Deceptive statistics

With the issues of the Japanese nuclear reactors on everyones mind, while doing my research the other day, I began noticing a trend amongst the anti-nuclear crowd. They regularly were using the same sources for arguing against nuclear, the Institute for Energy Research, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, American Energy Alliance, and so on. The same points, multiple agencies, must be valid points it looked like. You'd find a IER study referencing numbers from AEA, and vice versa, all throughout these articles.

But then I noticed one of them referenced the Cato Institute, and a big red flag went up. Cato is a front organization for Koch Industries. So, I began looking at the other agencies references, and the studies those groups were referencing. And what I discovered was, every single one of them is being financed by Koch Industries, or by one of the Koch brothers directly. Here is the list of the groups:

Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth

American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity

American Council for Capital Formation

American Energy Alliance

American Enterprise Institute

Americans for Prosperity

American Legislative Exchange Council

American Solutions for Winning the Future

Atlas Economic Research Foundation

Capital Research Center

The Cato Institute

Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

CO2isGreen

Coalition for Affordable American Energy

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Congress of Racial Equality

Energy Citizen

Fraser Institutes

FreedomWorks

Foundation for Research on Energy and Environment

Frontiers of Freedom

George C. Marshall Institute

The Heartland Institute

The Heritage Foundation

Independent Women's Forum

Institute for Energy Research

Mackina Center for Public Policy

The Manhattan Institute

National Black Chamber of Commerce

National Center for Policy Analysis

National Center for Public Policy Research

Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy

Property and Environment Research Center

The Reason Foundation

The Tax Foundation

Texas Public Policy Foundation

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Washington Legal Foundation

Young America's Foundation

These groups are spreading half truths, deceptions, and lies. But understanding why takes a bit more work. All of these groups are coming out against nuclear, but they are doing so by setting the green energy guys against it. This will force the nuclear lobby to fight against green energy. Both sides loose, and who is left? King Coal and Prince Oil, with their prime benefactors, Koch Industries, who runs coal mines, runs coal power plants,, runs oil rigs, oil refineries, and oil power plants and has fought to have any kind of fossil fuel restrictions loosened for decades, under a variety of subsidies such as Koch Minerals, Koch Carbon, C Russ Coal, and the Oxbow Group.

And I am watching people, again and again, being mislead by these groups, who work by inter-linking their information, to mislead the public through such actions and, shall we say, misleading statistics.

Nuclear vs Coal power, or how intelligent people fear the unknown

Last night I was dealing with panic and misinformation from a variety of people, who saw the stories out of Japan regarding the Fukushima I power plant and saw flashbacks of Chernobyl. There were calls to outright ban nuclear power. I spent the time to explain the benefits, drawbacks, and differences between different kinds of nuclear power, and tried to show how painting it with such a broad brush was harmful and dishonest. In my discussions, we got to discussing the direct health impact of nuclear accidents, so I went to study an actual comparison between Nuclear and coal.

Once I studied them, it became apparent that the total amount of health issues caused by an accident such as this is still dwarfed by the health issues caused by traditiona­l coal and oil power generation­. Example, the Chernobyl accident caused an estimated 200,000 deaths in the 20 years after it. Dividing by the total power that nuclear plants generated in the Soviet Union at the time of the accident according to the Russian nuclear agency, 210 Gigawatts, that means per kilowatt hour capacity, it killed 0.0009 people over those 20 years. Now, let's take a traditiona­l coal plant. The American Lung Associatio­n lists that coal plants kill an average 13,000 people a year in the United States due to health effects of the burning of coal. Add to that the health effects of mining for coal, which according to the CDC kills approximat­ely 8,000 people a year, bringing the total to 21,000 people per year. Multiply that by the same 20 year period, we get 420,000. The total power generation for coal in the US is 300 GW, bringing it to 0.0014 death per kWh. Which means, per kWh, nuclear, even with an accident, is still healthier than coal power.

Coming back to the Japanese nuclear plant, it looks as if the leaked radioactive gasses were minimal, and that the peak of radiation was still far lower than feared. We're still talking about getting in an hour what normally people would be exposed to in a year. However, the gas released was far lower in radiation, giving the equal to someone smoking two cigarettes by the worst case estimation. As of right now, Japan has written off the core, and is pumping the dome full of seawater in order to prevent a core meltdown. This will destroy the core, while previous methods were done with an attempt to try and save it. They have determined now that the steam being created by the previous methods interacted with zinc storage chambers inside the building outside of the containment dome, causing a dangerous buildup of hydrogen gas, causing the explosion last night. This is why they decided on the more direct, but destructive method being employed now. The core will be cooled to the point it can begin the process of disassembly and disposal by the end of next week they predict.

How can smart people be so dumb?

This recession has been hard on everyone. The lack of jobs has resulted in record numbers of people out of work. This sounds like a long term issue, waiting for jobs to return.

That is the issue. Not the lack of jobs, but the waiting for jobs. People seem to expect a job to be made for them, and that is the false thought. Jobs need to be made. Someone has to make them. The fatal flaw is that few are willing to. The traditional employer does not see a solid enough market to hire. So, what options do you have?

Don't wait for a job, make one yourself. Take a talent you have, and apply it. Know software coding, make an app to sell, a small game for Android or IPhone. Know how to sew? Put up flyers for tailoring or repair. Have a toolbox and garage, do oil changes for the neighbors. Take family portraits, paint rooms, something. Get out there, be the job we all need. If you get layed off with your co-workers, team up and restart your business, or a new business, cutting out the old management. A businesses greatest asset is its workers, you and me.

We as a society have grown complacent, waiting for someone else to do things. That is not America, for America was founded on the ideal of active participation. We must recapture the ideal of America, of active, engaged people. These are the people who conquered a continent, who tamed the atom, who went to the moon. We have these as our inheritance, and we must strive to be worthy of it.

Capitalism is a Liberal Concept

Something I often times hear is how Liberals hate Capitalism, how Liberals are anti-Capitalism, and other such sentiment. This always make me chuckle, for it ignores something inherent in Capitalism, that Capitalism itself is a Liberal concept.

This will likely confuse people, so indulge me.

It helps if you first understand what Capitalism, and even more what a Capitalist is. To understand these, you need to think on the word Capital a moment. Capital, in order words, Money, is what defines both Capitalism and Capitalist. Capitalism is the use of Money as the basic framework of the economy. Capitalists are those who use their money in order to perform economic development.

Example, a Capitalist buys a factory, hires managers, and lets the managers hire workers and run the factory. Every so often, the money generated by the factory is split, a portion for the operating costs of the factory, and a portion to the Capitalists, who own it. Capitalistic Economies are those where this is the main structure of production, owners, managers, workers, each splitting the income accordingly.

The problem comes when people start trying to apply Capitalist concepts to areas it does not apply to. Remember, Capitalism is about production, nothing else. It works great, for production, the making of something or the trading of services. But it starts falling apart when one of these three pieces, Owners, Managers, Workers, starts getting Greedy. Without Workers, Managers have no one to work, and the factory looses. Without Managers, Workers lack direction. Without either, the Owners do not get a return on the money they put into the factory.

When this system fails, when any one of these elements becomes reduced in importance, the system starts to break down.

So, what does this have to do with Liberals? Everything, actually. Every single piece of Capitalist structure came from a Liberal mindset. Liberals think, they think a lot. They thought how to make production easier. They thought that the people with money don't know how to produce,the people who know how to produce can't do all of the work themselves, and those who can work don't have a direction to work for. So they put this all together, and viola, we have Capitalism.

So, the counter arguments, that Liberals are for Socialism, or are Communist. Well, think on it a bit. We think. We have Capitalism, but we found it evolving into something it was never intended to be, where "production" involves things like asset backed securities and derivatives trading. So, we studied solutions to the issues. Socialism was a moderate approach, putting a firm regulatory body in place while eliminating the profit motive from areas where Society judges it should not be, such as in healthcare or retirement. Communism was a more severe approach, eliminating both managers and owners and putting Workers in charge of the full system.

Are all Liberals for Socialism, or Communism? Of course not, no more than all Conservatives are for the KKK or the Nazi's. The claims make good talking points, but just don't have any basis in reality.

So, if Liberalism created Capitalism, why do so many Capitalists dislike Liberalism? Simple, because they're not Capitalists. There is something else, the Conservative counter-argument to Liberal Capitalism, that is Corporatism. Corporatism is that these companies are self-existing entities, and should be given unfettered rights accordingly. It has pieces of Capitalism, but the underlying logic is that Money is the goal, as opposed to production is the goal for Capitalism. Money, to a Capitalist, is but a tool, not the end result.

When the pursuit of money overrules all else, your system becomes sick, and will eventually die.

Rand was Wrong

This is a repost of an old post of mine, but a good one to start with:

Recently at Target, I happened to notice a misplaced book. "Atlas Shrugged" was in the self-help section. I joked about how Ayn Rand needed all the help she could get, and a passer by stopped and commented about how that book was amazing. I replied that it failed in that the underlying structure was impossible, therefore the core element of the story falls apart under any reasonable analysis.

Simply put, Rand was Wrong.

For those of you who have not read the story, one of the key elements to it is that Business leaders decide on withholding their services, in a kind of blackmail, in order to topple the government as people cry out for what only they can provide. A kind of Libertarian paradise of no government would then erupt. So long as these businessmen were absent, conditions would collapse, so it was written.

This is absolutely why the whole book is not only fiction, but a fairy tale. This could not happen, and I'll explain to you why.

For it to occur, a fundimental element of Nature must be suspended. To wit: Nature abhors a Vacuum. If a business were to withhold its services or products, another one would rise up to fill the void left in the market place. That is the nature of the business world, otherwise there would be no competitive advantage to a Monopoly, to isolate out new entries into a market. For a business to intentionally seal itself out of the market, in a kind of "do it or else", the market soundly tells them to bugger off and finds a replacement.

Let's use a real world example. At one time, all household and small business computers ran a single operating system. This OS dominated the market, no system made was sold without it. The company making this OS was the must-have-could-not-be-without end-all-be-all. Then, the CEO of this company misbehaved, he did not enable its use on a new machine.

The company was Digital Research, the OS was CP/M, and the machine he did not put his OS onto, the IBM PC. IBM could have waited for DR to get its act together, possibly delaying themselves by months or years. Instead, they picked an upstart, a new company, and handed the keys of the kingdom to them. That company, Microsoft, and it's OS, DOS.

This is but one example. But it is a valid one. Rand's idea, that business leaders control through what they provide is absolute fiction. The customers control, the business only supplies to the customers. If the business does not supply, the customers will seek an alternative. If no alternative is there, an entrepreneur will step up to fill that need. That is what a Free Market is, and for all of Rand's endorsement of it, she failed to grasp even the most basic structure by which it works.

Those which espouse the philosophy of Ms. Rand have time and again proven themselves dangerous, for they believe that the business is the key to the market. This inversion of the nature of the market instead breeds corruption, and collapse, undermining the supports needed for the market to function.

This is why when the focus is, instead, on the worker, which then expand the consumer base, the market works so much smoother. This is why in the 1950's, we could support dozens of airlines, multiple automobile manufacturers, both fast food as well as mom and pop restaurants. Because the focus was on the consumer, the middle class worker. Until we stop believing in Rands delusional state, and start focusing on the true engine of our economy, the true master of our fate as it were, we shall never again achieve the greatness that we once had.

Forget John Galt, embrace Rosie the Riveter!

Opening Shop

I've tried a few blogs in the past, normally places of just letting thoughts flow. This time, however, I am doing something different. I am channeling my Liberal mentality here, to offer intelligent analysis, study, and education for the political world around us. I see a great many assumptions, many untrue, half true, or just flat out false, about what a Liberal is, even from those on the left itself, and I mean to educate.