Meanwhile, in Germany

One of the things on which Germany prides itself is its sense of prudence. It’s obvious to see in the realms of government finance and economics, where the German nation has become a self-conscious metaphor for responsible behavior and difficult but necessary reform – to the point where they have collectively forgotten how much leeway Brussels gave them roughly a decade ago when they were actually making the changes, to the great damage of the Mediterranean economies that are suffering for it today. But that’s for another post.

Another area of Germany’s overweening pride-as-humility comes in “green energy,” where they have tried to take the lead not just in the continent, but globally. Well, Anthony Watts (WUWT) reveals just where that has left the German economy:

In mid-August, Germany opened a new 2200MW coal-fired power station near Cologne, and virtually not a word has been said about it. This dearth of reporting is even more surprising when one considers that Germany has said building new coal plants is necessary because electricity produced by wind and solar has turned out to be unaffordably expensive and unreliable.

In a deteriorating economic situation, Germany’s new environment minister, Peter Altmaier, who is as politically close to Chancellor Angela Merkel as it gets, has underlined time and again the importance of not further harming Europe’s – and Germany’s – economy by increasing the cost of electricity.

He is also worried that his country could become dependent on foreign imports of electricity, the mainstay of its industrial sector. To avoid that risk, Altmaier has given the green light to build twenty-three new coal-fired plants, which are currently under construction.

Yes, you read that correctly, twenty three-new coal-fired power plants are under construction in Germany, because Germany is worried about the increasing cost of electricity, and because they can’t afford to be in the strategic position of importing too much electricity.

Twenty-three new coal-fired plants? What happened to wind and solar?

This happened:

Due to the inherent intermittent nature of wind, their wind power system was designed for an assumed 30% load factor in the first place. That means that they hoped to get a mere 30% of the installed capacity – versus some 85-90% for coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric facilities.

That means that, when they build 3,000MW of wind power, they expect to actually get merely 900MW, because the wind does not always blow at the required speeds. But in reality, after ten years, they have discovered that they are actually getting only half of what they had optimistically, and irrationally, hoped for: a measly 16.3 percent.

Even worse, after spending billions of Euros on subsidies, Germany’s total combined solar facilities have contributed a miserly, imperceptible 0.084% of Germany’s electricity over the last 22 years. That is not even one-tenth of one percent.

Moreover, the actual cost of Germany’s wind and solar electricity is far and away higher than its cost of coal and nuclear power. So much for “free” solar and wind.

Oops.

Perhaps someone from Southwest Virginia talk to Herr Altmaier about exporting coal to his country, at least until this one gets around to . . . following Germany’s lead.

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon

Of all the excuses for a tax increase I’ve ever heard…a UN invasion? Really?

When it comes to local elected officials and revenue, experience has taught me that it is flat out dangerous to get between them.

The latest exhibit comes from Lubbock, Texas.

There, County Judge Tom Head (in Texas, the County Judge is the equivalent to the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors) is asking for a property tax increase in order to fund…an insurrection against a re-elected President Obama.

What’s that? I can’t be serious, you say? Read for yourself (FOX34, h/t Kevin Williamson):

Lubbock County Judge Tom Head and Commissioner Mark Heinrich went into great detail Monday night on FOX 34 News @ Nine about why it is necessary to raise the tax rate by 1.7 cents the next fiscal year.

. . .

Judge Head said he and the county must be prepared for many contingencies, one that he particularly fears, is if President Obama is reelected.

“He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN, and what is going to happen when that happens?,” Head asked.

“I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.

“Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops. I don’t want ‘em in Lubbock County. OK. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here’.”

That’s right. Judge Head is using fear of a U.N. invasion to justify raising taxes. They really will resort to anything to get more of your money.

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon

Tom Friedman reminds us all how badly the New York Times needs to replace its copy editors

There are few columnists who can anger center-right and right-wing Americans as easily as Tom Friedman. Left or center-left arguments can be presented cogently; straw men can be lamented (and then debunked); even the ad hominem nonsense can be refuted. Friedman, however, is a special case, not only because he typifies the incapability of so many on the center-left to understand our view, but also because he gets his facts wrong with such consistency that one must wonder how on earth he still has a column.

Case in point is his latest peon to “a serious, thoughtful, credible 21st-century ‘conservative’ opposition to President Obama”. He probably wishes that Republicans would read it and wonder what ‘s wrong with their party. By contrast, I wonder what’s wrong with the New York Times copy editors.

Why do I want the Times‘ copy editors fired? Take a look at his discussion on taxes and the budget:

Imagine if the G.O.P.’s position on debt was set by Senator Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who has challenged the no-tax lunacy of Grover Norquist and served on the Simpson-Bowles commission and voted for its final plan (unlike Ryan). That plan included both increased tax revenues and spending cuts as the only way to fix our long-term fiscal imbalances. Give me a Republican Party that says we have to put real tax revenues and spending cuts on the table to solve this problem, and you’ll get a deal with Obama, who has already offered both, although not at the scale we need. True conservatives know that both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush used both tax revenue and spending cuts to fix budget shortfalls.

For starters, the Simpson-Bowles plan actually failed to “fix our long-term fiscal imbalances.” As I’ve explained before, it projected a revenue stream that is much higher than the historical average (in fact, it’s a revenue stream that has never actually come to fruition in American history). In plain English, Simpson-Bowles would lead to deficits of over $900 billion, in perpetuity.

Then we get to the Bush the Elder and Reagan references, which sound quite reasonable. Except that neither Reagan nor Bush the Elder were ever able to get spending cuts out of their multiple budget agreements (1982, 1984, 1987, 1990), and the shortfalls were never “fixed.” In fact, the deficit rose in the aftermath of three of the four aforementioned deals, and the last one (1990) lead to a record-breaking deficit in Bush the Elder’s final budget year. Only one budget plan has ever actually balanced the budget (1997), and that had tax reductions, not increases. I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again; tax increases do not balance budgets.

Now, the rest of my complaints with Friedman are genuine opinion differences. I don’t consider carbon emissions a “cost”; I think asking an Australian-born media mogul about immigration policy is folly when voters the land of his birth take a decidedly different view from him; I am dumbstruck by his pushing of Jeb Bush’s attempts at education reform after watching the entire center-left attack Jeb’s brother for trying the same thing. Those are unfortunate but usual disagreements.

The tax discussion, by contrast, is flat out incorrect, and somebody at the Times should know enough recent history to notice. That nobody did says all we need to know about Friedman, his editors, and his readers.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

…and they call it austerity (UK edition)

When the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition announced its “austerity” plan for Britain, they insisted spending cuts would be 75% of the plan, with the rest being tax increases. It was hailed as a “balanced” approach. Two years later, Juan Carlos Hidalgo (CATO) noticed that the spending cuts didn’t materialize:

We all know that the tax increases already took place (the VAT rate went up from 17.5% to 20%, for example). But as we can see, spending cuts haven’t taken place at all. Thus, austerity in Britain consists only of tax increases.

So what did the tax hikes bring to the UK? I’ll let the Telegraph explain:

The Treasury had been expected to pay off £2.2bn of the national debt last month, which is traditionally good for corporation and self-assessment tax receipts. Instead, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that the Government borrowed £600m more . . . Alan Clarke, UK economist at Scotiabank, said: “If the pace of deterioration continues, then we are on track to miss the government’s borrowing estimate by £30bn.”

Quelle surprise!

I’ve said it before; I’m saying it again. Tax hikes to balance the budget never work.

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon

If you think the president ignoring our deficits is a problem, wait until he tries to fix them

One of the main arguments against the president’s re-election has been his refusal to address the trillion-dollar deficits he has run up in his term in office. Most people assume he simply has no interest in balancing the budget. I disagree. I think the president knows exactly how he will balance the budget: through massive tax increases.

Truth be told, the president has tipped his hand from time to time. During the debt ceiling negotiations of last year, he pushed hard for a tax increase. He hasn’t talked about it much on the campaign trail, however (save for a tax increase on higher incomes that, even if it provides all the revenue he says it will, wouldn’t even bring the annual deficit below $1T). However, given his near complete refusal to discuss any reductions in spending – and the fact that nearly every other Democrat talks about “revenue” – the president will almost certainly interpret his re-election as a de facto endorsement of major tax hikes. The fact that he would no longer need to face the voters will only encourage him to enlarge the tax increase as much as possible.

The results will be devastating.

I’ve explained before why tax increases are not the fiscal salve that so many people think they are: they don’t provide the revenue that is projected, and that failure ruins any deficit reduction plans before the proposed spending cuts can take effect – thus leading to a new deficit plan with more tax hikes and bad revenue projections. Southern Europe is littered with nations that are reeling from tax-hike-exacerbated recessions, revenue targets missed, and bond markets turning up their noses.

That is what awaits America after a 2013 tax hike, whether its the expiration of the 2001/2003 tax cuts and/or new tax increases – if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on “and” over “or”. The first tax-hike/deficit-reduction deal was enacted in 1982; the fifth such plan was enacted in 1993. None of them succeeded; in fact that deficit grew after three of them (1982, 1984, and 1990).

Only one thing is worse than ignoring our record deficits, and that’s trying to fix them with tax increases. It won’t work, and it’s failure will further scare off bondholders, thus crippling us. That is the fate that awaits us if the president is re-elected.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

Now, Communist China is following us on “green energy” . . . over the cliff

Remember when the president, Tom Friedman, and all their buddies insisted that the Chinese Communist Party was leading the way on “green energy,” to justify companies like Solyndra getting billions in taxpayer dollars?

Yeah, about that . . .

Li Fei, the owner of Chengxing Solar Company in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, committed suicide by jumping off a building, alarming the debt-ridden photovoltaic industry, reported First Financial Daily in Shanghai.
Li ended his life after Chengxing was unable to repay a 20 million yuan (US$3.15 million) loan taken by another photovoltaic company called Zhongxi, for which Chengxing was the guarantor.
The incident was a sign of the imminent collapse facing the Chinese photovoltaic industry, because of its lack of liquidity and mounting debts, noted First Financial Daily.
. . .
The newspaper quoted US investment bank Maxim Group as warning that China’s top ten photovoltaic companies had accumulated a combined debt of US$17.5 billion and the entire industry was teetering on the brink of collapse.

Source: Want China Times
H/t: Andrew Bolt

It looks like America led the way on this file after all, and Communist China is following us right over the cliff.

Perhaps “green” corporatism – in either tyranny or democracy – is not such a good idea after all.

Cross-posted to the China e-Lobby and Virginia Virtucon

How the Democrats painted themselves into corners on health care and Medicare

When Rich Lowry put Rachel Maddow on the spot for the president’s $700-billion-plus reduction in Medicare spending to fund the president’s Health Care Plan 9 from Outer Space (Newsbusters)…

… I had a feeling we’d see an ad like this.

Why is this ad so devastating? Let’s count the ways.

First, we have a Democrat already on record enacting hundreds of billions in cuts to Medicare, with his Republican challenger vowing to restore them (NRO). This turns the Mediscare routine upside-down so thoroughly that I’m inclined to call it Eracsidem.

Secondly, it brings back the aforementioned HCP9OS as an issue, always a problem for the Democrats.

Thirdly, there are many things HCP9OS and “Romneycare” have in common. You know what they don’t have in common? About $700-billion-plus in Medicare reductions.

Fourthly, any attempt by the Democrats to explain this just opens the door for ads on IPAB (otherwise known as “death panels”), which would bring the absolute worst about “single-payer” medicine (services approved and declined by political fiat).

The irony of all this is equally delicious: what made this political ambush possible was the Supreme Court decision this summer. If HCP9OS had been struck down, this ad is never produced.

Talk about “Be careful what you wish for” . . .

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

Missing the Point with Soledad O’Brien (Part 2)

Yesterday, I mentioned how CNN’s Soledad O’Brien – in her desperate attempt to smear Paul Ryan – thoroughly missed the point on entitlements reform. As it turns out, Newsbusters discovered the probable reason why:

While filling in for Anderson Cooper, O’Brien was actually caught on screen looking at an article from the far-left website Talking Points Memo to assist her in a heated debate with Romney campaign senior adviser Barbara Comstock . . .

NB has a video of the exchange.

If Ms. O’Brien is relying on the TPM folks to inform her worldview, “Missing the Point” could be a long-running series.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

Missing the Point with Soledad O’Brien

Soledad O’Brien used her Starting Point show (CNN) to fire the usual talking points about Paul Ryan at Governor McDonnell today. As one would expect, McDonnell handled it rather well – and also pointed to why Ms. O’Brien’s meme is so way off:

O’BRIEN: You know, if you look at a poll, here is a question, CNN/ORC poll the first week in August. Romney cares about the rich and 64 percent agreed with that statement, the middle class 27 percent agreed, the poor only 2 percent. And some of that, of course, I think, is success from the Democrats who have been messaging hard on that.

How is a Paul Ryan pick — how does a Paul Ryan pick help you with that when you look especially at the budget which, you know, looks really closely and rips out a lot of the entitlement spending which will affect the middle class. I think that could be potentially a big problem, wouldn’t it?

MCDONNELL: Well, but first, you’ve got to look at leadership. I mean, this president has had no budget for 3 1/2 years. Harry Reid won’t take up a budget. The president’s budget would have increased the debt to $25 trillion by 2021. He couldn’t get one vote for it in the United States Congress.

I mean, Soledad, we are in a difficult time for the greatest country on earth and the president is talking about issues that really don’t resonate with the people. And I think what Paul Ryan brings to the ticket is now a serious conversation about debt, taxes, spending, energy, entitlement reform. These are the things that will determine what kind of country we’ve got for our kids and our grandkids. They need to be talked about and Paul Ryan is a good guy to do it.

So I think independent voters when they realize that we have these serious problems will say, yes, we do need to make some changes and this is the team to do it because the status quo with Biden and Obama is unacceptable.

Of course, O’Brien is your typical MSM anchor, but this is about more than simple left-wing bias. While O’Brien wanted to focus on class as the dividing line, McDonnell understands it’s about generations.

MSM and the president will see (and paint) Republicans’ efforts to reform entitlements as some sort of attack on the “middle class.” However, as Ryan himself has noted repeatedly, the reform efforts would only affect Americans under 55 – and for them, it’s the status quo that’s the problem.

Gallup asked Americans two years ago if they thought Social Security would be able to pay benefits when they retire. Most over 55 said, yes; over two-thirds of those under 55 said no.

Even a majority of current retirees assumed their benefits will be cut – something neither, Ryan, Romney, nor any Republican has proposed.

In short, the traditional entitlement scare tactics run by the Democrats are losing their allure because middle-age and younger voters know entitlements are unsustainable. It’s the equivalent Hollywood releasing a horror movie where everyone dies of old age. You can’t be shocked by what you already know.

Will the American people conclude that Republican efforts to reform entitlements are better than simply letting them collapse? We’ll find that out in November. We already know, however, that the scare tactics of old are falling on increasingly deaf ears.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

Why Paul Ryan was an excellent pick

Paul Ryan first caught my attention during the health care debate – in particular the “summit” the president held with leading Republicans in Congress so he could treat them like straw men and dress them down in front of the cameras.

Thanks to Paul Ryan, it didn’t work out that way (Ace of Spades).

What struck me about Ryan were two things: he clearly put some thought into this issue, and he refused to raise his voice or sour his tone. In other words, he was disagreeing with the president without being disagreeable.

The first part means Romney, by selecting Ryan, has made it clear he prefers someone who understands the government needs to be less involved in health care to fix it. He (Romney) has also revealed his clear preference for the Ryan budget plan to bring us closer to fiscal sanity.

That Ryan has managed to work with prominent Democrats on these matters (Clinton OMB Director Alice Rivlin on the budget, Senator Ron Wyden on health care) will only add to his cache.

It also points to what may be the more critical reason Ryan is such a good choice. Most political activists understand that the battles over the last few years have been clashes if ideas. The rest of the country, however, hasn’t really seen that yet. Not taking (or having) the time to delve deep into politics, they assume it’s just tribal warfare.

Ryan, by contrast, not only fights for ideas, but he also reaches out to
Democrats who share them. Thus he appeals not only to the conservative idealists, but also the less-informed voter who would prefer Washington dial down the conflict and focus on the issues at hand.

This makes him a perfect foil for the president – who revealed his political bloodlust a little too much with the now infamous Mitt-Romney-killed-my-wife Super PAC ad. That Gallup suddenly showed a six point shift away from him
(from -2 to -8 on the approval/disapproval score) is telling.

Ryan will not tell anyone to dislike Barack Obama. Hd will succinctly, politely, and firmly explain why a Romney Administration would be better than the current one. That is what voters want and need to hear, and that is why Paul Ryan will be the next Vice President of the United States.

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon