TAXPROF: Obama’s Tax Policy As Groundhog Day.
Archive for 2011
September 21, 2011
September 20, 2011
DON SURBER: The Arrogance of Mope. “The problem is not that Barack Obama failed to live up to the expectations of David Brooks but rather in what those expectations are.”
HMM: Whistle-blowers allege corruption, cartel ties.
wo former law enforcement officers allege that they cannot get anyone to investigate allegations that the Mexican drug cartels have corrupted U.S. law officers and politicians in the El Paso border region.
Greg Gonzales, a retired Doña Ana County sheriff’s deputy, and Wesley Dutton, a rancher and former New Mexico state livestock investigator, said that instead of arrests and prosecutions of suspects, their whistle-blowing activities have resulted only in threats and retaliation against themselves. . . . The two whistle-blowers said that drug cartels have managed to obtain computer access codes to U.S. surveillance systems that let them see where and when Border Patrol agents are monitoring the border.
They also alleged that drug cartels have given big donations to politicians, which are unreported, to influence appointments of key law enforcement officers.
Read the whole thing.
RIGHTHAVEN UPDATE: Copyright Troll’s Assets Targeted for Seizure. I hope they end up broke and in jail. Which is how things seem to be going . . .
JERRY POURNELLE: Obama Declares War on Liberty and Property. “Of course it can be said that the President desires nothing more than to promote the general welfare, and the general welfare requires a reduction in the vast disparity between the very wealthy and the rest of us. Perhaps so: but note that the President does not offer the alternative of giving up some of the regulations and rules and the swarms of officers who harass the people and eat out their substance.”
A MISSED OPPORTUNITY? “The group wondered aloud why the Treasury and the Congress were not being more opportunistic. Rates are at historical lows. Why aren’t we issuing 50 year or even 100 year treasuries? At these exceptional rates, that would allow us time enough and room enough to put the debt in order – a chance to structure the debt hodgepodge in an almost logical manner. It would give us a chance to hand off to our children something far less burdensome.”
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanotube Cables Hit a Milestone: As Good as Copper. “For the first time, researchers have made carbon-nanotube electrical cables that can carry as much current as copper wires. These nanotube cables could help carry more renewable power farther in the electrical grid, provide lightweight wiring for more-fuel-efficient vehicles and planes, and make connections in low-power computer chips. Researchers at Rice University have now demonstrated carbon-nanotube cables in a practical system and are designing a manufacturing line for commercial production.”
JOEL KOTKIN: The Demise of New York City As A “Luxury Product.” “The newly Republican ninth district — stretching from south Brooklyn through the upper-middle-class strongholds around Forest Hills, Queens — reflects growing unease in the non-luxury parts of the city. The area is decidedly middle class, but with a median income of $55,000 it is the city’s least wealthy white district. For the most part, its residents have not benefited from Bloomberg’s management nor from Obama’s economic policies. Rather, the district reflects the kind of anxiety that is sweeping middle class areas across the country.”
IN RESPONSE TO YESTERDAY’S BACKUP-POWER BLEG, a lengthy email from reader Harry Lenchitz:
Having enjoyed about one-third of our lives on generator power, we decided to enter the discussion.
I have more than 40 years experience in electric power generation for prime power applications (seagoing vessels, forward operating bases, field hospitals) and critical standby power (healthcare facilities, emergency services, credit card transactions).
My wife has invested a similar amount of time performing research at sea, and in remote locations, on generator power.
We met shortly after 9-11, and we watched the Pentagon smolder for several weeks.
Note to deniers: It really happened!
This e-mail is my contribution to the generator discussion.
First, to all those who want a cheap, convenient way to charge their cell phones and other portable electronics: every motor vehicle includes a one kilowatt (1kw) alternator for battery charging.
Some vehicles are slightly less (a skinny kilowatt) others are quite a bit more (2kw) but all vehicles have a battery charging alternator.
The best way to charge portable electronics is to idle your vehicle and use 12 volt DC chargers.
To charge your cell phone, you do not even need to start your vehicle. Just plug the cell phone charger into your vehicle and let it charge.
To charge larger items, start your vehicle and let it idle.
To operate larger items which require 120 volt AC power, such as your computer UPS, a drip coffee maker, or a small microwave, use a 1200 watt (1.2kw) inverter – available everywhere for less than $100.
Most vehicles today will run a 1200 watt inverter indefinitely while idling, but you may need to turn on the air conditioner (which increases the engine idle) or turn up the idle speed (not legal – do not do this) to make sure the alternator is putting out full power.
Also, the family minivan (or coupe, pickup truck, or SUV) is the best survival pod ever invented – heat, air conditioning, lights, etc. You already own it, and the fuel to run it is negligible compared to buying, maintaining, and feeding a generator.
Even more important, you can drive the vehicle to a fuel point to refuel it, and charge the battery while driving to and from the fuel point.
If you need more power than your vehicle produces, then and only then, consider a generator.
We can discuss how to size a genset for home use, based on how many items you desire to run during a power outage, and how much fuel you are willing to store and consume.
You can use a portable generator, or install a standby generator.
Whatever you do, please follow all safety precautions with respect to electrical hazards, thermal hazards, and fume hazards.
If you use a portable generator, please use extension cords to power your loads – do not energize your home wiring unless you have installed an Underwriters Laboratory (UL) listed transfer switch!
I will discuss transfer switches later in this article.
If you choose to install a standby generator, and you live in an urban, or dense suburban area, a propane (bottle gas) or natural gas (city gas) powered system is the most popular and cost effective way to go. It is also the quietest.
Note well: City gas is often shut off during natural disasters. Propane is stored on your property, and can be stored indefinitely.
If you live in a rural area, you can go with a propane or a diesel unit, or if you have a tractor, a pto-driven genset.
For almost all tractor owners, I recommend a pto-driven genset. If you buy a Winco, Onan, or similar high-quality pto-driven genset, you can pass it on to your grandchildren. It will never wear out.
The beauty of a pto-driven genset is that many tractor owners are already adept at maintaining their tractors. Also, you can always find someone to repair a tractor, or, if you really need to, you can buy another tractor, new or used, almost any time.
It is extremely important to have a generator big enough to start and run your rotating loads, and to hold frequency and voltage as near constant as possible.
All rotating loads – well pump, pool pump, air conditioner/heat pump compressor and fan motor, refrigerator and freezer compressors and fan motors – require 60 hz alternating current (AC) to operate at the correct, constant speed, and require full voltage (120 or 240 depending on the motor) to operate at the correct current under load.
Incorrect voltage, and incorrect or varying frequency, can lead to failure of rotating equipment.
Let me put that more plainly – a badly regulated generator will burn up expensive motors!
Home electronics (tv, computer, etc.) are not as sensitive to voltage, and are relatively insensitive to frequency (they all have power supplies that convert AC to regulated DC) but they can be damaged by very low or high voltage.
Most important is your transfer switch.
After the transfer switch is installed, and inspected by your county building inspector, send a copy of the electrical inspection to your insurance agent – 2 reasons:
1. Liability – If anyone is ever injured or killed while working to restore power on your distribution grid, you will have proof that there is no way it was a backfeed from your generator.
2. Risk Reduction – If you ever have an electrical fire in your house, you will have proof that the transfer switch was properly installed and inspected.
My advice is to install a 200 amp (or whatever size your home electrical service is) manual transfer switch.
That way you will be able to use any lights, anywhere in your house, including in your basement, regardless of whether you power your house with a 5kw or a 50kw genset.
I do not recommend an automatic transfer switch for home use.
You want to determine that the power really is out, and will be out for more than a few minutes (or hours).
You want to start your genset and make sure it is running right – all engine gauges (oil pressure, battery voltage, coolant or cylinder temperature) and generator gauges (voltage, FREQUENCY, current) registering correctly, and then and only then transfer the load.
If the engine parameters are incorrect, you run the risk of destroying the engine. If the generator parameters are incorrect, you run the risk of destroying expensive items in your home.
Even if you never have a power outage, throw your transfer switch once a year to make sure it moves.
Also, open it once a year and blow out the insects. Leave a piece of no-pest strip or a livestock ear tag with pyrethrins in there to keep it insect free.
I recommend testing a home generator twice each month.
Just connect an electric stove or similar load to it, and run it under load for 30 minutes.
If you can start it and run it every 2 weeks, and it takes a full load, you can depend on it for a power outage when you transfer the house load using your manual transfer switch.
Takeaway – Generating your own power during an outage requires serious investment in time and money, and significant fuel and maintenance expenses.
At present prices, we spend about $90/day for fuel and oil changes during extended power outages.
We can discuss this stuff further if you like.
We have a 200 amp transfer switch to transfer our house between the electric grid and generator power, and a second 100 amp transfer switch to transfer between main generator and auxiliaries. Main generator is a 15kw 1800 rpm diesel. Auxiliaries are 25kw Winco pto unit (more power than either of our tractors can provide, but superior motor starting capability), 8.5kw 3600 rpm gasoline powered welder, 3.5kw 3600 rpm gasoline powered welder, 2kw 1800 rpm continuous rated gasoline powered genset (perfect for overnight refrigeration and entertainment loads, if we don’t need heat or air conditioning).
Well, that’s going big. The small-scale way is with the inverters. The maintenance load for a generator is why I haven’t bought one. The more expensive ones start themselves every month. But they’re more expensive. . . .
PALIN WITHIN 5 POINTS: Poll Finds Obama Losing Ground To Republicans.
MORE ON DEVAL PATRICK’S COMMUTER HYPOCRISY:
It’s Car Free Week in Massachusetts, and Gov. Deval Patrick and highway commissioner Frank DePaolo kicked off the enviro-friendly event by setting a drive-as-we-say, not-as-we-do example: They drove to work.
Traffic-watchers say Massachusetts drivers have responded in kind to the top leadership’s example — by driving to work as usual. The state Department of Transportation has been pushing the idea, joining more than 1,000 cities in 40 countries around the world in celebrating World Car Free Day on Sept. 22 with a weeklong advocacy campaign. Bay State drivers are asked to log onto a Web site and record their car-free travel. So far this week, there have been 12,000 nondriving miles logged, said MassDOT spokeswoman Cindi Roy.
But Marshall Hook, operations manager for MetroTraffic, which monitors traffic data for Web sites and media around Boston, said it hasn’t had a noticeable effect.
People probably figured that if it were really important, the people who said it was really important would be acting as if it were really important.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? A Future For Drones: Automated Killing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Investor’s Business Daily: “It’s time for a tuition revolt, and higher taxes aren’t the answer. Students and the rest of the public are now paying for decades of mission creep and bureaucratic bloat. . . . What happened, for instance, to swell the bureaucracy at the UC over the past two decades? There now are nearly as many senior managers (8,144) as tenured and tenure-track faculty (8,521). As recently as 1993, the ratio between these groups was much different — 2,429 to 6,846. Put another way, 18 years ago the student-to-upper management ratio was 62-to-1. Now it’s all the way down to 2-to-1. The ratio of students to regular faculty, meanwhile, has risen from 22-to-1 in 1993 to 26-to-1.”
SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “Obama is great at math. He divides the country, subtracts jobs, adds debt and multiplies misery.”
Not as good as last night’s “limits” joke, but accurate.
AT AMAZON, recommended books in cooking, food, and wine. Three of my favorite things!
LESSONS FROM NETFLIX AND QWIKSTER:
You can get a sweet deal if you are the customer who gets marginal cost pricing. Medicare does this–reimburses hospitals at above their marginal cost, but below their average cost, so that private insurers have to pick up most of the hospital overhead. European countries do this with prescription drugs: reimburse above the marginal cost of producing the pills, but below the total cost of developing the pills, so that the US has to pick up most of the tab for drug development.
The problem is that as voters and as customers, we often get the notion that this can be extrapolated to everyone. So liberal policy wonks want to save money by putting everyone on Medicare, or some equivalent program that uses the government’s monopsony pricing power to get lower prices for everyone; thrifty customers think that everyone should drop cable and just pay $14.95 for streaming plus DVDs.
But everyone cannot be the marginal cost consumer. Someone has to cover things like development costs.
Indeed.
DANIEL HANNAN: “The Tea Party, perhaps more than any other contemporary movement, brings out the ‘Yeah, but what they’re really saying…’ tendency. The ‘tea’ stands for ‘Taxed Enough Already’ but, if you relied on the BBC and the Guardian for your information, you might not know it. Many Lefties pretend – or perhaps have genuinely convinced themselves – that the Tea Party is clandestinely protesting against immigration or abortion or the fact of having a mixed race president; anything, in fact, other than what it actually says it’s against, viz big government. The existence of a popular and spontaneous anti-tax movement has unsettled the Establishment. They’d much rather deal with a stupid and authoritarian Right than with a libertarian one. Hence the almost desperate insistence that the Tea Partiers have some secret agenda.”
WHAT I LEARNED AT DARTMOUTH. “Though she had made demonstrably false allegations, the first year woman was allowed to continue her stay at Dartmouth, without hindrance or prejudice.”
INDEED: “What New York City has are not restrictions on concealed weapons. What New York City has amounts to a prohibition for carrying a firearm at all, except for the rich and well connected. This should not pass any constitutional standard for a fundamental right. Since New York does not choose to prohibit concealed carry, but rather to restrict it in an arbitrary and capricious manner, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be forced to recognize other licenses from other states.”
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK BRUNCH: ‘Extravagant’ Spending, $16 Muffins Found at Justice Department Meetings. Remember when Obama savaged corporations for lavish conference spending?
WIRED: FBI Trainer Says Forget ‘Irrelevant’ al-Qaida, Target Islam. “’At the operational level, you have groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaida. Like teeth in a shark, it is irrelevant if you take one group out.’ . . . The best strategy for undermining militants, Gawthrop suggested, is to go after Islam itself. To undermine the validity of key Islamic scriptures and key Muslim leaders.” Not everyone agrees . . . .