Monthly Archives: December 2018

Bribery Laws Bad for Business

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Business, President Trump

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It’s very easy to connect these dots. Remember during the campaign Trump talked about how the Dodd-Frank Act was bad for business? One of the first things he got Congress to change and quietly signed was a bill eliminating fines for bribing officials of other countries. That was one dot.

The other dot was telling Putin he could have the top floor of the Trump-Moscow Hotel if Putin could push it through all the regulations and restrictions. Remember he dropped the project without saying why? Want to bet somebody said it would cost millions in fines or maybe put him in jail!

Now I wonder how he got the Scotland golf course through the environmental regulations. The local officials were against it along with hundreds of locals protesting the damage to the protected area. Suddenly the commission chair pushed it through and it was built. The BBC says it is losing money in spite of his two visits to advertise it. If he bribed any of the commissioners with free memberships, that would be actionable.

Don’t you wonder who got what to get Trump-Chicago, Trump-New York, and especially Trump-Washington D.C. opened?

Not Independent

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Energy, Oil Industry

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Tribune’s December 29th editorial on energy dependence was both factual and wrong. It left out critical information. Whoever wrote it should have consulted someone knowledgeable of the oil industry.

The first thing that caught my eye was the headline. We cannot be energy independent as long as we get oil from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela. For some reason the people who know nothing seem to forget those countries sell us oil so we are far from being independent. The second is a picture of an oil well pumping unit and calling it oil rig. Rigs are towering structures that drill the hole. Units are put in place along with the piping, pump and rods after gas pressure reduces the free flow of oil.

The writer left out statistics of consumption, domestic production, and barrels we buy from different countries. Also the writer left out that oil shale fracking produces a spurt of oil which rapidly dies out. Often the well dries up before the financing is paid back. If the price of oil is high during the spurt, the well is profitable. If it is at today’s price it may not break even, drilling drops and therefore production when the price is low. We produce less and consume more.

I hope a more baked editorial will be forthcoming.

Respect the Office

19 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in History, Politics, President Trump

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In the early 1960s, I watched a BBC News article showing Prime Minister Harold Macmillan addressing about forty people at some festival. They showed him no respect and I thought that could never happen here because American could always find enough things we like about a President. People still supported Nixon as he got on the helicopter for the last time. Those people who didn’t still appreciated many of “Tricky Dick’s” accomplishments.

I cannot remember, either through my readings or memory, a President who has been so disrespected as Donald Trump. The late night shows make a nightly comedy of the lies and ideas he has said that day. Their audiences roar with applause and cheers. The Democrats have pilloried him and now the Republicans, sensing weakness, have started to publicly turn against him. The Mueller investigation has exposed the corruption in the Trump administration, friends, family, business dealings, and in the President himself.

One independent organization tracks the number of lies, fabrications, and misrepresentations. They have listed almost 7,000 instances as of December 1. President Trump cannot resist being in front of cameras and telling a string of lies or putting out lies on social media.

Americans are supposed to separate the office of the President from the person in the Oval Office. How does one respect the office when the most incompetent, egotistical, narcissistic person imaginable is sitting behind the Resolute Desk? Most of the secretaries are just as unsuited for their positions.

A Prime Minister is out when the majority of the House of Commons loses confidence in their leader. I doubt Trump ever had it. How can we respect the office and not the man?

The Future of the Auto Industry

19 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Politics, President Trump, Tariffs

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                I don’t blame President Trump for his tantrum about General Motors closing four assembly plants. They are in states he barely won by saying he would bring more and better jobs into the areas. The tariffs he put on vehicle steel and aluminum cost GM over a billion dollars. It has cost all the auto companies billions.

                If all the companies are losing or passing on the costs of tariffs, why is GM closing the plants? Anyone who has been noticing traffic for as long as I have or just for the last few years has seen the decline of the sedan. We aren’t buying sedans. We are buying pick-ups, SUVs, and some cross-overs. Ford and Chrysler have already announced their closures for 2020 to 2022. What upsets Trump is the GM closures are before the 2020 elections. Remember it’s all about him and his image, not the people.

                CEO Barra, who is a generational GM employee, is putting the company into artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. Shutting those plants saves money for GM’s future. Building cars nobody wants is irresponsible and having to sell them at a loss is stupid and she isn’t.

                So let Trump and others rant and rave but shutting those plants to meet demand is necessary. Some of those cars were being shipped to China before the Chinese put tariffs on them in response to
Trump’s tariffs on imports. Small parts suppliers around the country will be affected also. One automotive engineer said an electric car has half as many parts.

                These closings are the future of the auto industry.

Repeating History

19 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in History, Politics, President Trump

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Many of us remember these words were said by a paranoid President. “I am not a crook! American deserves to know I am not a crook!” Richard Nixon was surrounded by loyal, decent people who committed crimes at his request or at the direction of his campaign or administration. A saying that must have been forgotten by some people today is: “It isn’t the crime it’s the cover-up that will get you.” Nixon and his immediate underlings had nothing to do with the Watergate break-in but the cover-up and investigations brought them all down. Most went to jail and Nixon resigned.

“There was no collusion,” and “I have done nothing wrong.” sounds a lot like President Nixon’s protests. Those statements come from a President who has no clue as to what is legal and may truly believe he can do nothing wrong, his family can do nothing wrong, and his friends can do nothing wrong as long as they are loyal to him. Unlike Nixon, Trump will viciously attack any former friend or associate if he thinks their loyalty is questionable. Like Nixon, Trump has a loyal following that will go over the cliff with him. They refuse to see the truth about a huckster.

Like Nixon, I suspect Trump may either resign or be kicked out of office. More likely he will announce in 2019 he has done all as promised and decline to run again. The latter is to stop congressional investigations before they get to him and his questionable finances.

Predictions Are Shortening

19 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Climate Change

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After reading excerpts of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic report, I had to rethink my opinion on the impact of global warming and climate change. The world’s scientific community has been slowly shortening their predictions of the effects of climate change. When the effects of methane (30 times more damaging than CO2) from thawing tundra was added to our imput of CO2, the time line shortened. When the impact of melting Arctic ice cap leaving less ice to reflect sunlight was added, the time line shortened.

This year there were more climate changing gases and less ice reflection than ever before. Another reason for sadness is the Earth had less major volcanic activity putting more gas and ash into the high troposphere reflecting the sun.

I have lowered my expectations to agree with the scientists who predicted major impacts by 2050 and not 2100. The oceans are rising faster than originally predicted because of thermal expansion, melting ice caps and glaciers.

Today’s very sophisticated computer programs predict the radical weather of November and December when the jet streams dropped to the south from a warmer Arctic.

Our eastern coastal cities (Miami, Norfolk, Charleston, and New York among others) are starting to plan – too late – to make zoning changes, or build up levees and install massive pumps. I think their efforts are too little, too late. Many predictions indicate they will experience constant flooding within thirty years, not fifty or more. Miami, Charleston, and Norfolk flood with king tides now.

Alternative Schools

17 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Global Warming, Religion, Science

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I don’t like to criticize a person’s religious belief, but I must explain why some people hurt their children’s future. A few years ago a neighbor had loved a Muslin man while she was in college. She converted to his faith. When he went back to his country she stayed and later married an American becoming a hard right Christian and had three children.

She home schooled them because the public schools taught lies. I don’t remember what her degree was in but she made sure no secular information was heard by them. She quickly decided my three college degrees, two in physical science, were from lies and her goal was to correct my knowledge. She was teaching her kids it was impossible to go to the moon, the earth was 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were lies, Noah’s flood had covered the entire world, including Mt. Everest, and other preposterous stories like oil and coal were put there when the earth was made, and other anti-science “facts”.

I told her if her kids were not given facts instead of her “truths”, their occupations would be extremely restricted. No scientific career would be open to them. Even human and animal medical work conflicted with her teaching. History, geography, geology, social science, and most other “above the shoulder” jobs would conflict with her teaching.

Conservative laws allow her to home school her children and brainwash them into her religious belief. We have allowed too many crazy people to use home, religious, and ethnic schools to “teach” children viewpoints that are totally impossible. We allow these schools to teach hate and superiority by skewing history and science. What should really scare Americans is some of these graduates are in Congress now. Maybe that is why they are so gullible on denying climate change and science.

The Future Is Near

17 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Economy, Global Warming, Uncategorized

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Recently I was parked in Morris’ Jewel lot when the radio announcer discussed the closing of four American plants by General Motors. CEO Mary T. Barra said she was closing them because people weren’t buying cars made in those plants. I looked at the three rows of double lines of vehicles in the lot and noticed of the fifty plus vehicles, only three were cars. The others were SUVs and pick-ups. My primary vehicle is a Cherokee.

In our free market capitalism system, a responsible company should only manufacture what they can sell. Of the three cars, one was my 1999 Town car and I doubt the other two were built in this decade. The factories had not gone from full capacity to closing next year. They have already reduced production to meet falling demand.

Ford and Chrysler have already announced factory closings stretching out into 2022 for the same reason. We are not buying cars with good gasoline consumption but pick-ups and SUVs that often get half the car mileage. When the price of gasoline first went over $2.00 we demanded high efficiency (25 mpg) and bought them. Now we are used to $3.00 gasoline and buy vehicles with less than 25 mpg. If gasoline went to $5.00 we might buy high efficiency 40+ mpg cars or will the electrics be plentiful by then. That’s what Barra and other automotive CEOs are planning with their factory closings. They are moving us into the future now whether we want it or not!

What Is Happening To Morality?

11 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Morality, President Trump, Religion

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W. Durant said “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” Many times I have heard the religious right talk and write about how our morals are declining. I bet it started before Rock and Roll and Elvis Presley but I am not that old. The 1960s, drugs, and protests were given as examples of our decline.

There will always be individual examples of depravity and immorality. As our population grows and the reporting increases we will see and hear more evil things. Unsocial media makes the impression of our total decline worse. We have always put some people on a pillar as a moral example only to pillorise’ them when we found they had feet in the mud. Prime examples are JFK and a host of evangelists. Political people are seldom good examples.

Today we have a President who has never risen to the level of even a poor example. He is proud of the fact that he has lied, cheated, conned, and assaulted women all his life. Every day he bullies his staff, appointees, opponents, allies, and people he doesn’t know just because he can and enjoys it. He has proclaimed his ability to assault women because he is entitled and rich.

How do the moral and religious people of this country support such an immoral person? How do his supporters tell their children to act morally and talk about how great the President is? How can a religious leader tell his flock to support someone who is the antitheses of everything they are supposed to believe? Why did they pass on other nominees who have far better morals and principles?

Would people please answer these questions?

The Truth Finally

11 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Global Warming

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Isn’t it hard to deny this planet is warming up? Heat records are falling somewhere in America almost every week. This fall saw the hottest month ever in some Northeastern states. Earlier some Southwest cities were around 115-120º. Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the East Coast have had one record breaking rain and flooding after another. The long term droughts have been briefly paused by a rain or two. Northern Illinois has been roasting this year. The oceans are rising causing some of Miami and Norfolk to be flooded with every high tide. The Navy is looking to combat the current and future flooding of bases around the world.

What will America be like in 2100? America’s scientists have decided to tell the truth hoping that we are competent enough to handle the truth. America is the only country with some normally intelligent people denying what they can see if they watch the real news and get around our country.

The rest of the world’s countries are preparing for the effects of human climate meddling and are scared to death. Even China and Russia are preparing for the effects while pushing their economic nationalism. The rest of the world’s projections say our area will have a year around temperature like central Florida. We might need year around air conditioning. Dikes and walls around Miami, Norfolk, New York, New Orleans, Galveston, Corpus Christi, and many other coastal cities won’t work. Look at a topographic map of our coasts and see how much is eight foot or less and then how many more feet will flood with storm surges.

Many acres of prime agricultural areas will be flooded by the seas, dried out, or become temperature insensitive like Napa Valley Grapes.