French Star LaGarde, Obstructionist Republicans, Shell CEO Predicts, Alberta Biodiesel Study
Stafford 'Doc' Williamson
February 08, 2009
I am angry and disgusted and well, I can't say I'm not going to take it anymore, because I realize that is not an option for me as an individual. But neither am I going to sit here and suffer in silence while I watch such unconscionable behavior. I did take the action of writing the following letter to my Senator. I hope he gets the message.
Senator,
I am trying to restrain myself from writing you an angry letter, because I am angry with the Republican Party in general and their behavior in Congress recently.
Get a grip on reality, please. Tax cuts, especially the ill advised Bush tax cuts are THE major reason that the government is not in a healthy financial condition to handle the current economic crisis.
Spending, and frankly it really doesn't matter much what kind of government spending, is the stimulus aspect of the stimulus plan. Please stop (yourself and other Republicans) from playing the old tired and discredited game of partisan politics in favor of some really constructive efforts to get the economy moving again.
Obstructionist, partisanship will energize "the base" all right, but it won't be the Republican base, it will be an immoveable base of your opponents´ supporters who will start far in advance of the next election to build a foundation that assures the American people will never again be saddled with the burden of the unconscionable petty politics of the Republican Party.
We started to believe we had "the old John McCain" back after the election of 2008, but it looks like you have simply fallen in line with what the party leadership (mistakenly) believes is in the party's best interest, and the country be damned. It is time you showed us some of that statesmanship of old that we came to admire when we knew that John McCain put the people first.
Sincerely,
Stafford Williamson
I would urge you to also express yourself to the esteemed Senator from Arizona either at the link above (on his name) or at his Senate Office via the web form available on the official Senate website.
Let me state here that I am not faulting Senator McCain for being lazy or ONLY being obstructionist in the creation and passage of a "stimulus" bill through both houses of Congress. Quite the contrary, the Senator has been a busy fellow, with a whole alternative bill proposal offered on the Senate floor. And it was filled with SOME sensible and even attractive ideas, including lowering the lowest income tax brackets to help the poorest of people, though frankly the individuals who are earning wages in the 10% bracket now would hardly be likely to notice the $5.00 a week in reduction to the payroll deductions. Senator McCain opposes the "buy American" provisions of the current legislation as "protectionist" and likely to cause international trade backlash, if not sanctions, which is sensible, and I believe was going to be reduced or removed at last I heard from the Senate. But Senator McCain's idea of "stimulus" is to spend most of the money on re-equipping the military due to the losses of the Iraq war (and in preparation for stepping up the next war, in Afghanistan), lowering corporate tax rates from 35% to 25%, and offering a $15,000 tax credit to home buyers which he claims will "hopefully" restore home values. Yet, the Senator fails to understand, or rather, needs to have explained to him, before he can support the current allocations how giving $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts stimulates the economy or job creation. I would be happy to explain that to the Senator any time he has about an hour and a half, since clearly he does not understand the funding crisis that hits the arts when the economy is less than robust, not to mention that the arts generally struggle to survive in even prosperous times. But I also feel sorry for the Senator that he is so troubled by this particular $50 million with, as a percentage of the projected $825,000,000,000 stimulus legislation amounts to a whopping ... are your ready? ... the enormous sum of 0.0006% (that's 6/10,000ths of 1%). If you need to put that into perspective, when I divide my own personal income into 10,000ths (as I so often need to do) and then multiply by 6, that is still less than my wife and I spent on a pair of movie tickets last week.
Oh, I almost forgot, Senator McCain would take the $4 billion allocated to hire, equip and pay police, the $16 billion in additional Pell Grants for college students, 4.19 billion for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and $2.1 billion for Head Start, and begin "writing checks to individual households for the same amount [because that] would do more to stimulate the economy." Right Senator, hiring police, educating college kids, and early childhood education are far too frivolous to entrust to the government oversight when sensible taxpayers would obviously spend that money more responsibly, keeping in mind, of course, the importance of the lasting stimulative effect of their purchases.
Almost surprisingly, [not really] the New Chairman of the Republican National Committee appeared this morning on This Week with George Stephanopolous asking the closely related question, "How do Pell Grants..." create or preserve jobs or stimulate the economy. Well, since you asked, Mr. Chairman, and this one doesn't take an hour to explain (and isn't one of the Republican code-words for the dirty, dispicable term "liberal", like the term NEA is to the right-wing, moral majority "base" of the Republican Party) I will explain it to you quickly, sir. You see a Pell Grant is an investment in the longer term "infrastructure" of the country in terms of investing in the "human capital" the intellectual resources that will benefit the country in the (not to distant) future. But at the same time, those Pell Grants get spent on tuition (an occasion which recurs every few months, so that´s pretty immediate spending) for deserving young minds. So that tuition money immediately preserves and, because of the economic dark times and cutbacks that have already occurred in some institutions of higher learning, creates new jobs, for University building maintenance staff, for landscape workers in the outside contractor who handles the shrubbery and lawn work on campus, for campus police officers, for administrative support staff in all the various departments of academia, and the library staff, administrators and, oh, yes, the professors whose salaries are paid in large part by the tuition income of the university. Now, sir, do you understand why increasing funding for Pell Grants creates and preserves jobs?
Meanwhile in the frozen Northland (aka Canada) some folks seem to have a more level head on their shoulders where there isn't quite so much salt in the air as in British Columbia. Next door, in the province of Alberta, an official study called, not so surprisingly, the Alberta Renewable Diesel Demonstration, was conducted using 59 long haul trucks over an entire year, taking into consideration weather in all seasons. "During winter months, two types of two per cent renewable diesel blends were used: fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) and hydrogenated-derived renewable diesel (HDRD). During the spring and summer, five per cent blends of HDRD and FAME (comprised of 75 per cent canola methyl ester and 25 per cent tallow methyl ester) were dispensed." Shell Canada assisted in the study acting as the fuel blender, using their traditional blending equipment. The cloud points were consistent with requirements for standard diesel fuels in Edmonton, Lloydminster, and Calgary and met all of the Canadian General Standards Board specifications. So much for the trumped up "concerns" of the British Columbia Truckers Association.
Jeroen Van der Veer, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell was in Davos, Switzerland last week at the World Economic Summit (the 39th such annual conference). He appeared on a panel hosted by CNN's Fareed Zakaria that Fareed included in this week´s telecast of his show Fareed Zakaria GPS. When asked what the price of oil would be in 20 years from now, he said with some assurance (and a chuckle from the crowd) that he was confident it would be somewhere that Shell could, "make a comfortable living." But he also acknowledged that he expected future transportation to be a thorough mix of hybrids, electrics, diesel and gasoline as well as other alternative energy sources like biofuels. He also pointed out that we are all well aware that in the next 40 years, the population of the earth will likely increase by 50% from 6 billion people to 9 billion people and that the whole world will want access to electricity and transportation for themselves. He said he expects that we may have difficulty creating a system that can deliver all of that. In particular he pointed out that much of our system of generating electricity is old, and needs to be updated. Indeed he said, "We need to replace how we make electricity..." In his opinion that was too large a task for government to take on alone. It will take private enterprise to revise the global energy system, but that in the meantime governments must, "create the framework that helps to accelerate this [re-]development."
I could hardly agree more than I do with the Shell CEO on this point, which is also why I am not only terribly disappointed with the tiny percentage of the stimulus bill devoted to actual "energy" spending. Despite Obama and Democratic promises not to merely maintain the old Washington way of doing things, the stimulus package IS packed with traditional spending priorities that dwarf any innovation. AND THAT is a BIG MISTAKE.
As most of the political pundits who know their history have pointed out, neither Japan's repeated programs of government spending during the 1990's, nor the WPA, the TVA and all the government programs of the 1930's managed to put an end to the deep recessions that dominated those times and places. What got America out of the recession was the Second World War. The Bush administration has already played that card, and it didn't help (well, maybe it did help their friends in the oil industry whose profits over the past couple of years exceed all other profits from all other industries for all of recorded history). I am certainly NOT in favor of trying to use war (Afghan, Pakistan, or elsewhere), death and destruction, nor even the McCain, "let's spend it all on rebuilding the military" in an attempt to cure the economic ills we are facing. But I am prepared to propose a bold strategy.
What made the difference of the coming of WAR to the end of the 1930's was that the government put all other priorities aside and devoted the country to a new economic footing of re-tooling and producing the "necessary" products and goods to be "ready" for war. Now, in fact, we didn't spend unlimited amounts of public monies on defense of the homeland initially. Much of what erased the economic doldrums of the 30's was war profits selling to (yes, you better believe it) BOTH SIDES of the war in Europe and in Asia. But what got the economy really humming was the attack on Pearl Harbor, and America being drawn into the war in an unlimited and wholehearted commitment of the economy and indeed the very lives of US citizens to that war effort.
What we need to realize is that it was that SHIFT in the basic orientation of the economy to a whole new direction, to the recognition of the scale of the danger to the world of not meeting that challenge, and the absolute dedication of personal commitment and public policy to achieving those ends. I am not clever enough, perhaps, to come up with the perfect way to "sell it", but I do know that the fastest way out of this economic slump (recesssion, depression, call-it-what-you-like) is to SHIFT the economy to a real revamp of priorities.
That doesn't mean we don't make automobiles any more, it means we make a fast and significant shift to clean burning fuels (like the Pickens Plan for compressed natural gas fueling of trucks) and electric and electric hybrids, and tie that directly to the demands in this NEXT round of financial aid to the Detroit-based auto industry, but also to new mandates that force the other car makers into competition on the same playing field. It may also mean "nationalizing" some of the closed auto factories and converting them to build wind turbines. That may drastically reduce the profit margins for current wind turbine makers, but it will also make enough wind turbine generators available quickly to get the Pickens Plan up and running in short order. Or perhaps in a more bipartisan spirit, we the people (meaning the government) could offer to partner with GE to take on this enterprise of producing not only enough wind turbine generators to significantly shift out electric generating capabilities away from fossil fuel sources, but enough to develop a significant export trade with other countries in supplying these tools of a new energy era.
NOTE, PLEASE: In Senator John McCain´s recent speech on the senate floor introducing his alternative stimulus bill he pointed out that in some cases up to 70% of our balance of trade exports to other countries were goods produced as military supplies; guns, planes, bombs. (Here´s the actual quote from mccain.senate.gov Quoting, "a Department of State … study shows U.S. exports of defense products increased to nearly $49 billion in 2006, comprising nearly 70% of global exports.") I´d rather be exporting wind turbine generators and biodiesel factories than bombs, bullets and artillery, wouldn´t you?
I also suggest that we impose EPA regulations that force rapid transition to biomass fueling of existing coal-fired electric plants. Don't toss a token US$4 billion toward the exploration of the creation of a smart electric grid, kick in a whole US$150 billion and do it in the next 3 years, not spread over 10 years like the promise of support for clean, renewable, alternative energy (same amount but what has been promised is only in dribbles over the 10 years in the bill introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer). [And despite my moaning and groaning, at least the bill has be put forward, so thank you Senator Boxer for that much!]
Put some serious money behind biobutanol. We are so close to real breakthroughs on biobutanol that one half of the country's corn subsidies tossed into an intensive one year research program could have us switching from ethanol to biobutanol at lower costs and cleaner driving within a couple of years. Eliminate pneumatic tires. If "correctly inflated" auto and truck tires can save 10% or more on the gas mileage people are getting, why not just have tires that don't require constantly being refilled (with air or anything else).
I want to take an extremely short trip into the world of entertainment this week. I saw the DVD of My Mom's New Boyfriend with Meg Ryan and Antonio Bandaras was sweet but disappointing. Still, I always like a Hollywood happy ending, so I have to put this in a "pleasant waste of time" category.
Speaking of categories, if there are any out there among you who are inclined toward wagering, don't bet against Slumdog Millionaire. It may not win every category in which it has been nominated, but it is almost certain to take home some of the statuary this year at the Oscars.
Finally, just a "pleasant" note. I was much impressed with the French Minister of Finance, Christine LaGarde when she appeared on Fareed Zakaria GPS today. I understand from the Newsweek article cited as a link to her background here, that she was, not long ago, the head of the global law firm Baker and MacKenzie, and it was apparent that her stint working in Chicago had not dulled her crisp British-style enunciation of her eloquent speech (with no detectable French accent). It is quite obvious that America has more than one friend in French government these days, and I look forward to seeing more of her. She is clearly one of the brightest of President Nicholas Sarkozy's stars.
Love and warm wishes,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://daochienergy.com
Senator,
I am trying to restrain myself from writing you an angry letter, because I am angry with the Republican Party in general and their behavior in Congress recently.
Get a grip on reality, please. Tax cuts, especially the ill advised Bush tax cuts are THE major reason that the government is not in a healthy financial condition to handle the current economic crisis.
Spending, and frankly it really doesn't matter much what kind of government spending, is the stimulus aspect of the stimulus plan. Please stop (yourself and other Republicans) from playing the old tired and discredited game of partisan politics in favor of some really constructive efforts to get the economy moving again.
Obstructionist, partisanship will energize "the base" all right, but it won't be the Republican base, it will be an immoveable base of your opponents´ supporters who will start far in advance of the next election to build a foundation that assures the American people will never again be saddled with the burden of the unconscionable petty politics of the Republican Party.
We started to believe we had "the old John McCain" back after the election of 2008, but it looks like you have simply fallen in line with what the party leadership (mistakenly) believes is in the party's best interest, and the country be damned. It is time you showed us some of that statesmanship of old that we came to admire when we knew that John McCain put the people first.
Sincerely,
Stafford Williamson
I would urge you to also express yourself to the esteemed Senator from Arizona either at the link above (on his name) or at his Senate Office via the web form available on the official Senate website.
Let me state here that I am not faulting Senator McCain for being lazy or ONLY being obstructionist in the creation and passage of a "stimulus" bill through both houses of Congress. Quite the contrary, the Senator has been a busy fellow, with a whole alternative bill proposal offered on the Senate floor. And it was filled with SOME sensible and even attractive ideas, including lowering the lowest income tax brackets to help the poorest of people, though frankly the individuals who are earning wages in the 10% bracket now would hardly be likely to notice the $5.00 a week in reduction to the payroll deductions. Senator McCain opposes the "buy American" provisions of the current legislation as "protectionist" and likely to cause international trade backlash, if not sanctions, which is sensible, and I believe was going to be reduced or removed at last I heard from the Senate. But Senator McCain's idea of "stimulus" is to spend most of the money on re-equipping the military due to the losses of the Iraq war (and in preparation for stepping up the next war, in Afghanistan), lowering corporate tax rates from 35% to 25%, and offering a $15,000 tax credit to home buyers which he claims will "hopefully" restore home values. Yet, the Senator fails to understand, or rather, needs to have explained to him, before he can support the current allocations how giving $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts stimulates the economy or job creation. I would be happy to explain that to the Senator any time he has about an hour and a half, since clearly he does not understand the funding crisis that hits the arts when the economy is less than robust, not to mention that the arts generally struggle to survive in even prosperous times. But I also feel sorry for the Senator that he is so troubled by this particular $50 million with, as a percentage of the projected $825,000,000,000 stimulus legislation amounts to a whopping ... are your ready? ... the enormous sum of 0.0006% (that's 6/10,000ths of 1%). If you need to put that into perspective, when I divide my own personal income into 10,000ths (as I so often need to do) and then multiply by 6, that is still less than my wife and I spent on a pair of movie tickets last week.
Oh, I almost forgot, Senator McCain would take the $4 billion allocated to hire, equip and pay police, the $16 billion in additional Pell Grants for college students, 4.19 billion for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and $2.1 billion for Head Start, and begin "writing checks to individual households for the same amount [because that] would do more to stimulate the economy." Right Senator, hiring police, educating college kids, and early childhood education are far too frivolous to entrust to the government oversight when sensible taxpayers would obviously spend that money more responsibly, keeping in mind, of course, the importance of the lasting stimulative effect of their purchases.
Almost surprisingly, [not really] the New Chairman of the Republican National Committee appeared this morning on This Week with George Stephanopolous asking the closely related question, "How do Pell Grants..." create or preserve jobs or stimulate the economy. Well, since you asked, Mr. Chairman, and this one doesn't take an hour to explain (and isn't one of the Republican code-words for the dirty, dispicable term "liberal", like the term NEA is to the right-wing, moral majority "base" of the Republican Party) I will explain it to you quickly, sir. You see a Pell Grant is an investment in the longer term "infrastructure" of the country in terms of investing in the "human capital" the intellectual resources that will benefit the country in the (not to distant) future. But at the same time, those Pell Grants get spent on tuition (an occasion which recurs every few months, so that´s pretty immediate spending) for deserving young minds. So that tuition money immediately preserves and, because of the economic dark times and cutbacks that have already occurred in some institutions of higher learning, creates new jobs, for University building maintenance staff, for landscape workers in the outside contractor who handles the shrubbery and lawn work on campus, for campus police officers, for administrative support staff in all the various departments of academia, and the library staff, administrators and, oh, yes, the professors whose salaries are paid in large part by the tuition income of the university. Now, sir, do you understand why increasing funding for Pell Grants creates and preserves jobs?
Meanwhile in the frozen Northland (aka Canada) some folks seem to have a more level head on their shoulders where there isn't quite so much salt in the air as in British Columbia. Next door, in the province of Alberta, an official study called, not so surprisingly, the Alberta Renewable Diesel Demonstration, was conducted using 59 long haul trucks over an entire year, taking into consideration weather in all seasons. "During winter months, two types of two per cent renewable diesel blends were used: fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) and hydrogenated-derived renewable diesel (HDRD). During the spring and summer, five per cent blends of HDRD and FAME (comprised of 75 per cent canola methyl ester and 25 per cent tallow methyl ester) were dispensed." Shell Canada assisted in the study acting as the fuel blender, using their traditional blending equipment. The cloud points were consistent with requirements for standard diesel fuels in Edmonton, Lloydminster, and Calgary and met all of the Canadian General Standards Board specifications. So much for the trumped up "concerns" of the British Columbia Truckers Association.
Jeroen Van der Veer, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell was in Davos, Switzerland last week at the World Economic Summit (the 39th such annual conference). He appeared on a panel hosted by CNN's Fareed Zakaria that Fareed included in this week´s telecast of his show Fareed Zakaria GPS. When asked what the price of oil would be in 20 years from now, he said with some assurance (and a chuckle from the crowd) that he was confident it would be somewhere that Shell could, "make a comfortable living." But he also acknowledged that he expected future transportation to be a thorough mix of hybrids, electrics, diesel and gasoline as well as other alternative energy sources like biofuels. He also pointed out that we are all well aware that in the next 40 years, the population of the earth will likely increase by 50% from 6 billion people to 9 billion people and that the whole world will want access to electricity and transportation for themselves. He said he expects that we may have difficulty creating a system that can deliver all of that. In particular he pointed out that much of our system of generating electricity is old, and needs to be updated. Indeed he said, "We need to replace how we make electricity..." In his opinion that was too large a task for government to take on alone. It will take private enterprise to revise the global energy system, but that in the meantime governments must, "create the framework that helps to accelerate this [re-]development."
I could hardly agree more than I do with the Shell CEO on this point, which is also why I am not only terribly disappointed with the tiny percentage of the stimulus bill devoted to actual "energy" spending. Despite Obama and Democratic promises not to merely maintain the old Washington way of doing things, the stimulus package IS packed with traditional spending priorities that dwarf any innovation. AND THAT is a BIG MISTAKE.
As most of the political pundits who know their history have pointed out, neither Japan's repeated programs of government spending during the 1990's, nor the WPA, the TVA and all the government programs of the 1930's managed to put an end to the deep recessions that dominated those times and places. What got America out of the recession was the Second World War. The Bush administration has already played that card, and it didn't help (well, maybe it did help their friends in the oil industry whose profits over the past couple of years exceed all other profits from all other industries for all of recorded history). I am certainly NOT in favor of trying to use war (Afghan, Pakistan, or elsewhere), death and destruction, nor even the McCain, "let's spend it all on rebuilding the military" in an attempt to cure the economic ills we are facing. But I am prepared to propose a bold strategy.
What made the difference of the coming of WAR to the end of the 1930's was that the government put all other priorities aside and devoted the country to a new economic footing of re-tooling and producing the "necessary" products and goods to be "ready" for war. Now, in fact, we didn't spend unlimited amounts of public monies on defense of the homeland initially. Much of what erased the economic doldrums of the 30's was war profits selling to (yes, you better believe it) BOTH SIDES of the war in Europe and in Asia. But what got the economy really humming was the attack on Pearl Harbor, and America being drawn into the war in an unlimited and wholehearted commitment of the economy and indeed the very lives of US citizens to that war effort.
What we need to realize is that it was that SHIFT in the basic orientation of the economy to a whole new direction, to the recognition of the scale of the danger to the world of not meeting that challenge, and the absolute dedication of personal commitment and public policy to achieving those ends. I am not clever enough, perhaps, to come up with the perfect way to "sell it", but I do know that the fastest way out of this economic slump (recesssion, depression, call-it-what-you-like) is to SHIFT the economy to a real revamp of priorities.
That doesn't mean we don't make automobiles any more, it means we make a fast and significant shift to clean burning fuels (like the Pickens Plan for compressed natural gas fueling of trucks) and electric and electric hybrids, and tie that directly to the demands in this NEXT round of financial aid to the Detroit-based auto industry, but also to new mandates that force the other car makers into competition on the same playing field. It may also mean "nationalizing" some of the closed auto factories and converting them to build wind turbines. That may drastically reduce the profit margins for current wind turbine makers, but it will also make enough wind turbine generators available quickly to get the Pickens Plan up and running in short order. Or perhaps in a more bipartisan spirit, we the people (meaning the government) could offer to partner with GE to take on this enterprise of producing not only enough wind turbine generators to significantly shift out electric generating capabilities away from fossil fuel sources, but enough to develop a significant export trade with other countries in supplying these tools of a new energy era.
NOTE, PLEASE: In Senator John McCain´s recent speech on the senate floor introducing his alternative stimulus bill he pointed out that in some cases up to 70% of our balance of trade exports to other countries were goods produced as military supplies; guns, planes, bombs. (Here´s the actual quote from mccain.senate.gov Quoting, "a Department of State … study shows U.S. exports of defense products increased to nearly $49 billion in 2006, comprising nearly 70% of global exports.") I´d rather be exporting wind turbine generators and biodiesel factories than bombs, bullets and artillery, wouldn´t you?
I also suggest that we impose EPA regulations that force rapid transition to biomass fueling of existing coal-fired electric plants. Don't toss a token US$4 billion toward the exploration of the creation of a smart electric grid, kick in a whole US$150 billion and do it in the next 3 years, not spread over 10 years like the promise of support for clean, renewable, alternative energy (same amount but what has been promised is only in dribbles over the 10 years in the bill introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer). [And despite my moaning and groaning, at least the bill has be put forward, so thank you Senator Boxer for that much!]
Put some serious money behind biobutanol. We are so close to real breakthroughs on biobutanol that one half of the country's corn subsidies tossed into an intensive one year research program could have us switching from ethanol to biobutanol at lower costs and cleaner driving within a couple of years. Eliminate pneumatic tires. If "correctly inflated" auto and truck tires can save 10% or more on the gas mileage people are getting, why not just have tires that don't require constantly being refilled (with air or anything else).
I want to take an extremely short trip into the world of entertainment this week. I saw the DVD of My Mom's New Boyfriend with Meg Ryan and Antonio Bandaras was sweet but disappointing. Still, I always like a Hollywood happy ending, so I have to put this in a "pleasant waste of time" category.
Speaking of categories, if there are any out there among you who are inclined toward wagering, don't bet against Slumdog Millionaire. It may not win every category in which it has been nominated, but it is almost certain to take home some of the statuary this year at the Oscars.
Finally, just a "pleasant" note. I was much impressed with the French Minister of Finance, Christine LaGarde when she appeared on Fareed Zakaria GPS today. I understand from the Newsweek article cited as a link to her background here, that she was, not long ago, the head of the global law firm Baker and MacKenzie, and it was apparent that her stint working in Chicago had not dulled her crisp British-style enunciation of her eloquent speech (with no detectable French accent). It is quite obvious that America has more than one friend in French government these days, and I look forward to seeing more of her. She is clearly one of the brightest of President Nicholas Sarkozy's stars.
Love and warm wishes,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://daochienergy.com