Ranger from the North

Okay, I hate to take issue with my own peeps at National Review and elsewhere, but the latest issue of the magazine perpetuates a basic confusion about energy. The second item of “The Week” in the April 4 issue, discussing the hysteria about Japan’s nuclear situation, has everything right until the last sentence, which reads: “The United States should continue to pursue nuclear power as an alternative to Qaddafi oil.” (Don’t feel bad, NR: I also heard my good pal Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal, who I am sure knows better, say much the same thing on Fox News early Saturday afternoon. This is a widespread cliche on both left and right.)

Wrong. We could double our nuclear plants overnight, and carpet the nation with windmills and solar panels if you prefer “green” power, and it would do virtually nothing to reduce our oil imports for a simple reason: we do not use oil to generate electricity. (Okay, if you want to be a stickler, a very tiny amount — less than 1 percent of our total — comes from oil, chiefly in peculiar circumstances. See this item explaining how we “got off oil” a long time ago as far as electricity generation is concerned; at one point in the 1970s, oil was our second-leading source of electricity generation. High oil prices made us shift rapidly to coal and led to increasing the output of our existing nuclear plants.)

We use oil overwhelmingly for our transportation needs, and as such, until someone develops really good electric-vehicle technology (don’t hold your breath), neither nuclear nor any other of the favorite gizmos will change our need for oil. The real alternative to Qaddafi’s oil (and Saudi oil etc.) is to drill more here at home. By all means we should build more nuclear power if the economics of it make sense, but not because it will help us “get off foreign oil.”

I would hope that conservatives would leave this kind of energy illiteracy to the windmill heads and sun-worshippers on the left.

# posted by Ranger @ 9:29 PM 0 comments

One can hardly resist comparing GE with another American company--one that has steadily increased its American workforce, rather than cutting it. One that has never gone to the federal government for a bailout. One that lobbies out of self-defense, as all companies do, but not to secure special privileges for itself at the taxpayers' expense. One that pays lots of taxes. One that not only advocates free enterprise, but lives by it, competing for business with superior products and services.

A number of companies would fit that description, but I have in mind Koch Industries. Koch is smaller than GE, although not radically so--$100 billion in revenues vs. $150 billion--but it pays a whole lot more in taxes. One might think that a company like Koch would be honored and respected compared with a company like GE, but that is not the case--not on the left, anyway. On the contrary, it is Koch's very integrity that makes it public enemy number one for the Democratic Party.

# posted by Ranger @ 10:01 PM 0 comments

Mr. Obama mentioned the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which nominally binds the governments of the hemisphere to act against those who commit political abuses, and said “we have to speak out when we see those principles violated.” Yet he himself did not speak out. Not once during his tour did he mention Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador or Bolivia or their increasingly autocratic rulers.

The president did bring up the people of Cuba, who, he said, “are entitled to the same freedom and liberty as everyone else in this hemisphere.” But Cuba, as he pointed out, has been stuck in “this history that’s now lasted for longer than I’ve been alive.” Venezuela and Nicaragua, on the other hand, are teetering between the democracies they had a decade ago and the autocracies their current leaders hope to install. By failing to discuss those fateful struggles, Mr. Obama did a great disservice to those Latin Americans who are fighting to save freedom in their countries, at great personal risk.

# posted by Ranger @ 3:05 PM 0 comments

In today’s press conference, President Obama lamented that “new drilling won’t be online soon” and then lamented that “we’ve been having this conversation for nearly four decades now.”

Indeed, if those who opposed drilling in the past, like the president and his allies, had relented, we might have had the new drilling operating by now.

# posted by Ranger @ 5:43 PM 0 comments

In effect, public-employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic party.

# posted by Ranger @ 7:44 PM 0 comments