Bailouts, Gasoline and CAFE Standards

It won't work

The bailout debate is intense, far-reaching, and complex. It can't be boiled down to a single blog. Books will be written in the future about this historic economic collapse. So multi-faceted is this issue, it has to be broken into bite-sized pieces suitable for digestion by lay people, scientists, economists and Harvard MBA's. (Laughter in the background? I hope so.)

This particular blog deals with gasoline and the maximum performance one can expect from a single gallon of gas. This is a fact and you can check it elsewhere: The amount of BTU's (British Thermal Units, a measure of energy) available in a gallon of gas is FINITE. That means a certain amount of energy is available and it cannot be changed through alchemy or other forms of magic. How we convert that energy to rolling stock can be summarized by boring equations which in the bitter end comes down to how much horsepower it takes to move a certain amount of weight a certain distance. Are you falling asleep yet?

There is a maximum amount of performance that can be attained by a vehicle moving down the highway. When the weight of the vehicle, passengers and desired speed are accounted for, X equals Y meaning that, after you have lightened the materials, reduced the rolling and wind resistance you can expect Z. That means that is the top performance available from the BTU's available from said gallon of gas. Once you've extracted every ounce of power from that gallon, you're DONE. We may be near that finite top performance.

Now reduce the passenger and cargo potential by making the car smaller and also reduce the size and weight of the engine. Guess what? There is a technological problem because the smaller engine, although moving a smaller load, still uses a similar amount of fuel. For example, if a car moves four people and a cargo load 30 miles down the road on a single gallon of gas, what is the benefit of having a little, UNSAFE smart car moving two people with a substantially smaller cargo load down the road 60 miles? It doesn't make sense. If this were economically smart, we'd ALL be driving tiny little scooters suitable for one person. Except that a scooter getting 120 miles to a gallon is fine until you want to move four people 120 miles. You'd need four scooters, which is 30 miles to a gallon.

It appears to me that we are nearing or maybe have even reached the ultimate power- to-weight-to-performance and safety potential in automobiles powered by gasoline. Now couple that with the unfair and impossible CAFE (Coporate Average Fuel Economy) standards set for auto manufacturers and you can see the folly of dictating mileage standards based on FANTASY and good intentions. Maybe science should prevail over environmental whack-job stupidity. I've never met a so-called environmentalist I couldn't bitch-slap into submission with facts. They get mad and stalk off in anger.

Without beating this to death, I'll point out that the Chinese used to ride bicycles and scooters. They've since opted for cars because they're not stupid. They have freeways and expressways now. They're burning the fuel just as we are and happily polluting the environment. That's all bad but it's to be expected. Give them a few more years and they'll be driving high-lift pick-up trucks while we are all reduced to driving roller skates with engines.

The auto manufacturers have deigned to bury themselves with labor contracts that have bankrupted them, but they've had plenty of help from the Federal Government with the CAFE standards and legislators beholding to both the unions and the environmental lobby. The poisonous bailout plan is apt punishment for our collective misbehavior and we're going to pay for it or rather, our children and grandchildren will pay for it. In the end, the death of the auto industry will be the result of our failure to recognize that you can't legislate or fantasize 100 miles per gallon into a viable conveyance.

Captain Push has a couple of final notes. Some of the "hybrid" vehicles for sale only get a SINGLE mile per gallon more than their conventional counterparts. These hybrids sell for several thousand dollars MORE than the conventional models. But hey! You look good driving a "green car." For the electric crowd, when you plug that hippy in, the coal-fired electric plants go into "high burn" to get that battery-burning baby fired up for its 40 mile drive. I'll explain hybrid and electric in a future post. It isn't pretty.

Colonel John Paul Stapp and Murphy's Law

"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."

As a youngster growing up near Lockheed, I became interested in aviation. I sold newspapers at the entrance to some of the giant plants where state of the art aircraft were being developed and built. I saw U-2's and F-104's flying overhead and eventually was lucky enough to have a grand tour of the complex including the ejection-seat shop and huge CAD room where computers were drawing wing designs on plotters larger than a pool table.

An obsessive bookworm, I read everything I could put my grimy hands on regarding aviation. One of my favorite subjects was G-forces and the man who rode the rocket sleds, Colonel John Paul Stapp. The vivid pictures of the torture he endured during these tests were etched into my mind and never forgotten. He was a true hero of mine.

Flash forward many years to 1998 when I first met Fanny. She mentioned that she was the niece of Paul Stapp. My fascination was recalled and renewed and I began to research him again. I found more and more interesting facts about his remarkable life. His research led to seat belts in automobiles and the safe ejection systems used in military aircraft. Reknowned for those achievements something amusing is often lost. That is, he made "Murphy's Law" a well-known phrase.

Quoting Wikipedia: Witty and charismatic and thus popular with the press and his staff, Stapp's team in particular, and its workplace subculture is also the clear originating source for the ubiquitous principle known as Murphy's law. There is no question, setting aside the specific murkiness of its attribution, that Stapp was its actual popularizer and probably framed its final form, first using the soon to be widespread term in his first press conference about Project MX981 in the phrase, "We do all of our work in consideration of Murphy's Law" in a nonchalant answer to a reporter. It was his team that, within an adaged-filled subculture, and while using a new device developed by reliability engineering expert Major Edward Murphy[2], coined the euphemistic phrase and began to use it in the months prior to that press conference. When the unfamiliar "Law" was clarified by a subsequent follow-up question, it soon burst into the press in various diverse publications, and got picked up by commentators and talk programs.

Regrettably, I never got to meet Uncle Paul. Fanny and I maintain a collection of Colonel Paul memorabilia including a poster-sized reproduction of the Time magazine cover shown above. He was a true American hero and every year, I write to the President and our legislators requesting that he be posthumously promoted to General.

Why We're Not Rich

Even though we own an oil/gas well.

Some months ago, Fanny received an intriguing letter from a law office informing her that she and several others had inherited some oil/gas leases. Of course, always on the lookout for fraud, we called her Uncle who has a lifetime in the "oil bidness" (as they say in Texas) and he told her it was legit. He also said that although it would pay off, it wouldn't be a lot so don't get too excited. We laughed as I worked on the math and determined that she owned a portion comprising something like 1/238th of a small part of said operation.

Today the data came in. Fanny is the proud owner of: 0.925926 of 27/32 of 2.488 divided by 511.3153 x 1/2 of 1/8 of 10 leases of a producing GAS field. The company checked the math for me and if I'm reading this correctly, Fanny owns 1/10,000th of 1% of said leases. I was surprised they paid the postage both ways for the documentation because I think that 84 cents probably puts her in the hole to the company. In fact, this statement from the "Division Order" tells the whole story: "Payor may accrue proceeds until the total amount equals $100, or pay May 15 of each year, whichever occurs first." I think we might get a bill instead.

This has been a fabulous year for us. We inherited an old dog and racked up a huge veterinarian bill along with a gas well. I pray for our relatives' health as I'm afraid of what they might leave us next.

POVERTY REDEFINED
copyright 1997
all rights reserved

I always imagined that I was poor when I was a teenager. Grandmother and I lived on her social security and pension of $115.00 a month. Thanks to a few relatives and the kindness of a landlord who frequently waived our rent, we managed to eat and pay the utilities. We lived in what was then known as poverty.

Today such a situation is unimaginable. The government has drawn a poverty line in the sand. Poverty doesn’t mean being poor anymore. Poverty used to hurt, was socially unacceptable and everyone tried to avoid living in it. Now poverty is something that entitles people to special status and treatment under the law. Poverty isn’t what it used to be.

Poverty today is the right not to work and be subsidized by those who do work. It means freedom and freeloading. It is a shopping cart full of groceries, a satellite dish in the front yard and a car. Poverty means receiving at least one or two checks a month in the in the mail along with food stamps and vouchers. Poverty is subsidized housing, cheap health insurance and discounted utilities. Poverty is now an occupation that affords one plenty of time to pursue an avocation.

Poverty is watching rented video movies on a color television. It means having discretionary money for lotto tickets, cigarettes, alcohol and disposable diapers. Poverty is a social event at the local tavern or a protest march on the capital steps. Poverty is political clout and a free college education. It is the pregnant welfare mother living with her gainfully employed boyfriend. Like a clever thief, poverty reaches into the pockets of hard-working Americans.

Poverty is even an excuse for every other social ill. Drug use, child abuse, robbery and even murder are blamed on poverty. People no longer commit crimes; poverty does. Poverty makes people riot and destroy the holdings of industrious and successful people.

Poverty is now defined by agencies of the government and people who haven’t felt it and don’t know what it is. Earn less than $12,000 a year and you are impoverished. Receive a welfare benefit package worth $20,000.00 and you are still impoverished. Poverty is a political tool used to get properly concerned individuals elected to high office. Poverty is nothing but a word hijacked and used for personal political gain.

Poverty in the United States is more than a comfortable living. It is something many protect with religious fervor. Politicians need poverty to rail against and huge bureaucracies employ thousands to administer to the poor. Poverty is big business.

There is no shame in choosing poverty as a lifestyle. An acquaintance of mine refers to her welfare check as her “paycheck.” Offered employment, she says she doesn’t want to face a cut in her benefits.

What poverty really means is destitution. It is the hollow-eyed child with a distended abdomen and the skeletal parent starving in blighted African lands. It is a handful of rice each day for nourishment. Poverty is no heat in the winter, no running water, no electricity and no hope. Poverty is the mother with no breast milk for her baby. Poverty is the homeless man found dead of hypothermia. Poverty is pain and suffering. Few Americans know real poverty.

I still think I was once poor. I remember the bare walls and floors. I remember transportation as getting somewhere by foot. I remember, and it makes me wince when I hear a politician lament the rise in poverty in our nation. What passes for poverty in America would qualify as affluence in many countries. Poverty has changed a lot in the last thirty years. Somehow it just isn’t the same.

Time To Act. Give Steele A Chance.

I used to laugh at how Democrats viciously devoured their own after an election. The anger and finger-pointing at Gore, Liebermann, Kerry, and Edwards was comical and predictable. There never seems to be a Nixonian rise from the ashes of a crushing Democratic defeat although Gore managed to salvage himself somewhat with his Nobel prize and Academy award.

Now that this election cycle is over, it's time for Conservatives to clean their filthy house. How we do that is fairly simple. Get rid of Republican Lite people like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani and let's plow the Governator under while we're at it. These people aren't moderates, they're sell-outs. Who can argue that McCain was a failure before he ran for President? McCain-Feingold gave McCain what he deserved and McCain-Kennedy was a betrayal. Mitt Romney needs to mend his flip-flopping ways or he can get out too.

Add to that Foley and Craig corruption along with Lindsey Graham attempting to slaughter "loud people" and a Congress full of free-spending Republicans and you have the recipe for a party with it's own peculiar ghetto. The party is plagued by unprincipled pricks and hacks who think that by pointing to the misbehavior of certain Demcrats, they have some kind of moral equivalency. I beg to differ. Democrats rarely pretend to be principled and have no duty therefore to apologize for William "cold cash" Jefferson or Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Jack Murtha.

So it is time for Mike Duncan to step down. He's the leader of losers and we need a different kind of leader and maybe an enforcement wing of the the party to weed out and punish the emerging left-wing of the Republican Party. If Michael Steele wants to chair the RNC, let's give him the chance. There doesn't seem to be anybody else out there that offers "hope and change" for Conservatives. Get behind Steele and maybe there will be a slight chance for redemption.

My Community Organizer Days

Captain Push was a Community Organizer. Now before you start snickering about my penchant for gathering Organs in the Community, let me explain that I am serious and have the resume to prove it.

Some years ago, while living in a small town (My Sarah Palin Creds on display) I recognized the need for certain community services, among them a Fire Department to complement our Volunteer Ambulance Service. A small group of like-minded individuals gathered and formulated a plan. First, we would take over the existing joke of a Fire Service and then we'd form a Community Service District to operate and fund it.

Plan A was initially, a huge success. We joined and raided the volunteer fire service and installed the Chief of our choosing. Afterward, we began a petition drive to form a service district with taxing authority. We were in for a battle against entrenched politicians like we never imagined. Despite our efforts and a pro-bono attorney of some reknown, we were defeated because the County registrar-recorder refused to remove DEAD people from the voter rolls. (No we did not file a writ of mandamus but considered it. The deck was stacked against us.)

So here's what we did. Plan B. We re-worked our petition and re-walked every inch of our proposed district choosing to form a Fire District without taxing authority which requires far fewer signatures to establish. The County, relieved that we couldn't self-govern, was happy to validate our petition without holding an election. (We would have won anyway.)

As a community organizer, I walked and talked and begged, cajoled and seduced (just kidding) every resident of our proposed district TWICE. I made countless trips to the county seat to battle the board of supervisors and their paid attorneys. I worked for the people. My associates worked as hard if not harder. And none of us ever asked for anything in return. Our efforts were self-rewarding. The silence from the people who gave so much is deafening. I am proud to have been a part of something that manifests itself today in a very well managed organization providing needed services for so many often-neglected people.

This is but a small part of my personal resume but one that I'm rightly proud of. I imagine it stacks up well with Barry Obama's but I'm not running for public office. He is. He's running for President and he's in your living room every day. He might be in your life every day for the next eight years. By the way, I'm NOT qualified to be President despite my "community organizer" credentials.

Domino Economics

A few days ago, I told a group of friends that the passage of the "Bailout Bill" would have a domino effect. My prediction was that the State of California would come crawling to the Fed for relief from its huge, roughly 7 billion dollar cash deficit. Well call me psychic because the Governator is going hat in hand to the Federal Government for an immediate cash bailout which of course, Kalifornia will repay promptly as its economy tanks and its deficit becomes larger. Sound familiar? Others had already predicted the "Big Three" automakers would get in line for bailouts and with the "Domino Economic Effect" it will undoubtedly trickle down to your local Dunkin Donuts. This is clearly unsustainable and the fight will be on. Maybe we'll have to bail out Starbucks who have a store on every street corner.

Let's do a little grade school economic exercise here using history which apparently, we are doomed to repeat. After WWI, Germany was hit with such huge reparations they didn't have a prayer of repaying them. The solution was to print Deutsche markS.

That didn't work very well as the money was worth exactly what Monopoly money is worth. People were literally pushing wheelbarrows full of Deutsche Marks down the street to buy a loaf of bread. In the electronic age, money isn't so much printed as it is electronically invented through clever accounting techniques like pushing a button on a computer. The end result will be the same. When you have borrowed against your tangible and intangible assets to the maximum and (in the case of housing) beyond, you don't own ANYTHING and hence, you have no value. Your dollar isn't worth anything. For example, if money to the tune of 750 billion is so readily available for bailouts, why do we pay taxes?

I bring up history because we're repeating it in many ways. Here's another example: If you print phoney Phd's in economics, they're worth nothing and we have a lot of nothings with Phd's in economics running our economy. What kind of genius came up with "mark to market" accounting which was an invitation to fraud? Well, it practically takes a genius to figure out what that little stunt is all about but something did jump out at me. It seems to have had its roots in margin accounts which allow people/corporations to leverage far more money than they actually have. It's a fool's game and guess what? We've seen it before. Can you say Great Depression?

My final comment is about "getting the government we deserve." This may or may not be true but I'm becoming somewhat of a believer of that theory. If we continue to elect people (I use the term people loosely) like Barney Franks and Chris Dodd, then we're getting what we deserve. Bush and Paulson with the help of Congress have taken the extraordinary position that we need to socialize our formerly capitalist economy. I've got news for them. It's been tried before. Remember the vanished Soviet Union?