2012 Election

Time for an early election prediction!  I will not guess about the Republican nomination yet...probably Romney or Newt.

 But the results: GOP will win the Presidency by a wide margin of electoral votes and 3-5% of the popular vote. GOP will hold the House and pickup 5-8 seats. GOP will take the Senate 61-49.

We will get the ball back and better do something with it this time!

                                                                  Tea Party rally in DC

Green Jobs

I will post more details on this topic soon. But I am in the renewable energy business (biogas from waste to electricity and heat). This business is capital-intensive and often displaces more traditional energy that is labor-intensive. That may mean less jobs are created not more.

There are good reasons to pursue alternative energy sources, but creating jobs is not one of them. Some research is reviewed in a University of Illinois study.

Election prediction

I have to write this down somewhere as a prediction.

House seats - Republican net gain of 68
Senate seats - Republican gain of ten.

Rationale - the House races are breaking to the GOP in 5 out 6 contests. The "likely voter" model will most closely resemble the Gallup version...with a whooping 15 point difference for Republicans.

Second, the Eastern races will demoralize the Western Democratic voters and any close races West of the Mississippi will have some surprising breaks as the enthusiasm gap grows widen as the night goes on. Colorado, Washington and California will be affected. All three Senate seats will go Republican.

That's my story and I am sticking to it........

Warsaw, Poland 7:45 PM local time.

The BP Spill and Obama

I have been involved in hazardous material and waste matters for thirty-years. Usually on the side of giving advice to the companies with the problems.

So I will do a very brief synopsis. Obama was told early on that the chances of capping the broken wellhead were not good. Estimates of oil volumes privately provided were also much highly that the public heard in the first weeks.

With that set of facts, the first order of the day should have been mitigation measures. That means destruction of the oil while far at sea (fire booms or maybe even military means to ignite it), sand berms and other containment means, and rounding up all of the equipment possible to remove as much as possible before it hit sensitive areas.

None of that happened. Obama played golf and then lectured us. The federal alphabet agencies did what they do best, used red tape to frustrate people who have to deal with the real world. Democrat politicians ought to demonize the oil industry, at the expense of worsening the economic crisis and aggravating our energy security.

If the health care debacle was the beginning of the end for the "new age of Obama liberalism," then the Gulf oil spill has to be the potentially fatal head shot to the staggering and wounded guy who got promoted by the media to a position about three levels above his competence.

The Incredibly Shrinking American Deterrent

It is no accident, I am sure, that the world seems far less predictable and safe in the last few months. After alienating most of our allies, bowing to foreign dignitaries, and trying to appease our avowed enemies, the Obama Administration is starting to reap the harvest of American contraction.

We have emboldened enemies on almost all fronts. A defiant Iran is now supported in its nuclear ambitions, not only by Russia and China, but by Turkey, a NATO member. Israel is more isolated than anytime since the 1973 war, with its Muslim adversaries feeling a new sense of boldness in their actions. North Korea has engaged in open acts of war with the South and has suffered no adverse consequences or reactions from the global community.

America itself has been subject to an increased number of near misses in terrorist attacks. We have dodged the bullets largely out of luck and human errors on the other side.

Our international popularity has only grown among the Leftist politicians in some European countries, themselves anxious to try to find any vindication of their discredited policies as the welfare state model in industrialized nations collapses. The infamous "Arab Street" dislikes us as much as ever, despite our President's apologizes for our past actions and present existence.

The world as we know is changing dramatically before our eyes. Without American exceptionalism, the place is indeed different. Less safe, less predictable and less democratic.

The only source of optimism is that this new form of American defeatism comes with a shelve life of January 2012.

Suicide bomber turned chicken?

I have an unusual hypothesis that may explain a lot about the attempted Times Square terrorist attack. Other than remotely triggered IEDs in Iraq, it seems that the specialty of Jihadists is suicide bombers, trained to self-destruct in ways that grossly simply fuse and trigger schemes. Just about all of the information coming out about Shahzad shows that he was hanging around with the varsity of suicide bombers in Pakistan.

So what happened in New York City?  I think that Shahzad was supposed to be a suicide bomber and got a change of heart and improvised the trigger mechanism (which is why it was sloppy). It also explains his rather ad hoc escape plan. His apparent willingness to talk about the whole scheme when he was arrested also fits with the reluctant bomber motif.

That the Pakistani Taliban would fund him and send him on this attack also may say a lot about how short of willing and quasi-rational suicide bombers they really are.  We had been told by the Left that our War on Terror was just causing the creation of an endless supply of suicide bombers. Since it is impossible to be a veteran suicide bomber, maybe they are hitting the bottom of the barrel in recruits? While jihadists no doubt have ample unsophisticated, uneducated and brainwashed young men who can mingle without suspicion in their native countries, it seems that they might be having trouble getting people who can move around in the Werst without suspicion and yet have the thwarted view that self-destruction along with as many innocent lives as possible is a sound idea. 

Awaiting the Administrative SNAFU

The above chart was used in the healthcare debate to illustrate the bureaucracy that the bill would introduce. Apparently nothing relevant has changed and 159 new agencies and bureaus will be created. It completely defies logic and history that this complex set of regulatory, personnel and factual decisions will produce a rational, intended outcome.

Those banking on the implementation of the healthcare take-over to increase its public support are betting on a lottery ticket in a rigged drawing. Many discretionary decisions must be made under the new law by people that are yet to be appointed, trained, or identified. One of the first "Polish jokes" I learned in Poland was the tale of the new potato inspector. The young man was briefed on what are good and bad potatoes and given a pile of several hundred by his supervisor. He was told to sort them as instructed. Hours later the supervisor returns and see that only eleven potatoes have been sorted. He demands to know why. The young inspector-trainee simply replies: "Every potato is a decision."

No one can imagine the number of decisions or their consequences from the bureaucratic nightmare set out in this boondoggle. We already know that the doctrine of unintended consequences is alive and well in the act. Employers will be incentivized to drop health plans and pay smaller penalties ($750 per employee) in lieu of continuing their employee coverage. Major subsidies to employers cut off at 26 employees, so there is a build-in incentive to keep hiring lower. And, of course, it will be increasingly tempting to move facilities across borders to lower operating expenses. But hundreds of other discretionary decisions of what to include in approved plans, what to tax, and other "command-and-control" mechanisms will replace individual market-based decisions.

We know that the catastrophic insurance option (which is a cost-effective way to cover the risk of major illness), will disappear over the phase-in period, because it will not meet all of the coverages demanded as an "approved plan." Do millions of Americans even know that they will not be able to select the type of insurance that fits their needs anymore? What will the reaction to "one size (and only the most expensive size) fits all"?  Obviously millions of young workers have no idea that they will be compelled to buy insurance, especially insurance that covers things that present no health or economic risk to them. Add to this basic inequity built into the act that fact that some bureaucrats will decide what has to be covered and the makings of a disaster seem to lurk under every arrow in the chart.

Imagine the regulations that have to be promulgated. Litigation over the regulations?

Now interpose a Republican House and maybe a Republican Senate that will use every turn of events to stymie the program and advance the cause of repealing it in whole or part.


Anyone who thinks that it was a good idea to try to do a whole-cloth remake of American healthcare against the wishes of a clear majority of American likely voters will obviously join the ranks of fans of the tooth fairy. The new system will not implode, because it will never get to the point where it has enough internal pressure to inflate.