Cash for Clunkers

The CARS program, more affectionately known as "Cash for Clunkers," is gaining more opposition as it shows more success. let's be real here, this is a stimulus plan for the American Car Companies, and certainly it is doing that. Ads around where I live show that with the rebate, one can get an economicaly car for a damn good price; one dealer is doubling the bonus...taking 9k off the price. I checked today to see if my "clunker" a 91 Plymouth Acclaim qualified (it doesn't).

Interesting that Fox News slams the program as early claims are that the average mpg of vehicles traded in is 10 mpg less than what people are driving away with.

some of the controversy comes from the destruction of the cars. This takes energy (as does building a new car). yes, these criticisms are accurate, but then let's be honest and all recycling is just down cycling, not true recycling. These criticisms are coming from fairly radical environmentalists. If we narrowly look at just transportation, the savings in mpg, assuming that people will not double their driving due to the increased mpg, we are saving gasoline. Some people will undoubtedly drive more, just as people who switch to compact flourescent bulbs, leave the lights on longer since cost is the driver, not energy consumption

Merry Christmas and here is your daily downer

30 years ago, President Jimmy Carter (remember him, he was a barrel of laughs), gave us this in a speech from 7/15/79:

“Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. It's a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation.
The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.”

But Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election. Almost a year to the day of Pres. Carter's speech, Ronald Reagan accepted his party's nomination for the Presidency. An excerpt from that speech shows you the path taken that has lead us to our mess today:

Those who preside over the worst energy shortage in our history tell us to
use less, so that we will run out of oil, gasoline, and natural gas a little
more slowly. Conservation is desirable, of course, for we must not waste energy.
But conservation is not the sole answer to our energy needs.

America must get to work producing more energy. The Republican program
for solving economic problems is based on growth and productivity.

Large amounts of oil and natural gas lay beneath our land and off our
shores, untouched because the present administration seems to believe the
American people would rather see more regulation, taxes and controls than more
energy.

Coal offers great potential. So does nuclear energy produced under
rigorous safety standards. It could supply electricity for thousands of
industries and millions of jobs and homes. It must not be thwarted by a tiny
minority opposed to economic growth which often finds friendly ears in
regulatory agencies for its obstructionist campaigns.

Make no mistake. We will not permit the safety of our people or our
environment heritage to be jeopardized, but we are going to reaffirm that the
economic prosperity of our people is a fundamental part of our
environment.

Shouldn't the goal be: energy without poisoning our future? Nuclear produces incredibly toxic waste; coal is not clean...lots o greenhouse gas, ... and when hasn't economic growth come with development of new technologies? Well, the threat to other industries is what stops the development of new technologies mnore than its real feasibility. Hell, the Saudis work on thwarting non petroleum energy sources.

...on a completely different track....I see blue sky. Seems like a week since I saw that. A clear blue Christmas is what I prefer today.

Update (later on Christmas Day). This is from a Sept 11, 2008 article in The Economist.

Straight talk express running out of gas?

At 2PM today Sen. McCain, living up to his straight talker reputation shares this little bit of conventional wisdom he shared at a town hall-style meeting Friday morning in Denver.

"My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East," McCain said.

So, this means our forgotten war in Afghanistan, from where the 9/11 attack came and where Osama bin Laden was being harbored, is the war about democracy and Western values, while the war in Iraq is about Western values, our oil intensive culture. Yeah, well, that is a good summary and hearing someone like Sen. McCain admit it, I think is the opening of one hell of debate for this election. Finally, straight talk.

Until he landed in Pheonix. There Sen. McCain's straight talk express ran out of gas and he equivocated, he dodged, he "bent."

According to the Associated Press: "No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons," McCain told reporters.

One reason was Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, he said. "But also we didn't want him to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil, and it's more important than any other part of the world," he said.

"If the word `again' was misconstrued, I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons, and that's all I mean," McCain said.

"The Congressional Record is very clear: I said we went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Now, one thing I am sure of, there is a lot of oil in Iraq, much more oil than WMDs.

I can't wait until one of our straight talkers admits that we went to war in IRaq to intall democractically installed sharia law.