Tag Archives: energy independence

The USA: Back in the USSR!

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We used to laugh at Boris and Natasha, never dreaming that the USA would someday replace the former USSR as the world’s most stupid, backwards, nonsensible socialist nation.

Did you feel sorry for Soviet moms waiting in line at the grocery store only to find empty shelves? That could never happen in the mighty USA, the world’s economic dynamo and home of free markets, right? Lately American shoppers are finding not only empty shelves and six-month lead times for ordinary products, but also Argentina-style price inflation.

The United States once had a vibrant free press that would investigate government corruption in a New York minute, while in the USSR, Pravda was the only news available to Russian citizens, and it was nothing more than propaganda straight from the totalitarian Soviet government. Hmmm, kind of sounds like CNN, MSNBC, and Facebook, right? Hunter who?

The USA, through applied technology and free enterprise, became energy independent and enjoyed the economic boost that abundant and affordable energy (oil and natural gas) can provide. But wait, our new administration is pushing alternative energy without considering the scientific realities: solar and wind can’t come close to the reliability, sustainability and low cost of petroleum energy.

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Cars from the USSR back in the day were almost useless. Check out our new $50,000 high-tech electric cars that require a 75 amp service for recharging when most homes only are wired for 100 amps, and our electric grid limits us to only three Teslas per block in most cities. Plus the puny 274 mile range of our best hybrids and 10-hour recharge cycle makes long distance travel impossible even if you can afford the cost of the electricity that is ten times the cost per mile of gasoline.

But we still have our freedom, right? At least we don’t have a KGB watching our every move and abusing our rights. No, we have the FBI tapping our phones and emails and instigating “insurgencies” to harass and arrest anyone who opposes our oppressive federal government.

Soviet elections were known world-wide to be manipulated. Now the USA sets the world standard in election fraud, making Vladimir Putin look like a piker.

But boy, the Soviets sure screwed up in Afghanistan, didn’t they?

What a bunch of losers! So glad that couldn’t happen to our vaunted American military – our foreign policy is so superior that we now have a transgendered four-star admiral in leadership. Thanks, Mr. President, for striking fear into the hearts of our adversaries.

Yeah, haha. The old Soviet Union sure was a joke.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

I’m back in the U.S.S.R.
You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the U.S.S.R.

Back in the USSR – the Beatles

More Ugly Obama/Clinton Crony Corruption

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hillary-and-warren-buffett

Hillary Clinton and billionaire Warren Buffett, who invested $30 billion in taxpayer-subsidized solar and wind energy –  photo by NPR

Robert Murray may be the most frustrated and abused CEO in the USA.

The owner of Murray Energy is the last man standing in the fight to save the coal industry from the Obama / Clinton “war on coal”, and his emotional appeals on the news networks reveal that he may be down for the count.

robert-murrayMurray grew up poor, picking up a shovel at age 16 to keep his family afloat after his father was paralysed in a mine accident.  He persevered through good times and bad to become one of the biggest players in the coal business, and now, at age 75, Murray sees all his hard work and investment going up in smoke, along with the livelihoods of his employees.

When President Obama declared in 2008 that he would destroy the coal industry, he wasn’t kidding. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” he said.  “It’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Over 400 coal mines have shut down since then, putting 83,000 miners on the street.  As coal companies headed for the exits, Murray bought many of them, unable to accept that the nation would allow such a valuable and strategically critical industry to just die at the whim of an imperious and misguided president.

Eight years later, Obama’s pre-ordained successor, Hillary Clinton, has doubled down, promising to “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Obama’s and Clinton’s pretense for eliminating the source of one-third of America’s electricity is their desire to save the planet and its inhabitants from “carbon pollution”.  But Murray isn’t buying it, as he told Fox Business:

“Windmills and solar panels generate 26 cent per kilowatt hour electricity – coal is only 4 cents a kilowatt hour.  The reason why she wants to see coal eliminated is because she’s getting millions of dollars of kickback to the Clinton Foundation and to her campaign from people who she says needs government help. You know who she’s talking about? She’s talking about Warren Buffett, the Pritzkers, Elon Musk, Tom Steyer—all billionaires that are making billions of dollars off of windmills and solar panels that are made in China.”

“She’s getting hundreds of millions of dollars from some of the largest banks in the country, from some of the largest electric utilities, and from these billionaires that I just mentioned.  They need the subsidies – wind and solar are not competitive with coal or other fossil fuels.  So they are making billions of dollars, these billionaires, and they are kicking back millions to the Clinton Foundation and to Hillary Clinton – it’s a story we have been hearing over and over.  The lowest 25 million families on the poverty scale in the country now spend 22 cents of every dollar they earn for energy.  We need to be worrying about the energy poverty in this country, not making more billionaires as Hillary Clinton attempts to eliminate the reliable low-cost electricity and substitute these ‘crony capitalists’.  It’s fraud – it’s absolute fraud!”

Today President Obama announced his “Clean Power Plan”, a new set of standards to limit “carbon pollution” from power plants.  The plan makes the outwardly pure-hearted promise to “decrease the pollutants that contribute to the soot and smog and can lead to more asthma attacks in kids by more than 70 percent.”  We all love kids, and don’t want them breathing soot and smog, right?  But the plan’s main thrust is to control carbon dioxide emissions, which have absolutely nothing to do with “soot and smog”.  Carbon dioxide is clear and odorless, it is necessary for plant life, and it has no impact on global temperatures or pollution of any kind.

coal-fired-power-generation-plantDemocrats sob about “the children” and flaunt blown-up photos of old Chinese factories belching smoke, pretending they are modern American electrical power generation plants and hoping the low-information public will believe the carbon dioxide hoax pumped through their politically-motivated news media.  Meanwhile, they destroy our clean and efficient energy infrastructure for no purpose other than to generate profit for their crony friends and receive kickbacks in return.

I never dreamed my government could become so corrupt, or that so many of our citizens would be unwilling or unable to put up a fight.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

Hanging on every word, believing the things I heard
Being a fool
You’ve taken my life, so take my soul
That’s what you said and I believed it all
Liar!  Liar!

Liar – Three Dog Night

 

 

Walk the talk, Democrats!

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Our nation faces a two-pronged economic problem.  We no longer produce the wealth or the jobs that our growing population requires.

That’s mainly because we don’t manufacture like we used to.  The USA has become a service-based economy, and most of our service activity does not create wealth – it merely pushes it around from one pocket to another.  We have abdicated our manufacturing prowess to developing countries, and according to the economic concept of “comparative advantage”, that should be a good thing – but only if we still have a way to make a living.

We have agricultural output that is the envy of the world.  But technology and corporate consolidation of farmland have largely eliminated employment in that sector.

We still are recognized as the world’s top producer of intellectual property – ideas, concepts, programs, designs, inventions.  Some of us are creative, and that generates wealth.  But not enough wealth to carry those of us who aren’t – the ones who used to work in factories and on farms.

So what does that leave us?  How will the US build employment and create wealth in the new world economy?

It always comes back to supply and demand, as I pointed out in a recent post.  Wealth comes from producing what the customer wants and needs.  Scarcity has value.  And in the United States, we have something scarce and valuable that the rest of the world desperately wants and needs:  Energy.

We are reminded every day how rich our homeland is in energy resources.  And we have the technology to extract, convert, and transport energy safely and efficiently.  It would generate much needed wealth and employment.  What’s holding us back?

Intransigence.  Bull-headed stubbornness.  The inability on the part of the liberal half of our nation to admit that they have been wrong.

Those who still oppose developing our traditional energy resources can’t admit that wind and solar are a colossal failure.  They won’t face the fact that nobody wants electric cars because they suck.  They hide the fact that more than half of the solar companies the federal government has subsidized have collapsed.  They pretend that today’s oil, gas, and coal industries still operate with ancient, polluting facilities and methods.

President Obama feigns concern about our energy dependence, the cost of fuel, and the sour economy.  He brags about how oil and natural gas production are up on his watch.   But he won’t admit that he has significantly cut oil leases on federal land.  And at the same time he announces that he has unilaterally (without Congress) decided to further restrict leases in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, which was created 90 years ago specifically for oil production.

The Democrats say they want to create jobs.  They say they want to improve the economy and reduce our debt.

Why don’t they do what they say?

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Enjoy some of the best rock of the 80’s

Why don’t they do what they say?
Say what they mean?
One thing leads to another.
You told me something wrong,
I know I listen too long,
But then one thing leads to another.