Economic Expectations and the 2012 Election

Posted on 18-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

Obama will not win reelection if the US economy during the latter half of 2012 is similar to the economy we see now.  I do not subscribe to the theory that Obama will win reelection by spouting the ‘do nothing Congress’ meme and using his bulging war chest to launch attack ads at the Republican candidate.  I just don’t buy it and I believe the American people will reprise the famous James Carville phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” that got Clinton elected in 1992.

In the past 50 years, no sitting President won reelection when the Unemployment rate was over 7.2%.  This 7.2% threshold isn’t derived from economic and political models but instead comes from the fact that in 1984 Reagan defeated Walter Mondale with 59% of the vote and carried 49 states even though the Unemployment rate was 7.2%.   No other incumbent President won reelection with an Unemployment rate higher than this so the is the empirically derived upper limit.  It must be stated for the record that Reaganomics dropped the Unemployment rate from 10% during his first term and it was obvious that things were turning around and the great recovery promised by applying fiscally Conservative economic principles was happening. 

Raise your hand if you think the Unemployment rate will drop below 7.2% over the next 12 months.  It might if more people leave the workforce in mass quantities since the Unemployment rate only considers those actively looking for work but I don’t think this will happen.  The employment to population rate was 62.7% before the latest recession and is currently at 58.5% so if the same number of people were looking for work in 2012 that were looking in 2007 the Unemployment rate would be 11%.  

Obama’s 2009 Stimulus and the over regulation from the EPA, DoJ, FDA and HHS have not created jobs and US businesses are basically waiting for the shackles to be removed from the economy.  After the Free Market is allowed to work by reducing government spending and lifting regulations, then we’ll have a true recovery from the great recession of 2008/2009.  These conditions won’t happen with a Democrat controlled Senate and Obama in the White House so we’d expect the economy to remain in its current malaise until after the 2012 elections.  But I think there might be a scenario where the US economy starts to improve dramatically as we get closer to the elections of 2012. 

In our modern world, with information available to all with the click of a mouse, tap of a finger on an iPad or from any of the 24 hour news cable channels, the average American is fully aware of economic expectations and how those expectations will impact their business and personal finances.  Our Economy still obeys the classical laws of supply and demand but the theory of rational expectations also dominates the Macro Economy.    

A post from the Library of Economics and Liberty explains this theory:

The theory of rational expectations was first proposed by John F. Muth of Indiana University in the early 1960s. He used the term to describe the many economic situations in which the outcome depends partly on what people expect to happen.

With so much information available to the individual investor, CEO and small business owner, they not only based their business/investing decisions on sound economic principles but they also base their decisions on what they expect the future to hold.  If a business owner expects higher regulation from a government agency or higher costs from compliance with OBamacare then they’ll make choices to reduce hiring, scale back production and cut operating costs and this is exactly what has happened over the past couple of years.  But if they expect the future to harbor a business friendly environment then they’ll hire more workers, increase production and add capital to their business in preparation for the forthcoming boom.  Likewise, if consumers see good times on the horizon they will grab big screen TV’s, buy a new house, purchase a new car and invest heavily in the Stock Market.

So here is why I think the economy will improve dramatically as we get closer to the 2012 elections.  As the Republican Presidential candidate gets selected and he eviscerates Obama all along the campaign trail (and in debates) then Americans will start realizing that 1) Obama will be a one term president and  2) many of the hindrances on business will be removed in 2013.   Companies will start to hire, manufacturing will ramp up, companies will purchase capital equipment to prepare for the real recovery and consumers will start spending some of the money they have saved.

So is a recovering economy in 2012 a bad thing?  If the economy improves dramatically prior to the 2012 elections will Obama try and spin this as a result of his policies?   Will the American people buy that lie?  As a Conservative, I want to flip the Senate and remove Obama from office but a recovering economy might make that goal more difficult to attain.

As an American I want our economy to improve but as a Conservative do I secretly root for the current malaise to continue?

The theory of rational expectations for the economy is real and can’t be manipulated as if we were living in an Atlas Shrugged novel (where John Galt and others intentionally remove the economic engine from America to teach Liberals a lesson).  The Free Market will adjust according to positive expectations and it is my opinion that the economy will improve in 2012 in spite of the deleterious policies of Obama and the Liberals in Congress.  It will happen and you can say you heard it here first.

Posted in economics, politics | 1 Comment

We Don’t Have to Wait for the Death Panels

Posted on 16-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

We do not have to wait for the Obamacare’s Death Panels to see how over regulation from the Federal Government will kill Americans.  It is happening right now and will get worse in 2012 for at least 11 states.

Dr. Melissa Walton Shirley wrote an eye opening piece entitled “Why Micro Managing Cardiology from the White House Won’t Work” and you should read it in its entirety.  It is a bit technical and written by and for doctors so you’ll have to skip over some of the medical jargon but you can get the gist of the article even with no medical education.

The heart (no pun intended) of the rant is aimed at new Recovery Audit Contractor Prepayment Review Demonstration Program that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued on 15 November 2011.  This new program was detailed by Shelley Wood at Heartwire and I’ll highlight two paragraphs which tell you all you need to know.

“Last month, the CMS announced a new “Recovery Audit Contractor Prepayment Review Demonstration Program,” geared toward making sure Medicare dollars are actually going toward procedures that are medically appropriate and necessary. To be implemented in 11 states for a three-year period, the program will allow Medicare recovery auditors to review medical records and gauge the appropriateness of procedures performed, devices used, and claims for procedures or hospital stays prior to paying those bills. The new program goes into effect January 2012.

At least one state—Florida—has provided a list of the 15 diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) that will require prepayment medical reviews: more than half of the DRGs listed pertain to cardiac procedures. These include ICDs, pacemakers, and stent implantations, PCI procedures without stents, and other vascular and circulatory-system procedures.”

Americans suffer from cardiac related problems that require stents, catheters, pacemakers and Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICD’s).  More than 900 Americans die every day due to sudden cardiac death and a vast majority of these deaths could be prevented from using an ICD so this isn’t some rare medical condition we are talking about here.  With our lifestyle that still embraces fatty foods and smoking and with the aging baby boomers, this situation will only get worse and the government is realizing that they won’t have enough money to pay for these programs and, in typical fashion, are seeking to attack the symptom instead of the problem. 

Dr. Shirley notes that there are a small minority of doctors who perform unnecessary cardiac surgery and do this to pad their wallets and like Kr. Shirley I welcome investigations of these practices and those medical professionals who are guilty of this should see the inside of a jail.  But this isn’t what the CMS new directive is targeting and the new regulation by the CMS in addition to previous regulation from the DoJ are causing doctors to not implant devices in cases that would benefit the patient for fear of investigation. 

Here are some pertinent quotes from Dr. Shirley’s post.

“What I don’t need is a “White House consult” every time I schedule a patient for a cath or a stress exam, and the tone of some of the language in this plan suggests there will be a ripple effect.

The opportunities to save money in all walks of medicine are as abundant as eggs on the White House lawn on Easter weekend. They are free. All you have to do is to bend over and pick them up. For the love of all things sacred in medicine, CMS–who in the world are you talking to? Do you ever ask anyone who is actively engaged in a full-time practice what they think will work to rein in cost? I’ve said it until I’m blue in the face. When you are looking at a budget and need to cut costs, the very first thing you do is examine the most expensive items on your expenditures, and I submit to you with absolute confidence that that is NOT CROOKED MEDICINE!

Furthermore, we cardiologists, who employ a substantial work force to fill out your forms and do your billing inquiries and kill trees and wreck carpal tunnels from all the necessary keystrokes, do not deserve to have our salaries reduced on a whim. Every year, it’s a new threat of a 20% or 30% reimbursement cut when there is an opportunity to save billions by just having a conversation with the White House. Insist on driving real campaigns that target compliance, make all public buildings in the US smoke-free, and map America for timely primary PCI. Quit just talking about malpractice reform and DO it! Offer incentives for hypertension screening, dietary instruction, and access to and utilization of exercise facilities for every business in America. Do not engage in a pathetic witch hunt, but go ahead and lay a trap for the crooks that are few and far between in cardiology.

If you are running for public office, especially the highest level of office in our country—specifically I am addressing you, President Obama, and you, Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich—you owe it to us to sit down with a physician who is actively engaged in full-time private practice to understand the most important issues we face in our country. Instead of just being reactive, let’s become proactive and at the same time react wisely and logically. Go ahead. Be bold. Focus on detection and prevention. Don’t be afraid to drive up the immediate cost of healthcare by looking for renal-cell carcinoma or triple As or carotid disease. It will save in the long run by preventing two years’ worth of chemo, radiation, and hospice care. Save billions of dollars in nursing-home stays for stroke. Drive the utilization of calcium scoring to detect asymptomatic coronary artery disease. Incentivize easy access to blood-pressure screening. Teach America how to check their pulses and screen for undetected afib. Make PE and health curricula in grades 1 through 12 just as important as math and science. After all, if we can’t teach kids how to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives, we have taught them nothing of value.

A great first step, and about the only thing the CMS has done that makes any sense whatsoever, was to make a feeble attempt at obesity screening and counseling. Someone must have had a TIA up there to have actually tried to address a real issue. I applaud that, but it was a drop in the bucket. Politicians cannot micromanage what goes on in a cardiologist’s office, but you can help us by laying the groundwork for success by just convening for a week on cardiovascular issues alone. If you don’t know what to do, instead of just picking some crazy scheme, for the sake of the future of American cardiology, why not pick up the phone and ask someone who is actually practicing it? CMS, by putting all the drivers of our most expensive DRG under the political microscope in cooperation with the scientists who actually fight in the trenches of cardiovascular disease every day, you can be successful in putting American medicine on the right track. It is only through the utilization of this formula that we can successfully improve healthcare spending. Otherwise, you will fail, and so will we.”

Here we have the real potential of a government agency over ruling medical diagnosis and care that was recommended by a medical professional.  As was stated in the post by Dr. Shirley, if you want to reduce health care costs then start with encouraging healthy lifestyles and providing incentives to do just that.  If someone has abused their body their entire life then why should the Federal Government pick up the tab and pay for the end of life care the same it would do for someone who took responsibility for their health?

And who do you trust to take care of yourself or your loved ones?  Should that job reside with your doctor or a bureaucrat in Washington DC?

We don’t have to wait for the Death Panels.  Our Federal Government is taking steps now to lower health care costs by allowing its citizens to die from denial of medical treatment.

Further reading – Regulations are Literally Killing Us

Posted in healthcare, Over Regulation, politics | 12 Comments

Payroll Tax Cut Comes Down to Philosophy

Posted on 12-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

The latest battle in Congress is over the payroll tax cuts which are about to expire at the end of 2011.  The payroll tax cuts are really a reduction in social security deductions from our paychecks (6.2% to 4.2%) and according to the NPR segment that amounts to about $1,000 extra net income for the average working American.  The Democrats’ plan is to offset the reduction in tax revenue from these tax cuts by adding a 1.9% tax on those making over $1 million and they spread this out over ten years.   In this post I will argue against the Democrat’s proposal and point out that this battle gets to the heart of philosophical differences between Liberals and Conservatives.

Math Check

Let’s first make sure the Democrat’s Math adds up.  $1,000 average savings would be seen by roughly 160 million workers so that equals a net tax revenue reduction of $160 billion in the Federal budget.  From the IRS 2009 tax data, the total taxable revenue of those making over $1 million dollars is $726.1 billion and those individuals comprise the top 10% of income earners in the US.  Taking 1.9% of that total income and multiplying by 10 gives a total tax revenue increase of $138.0 billion which is not equal to $160 billion but it is in the ball park so I agree with the Liberal Math here (which is rare) – The increase in taxes on the wealthy will, on paper, offset the tax revenue reductions from the payroll tax cut.

Income Redistribution

My main problem with this proposal is with its philosophy.  The Liberal mindset sees a need to reduce taxes on one segment of the population but instead of correcting our spending problem they choose to take money from another segment of the population.  This is income redistribution in its simplest form and there is no way you can argue against that point.  

Income redistribution is nothing new to Liberals and I’ve already shown that 90% of all current tax revenues go to pay social programs that are mainly comprised of beneficiaries who don’t pay any taxes.  Right now we have a serious dichotomy in America where 53% of the people pay taxes and the other 47% get that money in various ways (Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Insurance).  This is no way to run a country and you’d think we’d want to reverse this trend but the Democrats want to double down on it.

Full Disclosure – I am not in the category of those making over $1 million so I would be receiving this proposed benefit but I don’t want to receive money that is taken from another segment of the population by simply raising their taxes.  I’d rather take their money when they pay for a good or service that I offer which is the way we used to do things in America.  The Liberal method of income redistribution goes against the fundamental principle of the American Dream where all its citizens strive to enter that top income tax bracket.  Where is the incentive to get there when our Government demonstrates that you will be punished upon arrival?

 We Have a Spending Problem

I find it interesting that the Democrats snapped to increasing tax revenue and never entertained spending cuts.    In 2011 we have a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion and we can’t find $160 billion to cut for the offset of the payroll tax cuts?  Our total outlays in 2011 is over $3.6 trillion so $160 billion is only 4.4% of those outlays and anyone in business could easily cut that amount from their budgets when push comes to shove.  I have yet to hear any Democrat get in front of a microphone and give the results of an in-depth study they have done to investigate areas of the current budget that could be eliminated.   

Don’t tell me we need to raise taxes until you’ve shown me that the Federal government is operating at an optimum level and there is no more money we can cut from the Government without sacrificing its ability to carry out its duties as outlined in the Constitution.

It’s a Zero Sum Game

Giving more money to one segment of the population by taking it away from another doesn’t sound like it will stimulate the economy.  The people who make more than $1 million still like to use that money to buy things but under the Democrat’s plan they will have less money to spend and some who own business will have less to pay their employees, purchase equipment and pay for services that help support their businesses.  This money flowing to the bottom 90% is not materializing out of thin air and it is coming from other consumers (in the top 10%) who now won’t have that money to spend or invest. 

The Heart of the Problem

This battle over the payroll tax cut gets to the core of the differences between Liberals and Conservatives.  Liberals are married to the idea that government spending is the way to stimulate and regulate the economy and they are convinced that this is their only tool.  They have a hammer and every problem they see looks like a nail. 

Conservatives recognize that the macro economy is too complex to be solved by a group of bureaucrats and instead would prefer to rely on the infinite tools that the Free Market provides to solve our economic woes.

Posted in economics, politics | 1 Comment

Debbie Downer Hits an All Time Low

Posted on 12-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

 

In case you missed it, this morning Debbie Wasserman Schultz stated that Unemployment didn’t go up after Obama entered the White House.  I don’t know if this is a case of Schultz imitating Joseph Geobbels (If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, eventually people will start to believe it) or if this is just another example how Liberals need help with Mathematics. 

Either way, this is not the first time DWS has shown how out of touch she is with reality and I doubt it will be her last.  Earlier this year, Human Events published a top ten list of her most outrageous quotations but this will need updating once the Presidential campaign starts in early 2012.  She will not be capable of restraining her blamestorming and propoganda spewing rhetoric that have characterized her national political career.    

2012 will be a fun year to watch her continued slide off the cliff of rational thought and into oblivion as she continues her unenviable role as pitch woman for the worst president ever.  Popcorn!

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

Solutions in Search of a Problem

Posted on 11-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

It appears that the big Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) cult summit in Durban South Africa has ended with a resolution that basically does nothing and amounts to a draft agreement that will be renegotiated by 2015 and come into effect by 2020.  Raise your hand if you think any of this will actually be worked out and become binding by 2020.

All of this dithering is fine with me since AGW is a myth and amounts to little more than a cult religion which has its real goal of forcing developed countries to finance developing countries by means of a Carbon Tax.  Any resolution that is agreed upon by the UN members of this party in South Africa is meaningless unless countries pass legislation to put teeth to this resolution and while I can’t speak for other countries, the US does not have the backing in Congress to support the AGW lie and what little backing Congress does have for the AGW cult will decrease after the 2012 elections.

So in response to this nothing burger produced at Durban I want to take this opportunity to update the CO2 and global temperatures for your enjoyment.  Let’s see if Earth is indeed on its way to “Warmageddon” or if the UN is just generating solutions in search of a problem. 

The first graph below shows the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere as measured in parts per million (ppm) and sure enough we are continuing to pump more CO2 into the atmosphere on a fairly linear rate and there doesn’t seem to be much change to that rate over the time period measured.  This data was obtained from the Mauna Loa measuring station.

 

The AGW cult places the blame for global warming solely at the feet of the CO2 molecule which comprising about 0.039% of our atmosphere.  Let’s get some perspective on how much 0.039% represents on a total volume.  A gallon of milk is roughly 4 liters so 0.039% of that is 1.5 mL.  If you take a medicine dropper and measure out 1.5 ml you’ll find that it takes about 25 drops from an average medicine to equal 1.5 mL.  According to the AGW cult, the equivalent of 25 drops in a gallon of milk is driving our global temperatures so this CO2 molecule is indeed magical.  But wait, we must show correlation of increased CO2 emissions with global temperature increases before we make that claim.

The next two graphs are generated from temperature data obtained from popular sources used by Climate Scientists – The University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) and the Climate Research Unit (CRU).

 

 

When looking at the CRU temperatures over the past 14 years you can see that there is no trend up or down on temperature which is validated by the linear line fit having a slope of 0.00.

 

When you plot a correlation of CO2 vs. Temperatures from the Mauna Loa data and the CRU data you see that we have seen the correlation fall apart recently.  Once the level of CO2 reached 370 ppm the temperatures stopped increasing.  This suggests that CO2 is not correlated with temperature increase and there must be some other variable (or more likely variables) controlling our global temperatures.

 

So good luck to all the UN members who continue to wring their hands and beat their chests regarding supposed global warming catastrophes but forgive me if I remain a skeptic and laugh at your feeble attempts to propose solutions to a non existent problem.

If you are interested in further investigation…..

I provided more detailed explanation of these graphs in an earlier post and you can check that out if you are so inclined. 

There is also a previous post where I provided directions how you can check the temperature monitoring stations in your local area and see for yourself whether or not you see global warming increasing at a catastrophic pace.

Posted in Climate Change | 5 Comments

Light Scattering

Posted on 09-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

When I was driving to work this morning I took the above picture with my Blackberry (which, I might add, has a terrible camera) while stopped at a red light.  You’ll have to take my word that the colors were orders of magnitude more vibrant than the photo shows.

The physics behind a beautiful sunrise or sunset is actually quite interesting and can be explained by Rayleigh scattering.   When the sun is high in a clear sky, its electromagnetic waves pass through its shortest path to our view on earth (perpendicular to the atmosphere) and therefore only the smaller wavelengths of the sun’s light get scattered on the small molecules in the upper atmosphere and that scattering of blue/purple light is what gives our sky its light blue hue.  This also explains why our Sun appears yellow to us since much of the blue components have been filtered out of its light spectrum by the atmosphere.    

When the sun is rising or setting its light waves are now passing at a shallow angle through the atmosphere to our viewing point so now there is more opportunity for additional blue/purple waves to be scattered and the light that is left to hit our eyes is now deep orange instead of bright yellow.

When the sky is clear (no clouds, no pollution, no volcanic ash, etc.) the sunrises and sunsets don’t produce the spectacular colors that are afforded us on a morning like today in the upstate of South Carolina.  It is from these ‘impurities’ that the interactions between the Sun’s light and the atmosphere produce the most striking colors available in our sky.

That got me to thinking about my imperfections and my relationship with God.  His Light is shining on me but I am not perfect either (as my wife could surely testify!).  Too often I tend to focus on those imperfections and try to hide them, explain them away and use them as excuses why I can’t do more.  But just as spectacular sunrises are produced as a result of imperfections in the atmosphere, so too can our life be spectacular because of our imperfections (not in spite of). 

Each one of us is unique and can scatter light in a very specific and beautiful way that God had planned before we were born.  Use the physics of the sunrise as motivation to embrace your imperfections, allow the Light to shine on them and from that magnificent scattering others will see your beauty and God will be glorified. 

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

ECON 101 for a Liberal

Posted on 08-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

The Blamestormer-in-Chief gave us another example how our President appears to be mentally handicapped when it comes to basic Economics and Mathematics.  In case you missed it, here is the quote from the Washington Examiner:

President Obama said that he will delay his vacation and keep Congress in session until the passage of his desired payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits extension — two proposals that Obama said would create more jobs than the Keystone XL pipeline that his administration recently delayed.

 “I would not ask anyone to do something I’m not willing to do myself,” Obama said when asked if he would go on vacation while keeping Congress in Washington D.C. “We are going to stay here as long as it takes [to get unemployment extended and pass the payroll tax cut].”

 As Obama called for passage of those bills, he also responded to a recent Republican push to require him to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. “However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline,” he said, “they’re going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance.”

 

That’s right, according to Obama we can create more jobs by extending the Unemployment Insurance (UI) and payroll tax cut than by building a pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.   OK, let’s break up this Head-desk moment into two bite size pieces. 

Obama and his team have already stated that they will offset the payroll tax cut extension by raising taxes on the rich so in Obama’s worldview job creation is defined as taking money from one group of people and giving it to another group of people.  That is exactly what we are talking about by giving tax reductions to one segment of the population and offsetting that reduction in tax revenue by taking that same amount of money from another segment.  It is arguable whether this payroll tax cut has actually helped or not but if we want to extend them then cut that corresponding amount in SPENDING!  We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

Now let’s look at the other part of this ‘plan’ as it is related to extending the UI.   Extending UI means that we are giving people who don’t work more time to sit at home and have checks mailed to them.  Economics is all about incentives and where is a person’s incentive to find a job when he is being paid to not work?  UI benefits already go for 99 weeks so you have almost 2 years to find another job and Obama appears to believe that extending the time we pay people to sit at home will somehow create new jobs.

There was an Economics journal paper written in 2002 entitled “Labor Supply Effects of Social Insurance” and it asked the question that most sane people reading this have already asked.  Wouldn’t extending UI make the unemployment rate artificially higher than it normally would’ve been if the benefits were terminated and those out-of-work were forced to obtain employment?

I recommend reading the whole paper but if you don’t have time here is the pertinent quote from the Abstract:

The empirical work on unemployment insurance (UI) and workers’ compensation (WC) insurance finds that the programs tend to increase the length of time employees spend out of work.

Eureka!  Economic data agree with our common sense hypothesis we proposed above so maybe Obama just has the wrong economic advisors and they aren’t familiar with this type of research. 

But wait, here is the ultimate facepalm moment.  I left something out regarding that journal paper.  It was written by none other than Alan Krueger, Obama’s chief economic advisor. 

 

Posted in politics | 6 Comments

DNC Panders to Unions

Posted on 06-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

Ben Howe at Red State broke the story over a month ago that while preparing for its upcoming convention in Charlotte, the Democratic National Convention (DNC) will only accepting bids from Union companies.  This was a major blow to many North Carolina companies who could use the work but will be shut out because North Carolina has made the smart business decision to be classified as a Right to Work state.     

There was a story on NPR today which validated the reporting done at Red State.  The story highlights a small printing company in Charlotte, Consolidated Press, which happens to be a Union shop.  The story behind the shop going union is innocent enough and sounds like a good business decision by the company’s founder:

Mullaney’s father unionized Consolidated Press in 1968 to get the business of another union in the area. He kept it that way because he says it makes his nine employees happy, and because a bit fewer than half of his customers have union ties. Most of the rest don’t even know the business is unionized. It’s not something Mullaney advertises.

Nothing wrong with that.  Just because a state is a RTW state doesn’t mean unions can’t exist and if a union makes sense for both the employees and the business then by all means unionize and go about the business of providing jobs and serving a Market need. 

The story goes on to say that the company keeps two sets of scratch pads they hand out to their customers, one with the union label printed on them and one without.  Depending on their customer, they give the appropriate pad out and again, this is a smart business decision.  I doubt their non unionized customers would care about this as long as Consolidate Press provides a quality product that meets their expectations.  At the end of the day, that is all that matters.

Now here is where the NPR story gets interesting.  Apparently the DNC isn’t interested in choosing companies that can provide a quality product at a competitive price and within the schedule of the project.  They are more interested in ‘bugs’ which is the small insigne imprinted on paper that shows it was printed from a Union shop. 

But to unions — and to Democrats who rely heavily on them for campaign support — the union bug is a must for official documents. It’s kind of a secret code, one that’s so important that the National Convention Committee says all 20,000 welcome packets for delegates, 10,000 media guides and every convention sign posted around Charlotte must be done by a union print shop. Which bodes very well for Consolidated Press.

I have no reason to believe that Consolidate Press wouldn’t have won the contract if non-union shops would have been permitted to bid so, again, I have no ill will directed at that company.  My main gripe is with the process and the larger implications of it.

When thinking about the best use of funds, is it wise to blindly accept bids based solely on the fact that the company is unionized?  Conversely, it is also unwise to accept bids from only companies that aren’t unionized.  A business or organization should be willing to accept all bids and then chose the one that provides the best product, at the best price and within the time constraints of the projects.  But that type of common sense business practice has no place at the DNC.

And as an aside thought experiment – What would happen if the Republican National Convention put out a memo that they would hire only non-union shops to perform its work?  How well would that be received in the press?

I think this story sheds light as to why Liberals have a spending problem.  They are more interested in placating their voting base than using the American tax dollars wisely.  This is exactly why we don’t have a revenue problem in this country but instead we have a spending problem.  The President and Congres should not talk about raising taxes until they can show me that they can spend my money wisely. 

Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.  Luke 16:10

Posted in politics, unionthugs | 2 Comments

A Religion of Peace

Posted on 06-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

In Afghanistan yesterday a terrorist organization called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed at least 60 people.  The terrorist group is affiliated with a Sunni extremist group and they apparently hated the Shiite minority group so much they decide to coordinate two bomb attacks on one of the Shiite holy festivals and kill some innocent people.

Sunnis and Shiites are two denominations of Islam and, from what I have read, basically differ on who can select Islamic leaders – God (Shiite view) or Man (Sunni view).  Sunnis seem to be the most populous denomination and tends to be more traditional and Shiites have a more radical interpretation of their scripture. 

I’m sure it is much more convoluted than I stated above but here is my point.  Somewhere I heard that Islam is a religion of Peace.  Really?  I have a hard time believing that statement after seeing world events over the past few decades and I have an even harder time believing that claim when I hear stories like this one.  We aren’t talking about Christians, America, Israel or any of the usual suspects that Islam uses to justify their violence.  We are talking about Muslims carrying out major bomb attacks against those who share the same country and religion.

Did you hear about the time a Southern Baptist group bombed a Methodist Easter service because they didn’t like the fact that Methodists baptized their believers without using the full immersion technique?  Yea, me neither.

Posted in politics | 2 Comments

A Planet Like Earth

Posted on 05-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

There was an announcement today that the Kepler mission has confirmed the existence of a planet that is the most Earth-like that has ever been discovered.  The planet was given the name Kepler-22b and was discovered using the transit method where the Kepler instruments look for slight dimming of the stars brightness which indicates a planet has passed between our viewing point and the star.

From the Exoplanet iPad app, here are some screen shots of the pertinent information

This is truly an amazing discovery.  The star’s size is almost identical to Earth’s (98% as large as our Sun), the orbital period of the planet is slightly less than ours (290 days versus 365 for Earth) and the distance from its star is close to our (85% of Earth’s).  The planet is much larger than Earth as can be seen from the picture above but that is the only major divergence it has from the little blue orb we call home.

Is there oxygen and water on this planet?  Is there an atmosphere that supports life as we know it?  Does the planet contain life?  Right now we don’t know the answers to these questions but the average temperature on that planet should be suitable to have water in liquid form if the elements are there.

To find a planet relatively close to us, a little less than 600 light years away, is amazing enough but the fact that we can scientifically gather this type of detailed information from an object so far away speaks volumes as to how far Astronomy has advanced in the last 20 years.  I will not go into the physics here on how scientists obtain this information but there is a good resource that shows the many ways we can calculate the distances to stars and galaxies.  The Wikipedia page on exoplanet detection methods provides a good resource on how we can detect planets orbiting stars and the European Space Agency has another good overview of exoplanet detection methods. 

 We live in an exciting time where discoveries like this are being made at an amazingly high frequency.  With hundreds of stars known to have planets orbiting them and over a hundred planets orbiting in the habitable zone, Science will now move to answer some of the more difficult questions I posed above.  We have instruments and methods to detect elements on these planets (such as water, Oxygen, CO2, etc.) but existence of intelligent life will only happen if we detect radio signals from the planet or they receive and retransmit our signals that we send them.  And with round trip times of hundreds of light years, don’t expect that discovery to happen for a while!

Posted in astronomy, cosmology | 3 Comments

What the GOP and the NCAA Have in Common

Posted on 04-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

We’ll have to wait and see what the computers determine in the next BCS rankings but barring some miracle, the National Championship game will come down to LSU and Alabama.  These two teams are some of the Blue Bloods of College Football and have proven that in recent years when LSU won the BCS championship in 2007 and Alabama won it in 2009.  In case you missed it, these two teams already played each other earlier in the year with LSU winning 9-6 in overtime.  LSU beat the dog snot out of Georgia today to win the SEC championship and since Alabama (who is arguably one of the two best teams in the nation) will play in the title game but they couldn’t even win their division (LSU and Alabama are both in the SEC west).      

Crazy isn’t it?  This is the first time ever where two teams from the same conference will meet in the game that will decide the NCAA National Championship in football.  Of course this would all be moot if the NCAA would adopt the same method for crowning a champion as just about every other sport in the world (playoff) but that again looks impossible while the large conferences (PAC-10, SEC, Big 10 and Big 12) continue their stranglehold on this sport. 

This crazy way of picking a champion may be unique to college football but there is another organization that appears to follow the same method and I’m referrubg to the GOP.  Am I the only one who sees the similarities between the BCS and the current Republican presidential primary race?

Right now, barring some miracle, Republicans are going to choose between two political Blue Bloods for their nominee – Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.  Mitt and Newt are analogous to the SEC and the Big 10 conferences while other candidates that have been backed by the Tea Party are analogous to the conferences like the Mountain West and Conference USA. 

Boise State, TCU and Houston all have great records this year but they will not be allowed consideration for the BCS championship game because the sports writers, commentators and the big money behind the sport mount smear campaigns against them every year. 

You know the ‘arguments’ against allowing mid major conference champions to play for the national championship.  They don’t play the tough schedule week in and week out.  They don’t have the fan base to bring to large bowls (i.e. money).   They don’t have the tradition of the SEC and Big 10 so schools from these conferences must have their rankings biased to compensate for that.

Does this sound familiar to what we hear from the pundits on TV about the Republican candidates?

Bill Kristol stated in early November that there was little chance in the first place that Herman Cain was ever going to be the Republican nominee.   In hindsight, I have to agree that Cain was not the best choice and I left the Cain train a few weeks ago but it wasn’t due to claims of sexual harassment or affairs.  For me, I left because he didn’t do with his campaign what he said he’d do as President – surround himself with top advisors.  His leadership staff showed inexperience when they didn’t prepare Cain for the questions that would come on foreign policy.

But even before the foreign policy gaffs, pundits were against Cain and did what they could to make it very difficult for him to sustain the momentum he garnered during the debates.  There was a great post at The Real Red Barron this week that stated my frustration very well.

The Tea Party was a revolt against politics as usual. It was as much a revolt against the excesses of Republican politicians as it was a revolt against Democratic politicians. The Tea Party put Republican elected officials on notice that we – the base of the GOP – were not taking it anymore. Since the Tea Party led the GOP to historic wins in November of 2010, the Hill GOP – particularly House Republicans – have behaved in an uncharacteristic fashion. They have held the line on spending, refused to agree to raise taxes at all, and worked to reign in the size of government. These politicians didn’t suddenly get religion. They didn’t find political Jesus, they found fear – fear of the Tea Party. The only thing that stands between Republicans on the Hill going back to the bad old days of the Bush era GOP is the Tea Party.

Tea Party Conservatives need to be ready the next time around since, I’m sad to admit, it is too late to bring a new candidate into the 2012 race.  In the future, we must support so called ‘outsiders’ who are capable and worthy of the Oval Office and defend them against the resistance of the establishment. 

But all is not lost for now.  In this election cycle we can’t let the pundits dictate our views and we must push to have candidates in local elections that will not join in the Good Ole Boy politics that both the Democrats and Republicans have been guilty of.  If we can’t get a Tea Party candidate in the the Oval Office in 2012, let’s increase our membership in the House and make gains in the the Senate. 

Future ‘outsider’ candidates must learn from Cain’s failures and handle themselves better when the white hot light bears down on them when they choose to seek the highest office in the land.  Future Tea Party presidential candidates must surround themselves with those who have experience in the political arena and counsel them on how to act like a politician while they are campaigning.  It sucks but the inertia built up in the nomination machine can’t be changed overnight and we have to play in the system before we can change the system.   

The NCAA should adopt a playoff system for football and let the teams play out the championship on the field and the GOP should stop the snark against ‘outsiders’ and let the voters decide the eventual presidential nominee. 

Posted in politics, sports | Leave a comment

The Future of US Manufacturing

Posted on 03-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past 20 years, you know that manufacturing in the United States has fallen.  From this link, you can see that US manufacturing as a percent of GDP has fallen from a high of 24% in 1970 to its current level of about 13%.   

 

Much of this is decline is because we don’t need to manufacture as much as we did in the past because our factories are more efficient and automated so we don’t need to expend the same amount of effort to get the same quantity of products and you can see that the rate of decline in the world is roughly the same as the rate of decline in the US.  With the advent of the information age we have also moved from a blue collar work force to a white collar work force and this also accounts for much of this decline.  We now live in the Information Age and left the Machine Age behind after the popularity of personal computers became commonplace.

But the US is seeing manufacturing represent a lower percentage of GDP than the rest of the world and this accelerated after 2000 so there is another reason for the US’s increased decline.  Starting in the 1990’s and accelerating after 200, more manufacturing has moved to countries like Mexico, China and India and this has caused the US to see more of its manufacturing sector decline.  As a sidebar, this is also one of the main reasons for the decline in Union membership over the past 20 years and I wrote a detailed review of that in a previous post. 

I am a proponent of the Knowledge Based Economy and I’d rather have the US involved in the higher paying manufacturing jobs such as product development, engineering, purchasing, finance and management.  It makes smart business sense to let Mexico, China and India be involved in the labor intensive (and sometimes dangerous) work of manufacturing products that lend themselves to mass production.  I’m also a proponent of the Free Market and since the Information Age has shrunk the size of the world as it relates to supply chains, it makes better business sense to have the high tech, high paying jobs in the US and the low tech, low paying jobs in countries that need them and price their labor accordingly. 

But we still need to keep some level of manufacturing alive and well in the US because a country that loses the ability to manufacture products such as computers, TV’s, cars and other necessities of modern life risks loses the ability to innovate.  This article in Technology Review makes the claim, which I also believe to be true, that manufacturing and innovation are linked so if we lose too much manufacturing then highly skilled white collar jobs will be lost as well. 

So how is the US going to keep a necessary percentage of manufacturing in our country so that the Knowledge Based Economy can grow and increase the employment of high tech jobs?  Mexico, China and India will not be content on just taking the low tech jobs and they will follow the same path that we took in manufacturing with innovation in productivity through Six Sigma and since they are manufacturing the products, their expertise will grow in areas that will compete with our high tech jobs (product development and engineering). 

There was a story from American Public Media this week that highlighted how the US will keep its key manufacturing in the US and do it in a manner that benefits corporations without having to rely on tariffs or trade wars.   

In the story, Hard Milling Solutions showed how they improved their productivity and remained competitive by instituting a “Lights Out” manufacturing business model.  The company makes molds that are used by other companies for injection molding and they used to have 15 employees working 3 shifts to meet demand.  Through the purchase and integration of automated equipment they now employ 4 people to set the machines up on 1st shift and then the machines run, unassisted, through 2nd and 3rd shifts to make the products.   

This is the future of US manufacturing and the essence of the Knowledge Based Economy.  Highly skilled, and highly paid, workers do the design, engineering and setup of automated equipment and then the actual manufacturing is done by automated equipment that don’t require health care benefits, sick days, vacations, FMLA or breaks. 

The following quote from the APM story is very telling:

Economist Dan Luria says the success of manufacturing should be measured by productivity, not jobs. He heads research at the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center, which helps smaller manufacturers grow. Luria says for the U.S. to compete against ultra-low wage countries, it will have to use less and less labor. He says manufacturing is going the way of agriculture — once labor intensive, now highly automated.

But here is the rub.  Moving to a Knowledge Based Economy demands a workforce that is highly skilled and those employees are required to have more education than a high school diploma provides.  Americans need to recognize this now, better yet we should have recognized it 10 years ago, or we will be left behind.   China, Mexico and India are not going away and there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle.  America needs to set a priority on producing a highly skilled workforce which means more graduates from technical schools and traditional 4-year colleges.

If the US fails to recognize this, we will not only lose the ability to manufacture computers, TV’s and cars but also tanks, rockets and planes. 

Posted in economics, politics | 14 Comments

Police of the World

Posted on 02-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

It is hard to argue against the claim that the United States is the police of the world.  We are usually the first country to send troops, planes, ships and other elements of military force into a hostile territory and the last ones out.  That has never been a doubt of mine but ever since the Cold War ended, I have not paid much attention to the US military spending in comparison to other countries.  That ended today when I was reading an article in The Economist which contained a graph showing just how much more the US spends to support its military compared to the rest of the world.

According to the article, the US spends more money on the Military than the next 17 countries combined and the chart shown above was taken from that article (showing the US compared to the next 14 largest spenders).  All I can say is Wow!  China, which is #2 behind us, spends just 17% as much as the US and, as the article points out, China’s most recent military accomplishment was refurbishing a retired Soviet aircraft carrier which is China’s first carrier.  I am extremely proud of my country’s military and support them now more than ever and this chart gives me pride that are providing the brave men and women who defend our country and freedom around the world with the best tools to do their job and bring them back home safe.  

Say Hello To My Little Friend.

But something else jumped out from this chart.  Many times I have heard Liberals extol the virtues of European socialism and how countries like Germany have been very successful with  GDP growth rates while providing free healthcare, pensions, unemployment, welfare, etc.   They ask why the US can’t dip their toes in various aspects of Socialism just like Germany did.  Well this chart shows just why we can’t.  Germany and other European countries spend anywhere from 25% to 50% of what the US does when taking military spending as a percent of the country’s GDP.  They can do this because they have the luxury of having American bases on their soil, providing protection and therefore they can spend their money in other areas.  Being the World’s Police doesn’t provide America with the same opportunity. 

Now that the budget super committee failed to reach a compromise, automatic cuts to the military will kick in and we’ll be forced to reduce this spending.  I am one of the biggest proponents of a strong military but even before these automatic cuts were proposed, I took the view that we can reduce our military spending and can do this in a way that will not put the security of our country in jeopardy. 

We have 662 military sites around the world and with our enemies now taking a different form; do we really need dozens of bases in countries like Germany?  Isn’t it time for other countries to start sharing the load and force them to spend their own money to defend their countries?  There are a couple of links that show where our military bases are located and you can look at the Wikipedia link or the DoD report from last year. 

The US can dial back from its role of the World’s Police while not forsaking its primary purpose of keeping a military presence that defends Americans and our interests across the World.  Americans should be proud of its military and what it does on a daily basis to defend freedom around the world and we should also remind Liberals that we don’t want to move closer to European style socialism and should instead reduce our spending in those areas while we eliminate obsolete military sites around the world.  

Congress should be reminded that while military spending can be reduced, the bigger spending reductions need to come from so called entitlement spending.  As I showed in a previous post, over 90% of all tax revenues go to pay Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare and Unemployment Insurance.  This is no way to run a country and before we agree to sensible cuts in Defense we must agree to major reforms in these programs.  

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

You Can’t Appease an Occupier

Posted on 29-Nov-2011 by Highvoltage

In the Wall Street Journal there was an editorial about the struggles that the Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is having with the Occupy LA idiots.

The Mayor has tried to appease the Occupiers by offering ponchos to protect them from the rain, 10,000 square feet of office space and land that the occupiers can use to provide living space for the homeless and grow crops for food.  And how did the Occupy LA great this unwarranted generosity? 

The mayor’s overtures, however, merely emboldened the protesters. Just before midnight, hundreds of protesters crowded the streets around City Hall in revelry and defiance. The street party continued for several hours until police declared the demonstration an unlawful assembly and ordered everyone to clear out, at which point a few protesters wearing masks threw bamboo sticks and water bottles at officers. Most of the others returned to their campgrounds on the City Hall lawn.

George Santayana once said that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The attempts to appease Occupy Wall Street remind me of another famous attempt to appease an occupier in 1938.  The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and France’s Edouard Daladier agreed to a deal with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to give Germany the Sudetenland as well as Czechoslovakia in exchange for peace with the rest of Europe.  Chamberlain arrived back in England with a piece of paper he waved in the air and declared “peace for our time.”  We know how well that worked out.

The harsh reality is that when dealing with terrorists or those who wish to ‘occupy’, there is no compromise.  They want what you have and will take it by force so the only way to stop it is to resist them with like force.  Peace through Strength.

Posted in politics | 1 Comment

The Ignorance of OWS

Posted on 29-Nov-2011 by Highvoltage

There is a story from NPR today that is mostly really good and since it is about a small college in Kentucky, my home state, I really enjoyed it.  Well, I mostly enjoyed it.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

Berea College is located in the Eastern part of the state at the beginning of the Appalachian mountain area which contains not only some of the poorest people in the state but also in the country.  There are places in Eastern Kentucky where, if you were blindfolded and dropped into the area, you’d think you were in a third world.  I was born in the western part of the state and graduated from college in Louisville so I was fairly insulated from this but I was fortunate.

The NPR story is a good one in that it tells about the mission of Berea College and how it is helping kids, who couldn’t afford college, obtain their bachelors degree without having to pay tuition.  How do they do it?  Here is a copy of the college’s goals

  • To provide an educational opportunity primarily for students from Appalachia, black and white, who have great promise and limited economic resources.
  • To provide an education of high quality with a liberal arts foundation and outlook.
  • To stimulate understanding of the Christian faith and its many expressions and to emphasize the Christian ethic and the motive of service to others.
  • To provide for all students through the labor program experiences for learning and serving in community, and to demonstrate that labor, mental and manual, has dignity as well as utility.
  • To assert the kinship of all people and to provide interracial education with a particular emphasis on understanding and equality among blacks and whites.
  • To create a democratic community dedicated to education and equality for women and men.
  • To maintain a residential campus and to encourage in all members of the community a way of life characterized by plain living, pride in labor well done, zest for learning, high personal standards, and concern for the welfare of others.
  • To serve the Appalachian region primarily through education but also by other appropriate services.

So they can ‘give away’ tuition to roughly 1,500 students each year basically through a work/study program and a huge endowment that currently is valued at approximately $950 million.  Yes, you read that right.  This huge sum comes from individuals, foundations, corporations and organizations that want to support the schools mission and when measured on a per student basis, this college has one of the largest endowments in America.  I have no problem with that though, what better way to invest in our country than through education.    

Oh, and according to the Washington Monthly, Berea College is the #1 ranked Liberal Arts College in the United States! 

So the net take away from this story is that kids whose family makes less than $25,000/year can have a free four year education (valued at $25,000/year) in the hopes that, when they graduate, they can improve their social and economic well being and maybe that of their family as well.   

What’s not to like about this story?  There were two small sections of the NPR story that jumped out and made me cringe. 

Here is the first:

In October, about 40 Berea students rode a bus to New York City for the Occupy Wall Street rallies.

There are 40 students that, while getting a free, first class education provided to them by donations from corporations, chose to drive to NYC to protest corporations.  Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!  You’d think that if any college students understood the value that corporations (and to a larger extent Capitalism) provide, it’d be the students at Berea College. 

Now this is only 40 students and that is a small percentage of the total enrollment so I’m hoping this is just the fringe.  I don’t want to be guilty of painting the whole campus with the same broad brush so I’m telling myself that the rest of campus isn’t this stupid.

Now the other part of the story that I didn’t like:

And Sam Gleaves, a Berea sophomore, knows he is going home to Wytheville, Va., with his guitar and banjo. He’s an Appalachian Studies major. He wants to teach music at home and to help organize.

Now don’t get me wrong, when a kid goes to college it is his prerogative what he chooses as his major but since it is his decision, he must live with the consequences.  Looking at the majors offered at Berea, there are some real heavy weights in there which would lead to very well paying jobs.  Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Political Science, Sociology, Economics, Nursing and Technology/Industrial Arts are just to name a few.  If you are getting a free education and you see the poverty that is all around you, surely you would want to choose a major that would allow you to make a decent living so that you can not only help yourself but others in your family.

Now it could be that this young man isn’t interested in the money and chose that major to help those in this poverty stricken area in another way and if that is the case, then I salute the young man and wish him all the best. 

UPDATE: Based on comments left after the post was published it appears I was in error that Mr. Gleaves might have attended OWS (I never said he did but my words could be interpreted that he did).  I removed those comments from this post and apologize to readers and most importantly to Mr. Gleaves for leaving the impression that he did. 

Posted in politics | 23 Comments

Imagine the Possibilities

Posted on 27-Nov-2011 by Highvoltage

Recently NASA launched a new Mars probe called Curiosity that will arrive on the Red Planet in a little over 8 months from now.  Once there, it’ll be used to perform advanced experiments and measurements to determine if life could have existed on Mars in the recent past or if conditions currently exist on Mars that makes life possible.   And by ‘life’, I mean microbial life, not the kind you’ll find in an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. 

The new car-sized rover is very sophisticated and even generates 110W of electrical power from a small core of Plutonium (yes, it has its own nuclear power plant on board).  The plan is to have it search the planet for 2 years looking for conditions that would be conducive to life and reporting everything back to its mother planet for scientific analysis.

Delivering such a device to a planet is the next logical step in a VERY long range goal of one day delivering humans safely to the surface of Mars.  While this goal hasn’t been explicitly stated, it is what we as humans are hard wired to think about.  Exploring and Expanding is in our DNA and no matter how many budget cuts happen at NASA, the human spirit will push for us to go further into the solar system.  So as I read this story about Curiosity and watched with pride as the rover lifted off on a powerful Atlas 5 rocket, I started to think about the potential for life elsewhere in our Galaxy.

Full disclosure here – I am a Science Fiction junkie and found that this literary genre scratched an itch that I discovered in Middle School.  I read Asimov (Foundation trilogy), Arthur C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood’s End) and Larry Niven (Ringworld) in high school and these books got me thinking about alien encounters and alien civilizations.  But all of these books left out key details in the science fiction topic – how we get to these other worlds and what issues will we encounter.  It wasn’t until I discovered Robert L. Forward in college with such books as Dragon’s Egg, Starquake and the Rocheworld series did I start to ponder the difficult logistics involved with interstellar space travel and communication.

Let me explain these difficulties in a real world example.  We have a neighboring star, Gliese 876, that have a couple of planets orbiting in the habitable zone.   The habitable zone describes a distance from a particular star that would provide an environment that would be conducive to Carbon based life as we know it (i.e. water would exist in liquid form).  Of course this assumes that only Carbon based life exists in the universe and while this is an interesting topic, I will not attempt that debate in this post.

Gliese 876 has two planets that are in the habitable zone and the star is located 15 light years away from Earth.  This means that photons (which travel at 186,000 miles/second) leaving earth would take 15 years to reach the planets orbiting Gliese 876.  Here are some iPad screen shots from my Exoplanet app that give further details about Gliese 876 and its 2 planets that orbit in the habitable zone.

 

 

 

Since this star is 15 light years away, any communication we would have with its inhabitants or space ships we send to this star system will take 30 years to complete a simple conversation (1 question and 1 answer).  You can imagine the difficulty in relaying complex scientific Q&A so obviously any exploration project would have to be 100% self sufficient.  And that assumes that we have mastered travel close to the speed of light, which we haven’t, so a journey to Gliese 876 would encompass a lifetime for the first crew and would mean reproducing offspring to carry on the rest of the mission.  The best interstellar travel method we have now is something called a light sail (which was detailed by Robert L. Forward in his books) which can reach speeds of 0.1c (10% the speed of light) so it would take 150 years to reach Gliese 876. 

So reaching our closest neighbor is an almost unimaginable task at the moment.  But what about ‘talking’ to those on Gliese 876?  If life has evolved on these planets and if they have advanced to the point where they, like us, broadcast radio waves out to space then we could intercept those and attempt to decode them. 

But that takes time for life to evolve to that level of technical sophistication.  It took us roughly 4 billion years from the birth of Earth to now before we advanced enough to broadcast these signals to space. 

But what if we did get signal from another planet?  What would that mean for our life here on Earth?

How would our Worldview change knowing that there is life on another planet?  How silly would our local wars be?  What would this mean for our religions?  Do we assume that our God would follow the same pattern of revelations on another planet as He followed here on Earth?  How would that discovery change our government structures and budgets?  Instead of Americans, Chinese, French, etc. we would now think of ourselves as Earthlings.  Would we continue to cut NASA funding?  What would this mean for advancements in Science?  I have to think that Communications and Interstellar Spacecraft studies would skyrocket to a point that would make the Dot-Com explosion seem like a blip on a radar. 

This type of discovery most likely won’t happen in my lifetime but if we are smart enough to not destroy ourselves, I do believe it will happen one day in the future.  I can’t imagine that the Creator of the Universe would devise such a beautiful Universe and leave it for the exclusive benefit of a small blue planet orbiting a minor star in the suburbs of an average galaxy.

Posted in astronomy, cosmology | 2 Comments

Climate Gate 2.0

Posted on 25-Nov-2011 by Highvoltage

In case you missed it, another cache of leaked emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia has been posted.  Several Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) skeptic sites have posted summaries at Watts Up With That, Dr. Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Jr. and Jo Nova and the AGW propaganda sites of Real Climate and Skeptical Science have posted their ‘nothing to see here’ rebuttals.

I have downloaded the file (and you can too by going here) and The AGW skeptic sites listed above will do a better job than I can of thoroughly dissecting the emails so you should visit those sites for yourself to see the highlights.  In this post I will focus on one particularly damning email and I encourage you to download the files and view them yourself but before you do, I’d like to provide you with a list of the characters that you’ll see mentioned in these emails.

Gavin Schmidt is a “climate scientist” (although his degrees are in Mathematics) and works for the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).   He runs the attack website Real Climate.

Michael Mann is a “climate scientist” (although his degrees are in Mathematics, Physics and Geology) who works for Penn State and was implicated in the first Climate Gate.  Mann was behind the now debunked hockey stick graph that used flawed data to show that global temperatures were rising.

Phil Jones is a climate scientist who works for CRU and, like Mann, was implicated in the first Climate Gate.  

Kevin Trenberth is the head of Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

James Hansen heads the GISS and has degrees in Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics.  Recently he was arrested at a protest outside the White House against the proposed TransCanada pipeline.   

Raymond Pierrehumbert is a professor at the University of Chicago and assists Gavin Schmidt in running Real Climate.

Keith Briffa is a climatologist at CRU and was responsible for the flawed tree ring study that led to Mann’s hockey stick graph.  Briffa cherry picked his data to use the only tree that showed warming and that was used to generate the hockey stick graph.

All of these characters contributed to the work of fiction called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report which is mentioned in many of the emails.  

I will not argue the merits of the scientific research on this post but instead will use the following email to show the lack of scientific skill and integrity of one of the main players in the AGW cult.  If these are in question then we have to question his conclusions.

Don’t Let the Data and Statistics Get in the Way

This is from email #1885 in the dataset and I was alerted to this gem from a Telegraph article. This email is from Phil Jones who may be considered one of the top 5 climate scientists in the world who is leading the AGW push and in this email we see many examples where he lacks basic technical skills.

   From: Phil Jones

   Sent: 20 December 2007 13:58

   To: Bob Ward

   Subject: Re: More nonsense on climate change

     Bob,

      Quickly re-reading this it sounds as though I’m getting at you.  I’m not – just at the idiots who continue to spout this nonsense.It isn’t an issue with climatologists. All understand. If I tried topublish this I would be told by my peers it was obvious and banal.

I will try and hide it in a paper at some point. I could put it on theCRU web site.  I’ll see how I feel after the Christmas Pud.  I would have thought that this writer would have know better!

 I keep on seeing people saying this same stupid thing. I’m not  adept enough (totally inept) with excel to do this now as no-one  who knows how to is here.What you have to do is to take the numbers in column C (the years)and then those in D (the anomalies for each year), plot themand then work out the linear trend. The slope is upwards. I had someonedo this in early 2006, and the trend was upwards then. It will benow. Trend won’t be statistically significant, but the trend is up.

First, we see that he doesn’t know how to plot data from an Excel spreadsheet.  Plotting data in Excel is not a skill required by all humans and I’d guess that a majority of people in the world do not know how to do this but they don’t have the word ‘scientist’ listed in their job description.  A scientist who doesn’t know how to plot data in Excel is equivalent to:

A race car driver who can’t use a clutch,

A chef who can’t operate a stand mixer,

A professional tennis player who can’t put top spin on the ball,

A Navy Seal who can’t load a gun,

An astronomer who doesn’t understand the celestial coordinate system,

An auto mechanic who can’t change the oil in a car,

An electrician who can’t read a wiring diagram,

A plumber who can’t use a pipe wrench.

 You get my point.  This is pretty basic stuff for a scientist and especially one who requires data trends to prove his hypothesis.  And I find it troubling that he isn’t the only person at CRU who doesn’t possess this skill since he stated in the email that “no one who knows how to is here.”  It makes you wonder if CRU is comprised mainly of Marketing and Public Relations professionals instead of scientists.

But the deficiencies don’t stop there.  Mr. Jones states that the “trend is up” but also states that the trend won’t be “statistically significant.”  In science, if the data results aren’t statistically significant then you can’t make statements about trends.  Mr. Jones makes the claim in the email that there is a trend even though he doesn’t have the skill to plot the data and even when someone can be found to plot them he feels the data won’t show statistical significance.  A real scientist will not make these bold statements before he has plotted the data, generated a trend line (in a y=mx+b form), determined correlation via R-squared and performed statistical analysis to say within a certain confidence (usually 90%) whether the data supports the hypothesis.  Sounds like Mr. Jones has a bias and will come to his own conclusions no matter what the science and the data show.   That is a big problem!

There is another part to this email from Bob Ward who seems troubled that the data can’t support their thesis.

date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:07:00 -0000

from: “Bob Ward”

subject: RE: More nonsense on climate change

to: “Phil Jones”

    Dear Phil,

    Thanks for responding so comprehensively. I have plotted the data before, and as youobserve, the trend is up but the result isn’t statistically significant, which I thinkmakes it open to attack. I think the problem is that NOAA made the following statement inits report on the 2006 data:

   “However, uncertainties in the global calculations due largely to gaps in data coveragemake 2006 statistically indistinguishable from 2005 and several other recent warm years asshown by the error bars on the [1]global time series.”

   I’m not sure how to argue against this point – it appears to imply that there is nostatistically significant trend in the global temperature record over the past few years.

  Mr. Ward admits that the lack of statistically significant trends in the global temperature record makes it difficult to make the claims that temperatures are rising.  Well, I have to agree with him here and I’ve pointed this out in a previous post (unlike Mr. Jones, I have no problem plotting data in Excel).

Posted in Climate Change | 5 Comments

This is How Liberals Think

Posted on 21-Nov-2011 by Highvoltage

Greg Sargent wrote an article for the Washington Post entitled “Debunking the Conservative Arguments about the rich and taxes, in three easy charts” and his conclusions show us how Liberals think. 

His first chart acknowledges what many Conservatives have known for a long time – The richest 1% of Americans has seen their share of the total income tax revenue rise over the past 20+ years. 

 

But then he tries to spin this by showing his second and third charts here.

 

 

When a Conservative looks at these graphics he will most likely ask the following questions and make the following conclusions. 

The income of the bottom 90% has only risen 4% over the past 20 years.   What can we do to get their income level up?

It is not surprising that the income increase (119%) and income tax increase (54%) for the 1% are not equal.  The top 1% makes a majority of their money in stock which is taxed at a much lower level than payroll income.  This study stopped in 2008, just after stock market and housing market collapse, and during the time between 1986 and 2007 the stock market provide a great deal of wealth for many who had the courage to invest and reap those rewards – see chart here.  

While the bottom 90% had a very small income increase (4%), their income tax dencrease (-30%) was much lower proportionally.  This is most likely due to the fact that more people are in the lower income groups that either pay very few taxes or none at all (from the 2009 IRS tax data, those making less than $30,000 paid less than 2% of all income taxes collected).  We could also deduce that those living in poverty (which is defined as a family of four making less than $22,350) have also increased which would add to the number of people that pay no income taxes.  We should investigate why the number of people living in poverty in the US is increasing and this graph does indeed show that the number of people in the US who are in poverty has increased over 30% from 1986 to 2009.

I’ve dealt with the Income Inequality meme of the Left here and also showed that poverty rates increase when Welfare spending increases.  For those who care to dig into the details and history, it is obvious that Liberal policies which are publicly stated to help the poor are really designed to hurt them.

But how does a Liberal react to these charts?   Mr. Sargent’s quote is below (emphasis mine).

So, look, here’s the disagreement in a nutshell. Conservatives say we should not raise taxes on the rich because wealthy people are already paying a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Liberals respond that the wealthy’s after tax income has exploded at a far greater rate than their rate of taxation has risen. Liberals are proposing only a tiny adjustment in that trend, as part of a broader solution to reduce the deficit that would also involve those of much more modest means making sacrifices.

So when a liberal looks at these charts they make the claim that the rich should pay more taxes and this conclusion gives great insight into Liberal Group Think.  Instead of posing solutions to increase the wealth of the bottom income groups they snap to decreasing the wealth of the rich.  I thought the American Dream was defined as working hard, making good decisions and taking calculated risks so that our income and wealth would increase.  Where is the motivation to do just that when the Liberal response is to punish those who succeed?

This is the heart of our problem in America.  Liberals look at the successful and propose ways to punish them while Conservatives look at the poor and propose ways to help them. 

Posted in politics | 4 Comments

Our Problem Is Simple

Posted on 20-Nov-2011 by Highvoltage

Political issues are notoriously complex but, as fate would have it, our current political problems can be stated in very simple terms that can be comprehended by most of the US adult population. 

Mortgaged To The Eyeballs

We have over $15 trillion in debt which exceeds our GDP.  This is equivalent to an individual household running up credit card debt equal to their annual income.  No financial advisor would advocate such a ludicrous plan and the same goes for a country.  We have already had our national credit downgraded and we risk further downgrades unless we reduce this debt.  See Greece, Italy and the rest of the European Union for examples of where this huge debt to GDP ratio leads.

Addicted To Government Handouts

As I showed in a previous post, we spend over 93% of our tax revenues on Social Security, Medicare, Welfare and Unemployment Insurance.   Almost everything the US takes in with regard to taxes goes to citizens who, for the most part, do not pay taxes.  A great deal has been said about income redistribution and Socialism and if this isn’t evidence that the US is moving toward Socialism I don’t know what is.  53% of the country pays taxes so that the other 47% can receive benefits.

I also showed here that increasing Welfare spending only causes the Poverty rate to increase so spare me the meme that we’ll hurt the poor by cutting these programs.  These social programs only create slaves to the Government and do nothing to increase individual responsibility and do not bring them out of poverty.

Tax Increases Are Not The Answer

The Democratic members of the Super Committee are dead set on increasing taxes by over $1 trillion and they see this as the way to solve our debt problem.  As was pointed out by Dr. Whitman in his recent post here, tax increases would guarantee a double dip recession and add to the uncertainty that is already stifling the economy. 

I do not understand How anyone can see that we spend almost 100% of what we take in to cover Government handouts and then say we need to increase revenues.

Our current budget deficit is $1.4 trillion so what kind of tax increases would be needed to close this gap?  If we look at the latest IRS data from 2009, we’d need to tax those making over $200,000 per year at 73% (gulp!) to break even on our current budget deficit and that wouldn’t reduce the national debt one penny.  If someone is being taxed at those rates, why would they continue to work?  Math is hard for Liberals.

I have yet to hear from any Liberal what the supposed “fair share” of taxes is that the “rich” should be paying but here is a graph that illustrates how much of the tax revenue each income demographic is paying.

 

The Simple Solutions

It really comes down to two viewpoints on how to solve our current problems.  Liberals think we should increase tax revenues, redistribute more of the wealth and increase government handouts (all of which has failed in the past).

If your family were faced with a similar situation as the US government you would make sacrifices to make better use of your income, pay down debt and build for the future.  This would mean reducing spending, cutting up the credit cards and staying on a budget.  Why shouldn’t the government’s solution be exactly the same?

I’m glad the Super Committee is failing and once we clean the White House, Senate and House of tax-and-spend ideologues then we can get down to business.  Conservatives believe the solutions to our problems can be solved by reducing Regulations that are killing business, cutting Government handouts, eliminating Crony Capitalism and restoring America to a Free Market Economy.

We have a spending problem in this country and you don’t solve it by giving the addict (Federal Government) more drugs (tax revenue). 

Posted in politics | 2 Comments

If I Were King

Posted on 19-Nov-2011 by Highvoltage

I’m not well studied in Poetry but occasionally I’ll stumble across one that really touches me and I’ll save it to a file so that I can periodically read them and ponder their meanings.   

While watching the movie Invictus , which chronicles the two lives of a Rugby captain Francois Pienaar and Nelson Mandela after the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, I started to look at other poems by William Ernest Henley and came across one entitled “If I Were King.”

If I were king, my pipe should be premier. The skies of time and chance are seldom clear, We would inform them all with bland blue weather. Delight alone would need to shed a tear, For dream and deed should war no more together. 

Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear; Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather; And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere, If I were king. 

But politics should find no harbour near; The Philistine should fear to slip his tether; Tobacco should be duty free, and beer; In fact, in room of this, the age of leather, An age of gold all radiant should appear, If I were king.

I don’t profess to have the literary knowledge to perform a detailed exegesis of the entire poem but a few lines grabbed me and I think this poem paints a picture of a better world.  Tears would only be shed in joy.  Our dreams and our actions would be aligned.  Politics would be treated with extreme prejudice and extricated from the body. 

Not a bad place to live, if you ask me.  

Posted in Poems | Leave a comment