Sharon's Grim Picture

Sharon Astyk writes at Casaubon's Book about unrest in Libya and other oil producing nations. And the picture is grim.

As Sharon states in a comment,

Saudi Arabia announced it was phasing out wheat production a few years ago, so this is largely expected, and Saudi Arabia has been a major new landowner in the global land grab for grain-growing land. But yes, it is a factor because Saudi Arabia absolutely needs to be able to buy grain on the world markets - as does China and several other major nations with deep pockets. So what happens when the entire Canadian Wheat harvest, say, is needed on the marketplace?

My answer to Sharon:

You paint a grim picture, Sharon. If China and other major nations are bidding up the price of wheat and other grains - what does that mean for the poor and those in less affluent countries?

As for where we would be now, having started to take things seriously in 1998? I would like to think we wouldn't be shipping milled steel at junk prices - i.e., old model cars and farm equipment, some of which is repairable - to China, instead of letting China spend the energy we will have to, to mine and process steel and iron to replace the implements and material we are now throwing away. We might all be living within walking distance of work, or at least see the average commute distance - via public or private transport - diminish significantly each year. We might see communities and cities denigrate the entertainment and shopping centers in favor of neighborhood, around the corner stores and services. We might be seeing more green (planted garden/grassland habitat) roofs and insulation-clad siding projects to make current structures more energy efficient.

We might see Washington, D.C. have to report not just the dollars they spend, but the energy loading for each program dollar (fuel, support for administration, material procurement and maintenance, support for each government employee, etc.). Heavens, we might have and actual, court-enforced, national energy budget, that even the President and Congress would have to honor. That might make an interesting Constitutional amendment, actually: Require the budget to 'balance' energy consumption without consuming any foreign energy or any hydrocarbon fossil fuel or other non-renewable mineral source.

Unfortunately, people are willing to drive longer distances to commute to work in this tough economic climate. Employers are even less interested in keeping employees energy usage under control. Stores can hardly afford to worry about the fuel their customers consume in getting to the store. And the government wastes energy in profligate amounts on projects with little actual use (that is, high speed rail, intended to address a wrongly perceived issue from a couple of decades back). Oh, and the nation and world want to buy their way back to living the way we did back before we ran into food, money, and energy constraints.

Sharon,

I look at how long ago the space shuttle program was supposed to be a brief transition to an efficient transport to space. I look at how long now they have been 'retiring' the space shuttle, and how the Hubble telescope was in use years after it was supposed to have been replaced. And I really have to wonder if any project that takes longer than the 12 months between swearing in a Congress and the next campaign season could have made a difference.

Kennedy's adventure to put a man on the moon, that happened in what? seven years? That built on technology already in development, and McNamara's predecessor to today's big government 'Federal Acquisition Regulations' hadn't really kicked in yet. Today the government cannot do anything without first creating a new bureaucracy (to assure that all hindrances and regulations are observed, with added costs rolled into the expected program over-runs). What won WWII was the ability of contractors to talk to the military, and come back with a plane or ship, and say, "What do you think?" "We'll take a thousand!".

I have lived much of my life being told that the US Dept of Education has outlived its purpose - yet it is still a bulwark of union teachers and Democratic social engineering.

I don't think starting in 1998 government would have accomplished much, nor allowed industry to accomplish much, either. My fear is that with the weak economy threatening national security, and the rising tide of violence (with food prices and oil prices), that we may not be able to depend on the government to keep hostile forces out of our back yards.

Because I don't believe for one minute that the unrest in the oil producing nations is an accident, or that they are each spontaneous. Nothing I have read in history, or that I have read of our world today, imputes stupidity to all those people. There is no reason for anyone to believe that changing the government will change food and energy prices - so, where did the organization come from to raise all the protests? And is there any reason to think they aren't aimed at weakening the US for future hostile actions?

The Federal Budget, and Peak Oil.

I sent the following message to my US House representative.

Every thousand dollars of budget represents a finite and measurable amount of oil, coal, electricity, and other forms of energy.

The US budget to date has depended on unfettered access to cheap energy - oil, coal, hydroelectric, and to some extent, natural gas.

Other forms, from nuclear to wind and solar power, are forms of energy - but not cheap. Not cheap to build the structures, not cheap to operate. Most forms seem to burn tax dollars to produce energy.

The world faces a change, as the ability to produce expected amounts of oil in a day was passed back in 2005, by some estimates. As demand in the developing world continues to increase, nothing America does to conserve will have an impact - worldwide demand for oil will continue to outpace the ability to produce oil on any given day. Federal expenditures represent energy usage. Fuel used in the course of doing business, energy used to produce vehicles, structures, material and supplies - and to maintain, dispose of, and account for each.

Energy is consumed in the private lives of every government employee - diverting energy from the economy, as well as talents not being used to produce goods and services to maintain the America we have come to know.

A sound, sustainable energy plan has to begin with accepting the energy burden of government employment and government expenditures. The security of the nation demands that we move to a lower-energy economy, and form of government, now - while we still have access to the energy needed to build the structures and infrastructure needed for the future.

The security of the nation has always depended on a strong US economy. While not moribund, today's US economy hasn't yet begun to face a future of restricted access to cheap energy. We risk losing the ability to stand strong in the face of foreign competition.

The federal budget, as monstrous as it has grown, is but the tip of the iceberg. I see no way around the debt deflation facing the nation as the artificial wealth represented in the housing bubble and especially the banking and security shenanigans continue to collapse. Throwing tax dollars (energy and talents diverted from productive use in the economy) at the collapse won't help the nation.

Funding big government is a luxury of the past, that perhaps we never could afford. Today over-spending is a risk of our nation and our way of life.

Compare "Big Government" to an alcoholic, and the federal budget is the bottle. Get the picture?

Tax dollars = energy expended. Government employees have been pulled from the available work force just as if they had moved to a foreign country.

We cannot afford the brain drain or energy expense of big government.

Will the Egypt riots spread to Cairo, Illinois?

Sharon writes at Casaubon's Book "It all comes back to food" about the riots in Egypt.

I think Dmitri (Club Orlov) called it, when he described the uprising in Egypt as people who had lost faith that their government could do something for them.

That hasn't happened in the US, yet, on any kind of grand scale.

But it could.

I recall the feeling back in 1992, when paperback book prices jumped a dollar. I forget, that might have been when they went to 5.99 or 6.99. I remember the anger of the moment, though all I did was make a pointed and blunt, moderately courteous comment to the B. Dalton store clerk.

I picked up a 2 lb package of Wal-Mart popcorn today. $1.44 isn't bad, and it works decently in my air popper. But I recall a few years back, that package was $0.77. Bread has gone from ninety-some cents to $1.20. Etc. And these are all mild price increases.

Forget worrying about clobbering farm ground with non-productive urban sprawl. Worry that we have designed our cities and workplaces to require the expenditure of cheap energy to get from shelter to work to shopping to recreation to school. You are right, probably the first impact of loss of cheap energy will be food supplies and other essentials - they don't make toilet paper here in Oklahoma, as far as I know, nor enough coffee or peanut butter for the whole state.

But dealing with local food security is probably minor, compared to the hidebound thinking of city planners, housing developers, and business planners. If energy prices rise significantly again, the first steps will be to conserve, share rides, etc. But there are limits to what can be done. Very few businesses participate in planning how much housing nearby is available for their work force, nor whether there is grocery shopping and entertainment nearby.

I don't like government programs for the same reason I don't like dictators. Any mistakes are too horrid to be believed. The cumbersomeness, inefficiency, and extended time it takes for Democracy to accomplish anything means there is a good chance that the best things never happen - but many of the worst things likewise end before starting. If every community addresses a given problem, such as food security, so many things might be tried that surely some approaches will help. When a community notices a mistake, they can be fairly agile in correcting the problem. Correcting a problem in a program at the national level, well, we mostly just have to live with the errors.

And, yes, Obama's stated policy of 'streamlining' regulation and rule making scares me, as it disconnects from much of the apparatus for stopping bad ideas from harming the nation. Recent actions by the EPA, FCC, and other agencies show this stated policy is and has been in force under President Obama.

If Orlov's premise is correct, that only belief that our government can provide assistance is keeping Americans from taking to the streets in protest, then the disregard of Obama and others in government for what is harmful and contrary to the will of the people is particularly scary; President Obama could be in the middle of the process of throwing away all the stability of 200 plus years under the US Constitution.

Ending the unsustainable extended jobless benefits without putting people back to work (you know, drop business taxes, eliminate burdensome business regulations that don't work, and disband intrusive government interventions), that would be a step in eroding confidence that the government could help us. Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments could embitter our elders, and those that have come to depend on government handouts; again, increasing the odds of disaffection for the government.

I expect we will see protests in the street, from those sympathetic to the Egyptian people, and probably also from those that identify with the class differences and lack of government service to those that need it - the poor. I don't think government payments are the best help, or even useful. But the government can assure that the poor have access to jobs, shelter, and that businesses of the poor are able to compete with businesses run from more affluent neighborhoods.

The Arizona Shootings, Jan 8, 2011

First off - the shooting in Tuscon, Arizona, was criminal, and unjustified.

Several aspects of that shooting come to mind. At this time, I haven't seen any motive or agenda, and all I know about the shooter is that a second actor is being sought.

1) 12 people were downed by the reputed lone gunman. While Fox News (the report I saw) harped on and on about what that might mean about beefing up security for other Congresspeople and Senators - I can't get away from one glaring fact.

12 people were hurt because only 1 person had a gun. And the one with the gun was not the one defending his family and neighbors.

15 years ago Arizona had an open carry policy - I once did a double take, standing in line at my bank, behind a gentleman with a six-shooter on his belt. Surprisingly to some, but not to me, no one was shot that day. I don't know what Tuscon does, that may be anywhere from open carry to a Disarmed Victim Zone. The crowd at Congresswoman Gifford's event yesterday certainly failed to protect themselves and their neighbors.

2) Lawless behavior. Shooting someone is a lawless act, unless protecting oneself or family or others from imminent danger. The shooting in Tucson was certainly lawless.

The outgoing 111th Congress under Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid, in collaboration with President B. Hussein Obama, set a lot of 'precedents', they bent a lot of rules, and if they didn't violate laws and the US Constitution, they certainly appeared to. That is, the past Congress could be said to have been 'lawless', in a manner similar to the shooting in Arizona. Certainly, ObamaCare bids fair to directly cause the death of thousands or more, through denial of services and "death counseling" to those already troubled and depressed. I imagine that the case will be made that when Congress acted lawlessly, to the satisfaction of one citizen of Tucson, AZ, that constituted tyranny - perhaps the main reason the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution assures each and every citizen the right to possess and own the means to confront tyrants. Acting against a tyrant - such as the good Congresswoman as a representative of the apparently lawless 111th Congress is against the law. There is no question about that, the 2nd Amendment doesn't provide any basis for taking the law into one's own hands. The 2nd Amendment merely assures that when any citizen is convinced of the need to act, that citizen has the means to act, even though doing so is legally murder and carries the penalties associated with murder. The intent is to avoid tyranny - lawless behavior - in government.

Was this shooting related to the Congresswoman's record, her association with the 111th Congress or the incoming 112th Congress, or her identification with the Democratic party? I don't know, and whatever is released or claimed, the truth may never be known. For all I know, this shooting was an infantile bid for attention by someone that should have known better.

3) This last point bothers me a lot. President B. Hussein Obama is on record as claiming to "not let a crisis go unexploited" or words to that effect. This shooting of a 'moderate Democrat' could turn out to be a wedge the Administration under Obama uses to disrupt the grand plans of the incoming Tea Party and Republican lead House of representatives. Could President Obama have instigated the shooting, coming as he does from Chicago, the home of Mayor Daley and Al Capone? Could the Democratic leadership have been sending an unsubtle message to so-called 'moderate' Democrats - about straying from the party line?

Granted, Arizona has several issues from state solvency and federal (unfunded or underfunded) mandates, to illegal immigration and state sovereignty. Could this shooting have been related to one of these issues, or illegal drugs? Yes, certainly. And I pray that President Obama hasn't begun shooting Congresspeople that might not agree with him.

What I am convinced of, is that we need less lawlessness, and especially the appearance of less lawlessness, in this next congress. And I pray that the Congresswoman from the 8th district of Arizona is a major player in this new congress. All the best to her, and the families of those injured or killed in Tucson yesterday.