When Helping Out Turns Out to Be a Bigger Catastrophe Than The Initial Problem

From Instapundit , a link to an article by Jon Basil Utley. From his piece:

Most startling is the news that large boat skimmers could have sucked up much of the spill and cleansed it long before the oil reached shore. At the outset of the spill the Dutch offered skimmer boats with experienced crews that could have handled most of the spill. As The Christian Science Monitor reported in “The Top Five Bottlenecks”:

Three days after the accident, the Dutch government offered advanced skimming equipment capable of sucking up oiled water, separating out most of the oil, and returning the cleaner water to the Gulf. But citing discharge regulations that demand that 99.9985 percent of the returned water is oil-free, the EPA initially turned down the offer. A month into the crisis, the EPA backed off those regulations, and the Dutch equipment was airlifted to the Gulf.

A giant Taiwanese oil skimming ship, The A Whale, is only now working on the spill. It can process 500,000 barrels of oily seawater per day, but it also needed the same waiver from the EPA which, expressed in another way, limits discharged water to trace amounts of less than 15 parts-per-million of oil residue. It also needed a waiver from the Jones Act, which prevents the use of specialized foreign ships from the North Sea oil fields because they use non-American crews. Previously, the skimmers had to return to port to offload almost pure seawater each time they filled up with water.

Incompetence or malice or both? Doesn't much really matter on that answer, does it? A catastrophe by any other name...

This Blog After One Year

It's hard to believe that it was a little over a year ago that the blog got underway. I have been pretty sporadic on posting for the last six months and can only blame personal laziness and public befuddlement at our present situation. I hope to let you know some of my opinions shortly.

The E-mails on Global Warming and What It Means

As the scribe for the Great Unwashed, I believe that it is necessary to question authority and to remain skeptical about the things that are dished out to us by our betters. And not just the political, big government kind. All kinds. Include big business, big finance, big media, big military and big academia in the mix and their need to justify the things that they have in mind on doing to us. I believe, by and large, that we have always been skeptical of these groups, but I don't honestly think that I have ever noted any great conspiracy of the scope and scale that we are seeing with the global warming science.

Read Climate Change Data Dumped and Climate Change: This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation . Especially the latter. While doing so, remember that the e-mails hacked contained correspondence between the true Big Kahunas of the global warning movement.

We find the following:

• Field data was massaged to fit preconceived notions. The massaged data was kept and original field data was discarded. It appears that this data supplied the baseline for other studies that supported the global warning movement.
• The computer models were created to justify a predetermined result and data that did not meet the required result was once again manipulated by inserted hard coding. This hard coding literally made the use of any new or present or future data impossible to use without further coding manipulation. Its predictive use is, to put it lightly, now highly suspect. (Even a yokel like me was required to take FORTRAN in the early 80's and I recognize the term Garbage In-Garbage Out)
• The data and models were secretly kept. Only the washed Kahunas had access to it. Science requires the release of data and method to allow independent investigation. One's ability to repeat the process proves the model's predictive viability.
• Only selected peer review was allowed. It wouldn't be prudent to have any skeptics screwing up the expected results.
• Skeptics were subject to be destroyed and discounted. If you deny global warning, you also deny the Holocaust. This comparison degraded the Holocaust. You know, we have historical evidence of the Holocaust. I haven't seen any evidence that their climate models account for the present cooling phase or any future climates.
• Freedom of information requests were unlawfully avoided.

Now these e-mails have been available for the past week, but have you seen any of their mention on CNN, ABC, NBC or CBS? Nope? Well, please notice that all of the big institutions that were aforementioned have accepted and promoted this fraud. They just want to change Western Civilization. Global warming is political and administered by the modern politics of academia.

Come to think of it, isn't it strange that the proposed solutions to global warming are almost identical to the economic solutions proposed to alleviate the problems of the proletariat from the 1960's? Of course, we really need an economic solution to a scientific problem.

Now, please also consider the timing of this. We are now just realising that we appear to be in a cooling phase. What if Gore would have won in 2000? Would Enron have been in a perfect position to administer a Cap and Trade program? All the circumstances, at that time, would have been perfect. Just a little thinking with my tin-foil hat in place.

For the great unwashed, as a member in good standing I know that I don't know that the earth is warming. I can also say that I know no one else can say that for a fact either.

Its Good To Be Back With You

The photos posted show the Houston skyline from the roof of a thirty-story building and the view from a condo balcony that overlooks a (for now) dried up dock area at Lake Travis in Austin.

I have gotten back to work. Not full time, but I am back to looking at buildings and structures. I thought I would try to illustrate where I have been.

Another Nobel Prize Winner

Apparently that's where they come from. H/T to Tammy Bruce.

Stimulus Or No Stimulus, Why The Economy Isn't Coming Back Like Expected

I think you can tell from some of my past blog posts that I don't believe the stimulus package has helped in any way to stimulate the economy and may, in fact, have made things worse. Much like vampires helping out at the blood bank, I also fear that the creation of a stimulus package by folks who think that wealth is created by owning the printing press that prints the currency has actually helped to undermine the economy as a whole.

This morning, Why My Business Has Ceased Investing from Coyote Blog helps to explain why we are not seeing the economy come back. From that blog post:

This is exactly where I am right now. The business I own has been growing at about 10% a year for the last five years. In each of the last 3 years, we have invested an average of a half million dollars in new facilities. In the past five years I have added over a hundred new positions in the company.

This year we will add ZERO.

It is not for lack of opportunity. Because we are on the low-cost end of recreation, we have had a record year. And because I am in the business of privatizing public recreation, my phone has been ringing off the hook. All over the country, desperate public recreation authorities are calling me to say that they are out of money, their parks are about to shut down, and can I do something to keep them open.

To the extent we find opportunities to grow with limited investment, we are pursuing those. But I just cannot put up any more capital in this environment. If I make an investment, how much will the government let me keep? How much are taxes going up (because they certainly are going up)? Inflation simply must be around the corner given the monetary policy this country is pursuing — so will my business be able to raise prices fast enough to keep up with inflation in my inputs?

From Don Surbers Blog, Commenter "Sean" writes the following:

Businesses aren’t hiring because no one knows what in the hell our economic system is going to look like 5 years, or even 5 months, from now.

Will “Cap and Trade” get implemented as the Democrats hope?

How much of an upheaval will “Healthcare Reform” end up being?

Is the administration and Congress done overhauling regulation of the Financial Industry?

No prudent investor is going to bet their money (i.e., invest in growth) when it is conceivable that the government is going to radically alter how 50% of this nation’s economy functions.

Investors want to know what the playing field is going to look like before expanding their businesses, or starting new ones.

Right now, there is no certainty. No one knows if the business you start up is going to be adversely impacted by government dictum in a few months or years.

To say nothing of all the questions surrounding taxation to deal with these massive deficits we have going on right now.

Too much risk, and the prospects for reward are also uncertain. No better way to prevent growth.

The logic behind this thinking is pretty much common to all the successful business men and women that I have ever had the opportunity to cross paths with. Even in the best of economic climates, there is an element of risk. But add everything going on right now and we see no movement to jump out and risk the folly of investing when uncertainty is the only known.

So we see the following:

• The stimulus was a big failure. Not only economically, but politically. Basically nothing for small business. Consider if the stimulus package contained loan backing to small businesses. Not grants or handouts, but loans to be paid back. 787 billion dollars worth means that its possible for over 7 million businesses to get a minimum of 100 thousand in backed loans. Now some businesses may need more, but could you imagine the confidence that we would see as a result of a move like that. That confidence would have helped boost employment. Further politically, the Republicans would have been co-opted and would probably not opposed anything after that.
• Cap and Trade is a loser. I believe if I had a problem that dealt with science (climate change), I would find a scientific solution. Not an economic solution. What if we are wrong. My Weekly Reader in the 60's said that we need to prepare for an Ice Age.
• Health Care. Words fail here, but why wouldn't we just identify the problems and fix those.

The stimulus truly was short-sighted. I have always believed in using experts and have left many choices to my betters, but it's turning out that my betters are a bunch of dumbasses. And unfortunately, our political class may be the most inept that we have ever had. As the Official Scribe to the Great Unwashed, you are not in the best of hands.

New Campaign Poster

We are in the best of hands, folks. From Lucianne.com.