TRUMP WHITE HOUSE!
Cannot Trump this!
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I have received many comments re my trip memos and two pertained to my comments about the many windmills.
The first comment came from an acquaintance who lives in Israel and has worked a great deal in the power grid and he says; "... the reason so many are not rotating is because they are too expensive to operate and too costly to take down so they remain upright and locked.'
The second came from a long time friend who took a similar trip in his new Corvette concentrating on RTE 66: "Once again, I enjoyed your write up. While I didn't have as much time for the museums as you and Lynn, I think the real beauty was America!
One last thing, the reason the electric windmills aren't all working is this. Wind mill power is still one of the most expensive sources (Coal is still the cheapest.) What power companies do is produce what's needed from the cheapest source available first then the next cheapest source and so on. If a wind mill is not turning it means that demand is not at peak so they lock down the turbine until demand is ready. Also I think some of these wind grids do use batteries to store some electricity but I may be wrong on that. It may only be the solar arrays since electricity is needed at night but not produceable for obvious reasons.
be well!" (See 1 below.)
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Gov. Perry is sort of a dark horse and when he ran the last time was ill prepared, stumbled and that has impacted his chances this time. He was an effective governor and made a speech before the Fourth which is very worth noting.
Perry has an up hill fight but has proven credentials and is rational. Can he overcome the press' bias? That remains the question. Time will tell. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Obama is really not a complex person. Like all mortals he has many faults and as a leader they can, and are proving to be, dangerous and costly.
To begin with he tends to believe he is smarter than anyone, does not like to be challenged or proven wrong.
His ideas, absence of cost analysis seem to lack any economic comprehension.
Obamacare was complex, those who passed the legislation admitted they did not read it and most citizens found the matter too complex to comprehend. What they are now finding out is that it is costly, will produce less competition and savings as they were warned it would but ignored these warnings because they were told Republicans were simply rejecting anything this "black" president wanted because they wanted him to fail. (See 3 below.)
(One thing should be obvious even for Gruber's stupids - when the government tells you you it is affordable , think the opposite, and when the government tells you they are here to help, expect the worst.)
The press and media purposely mis-interpreted the comment by Sen. Mc Connell who said his job was to defeat Obama. In truth, that is the job of the 'loyal opposition' if, in fact, their disagreements run along philosophical fault lines.
Mc Connell, having now become Majority Leader in The Senate, is actually making that body function again. Bills are being passed, Demwits are being given a chance to vote, to express themselves and Mitch even passed trade legislation which House Demwits, rejected giving their own president a stinging rebuke. I hear no praise in the press or media about McConnell's achievements. Wonder why?
Now Obama is getting ready to craft a deal with Iran because he promised to end our participation in Middle East wars. Ending wars is a worthy goal if they are matched by equally worthy consequences.
We have buckled in order to bring Iran to the negotiating table and once there we have conceded virtually every point so Obama can have his promised legacy. He will be long gone after the agreement is reached and completely understood. This was the same case with Clinton's agreement with N Korea and look at what N Korea has accomplished.
The reason we are in the mess we are in is because most voters, nay citizens in general, are uninformed, have no desire to be, and understandably the issues are very complex and confusing. They are ably assisted in their pathetic position by a press that is biased, is more interested in stirring up issues than informing.
I mention this because it also has reference to Perry's excellent speech in that he is telling black voters what they need to hear and understand but may not be informed and/or intelligent enough to comprehend, ie. the Demwits have played them, and will continue to play them, for the suckers they are.
I have repeatedly said the same pertains to Liberal Jews. Obama, by giving Iran the nuclear latitude he has, they will now find out what the consequences can mean . But then most Liberal Jews and an increasing number of Demwits have turned against Israel because they are tired of seeing that nation defend itself against the 'oppressed' Arab radicals still living in camps administered by The U.N. that bastion of even handedness.
Israel lost the propaganda war eons ago because they kept being victorious against their unrelenting enemies. The world loves the victim.
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1)
Obama’s Renewable-Energy Fantasy
Bill Gates recently noted that the cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is ‘beyond astronomical.’
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
On June 30, one day after the Supreme Court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of mercury emissions from power plants, President Obamacommitted the United States to the goal of generating 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. This would nearly triple the amount of wind- and solar-generated electricity on the national grid.
The EPA ran afoul of the law by failing to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before it acted to reduce mercury emissions from coal-power plants. There is no objective cost-benefit analysis that could justify the president’s target for renewable energy.
Recently Bill Gates explained in an interview with the Financial Times why current renewables are dead-end technologies. They are unreliable. Battery storage is inadequate. Wind and solar output depends on the weather. The cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is “beyond astronomical,” Mr. Gates concluded.
Google engineers came to a similar conclusion last year. After seven years of investigation, they found no way to get the cost of renewables competitive with coal. “Unfortunately,” the engineers reported, “most of today’s clean generation sources can’t provide power that is both distributed and dispatchable”—that is, electricity that can be ramped up and down quickly. “Solar panels, for example, can be put on every rooftop, but can’t provide power if the sun isn’t shining.”
If Mr. Obama gets his way, the U.S. will go down the rocky road traveled by the European Union. In 2007 the EU adopted the target of deriving 20% of its energy consumption from renewables by 2020. Europe is therefore around a decade ahead of the U.S. in meeting a more challenging target—the EU’s 20% is of total energy, not just electricity. To see what the U.S. might look like, Europe is a good place to start.
Germany passed its first renewable law in 1991 and already has spent $440 billion (€400 billion) on its so-called Energy Transition. The German environment minister has estimated a cost of up to $1.1 trillion (€1 trillion) by the end of the 2030s. With an economy nearly five times as large as Germany’s and generating nearly seven times the amount of electricity (but a less demanding renewables target), this suggests the cost of meeting Mr. Obama’s pledge is of the order of $2 trillion.
There are other, indirect costs to consider. Germany is the world’s second largest exporter of merchandise, behind China and ahead of the U.S. But high and rising energy costs are driving German companies to locate new capacity overseas.
BASF, which operates the world’s largest integrated chemical facility, is shifting more production to America. “With such a huge difference in energy prices, the decision is clear that the money is now going there,” a BASF executive told a meeting of EU industry ministers last year. BASF has opened plants in Malaysia as well as Louisiana.
Advocates of renewable energy such as Deutsche Bank anticipate that electricity from solar panels will cost the same as electricity from the grid (so-called grid parity) in the not-too-distant future. But none suggest that solar can do so now without subsidies. And as Germany, Britain and other European countries are finding out, overt subsidies are only one part of the cost of renewables.
Most damaging is the effect of renewable mandates on the power stations necessary to ensure the stability of the electric grid and balance supply and demand. Even a modest proportion of wind- and solar-generated electricity prevents gas- and coal-powered stations from recovering their fixed costs. This has led to the proposed shuttering of Irsching in Bavaria, one of Germany’s newest and most efficient gas-fired plants. So unless conventional capacity also is subsidized, at some point the lights will start going out. European politicians have no answer to a problem they created, and it’s a safe bet the EPA doesn’t either.
One unintended consequence of the fracking boom is the displacement of coal by natural gas—a cheaper and more effective way to cut carbon-dioxide emissions. A 2014 Brookings Institution study estimated that replacing coal with modern combined-cycle gas turbines cuts 2.6 times more carbon-dioxide emissions than using wind does, and cuts four times as many emissions as solar.
That’s because generating electricity with low-energy density, weather-dependent technology is very inefficient. It requires far more plant and equipment and land to harvest an equivalent amount of power than fossil fuels. And that’s not counting the investment in fossil-fuel capacity to provide on-demand power when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun doesn’t shine.
There is no rational justification for policies favoring renewables. In 1972 environmentalist guru E.F. Schumacher wrote “Small Is Beautiful,” taking as his guide what he called Buddhist economics, which he’d discovered in Burma. A civilization built on renewable resources, he claimed, was superior to one built on nonrenewable resources. “The former bears the sign of life,” Schumacher wrote, “while the latter bears the sign of death.”
Mr. Obama’s renewable target is a triumph for Shumacher’s Buddhist economics—which amounts to being poor and staying poor. It does not produce jobs, growth or prosperity.
Mr. Darwall is the author of “The Age of Global Warming: A History” (Quartet, 2013).
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2) Perry’s Race Talk
The former Texas Governor challenges the GOP and the political left.
The media continue to dismiss Republican Rick Perry’s presidential prospects even as they pretend that Democrat Bernie Sanders poses a serious threat to Hillary Clinton. Mr. Perry has a far better chance at becoming President than Mr. Sanders does, and last week the Texan gave the speech of the campaign so far.
At the National Press Club on Thursday, Mr. Perry delivered thoughtful, often moving, remarks about race and the Republican Party. (We reprint excerpts nearby.) The former Texas Governor doesn’t spare the GOP, Texans or Americans for historical offenses against African-Americans. He also scores his party for giving up on even trying to win support among African-Americans, a failure that he says has cost the GOP “our moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln, as the party of equal opportunity for all.”
Rick Perry speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, July 2, 2015.PHOTO: ZUMA PRESS
But his remarks are far more than a mea culpa. He also lays out a rationale and a specific agenda for how the GOP can earn—and deserve—the support of black Americans. In particular he points out how Republican policies have improved life for all races in Texas. And he contrasts those results for blacks in progressive states that purport to do so much more for minorities but have left them behind economically.
“There is a lot of talk in Washington about inequality. Income inequality. But there is a lot less talk about the inequality that arises from the high cost of everyday life,” Mr. Perry says. “In blue state coastal cities, you have these strict zoning laws, environmental regulations that have prevented builders from expanding the housing supply. And that may be great for the venture capitalist who wants to keep a nice view of San Francisco Bay, but it’s not so great for the single mother working two jobs in order to pay rent and still put food on the table for her kids.”
That’s a nice turn of the equality argument against Democrats. Mr. Perry does the same on education, pointing out that “in too many parts of this country black students are trapped in failing schools.” He notes that in 2002 Texas ranked 27th in high-school graduation rates; by 2013 it was second, and its most recent graduation rate for blacks was first.
Mr. Perry also stressed Texas’ impressive record on prison and sentencing reform, especially for nonviolent drug offenses. “I’m pretty sure no one gets confused that Texas is a soft on crime place,” he says. “But I also believe in second chances and human redemption because that, too, is part of the American story.”
Beyond the policy details, Mr. Perry is on to something larger politically. He is turning the politics of race back against progressives by pointing out their lack of results. He is also making a pitch for political unity based on common American aspirations.
The sad truth is that most Democrats and the American left today want to polarize politics along racial lines. They need to divide by race because their coalition is built on identity politics and grievance. Mr. Perry is showing how to respond in a way that points the country to a better, unifying future.
2a)
Republicans, Race and Economic Opportunity for All
Too often we Republicans—myself included—have emphasized the 10th Amendment but not the 14th.
PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
From remarks by Rick Perry, a Republican presidential candidate and former Texas governor, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., July 2. A related editorial appears nearby:
We are a country with Hispanic CEOs, with Asian billionaires, and a black president. So why is it that today so many black families feel left behind? Why is it that a quarter of African-Americans live below the poverty line? Even after the impact of federal programs like food stamps and housing subsidies, the supplemental poverty rate for African-Americans is nearly double the rate for other Americans.
Democrats have long had the opportunity to govern African-American communities. It is time for black families to hold them accountable for the results. I am here to tell you that it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are truly offering black Americans the hope of a better life for themselves and their children.
I am proud to live in a country that has an African-American president. But PresidentObama cannot be proud of the fact that the prevalence of black poverty has actually increased under his leadership. We cannot dismiss the historical legacy of slavery, nor its role in causing the problem of black poverty. And because slavery and segregation were sanctioned by government, there is a role for government policy in addressing their lasting effects.
But the specific policies advanced by the president and his allies on the left amount to little more than throwing money at the problem and walking away. We spend $450 billion a year on Medicaid. And yet health outcomes for those on Medicaid are no better than for those with no insurance at all. Instead of reforming Medicaid, the president expanded it under ObamaCare.
In the cities where the left-wing solutions have been tried over and over again—places like Detroit and Chicago and Baltimore—African-Americans are moving out, and moving to cities like Dallas and Houston.
Listen, as Americans I think we are all united by certain aspirations. We want access to opportunity. We want good schools for kids. We want to live in safe neighborhoods. We want to live in cities and states where housing and college and everyday expenses are affordable. We all want to experience the American dream.
From 2005-07 more African-Americans moved to Texas than all but one other state, that state being Georgia. Now, many were coming from blue states like New York and Illinois and California. Many came from Louisiana, where they had lost their homes due to Hurricane Katrina. But each one of those new residents was welcomed to Texas with open arms. They came to a state with a booming economy. We kept taxes low, regulations low, we kept frivolous lawsuits to a minimum. We worked hard to educate every child.
Let me be clear, we have not eliminated black poverty in Texas, but we have made meaningful progress. In New York the supplemental poverty rate for blacks is 26%. In California, it is 30%. In Washington, D.C., it is 33%. In Texas, it’s just 20%. . . .
I know Republicans have much to do to earn the trust of African-Americans. Blacks know that Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 ran against Lyndon Johnson, who was a champion of civil rights. They know that Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because he felt that parts of it were unconstitutional.
States supporting segregation in the South cited “states’ rights” as a justification for keeping blacks from the voting booth and the dinner table.
As you know, I am an ardent believer in the 10th Amendment, which was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. The 10th Amendment says that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” I know that state governments are more accountable to you than the federal government is.
But I’m also an ardent believer in the 14th Amendment, which says that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
There has been—and will continue to be—an important and legitimate role for the federal government in enforcing civil rights. Too often, we Republicans—myself included—have emphasized our message on the 10th Amendment but not our message on the 14th—an amendment, it bears reminding, that was one of the first great contributions of the Republican Party to American life, second only to the abolition of slavery.
For too long, we Republicans have been content to lose the black vote because we found that we could win elections without it. But when we gave up on trying to win the support of African-Americans, we lost our moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln. As the party of equal opportunity for all. It is time for us to once again reclaim our heritage as the only party in our country founded on the principle of freedom for African-Americans.
We know what Democrats will propose in 2016—the same things Democrats have proposed for decades: more government spending on more government programs. And there is a proper and important role for government assistance in keeping people on their feet. But few presidents have done more to expand government assistance than President Obama. . . .
If we create jobs, incentivize work, keep nonviolent drug offenders out of prison, reform our schools, and reduce the cost of living—we will have done more for African-Americans than the last three Democratic administrations combined.
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3)
How the Affordable Care Act Is Reducing Competition
Five big insurers seem set to become three, as Aetna buys Humana and Anthem eyes Cigna. Thanks, ObamaCare.
The urge to merge is sweeping managed health care. Aetna announced Friday a $37 billion deal to acquire Humana. Anthem and Cigna are in merger talks and could be next. The national for-profit insurers are on an anxious mission to consolidate. These combinations will sharply reduce competition and consumer choice, as five big insurers shrink, probably, to three.
PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
This trend is a direct consequence of ObamaCare, reflecting the naïveté of its architects and the fulfillment of their myopic vision. For Aetna, the deal is aimed at expanding its footprint in Medicare Advantage, a business that has become more financially attractive now that ObamaCare caps profits in the individual and group insurance markets.
The authors of the Affordable Care Act wrongly assumed that new kinds of health plans, engineered in Washington, D.C., would emerge to displace the national for-profit insurers. Their first invention was not-for-profit “co-op” plans that ObamaCare funded with almost $2.5 billion in grants. The co-ops were envisioned as an egalitarian alternative to for-profit insurers, and a compromise to
Democrats who wanted a full-blown “public option.”
It turns out that the insurance business—contracting for medical services, structuring and marketing health plans, pricing actuarial risk—isn’t so easy. Many of the 23 co-ops that were established underpriced their coverage. When they delivered low premiums on the ObamaCare exchanges two years ago, Democrats hailed it as a triumph.
But now almost every co-op is financially underwater, on the hook for federal loans that amount to more than 100% of the total value of their capital and surplus. Some—like Arizona’s Meritus Mutual Health Partners—are nearing 1,000%, according to rating agency A.M. Best.
All but five co-ops had negative cash flow heading into the end of last year, according toStandard & Poor’s, and nine had medical-loss ratios above 100%, including Iowa’s CoOportunity Health, which has declared bankruptcy. During the last half of 2014 the Health and Human Services Department had to bail out six co-ops with $356 million in emergency funding.
As a second invention, President Obama’s advisers suggested that if consolidated hospital systems grew to critical mass, they would be able to market their own risk-bearing health insurance directly to patients. Thus ObamaCare expanded hospital subsidies, and included rules that made it cheaper for hospitals to own doctors, and costlier for doctors to remain independent.
When hospitals fashioned local monopolies through mergers and acquisitions, regulators looked the other way. In 2014, 72 of these “provider-sponsored” plans participated in the exchanges, according to Navigant Healthcare, and many more are being launched. Yet when similar schemes were tried in the 1990s, they failed badly. Most hospitals bungled the risk.
At the same time, ObamaCare tilted the playing field against for-profit health plans. Take the cap on operating expenses (including profits), proposed as a way to ensure that insurers were spending most of their money on patient care. For co-ops and hospital-run plans the cap is set at 20% of revenue. The cap on for-profit insurers in the large-group market is set at 15%. Hospital-run plans also have an easier time staying under the cap because they manage their own doctors and can shift costs between overhead and medical care.
The wave of mergers poised to sweep the industry is a result of this kind of regulation. To sustain themselves, insurers must spread fixed costs over a larger base of members. The bigger they are, the easier it is to meet the government-imposed cap on their operating costs while cutting their way to profitability.
This same pressure discourages new health plans from launching. Startups often must channel more money into initial operating expenses. But the caps largely prevent this, so the market stagnates. Under the entire Obama presidency, only about 50 new health carriers have entered the commercial market, according to a November analysis from Goldman Sachs, and half are the struggling co-ops. Around 40 health plans have also left the market since 2007; many merged with competitors, but at least 13 were shut down or liquidated.
ObamaCare’s architects saw these trends coming—and welcomed them. They mistakenly believed that consolidation would be good for patients, on the theory that larger companies would have more capital to invest in innovations that are thought to improve coordination of medical care, such as electronic health records, integrated teams of medical providers and telemedicine.
This was a profound miscalculation. The truth is that the greatest innovations in health-care delivery haven’t come from federally contrived oligopolies or enormous hospital chains. Novel concepts—whether practice-management companies, home health care or the first for-profit HMO—almost always have come from entrepreneurial firms, often backed by venture capital.
That venture capital has been drying up since ObamaCare was passed. Instead, the biggest wagers in health-care services are being placed by private equity, which is chasing opportunities to roll up parts of the existing infrastructure. For instance, there were 95 hospital mergers in 2014, 98 in 2013, and 95 in 2012. Compare that with 50 mergers in 2005, and 54 in 2006. Cheap debt and ObamaCare’s regulatory framework almost guarantee more consolidation. That will mean less choice for consumers.
Aetna’s core business had always been private coverage through employer-based plans; only about 40% of its revenue comes from government sources. But the Humana acquisition will skew it toward government insurance programs, which will account for about 60% of revenue after the merger.
That emphasis, and the merger activity, will reduce the kind of competition that leads to clinical advances and improves outcomes for patients. Congress could provide regulatory relief, by lifting the rules that impede new health plans from entering the market, but such reform, sadly, seems politically improbable.
Dr. Gottlieb is a physician and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He consults with and invests in health-care services companies.
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