Electric Cars: Government Subsidized Toys for Rich People

Hype for electric cars certainly has been making the rounds lately. Nissan has aired its nauseating polar bear commercial. Los Angeles is digging fiscal deficits buying people home chargers. And politicians are eager to take money by force from people who work and give it to people who are rich enough to buy a $30,000+ enclosed golf cart.

So how practical are these electric cars?

Well first off all, if you plan to drive anywhere cold, an electric car is not for you. Despite the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf being loaded down with hundreds of pounds of lithium ion batteries, they don't last very long. The Volt can get you about 35 miles on it's hundreds of pounds of lithium, and the Leaf can get you maybe 75. And guess what... when it's cold out, lithium ion batteries don't perform even that well. What also happens when it's cold? It snows. What if you were caught in a snow storm with an all-electric car? The heater also runs off the battery... do you feel like gambling with your safety? At least the Chevy Volt kicks over to its premium gasoline-powered engine after you drive a half hour. But I guess that defeats the purpose.

And how bout those batteries? Another "gotcha" of electric cars is the limited number of recharge cycles those batteries will last. Nissan says you'll have to replace the battery after 7-10 years. The current battery cost? About $18,000. Let's see... how much gasoline can you buy for $18,000?

Let's assume a generous $4.50 per gallon. $18,000 will get you 4,000 gallons of gasoline. If you are driving a car that gets an average of 25 miles per gallon, you can drive 100,000 miles for the cost of the battery pack in the Nissan Leaf. If you average 30 mpg, that's 120,000 miles. If the car costs $32,780, and the battery pack is $18,000, what kind of features are you omitting?

Can you say "depreciation?" Do you think you can sell a car that has a partially depleted lithium ion battery pack? People assume that lithium ion battery packs will come down in price over time. Let's play the unproven assumptions game and assume they are right. If the lithium ion battery pack drops 50% over the next 5 years, how easy do you think it will be to sell a car with a partially depleted battery pack, if the battery pack will cost $9,000 to replace?

Here are some comparisons:

The Nissan Altima costs $20,270. The Leaf costs $32,780. The Altima is bigger and can actually go on a road trip.

You can buy a lot of gasoline for $12,000, the difference in cost between the two cars. Which car do you think will depreciate faster? Which car don't you have to spend ten grand on to replace the battery when it wears out?

The Chevy Cruze costs $16,525. The Volt costs $40,280.

How much gasoline can you buy for the difference between the two vehicles– $23,755? (Hint: you could buy gasoline for longer than the Volt's battery lasts)

Electric cars are super expensive, and not very practical. But wait... the government is here to help!

Equipped with a limitless credit card and $14.3 trillion in debt, the government has so generously offered to take money by force from other people and give it to YOU... if you buy an electric car!

I guess there's a silver lining to every lithium ion cloud.

But at least electric cars are "zero-emissions," right? That should make us feel good at least.

Well, the Chevy Volt primarily runs on premium gasoline. So it's not really even an electric car.

The Nissan Leaf gets its power from the power grid, which, in the United States, is primarily coal power. So your Nissan Leaf, instead of burning gasoline, essentially burns coal and a mixture of other power sources. Does the polar bear realize this?

Why does anybody want these things again?

The Stupidity of "Clean Energy Economy"

Whoever says "the country that leads in clean energy will lead the global economy" is a poor economist, or a liar. Maybe both.

This is because it is a false statement... a correct perspective would be "whatever country has cheap, abundant energy will have an economic advantage."

The "economy" doesn't know if the energy that powers it is green or not, but it does respond to how much of it is available, and how much it costs (how much effort it requires per unit produced).

What converting to a "green energy" economy simply means is that we would pay more for energy. We have energy now, but what liberals want is for people to pay a higher amount of money for the same product, thus causing people who aren't rich to use less of it. This will create jobs for people in the wind and solar industry, and hurt people in all other industries, because it takes money away from everything else and hinders abundance.

If "green energy" was appealing, they wouldn't need cap and trade laws to force people or businesses to use it.

Let's say right now, to power a home in the U.S., it costs $200 per month. And let's say that if we cap carbon emissions and set mandates of percentages for renewable energy sources like wind and solar, it causes the cost of powering a home to rise to $400 a month. What effects will this have?

It will cause people to have to spend more time working to pay for the same end product that they already had before. If you make $100 per day, you now have to work for 4 days per month instead of 2 days to power your home. That leaves us $200 less per month to spend on products of other industries, and thus hurts all industries except wind and solar.

Policies such as these hinder abundance. Liberals don't realize that most of their policies hinder abundance, but if you force people to buy electricity from more expensive sources, and money is limited, less of that electricity can be paid for and thus produced. Wind and solar are some of the most expensive sources of electricity known to man, because they require tremendous effort for relatively little energy... compared to something cheap like coal, which is higher energy output for less effort. With less of a resource to go around because it requires more "effort" (has a higher cost), living standards are lowered, because people will be forced to use less of it.

When you say "green energy creates jobs," what you truthfully mean is "green energy takes jobs away from other industries and adds jobs to inefficient energy production."

Imagine an efficient shoe company can sell shoes at 25 dollars a pair, and another more inefficient shoe company sells identical shoes at 50 dollars a pair. The efficient shoe company employs 1,000 people, and the inefficient shoe company employs 2,000. The poor economist would say, "hey, if we force everyone to buy from the inefficient shoe company, and they expand operations, we will create jobs, because they employ more people per shoe produced." What the poor economist doesn't realize is that it hurts anyone buying shoes because it requires them to pay a higher cost per shoe, hurts all other industries since there is now less money to spend on everything other than shoes, and hinders abundance because they are putting more workers and effort into creating the same product that could be produced more efficiently with less people. If the same number of shoes produced could be made in a more efficient way with half the people, the other 1,000 could be working to produce something else, and thus contributing to abundance.

Likewise, if you subtract 1,000 people away from the coal industry which (for the sake of example) produces 2 units of energy per worker, and add them to the wind turbine industry which produces 1 unit of energy per worker, you are just hurting all industries other than the wind industry, and hindering the abundance of energy. More people are working to produce the same amount of what we already had. More effort, higher costs, lower living standards.

And besides, wind power takes a ridiculous amount of land to implement... so not only does it make energy costs rise, but it renders thousands of square miles of land unusable and deforested.

I though green energy was supposed to save the environment!

Sounds like a bad deal to me.

Mosque at Ground Zero Controversy

Lately, some controversy has arisen regarding a Mosque/Islamic culture center being built at the site of Ground Zero.

A controversy should not be surprising, since the Koran, sure to be taught at the new Mosque, contains these statements:

"When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them." (Koran 8.12)

"Fight against those who believe not in Allah, and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (Islam), until they are subdued" (Koran 9.29)

"O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people." (Koran 5.51)

"The unbelievers among the People of the Book and the pagans shall burn forever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures" (Koran 98.6)

"O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil)." (Koran 9.123)

Some liberals would ask, "What's the big deal? If a Christian does something wrong, we don't create a controversy about a Church being built near the scene of a crime."

The difference is that if a person calling himself a "Christian" commits a crime, they are disobeying a straightforward interpretation of the words of Jesus. When a Muslim flies a plane into a building in order to kill unbelievers, he is obeying a straightforward interpretation of the aforementioned verses and applying them to modern times.

3,000 people were killed as a result of Muslims taking such statements literally, the new tower is not even built yet, and they are getting ready to build a mosque at Ground Zero.

Unfortunately, today, we can't take things many people say at face value:

How Media Lies through Headlines

There is a common trick the media uses to lie via attention-grabbing headlines. They will make a bold statement, sometimes with a question mark and sometimes without, that is completely false. The headline is a way to lie to people who peruse headlines but don't read the article, or check the facts behind a story.

Here's an example:

UK DAILY MAIL: Scientists find a 'hint of life' on Saturn's moon Titan

This would mislead a browser of Google News or some other collection of new stories to think "Wow! Scientists have found life on one of Saturn's moons!"

If they read the whole article, however, they would find this is ridiculous.

The first line makes the bold statement:

Scientists have found evidence that there is life on Saturn's biggest moon, Titan.

The bold statement immediately following the headlines assists the misleading "news" outlet, by having a bold lie show up under the headline on a website that is a collection of news stories.

In this case, this seems quite profound, until you keep reading. The next lines read:

They have discovered clues that primitive aliens are breathing in Titan's atmosphere and feeding on fuel at the surface. The startling discoveries, made using an orbiting spacecraft, are revealed in two separate reports.

and then later,

The first paper, in the journal Icarus, shows that hydrogen gas flowing down through Titan's atmosphere disappears at the surface, suggesting it could be being breathed by alien bugs.

So basically the article starts out with misleading statements, and then over the course of the article they reveal the facts behind their lie, and essentially reveal, "yeah the headline of this article is not true." In this case, they go from saying "there is evidence for life on Titan," to saying "some hydrogen gas dissipates as it goes from the upper atmosphere to the surface."

Wow, that's exciting.

Then we have this gem of information:

The second paper, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, reports there is a lack of a certain chemical on the surface, leading scientists to believe it may be being consumed by life.

Wow. I see why they had to be misleading in the headline... this is a completely boring non-story.

If you keep reading, they eventually admit that this whole story is useless:

Experts warn that there could be other explanations for the results.

Thanks for admitting that to those who actually continued to read.

Finally, we have a nice culmination of stupidity:

Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, said: 'We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process.

'In four billion years' time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.'

So a professor thinks the origin of life is as simple as chemistry, even though nobody knows what that chemistry could possibly be, and even though life is obviously more complex than chemistry. Then he proceeds to suggest that a moon orbiting Saturn is going to be a paradise.

I cannot express in words how utterly ignorant those statements are, nor how useless this entire article has been.

I just hope that people realize that these are the stupid media tricks that help elect people like Barack Obama, and the same media that tries to subtly push destructive ideologies and philosophies onto their readers.

Don't Let Politicians Plan your Family Budget

Tomorrow, the U.S. national debt will hit $13 trillion. With annual tax revenue of about $2 trillion, that's like making $50k per year but having a debt of $325k that you pay interest on... all while purposely planning to increase spending and going further into debt every year going forward. Good times.

Vote for fiscal sanity 2010.

Obama's "Yes We Can" should be "No You Can't"

Obama used repetitive chants, memorable numbers (like the lie "tax cuts for 95% of Americans"), and his smooth smoker voice to lure liberal and uninformed voters into electing him president of the United States in 2008.

On of the most memorable repetitive chants that appealed to young, uninformed voters was the phrase "yes we can."

This is ironic, since liberalism is all about what you can't do, and what the government can do to you.

Can we buy regular light bulbs? No, you can't.

Can we buy whatever health insurance you want, or choose not to buy it? No, you can't.

Can we drive what kind of cars we want? No, you can't.

Can we use cheap energy sources to keep electricity rates competitive? No, you can't.

Can we prevent our tax dollars from funding abortions? No, you can't.

Can we keep more of our own money during a recession? No, you can't.

Sadly, when you ask a liberal what "yes we can" means, or what "change" to "hope" for, they likely have no idea.

Vote against Marxism 2010 and 2012.

Obama SCOTUS Pick has No Experience, Just Like Obama

MICHELLE MALKIN: SCOTUS fight: Boxing Elena

It makes complete sense that Obama would pick someone with no experience to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Obama had no experience running anything, or for that matter getting a productive job in the private sector, before he became president.

It only makes sense that throwing a water balloon into a crowd of random people would produce better appointments than our current president, since most of them actually work hard serving others for a living.

Hope for change 2010 and 2012.