that clouds formed by the water vapour in the exhaust from jet planes have a small but significant effect on daily temperatures. (one degree C = 1.8 (+32) degree F, really?  jet contrails impact national temperature daily by two degrees?)
The researchers said that in regions with crowded skies, the clouds formed by the planes' water vapour worked like cirrus clouds to prevent days from getting too hot and trapping the Earth's heat at night.

I thought the carbon emissions produced by jet fuel contributed to global warming? Now I find out that water vapor – a byproduct of jet fuel combustion – helps to moderate the earth's temperature. Do you ever get the feeling that some people want to have it both ways?

Coffee Milk Conservative: Suspension of Air Traffic Could Raise Temperatures Across Europe,

My head hurts…

-KOOK

This is a story nearly as old as time itself

It really all comes down to who knows better.  It is the same story that most of you are familiar with as being told by Braveheart.  The Scots-Irish is the culture that more than any other begat the USA.   It goes way, way back to the time of the Romans several years before Christ’s birth, but really takes off not long after his death.  The Roman army conquered the south end of England but was never able to really take the north because there were crazy people up there who fought like madmen and painted themselves blue, they were called Picts.  They refused to bend a knee to a far away authority.  Their culture was based on family ties, personal honor, and leadership was only accepted after it had been earned.  Allegiance was to the most local level.  In AD 122 Hadrian began construction of a wall between the ‘civilized’ part of the island and the wild north. Kings tried again and again for literally hundreds of years to bring these ‘savages’ into line.  They burned whole towns, slaughtered them in droves but never, eva, eva, won.  These people had freedom hard wired into their DNA.  The Scottish ‘nobles’ eventually were bought off and became ‘civilized’ to the British way of thinking, but still the people themselves never submitted.  They did not view allegiance the same way as the Brits. The British view was of wealth and property, poor people owed their allegiance to their rich ‘betters’.  Scotsmen knew in their hearts every man, prince or pauper, was free, and as stated before their allegiance was to their Kin, then their Clan, then their neighbor clan. They were not isolationists like the gypsies, did not have a class caste system like the rest of Europe, and they freely intermarried with other groups, who then became Scots.  This is what we think of as  a “grassroots” organization now. Their religious affiliation was Protestant and they were some of the first.  The Brits had always also had difficulty with the Irish, for differing but similar reasons.  They decided getting the Scots to move into Ireland would allow them to take both Ireland and Scotland in time.  Bad plan.  Many Scots moved to Ireland in the Ulster Plantation under a colonization plan dreamt up by the Brits.  Soon the Irish and the Scots were fighting each other…when they weren’t both killing the English.  The Irish and the Scots had similar views on Freedom, but differing views on Religion.  Then the first colonization of North America began.  Some Scots-Irish left Ulster to come to the “new world”  with the Puritans thinking they too could have religious freedom, and to their way of thinking they were protestants just like the Puritans.  Not true.  The Puritans idea of religious freedom was that everyone should be ‘free’ to worship as the Puritans did (Everyone was entitled to their opinion, as long as it was the Puritan opinion).



  Scots again refused to be assimilated, and were pushed further west into the Appalachian mountains, which was similar to throwing Brer Rabbit into the Briar Patch.  More Scots came and they stayed in the Mountains, moving South all the while. They intermarried and had lots and lots of little Scots-Irish babies (up to 40% higher birthrates than other immigrants at the time).  Ohio was opened for settlement and by this time the Native Americans or “Indians” were wise to this tide of white men and so began killing of the more gentrified of the English settlers…  The aristocracy in Britain thought they knew just the people to send over to make the Indians lives rough…the Scots.  They sent Scotsmen literally by the boatload to cheap land on the wild western frontiers as as a buffer between “Civilization”  and the “Indians”.  The Scots did as predicted and more.  The Scots kept coming, causing at least one wealthy landowner in England to lament (paraphrasing) “why are we letting them move if it is only so that they can have a better life, how does that profit us?” because he was losing too many tenants on his vast landholdings. The Scots kept pushing the Indians, and still managed to cause problems with their more ‘enlightened, wealthy, and civilized betters’  When the American Revolution began many in England saw it as nothing more than just one more Scottish rebellion, some called it exactly that.  The vast majority of the Scots stayed out of the fray until the English using their typical bullying tactics that had so enraged Scotsmen for eons, really went too far.  Then buckskin Scots came down out of the hills near Kings Mountain and destroyed an entire British Loyalist force 10 to 1.  Then they did it again at Cowpens, which the Brits never recovered from, ending in their defeat at Yorktown.  The Scots refused to bend a knee, and the USA was born. Down through the ages, the Scots-Irish CULTURE, meaning not only those people descended from the Scots, but also those who became culturally inseparable from the Scots,  have fought in more battles and done more to defend Freedom than any other group of people.  They have given us most of our  presidents (61%), many of our founding fathers were Scotsmen by birth or culture.

 
   The battle is the same today in the 21st century. The Puritans, the Elite, Our Betters, the Democrats, the proponents of European Socialism believe they know better than us.  Us, of the Mountains of Appalachia, the Carolinas, descendents of the first settlers of Ky, TN, TX, AR, and the Missouri Ozarks and all points West.  Our ancestors were at the forefront of the frontier and settled the West because no one else was tough enough, crazy enough restless enough to do it.  They were always fighting and moving to try to keep their individual freedoms, to be LEFT ALONE.  Today we are called Hillbillies, Rednecks, Rubes, Hicks, Uneducated and Unenlightened.  We are the faceless ignorant electorate, “those People” in the “Flyover”.  What we really are is the Poor but Proud, the  Entrepreneurs, The self made men and women  who frickin run this country, just like our ancestors.

You. Are. Not. Our. Rulers.

-KOOK

Smart Grid: Smart for Whom?

 All this is taken directly from the NY Times article, if this stuff doesn’t anger and frighten you then I don’t think you are paying attention.

WASHINGTON — Millions of households across America are taking a first step into the world of the “smart grid,” as their power companies install meters that can tell them how much electricity they are using hour by hour — and sometimes, appliance by appliance. But not everyone is happy about it.

 Leo Margosian of Fresno, Calif., said his meter put July use at three times as much as last July's.

Customers in California are in open revolt, and officials in Connecticut and Texas are questioning whether the rush to install meters benefits the public.

[snip]

Elizabeth Keogh, a retired social worker in Bakersfield, Calif., who describes herself as “a bit chintzy,” has created a spreadsheet with 26 years of electric bills for her modest house. She decided that her new meter was running too fast.   Ms. Keogh reported to the utility that the meter recorded 646 kilowatt-hours in July, for which she paid $66.50; last year it was 474 kilowatt-hours, or $43.37.

[snip]

At one in Fresno, Calif., Leo Margosian, a retired investigator, testified that the new meter logged the consumption of his two-bedroom townhouse at 791 kilowatt-hours in July, up from 236 a year earlier. And he had recently insulated his attic and installed new windows, Mr. Margosian said.

At the urging of the state senator, Dean Florez, Democrat of Fresno and the chamber’s majority leader, and others, the California Public Utilities Commission is moving to bring in an outside auditor to determine whether the meters count usage properly.

[snip] To reduce their bills, customers could cut back at pricey peak times and shift some activities, like running a clothes dryer or a vacuum cleaner, to off-peak periods. Utilities will then have lower costs, the argument goes, because the grid will need fewer power plants as demand levels out.

Someday utilities hope to use the meter to control consumption by major appliances like air conditioners [!holy!shit!]. But experts are still debating what technical standards the meters and appliances should use to communicate.

[snip]  And with smart meters, utilities are alerted immediately if a customer’s power is out.

If a utility decides to shut off a customer for nonpayment, it can do so by remote control; if the customer pays enough money to allow resumption of service, the utility can also do that from a central office without sending out a representative. [!!! think of what else this means]

[snip]

But today, reining in energy consumption is less of a corporate priority: generating capacity is in surplus in almost all parts of the United States because the recession has shuttered so many factories. And in swaths of the eastern United States, the wholesale price difference between peak and off-peak demand is far smaller lately.  [so the point of this is…WHAT?  Politics of Greed is what it is]

The long-term impact of the smart meters is uncertain. Some studies show that people use less electricity when they can see the numbers ticking higher on the meter. [no joke, and when the power company turns your heat off or your AC off because they know better, or make a mistake, or kill your grandpa when they kill the oxygen machine that is sucking up too much power oh well, you cannot possibly be expected to take care of yourself, and it sounds like even if you track and understand your usage it is going to go up anyway.  Looks like from this the rate you are charged is whatever they want it to be that minute] I guess the only question I have is, Smart Grid: Smart for WHOM?

Read the complete article below:

‘Smart Grid’ Is Making Many Households Unhappy - NYTimes.com

So Where Do I stand on the issues?

My partner in crime asked Where do you Stand on issues the other day, and it is a great question. I started to answer just to clarify MY positions and it got too long for the comment section.


When I started this blog I would have to say I thought I was what commonly passes for Republican these days. The more I have discussed and aired my thoughts here and studied and read, the more I realize I am Constitutionally Libertarian. So in a nutshell here is my stance on the issues:
Fiscal Policy - Leave us alone. Free Market Capitalism is the way, the truth, and the light when it comes to fiscal policy. The government is the problem not the solution. Audit the Fed, Get rid of the Fed.

Freedom of speech - this means freedom of all speech even that which we disagree with and do not like or that which makes us uncomfortable. This means Fox news and even MSNBC news.



Freedom of Religion- not freedom from, even those ideologies that we do not agree with , as long as those people believing those ideologies can live peaceably with us and not blow up our planes, trains, automobiles, and buildings, or Kill our kids. Free to choose any religion, even none, realizing that this nation was founded on strong Judeo Christian traditions.



Second Amendment - Leave us Alone. It is plainly said in the constitution and there is a reason why. I have perfect gun control thank you: the ability to hit the target, and a good two hand weaver stance.


Abortion- LIFE, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Duh. I do not know exactly where life begins, but in lieu of knowing I will side with Life. It is totally illogical to be pro-abortion and anti-KFC


Taxes - will never be low enough.


Entitlements - breed cultures of dependency and need to be slowly and methodically scaled back and controlled. OASDI will not be there when I need it anyway, start letting me pay for my ancestors as well as save for MY future.


Anthropogenic Climate Change - Good story, right up there with Hansel and Gretel and the Three Little Pigs. All three are to get children and mental midgets to do something someone else wants them to do.




Wars- IF...IF, they are important enough to fight, fight hard, win decisively and come home quickly. Strike fear into the enemies heart and break his will to wage war and you won't have as many people trying to start stuff with you.


UN - keep them here and keep an eye on them, but never take them seriously.




Immigration - I am for all the LEGAL immigration we can stand. I am in favor of making it easier to obtain work authorization. But the line forms over there and no cutting, the rest of you go back the the end of the line, cross our border illegally again and we will shoot you.


Education - leave my damn kid alone, you can't run the post office, DMV, balance a checkbook, read a bill, tell the truth, obey the law, or pay your taxes. Leave my Kid alone. Vouchers are a good idea, let parents vote with their feet, and their school tax dollars. Then the schools that PERFORM will SUCCEED.


Unions- there was a time, fifty years ago, when Unions were a good thing. Now they are just PACs and Criminal Organizations that feed off of hard working people like a tick. They need to go the way of the dodo.



Healthcare - Leave me alone. Tort Reform, Entitlement reform, EMS reform, less insurance restrictions. That would help healthcare. What the Fed wants to do is not about healthcare or health insurance but about consolidating control and power.


Energy, for heaven’s sake drill here, drill now. All the Cars running on wishful thinking is not going to happen this decade or probably in the next two. So let's quit running ourselves into bankruptcy and prevent our economy grinding to a halt. Let's stop funding those entities which do not have our best interests at heart. Let's create some jobs in this country. No Smart grid, that is just like Government Healthcare, a joke and lever of control. Build some Nuclear power plants, they are good enough for China and France, why are they not good enough for us?
-Kook

The story of stuff

Let's conduct a little thought experiment shall we? I briefly toyed with the idea of going through this script line by line but it would be too long to hold a readers attention. So, read it yourself and then you tell me why it is unthinkable for this to be lauded as a great lesson to teach to our children. The new York Slimes has given this crap its seal of approval as a wonderful way for our kids to learn about many issues important to today.
Read the script and then post a comment or send me an email why this is wrong. Best comment gets it's own post here and at conservative blog central. Click the link to read the file:
The Story of Stuff annotad unabridged script.

Back To Basics Part I -Exceptionalism not Imperialism

Back To Basics - Part II - Exceptional Science
Back To Basics Part III - Exceptional Economy
Back To Basics Part IV - Exceptional Culture
Back to Basics V Recap

Read the Script to the Story of Stuff Here



Ps. The story, video, book, and website for this "educational material" is funded by the Tides Foundation. Friends of Apollo and Acorn.

If Obama Fails, It's Not His Fault

Posted by The Keeper of Odd Knowledge (Kook) with a big Hat Tip to : Right Klik: If Obama Fails, It's Not His Fault

It looks like the Demokrat MSM are preparing for what might be the inevitable failure of their Messiah's health care plan. Some amazing damage control memes are beginning to emerge:

1. Failure is good!

From Slate:

It's easy to forget that, even if Obama's health care effort is bogging down, the effort itself still serves his presidency as a crucial time-waster, tying up Congress and giving him a reason to postpone (or the public a reason to ignore) those other divisive, presidency-killers" [e.g. cap and trade, immigration legalization, card check and the Afghan War].

"If he keeps failing to pass health care until spring, that might not be such a bad outcome. In fact, even quick passage was maybe never in his interest. There are things more unpopular than struggling...

Failure is success? Yeah ― they're that desperate!

2. Obama's failure is really a failure of the national press corps, the left wing and the Demokratic party.

From The New York Times:

Throughout the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama’s most loyal constituencies were the national press corps and the left wing of the Democratic Party.

But now both groups are turning on him. As the health care debate enters its decisive weeks, the left doubts President Obama’s commitment, and the press doubts his competence.

...[we] assume that some kind of legislation will eventually pass.

If it doesn’t, President Obama will have been defeated. But it’s the party, not the president, that will have failed.

Rhetorical question: If Obama's not running the Demokrat party, who is???

3. Obama is bogged down because he has been working so hard to accommodate Republicans.

From Bloomberg:

Schumer, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday, said Obama and Democratic leaders are “bending over backwards” to win Republican support. “It’s looking less and less likely that certainly the Republican leadership in the House and Senate will want to go for a bipartisan bill,” he said.

As RNC chairman Michael Steele has pointed out, this claim is patently absurd. Demokrats have not been striving for ― nor have they been expecting ― Republican cooperation...

From Fox News:

Steele told reporters that he thinks if Democratic senators think they have the votes, they should try a tactic that would allow them to get around a bill-killing filibuster without the 60 votes usually needed. Steele said he didn't think Democrats would do it because of potential voter backlash.

"Get it to the floor. Up or down, baby," Steele said at a news conference at the state GOP headquarters. "Put it on the table. And if you don't think you've got enough votes to get to 60, you've got the nuclear option. You've got 51."

The legislative tactic Steele suggested, called "reconciliation," would allow senators to get around a bill-killing filibuster without mustering the 60 votes usually needed. Democrats control 60 of the Senate's 100 seats, but some moderate Senate Democrats have expressed reservations about Obama's plan.

4. Obama is failing because he's too nice.

From The LA Times, words of encouragement from Rep. Maxine Waters:

"Yes, we know that you are a nice man... But there comes a time when you need to drop that and move forward," Waters said. "We're saying to you, Mr. President, 'Be tough. Use everything that you've got. Do what you have to do. And we have your back.' "

Obama's "nice guy" veneer is barely skin deep. Barack "I WON" Obama, the self-described ruthless pragmatist, has already pulled out all the stops for his agenda. And that is precisely the problem.

Twenty-seven days after taking office, Obama abandoned his short-lived commitment to transparency and bipartisanship and signed his ill-conceived stimulus bill into law. In his frenzy to push the legislation through Congress, Barack had managed to earn the hesitant support of a grand total of two extant Republicans (RINOs, both from the same state).

Since that very turbulent moment, Americans have developed persistent doubts about Obama's judgement and leadership strategy. And in the process they have rediscovered their self-confidence. The Wall Street Journal explains:

American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.

Those protesters in those town-hall meetings have served notice that Mr. Obama's charismatic moment has passed. Once again, the belief in that American exception that set this nation apart from other lands is re-emerging.

Let's be clear. Obama's problem in implementing ObamaCare is not the press corps, the left wing Demokrats, the GOP, the protesters or the "naysayers". His critics aren't his problem. His proposal is.

Right Klik: If Obama Fails, It's Not His Fault

Parable of the Broken Window

I have been saying since day one on the blog that “ancient” history shows the fallacy of the things that are going on in our country and our economy in 2009. I have been (as usual) reading as much as I can get my hands on and have time for. And I ran across this little gem. Now many of you, and including me, KNOW that this “stimulus” is a farce. But check out the “parable of the broken window” I have tried to think of an analogy that fits this situation and have wanted to post this in a way that is easily explainable since we began this blog. Lo and behold, just like everything else, it has been done before. I am going to paraphrase and modernize it a bit for brevity and ease of understanding. I did not discover it at Wikipedia, but it is there.

There was a shopkeeper who had a son who helped around his father’s store. One day while cleaning he accidentally broke a window. This angered his father, the shopkeeper. He began to scold his son in front of the store patrons. Many of the patrons began to confront the shopkeeper telling him this was ok in the long run because if not for broken windows, glass repairmen would have no work. In this way the shopkeeper was providing stimulus to the local economy.

We have all heard this before. When a tornado/hurricane/ earthquake/flood hits, we say, “well that is a mixed blessing, it is a shame that all those people lost their homes, but it will be good for construction and the furniture stores and clothing stores etc.” Right? We have also heard that wars are good for our economy… It may be somewhat counterintuitive, but this is a logical fallacy that is easy to expose.

I heard my mother’s father (the one I mention in a previous post only completed 6th grade) say many times “money only spends once.” That sounds simple, right?

Let me put it this way: I run a mobile DJ service for parties and such. I heard of a good deal on some more speakers, amp, and equalizer, $300. This is a very good deal, from a guy who needs the money. I have a little fund that I maintain for equipment, it had almost $250 in it. I was preparing for an upcoming gig, getting my playlists right and everything and my amp quits working. So I have to go and buy a new amplifier. It costs almost $300. Now the website where I buy my amplifier thinks this is great, because they have made a sale. Much like the Government, I have put money into circulation, but I have not PROFITED anything. What of the forgotten man; the individual who wanted to sell me the equipment? This is not only about me and the website I buy my equipmet from. The Forgotten Man still has his merchandise to sell and most certainly does not want it, but now I am not able to buy it from him. What about me? Have I increased in capability, have I profited, have I increased my worth? No, I am at the same level as I was before. All I have done is replaced my “window” I was not able to increase my worth.

As the original parable tells us

“It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented”

This is the argument of “that which is seen, and that which is not seen” What we see is that he bought a window, we do not see what he was not able to do with that money. Because, when you spend money on one thing, you cannot spend it on another.

This assumes you had the money to begin with. What if it was borrowed money? Now you are actually in debt further, and unless what you bought on credit would create more worth than what you are now paying in interest you will not come out ahead. My Dad sells horses, and he says “you will never go broke taking a profit.” the converse is true as well, “you will always go broke taking a loss”

How we can believe that borrowing money to get out of debt is not insanity I do not know. Further, none of the projects that I have seen go to the actual manufacture of products, but only to repair what we already had. Roads, bridges, power plants, etc. This is all great, but it is only fixing the broken window, not buying us new equipment for our business.

When and by whom was this parable written? 1850 by a Frenchman named Frédéric Bastiat.

Scare Tactics????

I have been pondering the vote on energy tax all morning. I was wondering why those Repubs would vote just enough to get this passed in the house by 1 vote. This seemed odd to me, and then I remembered that these are politicians running for election in 2010. I am wondering if maybe the Republicans (knowing that they have Dems strongly siding with them in the Senate against this travesty) gave Pelosi a one vote win intentionally. Is it possible that knowing this has no chance in the Senate, the Repubs intend to use this as a weapon in 2010 so the gave in just enough to let it pass by 1 vote in the house. This is putting more faith in Repubs than I usually have, but we are entering the time when both parties will begin posturing for the upcoming elections and maybe this is an attempt to give Dems the rope to hang themselves as they did in 93/94. This goes back to Minority Leader Boener's curious statement that Repubs are allowing Debate....to leave it to those across the street to do their jobs. AS far as I'm concerned this would be dangerous brinksmanship with the future of the country but it is a scenario worth considering.

Energy tax thoughts...

This started as a comment on Left Coast Rebel's blog, but as they sometimes do, it started to look more like an appropriate post so I brought it over here too...

I have already started my attack on the RNC which was oddly absent and silent during a time when the house was going to pass the biggest attack on our economy in history. This was a chance for Republicans to stand up in unison and show where they are different from the sniveling wolves across the aisle and they did not. Yes, many Republicans put up a good fight but Michael Steele should as the head of the RNC been there twisting arms in a huge way. He also should be making the "rounds" on the cable news channels, apologizing to the American people for the actions of the sniveling elephants that joined the sniveling donkeys.

I want to thank all of you for helping in the assault on you various congressman/or women's e-mail boxes and the local and congressional switchboards to which I never got trough. This may have impacted, as LCR said, the vote enough that the senate will be much more timid about voting on it. Or we will have to have an election so far to the "right" that a push to repeal all this garbage happens.

Cap and tax...

Passed the house, but barely. We have one chance left with the senate. I know what McCaskill will do...the syncophant.

Please...let's do all we can...this is bad news for the country.

BBCW: If You Think This Car Review is Bad, Just Wait Until Obama and the Government Starts Building Cars: Honda Insight Hybrid

If You Think This Car Review is Bad, Just Wait Until Obama and the Government Starts Building Cars: Honda Insight Hybrid

Rush Limbaugh featured this review of the Honda Insight on his show today. Before he read this, which had me laughing at times and crying for the state of my country at other times, he pointed out that Obama's CAFE standards will kill more Americans on the highways than the total American deaths in Iraq. He cited a statistic by the National Highway Safety Administration, and something this blog has tried to drive home with Obama's plans to shink cars.

For every 100 pounds lighter they make cars to meet the CAFE standards, thee NHSA estimates there are up to 715 more deaths on the highway per year. Obama wants the biggest cars off the road, and chances are we are going to have cars we hate.

This review of the Honda Insight Hybrid by Jeremy Clarkson shows what a sad state the auto industry will be in with more forced oversite and government mandates.

Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.
So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).

It doesn’t work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

Because the Honda has two motors, one that runs on petrol and one that runs on batteries, it is more expensive to make than a car that has one. But since the whole point of this car is that it could be sold for less than Toyota’s Smugmobile, the engineers have plainly peeled the suspension components to the bone. The result is a ride that beggars belief.

There’s more. Normally, Hondas feel as though they have been screwed together by eye surgeons. This one, however, feels as if it’s been made from steel so thin, you could read through it. And the seats, finished in pleblon, are designed specifically, it seems, to ruin your skeleton. This is hairy-shirted eco-ism at its very worst.

However, as a result of all this, prices start at £15,490 — that’s £3,000 or so less than the cost of the Prius. But at least with the Toyota there is no indication that you’re driving a car with two motors. In the Insight you are constantly reminded, not only by the idiotic dashboard, which shows leaves growing on a tree when you ease off the throttle (pass the sick bucket), but by the noise and the ride and the seats. And also by the hybrid system Honda has fitted.

In a Prius the electric motor can, though almost never does, power the car on its own. In the Honda the electric motor is designed to “assist” the petrol engine, providing more get-up-and-go when the need arises. The net result is this: in a Prius the transformation from electricity to petrol is subtle. In the Honda there are all sorts of jerks and clunks.

And for what? For sure, you could get 60 or more mpg if you were careful. And that’s not bad for a spacious five-door hatchback. But for the same money you could have a Golf diesel, which
will be even more economical. And hasn’t been built out of rice paper to keep costs down.

Of course, I am well aware that there are a great many people in the world who believe that the burning of fossil fuels will one day kill all the Dutch and that something must be done.

They will see the poor ride, the woeful performance, the awful noise and the spine-bending seats as a price worth paying. But what about the eco-cost of building the car in the first place?

Honda has produced a graph that seems to suggest that making the Insight is only marginally more energy-hungry than making a normal car. And that the slight difference is more than negated by the resultant fuel savings.

Hmmm. I would not accuse Honda of telling porkies. That would be foolish. But I cannot see how making a car with two motors costs the same in terms of resources as making a car with one.
The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a tree house, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight production plant in Suzuka. And then the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, to Britain, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he’s doing the world a favour.

Why doesn’t he just buy a Range Rover, which is made from local components, just down the road? No, really — weird-beards buy locally produced meat and vegetables for eco-reasons. So why not apply the same logic to cars?

At this point you will probably dismiss what I’m saying as the rantings of a petrolhead, and think that I have my head in the sand.

That’s not true. While I have yet to be convinced that man’s 3% contribution to the planet’s greenhouse gases affects the climate, I do recognise that oil is a finite resource and that as it becomes more scarce, the political ramifications could well be dire. I therefore absolutely accept the urgent need for alternative fuels.

But let me be clear that hybrid cars are designed solely to milk the guilt genes of the smug and the foolish. And that pure electric cars, such as the G-Wiz and the Tesla, don’t work at all because they are just too inconvenient.

Since about 1917 the car industry has not had a technological revolution — unlike, say, the world of communications or film. There has never been a 3G moment at Peugeot nor a need to embrace DVD at Nissan. There has been no VHS/Betamax battle between Fiat and Renault.

Car makers, then, have had nearly a century to develop and hone the principles of suck, squeeze, bang, blow. And they have become very good at it.

But now comes the need to throw away the heart of the beast, the internal combustion engine, and start again. And, critically, the first of the new cars with their new power systems must be better than the last of the old ones. Or no one will buy them. That’s a tall order. That’s like dragging Didier Drogba onto a cricket pitch and expecting him to be better than Ian Botham.
And here’s the kicker. That’s exactly what Honda has done with its other eco-car, the Clarity. Instead of using a petrol engine to charge up the electric motor’s batteries, as happens on the Insight, the Clarity uses hydrogen: the most abundant gas in the universe.

The only waste product is water. The car feels like a car. And, best of all, the power it produces is so enormous, it can be used by day to get you to 120mph and by night to run all the electrical appliances in your house. This is not science fiction. There is a fleet of Claritys running around California right now.

There are problems to be overcome. Making hydrogen is a fuel-hungry process, and there is no infrastructure. But Alexander Fleming didn’t look at his mould and think, “Oh dear, no one will put that in their mouth”, and give up.

I would have hoped, therefore, that Honda had diverted every penny it had into making hydrogen work rather than stopping off on the way to make a half-arsed halfway house for fools and madmen.

The only hope I have is that there are enough fools and madmen out there who will buy an Insight to look sanctimonious outside the school gates. And that the cash this generates can be used to develop something a bit more constructive.

BBCW: If You Think This Car Review is Bad, Just Wait Until Obama and the Government Starts Building Cars: Honda Insight Hybrid

Very in depth look at how Cap and Tax will work; prime example of how Government fails every time; and also how Environazism is just about the Benjamin$.

As stated in my previous post, this all went down pretty much in Carthage MO. So this is a two part Post from two perspectives, one of the local perspective and the second article from today in a more national level. Reading all of this shows you how it really works.

First here is some more background information on the players in this game.

From Wikipedia:

Changing World Technologies (CWT), a privately-held company, was founded in August 1997 by Brian S. Appel, the current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CWT and its subsidiaries. CWT was started primarily to develop and commercialize the thermal depolymerization technology, now referred to by the company as "thermal conversion process", developed and patented by Paul Baskis. The process produces renewable diesel fuel from agricultural and livestock wastes.
Baskis has since left CWT, but the company has retained the rights to his patents ...

In 1998, CWT started a subsidiary, Thermo-Depolymerization Process, LLC (TDP), which developed a demonstration and test plant for the thermal depolymerization technology. The plant opened in 1999 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Another of CWT’s subsidiaries and affiliate companies is Renewable Environmental Solutions, LLC (RES), which was formed in 2000. It is a joint venture between ConAgra Foods and CWT to develop the processing of agricultural waste and low-value streams throughout the world. RES, now wholly owned by CWT, has the "first commercial biorefinery in the world that can make oil from a variety of waste streams,[3] principally waste from the nearby ConAgra Butterball turkey processing plant in Carthage, Missouri. According to Biomass magazine, "CWT’s thermal conversion process is a commercially viable method of reforming organic waste that converts approximately 250 tons of turkey offal and fats per day into approximately 500 barrels of renewable diesel."[4] In addition to other problems, production costs turned out to be $80 a barrel, much higher than the anticipated $15. As of 2006[update], however, the Carthage plant was expected to generate a small profit.[3]
...

On March 4, 2009 after a failed IPO attempt, Changing world Technologies along with subsidiary Renewable Energy Systems filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Plant closing mixed blessing for Carthage

By Associated Press

Associated Press

Wed Apr 22, 2009, 11:13 AM CDT CARTHAGE, Mo. -

A decision by the owner of a renewable fuel plant to file for bankruptcy last month has brought mixed emotions to a community that has lost not only an odor that tormented it for years, but also about 50 jobs.

Renewable Environmental Solutions owner Brian Appel says he's hoping to reopen the plant that had converted turkey guts, bones and feathers into diesel fuel, but next time he'll use corn oil and grease to produce the fuel.

…

The turkey waste produced a stomach-churning smell that sometimes blanketed the town and prompted lawsuits from citizens and fines from the state attorney general's office.

Appel spent millions of dollars trying to control the smell, but he couldn't control plummeting energy prices that paid him $1.19 a gallon for oil that cost more than $11 a gallon to produce.

…

RES came to town as a demonstration plant in 2001, when the $15 million project gained much fanfare for Appel's vision of beginning production the following spring and that eventually technology would let it produce 12 billion gallons of oil a year.

But production didn't begin until 2004, and by May 2005 the plant was processing 270 tons of turkey waste into 300 barrels of oil a day.

Soon hundreds of complaints about odors put the plant in the national spotlight, but not in a good way.

"They promised us no odors when they came in," said Carthage Mayor Jim Woestman. "The odors are so bad that it would buckle your knees."

Then-Attorney General Jay Nixon cited the plant at least seven times for odors, and in December 2005 then-Gov. Matt Blunt ordered the plant to shut down until Appel could figure out how to control the smell.

The next year, Nixon fined the plant $125,000. Though state investigators said the smell was coming from other places, some residents remained certain the odors were still coming from RES and filed lawsuits.

…

…

Appel's bankruptcy petition shows that by Sept. 30, 2008, his related companies had a debt of $117.8 million, some of which was caused by the collapse of the renewable fuels industry.

"I wish they could solve the problem," Woestman said, "because it would have been great for the world, but they did not. We didn't want the city of Carthage to be sacrificed for what they were trying to do."

Plant closing mixed blessing for Carthage - Carthage, MO - Carthage Press

The mysterious death of the chicken-fat car

By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
05/19/09 8:21 PM EDT

As President Barack Obama unfurls his fuel-economy standards and Congress takes up global warming regulations, it’s useful to remember that what emerges from environmental policymaking is not necessarily what’s best for the planet, but instead what’s best for special interests.

Consider the epic and somewhat bizarre struggle over clean fuels that ended last week. As usual, special interests were central to the drama. But the antagonists seemed right out of a Monty Python sendup of Washington politics: An oil company, hoping to profit from making trucks run on chicken fat, was thwarted by the soap industry’s lobby.

The chicken-fat story is a cautionary tale about how environmental policy actually gets made.

It began in 2005, when President George W. Bush signed an energy bill including a $1-per-gallon tax credit for “renewable diesel” fuel created through “thermal depolymerization.” Writer Rina Palta reported in the liberal American Prospect that Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., wrote the measure “to benefit a floundering company in his home district that produces boiler fuel from turkey offal, which did not qualify chemically as ‘biodiesel.’ ”

At the time, Congress was eagerly providing subsidies to turn plants and animals into fuel, so it didn’t seem farfetched to boost the cause of fowl entrails. But unintended consequences soon arrived, proving once again that the biggest companies usually find a way to profit from government intervention.

In April 2007, the Internal Revenue Service ruled that Blunt’s tax credit had broader applications. Within two weeks, ConocoPhillips and Tyson Foods saw that the IRS had opened the door for a joint venture to melt chicken, cow, and pig fat into diesel fuel. Conoco Chief Executive Officer James Mulva was honest about his unusual undertaking: “It’s not profitable without the $1 per gallon tax credit,” he said at a news conference.

But this renewable fuel had enemies. First, Democrats didn’t like any subsidy that helped an oil company like Conoco. (Blunt, for his part, said he never wanted to help oil companies, and that the law should be changed.)

Second, business lobbyists were also working to kill the subsidy for chicken fat. The obvious opponents were chicken fat’s competitors — the companies that turn vegetables into diesel fuel. The National Biodiesel Board, which spends nearly $1 million a year on lobbying, pushed hard to ensure the $1-per-gallon subsidy for clean diesel didn’t also apply to the Conoco-Tyson operation.

But the issue of “renewable biodiesel” also turned up on the lobbying filings of the Dial Corporation and the Soap and Detergent Association. Just as ethanol subsidies have driven up the price of food, it turned out that fat-to-fuel subsidies boosted the cost of manufacturing soap, which is also made of animal fat. So Dial and the Soap and Detergent Association, displeased that Tyson now had somewhere else to peddle its fat, also lobbied to kill the chicken-fat diesel subsidy.

While their own interests were obvious, the soap and biodiesel lobbies argued that chicken-fat diesel was not good for the environment. But the Environmental Protection Agency ruled this month that “biodiesel or renewable diesel made from animal fat or used cooking oil results in an 80 percent reduction from carbon emissions versus petroleum diesel,” according to Darling International, a company that deals in animal-fat diesel. Darling added in its first-quarter 2009 report, “That is the highest level of carbon reduction available from any commercially ready fuel.”

Both sides claimed to be aiding the environment. Both had profits at stake. The soap side just had better lobbyists than the chicken side. When Congress rushed the massive Wall Street bailout to passage last fall, it extended many special-interest tax breaks, but it specifically killed the $1-per-gallon break for animal-product diesel, leaving chicken-fat diesel with a subsidy of only 50 cents per gallon. Big soap and big biodiesel had defeated big oil and big chicken.

Last week, Conoco and Tyson announced they were axing their joint venture, at least until the $1-per-gallon credit returns.
Maybe Congress can take a lesson from the chicken-fat story: Stopping the oceans’ rise or cleaning the air are lofty concepts, but behind closed doors, environmental policy is often driven by less ambitious motivations.

The mysterious death of the chicken-fat car Washington Examiner

What does cap and trade have to do with Animal Waste? More than you think, and not what you think.

Another great article from the Heritage Foundation. I find it even more interesting as I live in a rural area of a rural state, and a local town had the turkey rendering facility that the article mentions until it was thankfully shut down (according to the article because it became non-profitable when the government subsidy ran out, imagine that). Anyone who says that these operations are environmentally friendly does not have a sense of smell. If you can imaging what smoldering feathers, rotting turkeys, and road tar would smell like all mixed up that is about what the town smelled like most of the time they were running. They said they spent millions to make it safe, but many townspeople felt that anything that smelled that bad was likely not good for air quality either. Then they started only running at night, but unlucky for them there are many other industries in the local area that run 24 hours. The Missouri Dept of Natural Resources and the EPA set up a special hotline for people to call to report the odors. The EPA levied fines and injunctions against the company. Some folks might have even had the hotline number posted on bulletin boards near phones in factories to help employees call and complain. It would literally make you sick to your stomach at times. Anyway, what does this have to do with Cap and Tax? Well it is the exact same game. Read on to get the full picture…

The Waxman-Markey Pay to Play

When Congress passed its last major energy legislation in 2005, a minor provision was added late in the legislative process that created a $1-per-gallon tax credit for “renewable diesel” fuel created through “thermal depolymerization.” The measure was included to benefit a single firm that produced boiler fuel from turkey waste, but in 2007 the Internal Revenue Service ruled that the tax credit also applied to other livestock waste. This led corporate giants ConocoPhillips and Tyson Foods to form a joint venture that turned chicken, cow, and pig fat into diesel fuel.

But just as ethanol mandates drove up the price of food, diverting Tyson’s animal fat into the energy market drove up the costs of manufacturing soap. So the soap lobby fought back and earlier this year Congress cut the thermal depolymerization tax credit in half. This made the Conoco/Tyson venture unprofitable, which they have since discontinued.
What does this have to do with the Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation currently being debated in Congress? Everything. In order to win enough votes to pass cap and trade, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has given the corporate members of the United States Climate Action Partnership (which includes both private and government-controlled firms like General Electric, Duke energy, Chrysler, and General Motors) a front-row seat in writing the legislation. The motives of these major corporations are simple: if they cooperate with big government in drafting the legislation, they can cut deals to protect their bottom line. If they don’t play ball, then big government will just tilt the regulatory scheme in their competitors favor. As the New York Times reports, this is exactly what is happening in the House now:

Cap and trade, by contrast, is almost perfectly designed for the buying and selling of political support through the granting of valuable emissions permits to favor specific industries and even specific Congressional districts. That is precisely what is taking place now in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has used such concessions to patch together a Democratic majority to pass a far-reaching bill to regulate carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade plan.

The Center for Public Integrity released a study today showing that lobbying on the Waxman-Markey bill has been dominated by just 10 major lobbying firms. And yesterday the United States Climate Action Partnership released a statement in support of Waxman-Markey explaining:

As USCAP has indicated, there are several key linked issues that must fit together to ensure a climate protection program is environmentally effective, economically sustainable and fair. In some instances, that does not occur in this legislation. … Individual USCAP members will continue to work with Congress to address these matters in a satisfactory manner.

Oh, we’re sure they will.