Cowboy Confessional

It should be American policy to produce insane quantities of cheap and clean energy to the point that The States become a net energy exporter.

Once government quits fiddling with energy economics, we just might.

Juice drives many things. It powers factories that employ people. It keeps alive the beep-beep machines in hospital that in turn keep people alive. If Silicon Valley neo-automotive geniuses conjure a few more tech-magic tricks, electricity might well become the fuel of the average American automobile.

In fact, the only downside I see to plentiful and cheap electricity is that it might create more television. We have far too much of that toxic waste as is.The paired business economics and public policy questions revolve around which technologies to invest in and where government should be pared back to allow electrical energy to thrive. With a snide nod to those who still believe in Gospel according to Gore, we might also entertain what energy sources pollute the least.

It is time to nuke Greenpeace.

In the June 2009 issue of Reason, Ronald Bailey lays bare the eco-nomics of various electrical production methods including those loved and loathed by the green movement. Because Bailey believes there is a carbon/temperature connection, he lists along with economic data the carbon contribution to the air on which we choke (for readers outside of major California metro areas, that is an insider joke – people in Montana can continue breathing your clean stuff).

Everything else being equal (a rash assumption, but one necessary to frame the discussion) we see that building nuke plants is sane, cheap, clean and will spew enough juice for about as long as humans roam the earth, which will be until 2012 if the jihadists have their way.

Naturally people with limited perspective – and by that I mean politicos burying facts faster than cats in litter boxes – publicly worry about nuke waste. Nobody likes the idea of living next to a glowing stockpile or letting terrorists swipe a few barrels of the stuff for urban intimidation purposes (people in Montana need not worry, Montana being a state-wide ranch). What to do with spent fuel rods is an impregnable problem to people without perspective, by which I mean Nancy Pelosi.

Perhaps that is an inaccurate assessment. Psychotic people do have perspective … it is merely within uncharted universes.

Bailey notes that in America all the nuke power plant waste produced in the last 40 years would fit on a football field if you packed it seven yards deep. That’s 100 X 53 X 7 yards, or about 37,100 square yards (28,365 square meters for our metric speaking cousins abroad). For forty years of production, that is a very little litter. Even that small amount of byproduct could be recycled, making it useful and with very little of the residual being rendered (relatively) harmless (Google “nuclear waste recycling” or “repurposing” for more scientific detail than you care to ingest).

In the past 53 years McDonald’s has served approximately 100 billion burgers, which are far less healthy for you than nuclear waste. That stack of sliders is about 924 times the volume of spent fuel rods waiting to be recycled. We humans have already recycled the hamburgers, producing a new species named pinguis americanus.

Since this is a tiny physical mass, it could be buried much cats bury … OK, I need a new metaphor. Storing spent nuke fuel was the national game plan. In Nevada north of Las Vegas is the most geologically analyzed mountain on the face of God’s glowing earth. Yucca Mountain (named after the yucca plant, not the word that escapes your lips when you think about eating 100 billion McDonald’s hamburgers) was excavated with $9 billion tax payer bucks in order to have a safe place to keep the tiny amount of nuke waste we currently produce, and larger future volumes because we want to produce insane quantities of cheap and clean energy to the point that The States become a net energy exporter.

Which is why Barack Obama is shuttering the facility before the first deposit can be made.

The five mile (eight kilometer) long and 25 feet (eight meter) wide main tunnel under Yucca would in theory be large enough hold about 577 years of unreprocessed nuke electricity byproduct. Even if America doubled its nuclear power production, that is still more years of future storage than America has existed. Given the documented advantage nuclear has for achieving the stated goal of generating lavish electricity, closing Yucca goes squarely against the goal.

But Yucca is in Harry Reid’s state and the otherwise good and sane people of Nevada threw fits over being the repository for the nation’s nuke gook. Since the executive has the power to not execute projects, and since his party holds power in the legislative branch and thus will raise no objection, the $9B sunk investment in Yucca is more of a waste that the waste it was designed to hold. Harry Reid is receiving a payoff for delivering Obama the White House to the detriment of national goals.

Here lay the irony. During the campaign Obama said “I think that nuclear power should be in the mix when it comes to energy,” and yet in March his energy secretary declared “the Yucca Mountain site no longer was viewed as an option for storing reactor waste.” When early post-election actions do not match campaign promises, then you know you were deceived.

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Order at Amazon.com

Publishing a book is like giving birth to an elephant:  It takes a long time, hurts like hell and is accompanied with a lot of ear splitting noise.

But it is done.  Afterlife is now on the market.  Order a thousand copies today.

After death, one soon discovers that every theologian was right. The afterlife offers too many inconvenient options including the chance at reincarnation, a boring existence as a ghost, the ultimate demise of oblivion or a short walk into the great unknown on the other side of The Light.

AFTERLIFE is a humorous yet tragic tale that forces everyone to rethink their postmortem prejudices. If you think life is frustrating, try death.

Cover blurbs

“Afterlife delivers a story crawling with heart, humor and hope. Packed with a cast of characters who surprise with insights, integrity and insults, this book made me more curious about life’s after-party. We can all hope that Guy’s vision can light the way, because we’ll be laughing and learning on that path while we wait for our turn at care that’s critical.” – Ron Seybold

“… imaginative, funny and smart.” – Heidi Springer

Author’s comments

Comparative theology is an interesting hobby as long as one doesn’t take theology itself too seriously.

Harvard Bob tends to agree. Harvard Bob — who was president of Harvard Theological Seminary during the Timothy Leary period at that ivy covered asylum — has seen theological debates at a depth and arcane intensity that would make most men prefer the Devil. One day while he and I were chatting about the different human conceptualizations of God and the afterlife, I got a bad case of the giggles. The curious notion that had struck me was that maybe everybody was right — that all the theologians were 1000% correct and that every explanation about what happens to human souls was spot on. Ghosts, reincarnation, oblivion, The Light … they were all available in the ever after.

This of course led to a logical problem. How does one choose a path in the afterlife? Are there moral choices with each option? What is the relative worth of each alternative or do some postmortem options remain as ambiguous as the unspoken reservations about the very existence of an afterlife we all share (come on and admit it)?

What if death was as confusing, unpredictable and angst-inducing as life?

So I invented a situation and a Job-like character to deal with the mess we call death. In a horrific auto accident he dies, his wife survives, and in his afterlife he is presented with news and choices that would drive a sane man mad and a mad man to run for office.

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“The fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts individuals only insofar as their interests coincide with those of the State. Fascism is opposed to classical liberalism that denies the State in the name of the individual … The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to conform with nature’s plans. If classical liberalism spells individualism, then fascism spells government.”
— Benito Mussolini, Fascism: Doctrine & Institutions, 1935

“Part of my job as president I think is to make government cool again.”

“It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.”
— Barack Obama

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The end of Washington’s spending spree may soon come thanks to incautious California.

The day care center known as the California Legislature has led the State of Disaster to fiscal ruin. So bad is the situation here in the Shaky State that politicians – unable to balance the budget without bankrupting the taxpayers – rigged a series of ballot propositions to do jigger the books. Propositions 1A through 1E raise taxes or shuttle money from one formerly protected use to the general fund. The institutionalized insanity of the state overspending is not addressed in any of the proposals.

And the people are PO’ed.

Odds of these ballot measures passing is slightly below Hell’s sixth ring. If they fail, California’s $42 billion shortage combined with its junk bond rating would likely push the Land of Fruits and Nuts into bankruptcy, an outcome for which more than a few folk are openly rooting. Taxpayers contend that the state legislature is fiscal alcoholic, and like regular drunks needs to hit rock bottom before it can recover and start leading a respectable life.

Bankruptcy might just sober-up California for the first time in history. San Francisco however will continue its non-stop bender.

While sucking down coffee at my favorite corner café last week, I predicted that should Cal go bust, it would instantly turn to its equally insolvent big brother, the federal government. The Golden State – bereft of gold – would cadge congress for cash. In the age of endless bailouts, and with Obama beholden to government employee unions while trying to make government ‘cool’, another $42 billion would look like chump change. After all, AIG got $100 billion more than that and congress critters never cringed.

I should go into the prognostication business, because I nailed this one.

Bill Lockyer, California’s current Treasurer, gives other trolls a bad name. I encountered Bill years ago when he horded the state’s Attorney General’s office. I briefly debated him on the constitutional basis for gun control. Despite his being a lawyer and me being an autodidact, it quickly became obvious that he was incapable of performing his job or perhaps cleaning himself properly after visiting the little dictators’ room. I suspect he is no more capable of making change than managing California’s coffers. Even the concept of a balanced budget seems beyond his grasp given his written statement:

“Even with a balanced budget, California believes its cash flow shortfall in fiscal 2009-2010 will be in excess of $13 billion.”

But he is a politician, which means he looks for the easy way out.

Lockyer has written to Timothy Geithner, a Keystone Cop masquerading as the U.S. Treasury Secretary. Without the shame common to common prostitutes, Lockyer began the pocket picking process, extending his rather greasy palm into the pockets of taxpayers from coast to coast.

“I am writing today to ask that you authorize extending TARP assistance to the State of California,”

‘TARP’, you will recall stands for ‘Troubled Asset Relief Program.’ Indeed California is troubled … in the psychiatric sense. Yet classifying Cal as an ‘asset’ will irk anyone east of the Sierra Nevadas. More to the point, TARP was established to soak-up toxic loans and other real property. Congress never intended for this loot to be lobbed at other governments.

Given America’s general distrust of California, you can expect a backlash.

People generally dislike being stolen from. If a man lives in a state that has balanced its budget the way it should, he will look lowly upon any attempt for another state to take his taxes. Yet that is what Lockyer yearns for – to make off with mullah from Maine, Montana and Missouri. Bill wants to bilk bumpkins in Baltimore, Brevard and Bayonne.

And they will bite back.

If the Obama Bunch backs Bill Lockyer in this misappropriation, it will backfire. Tea Parties were tepid compared to the pummeling politicians would receive over this intergovernmental slush fund. Imagine a representative from Rexburg, Idaho explaining to his constituents – many of whom escaped California years ago – that he opted to underwrite the fiscal failure and open air asylum called California. The good folks of Rexburg would reverently read scripture … as the tossed the last shovel full of dirt on his face.

Repeat the processes in 48 other states.

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Economists define inflation as an expansion of the money supply. Print more money, put more money into circulation, that expands the stockpile of cash. We plebiscites experience inflation in terms of higher prices. Groceries cost more. Gasoline costs more. Medical care costs more. Inflation is like a tax without a tax collector who you can shoot when he comes around.

Given what Bush and Obama have wrought, prepare to double, triple, quadruple your household budget for years to come.

This graph (click to enlarge) comes courtesy of the Federal Reserve, the government’s bank and one that oddly is not audited like other banks. The chart shows our annual increase in the monetary base, an aggregate measure of the supply of American money. This particular picture shows the change in the monetary base from year to year. The combined affects of the Bush corporate bailout and the Obama spending spree are that vertical line on the right side (incidentally the gray areas are recessions, which make past monetary policy comparable).

When the money supply grows at the same rate as the economy (i.e., the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP) we experience no ill effects. Prices may rise but so do wages, dividends and other income sources. The net effect on your prosperity is static. However, when the money supply grows but the economy does not, we see staggeringly higher prices but not higher wages. Thus we all steadily starve. Pensioners – who all the baby boomers will very soon be – are hurt the worst for they are on fixed incomes and have no way to grow their prosperity.

The “Bush and Obama spike” – the combined effects of corporate bailouts and Obama’s explosive spending spree – have caused the rate of growth of the money supply to double overnight. With his spending schemes projecting far into the future and guaranteed for at least two years – until inflation forces voters to rethink their congressional preferences in 2010 – we will soon be selecting the cheaper cans of dog food to feed our children.

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