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Craig Pirrong juxtaposes Solyndra and Keystone.
… On the one hand: An unshakable commitment to throw vast sums of money extracted by coercion from American citizens at delusional, patently uneconomic projects that will produce little energy, and which just oh-so-coincidentally (It is a coincidence! Really! Chu says so!) happen to be owned by Obama donors.
On the other hand: Using every regulatory power available to stymie the investment of private capital freely provided in economically viable projects that will produce large amounts of energy now and into the future, pursuant to highly speculative–and dubious–theories about the environmental impact of these projects.
The mental vacuum in which these environmental impacts are conceived is beyond belief. …
…In Federalist #70, Alexander Hamilton extolled “energy in the executive.” In the past days we have seen an executive devoting all its energies, positive and negative, to pushing some projects that will produce no energy, and to thwarting others that will. An energetic twofer: they will make us poorer, by making energy more expensive, and they will not help the environment–and will quite plausibly make the environment worse. …
Charles Krauthammer writes on pipeline politics.
… Obama’s decision was meant to appease his environmentalists. It’s already working. The president of the National Wildlife Federation told The Post (online edition, Nov. 10) that thousands of environmentalists who were galvanized to protest the pipeline would now support Obama in 2012. Moreover, a source told The Post, Obama campaign officials had concluded that “they do not pick up one vote from approving this project.”
Sure, the pipeline would have produced thousands of truly shovel-ready jobs. Sure, delay could forfeit to China a supremely important strategic asset — a nearby, highly reliable source of energy. But approval was calculated to be a political loss for the president. Easy choice.
It’s hard to think of a more clear-cut case of putting politics over nation. This from a president whose central campaign theme is that Republicans put party over nation, sacrificing country to crass political ends.
Nor is this the first time Obama’s election calendar trumped the national interest:
? Obama’s decision to wind down the Afghan surge in September 2012 is militarily inexplicable. It comes during the fighting season. It was recommended by none of his military commanders. It is explicable only as a talking point for the final days of his reelection campaign.
? At the height of the debt-ceiling debate last July, Obama pledged to veto any agreement that was not long-term. Definition of long term? By another amazing coincidence, any deal large enough to get him past Election Day (and thus avoid another such crisis next year). …
More on the misplaced pipeline priorities of this president from Daniel Henninger.
The decision by the Obama administration to “delay” building the Keystone XL pipeline is a watershed moment in American politics. The implication of a policy choice rarely gets more stark than this. Put simply: Why should any blue-collar worker who isn’t hooked for life to a public budget vote for Barack Obama next year?
The Keystone XL pipeline would have created at least 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. Much of this would have been well-paid work for craftsmen, not jobs as hod carriers to repave the Interstate.
On a recent trip to Omaha, Neb., Mr. Obama signaled where his head was on the pipeline during a TV interview: “Folks in Nebraska, like folks all across the country, aren’t going to say to themselves, ‘We’re going to take a few thousand jobs if it means our kids are potentially drinking water that would damage their health.” Imagine if he’d been leading a wagon train of workers and farmers across the Western frontier in 1850.
Within days of the Keystone decision, Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, said his country would divert sales of the Keystone-intended oil to Asia. Translation: Those lost American blue-collar pipeline jobs are disappearing into the Asian sun. Incidentally, Mr. Harper has said he wants to turn Canada into an energy “superpower,” exploiting its oil, gas and hydroelectric resources. Meanwhile, the American president shores up his environmental base in Hollywood and on campus. Perhaps our blue-collar work force should consider emigrating to Canada.
Recall as well the president’s gut reaction in 2010 to the BP Gulf oil spill: an order shutting down deep-water drilling in U.S. waters. The effect on blue-collar workers in that industry was devastating. …
Neal Boortz weighs in too.
Barack Obama has taken to micro-managing our economy by picking the winners and losers. Not only has he chosen “green energy” but he has selected which companies within the industry will benefit from Obama’s piggy bank. And it turns out that if you wanted a piece of the government’s green energy piggy bank, you would have better luck if you had … donated to Barack Obama’s campaign!
A new list of green energy loans doled out by the Obama administration reveals that 80% of the $20.5 billion in energy department loans went to Obama’s top donors. Don’t you think that this is just a bit strange? This, my friends, is what you would call crony capitalism – using someone else’s money (the tax payers) to reward personal relationships (in this case, for political gain). …
It was two weeks ago when we ran a piece on LSU football. WSJ has another. This time on Brad Wing the improbable freshman punter from Australia who is on his way to becoming a college football legend.
Brad Wing is king of the campus at LSU.
Classmates wear T-shirts that allude to his “swag.” Posters of his infamous 44-yard run against Florida, during which he drew a penalty flag for spreading his arms like an airplane, adorn storefront windows. Just this week, he hit Facebook’s 5,000-friend limit and had no choice but to start his own “fan” page.
None of this should be terribly surprising. Wing, after all, plays football for the No. 1-ranked Tigers. But here’s the weird part: He’s the punter.
While LSU has emerged as the national-title favorite because of its merciless defense, Wing—a 20-year-old from Australia with an unorthodox style—has played an enormous role. He’s helped produce arguably the most staggering statistic in college football this season: LSU’s opponents have totaled a mere seven return yards on his 39 punts. In other words, against LSU, teams can expect to gain about six inches each time Wing boots a punt.
It isn’t sexy, but this is the sort of edge that can separate a national-title contender from an also-ran, particularly in the brutally tough Southeastern Conference, whose teams have won the last five national championships. Every elite SEC team recruits powerful linemen and athletic running backs and receivers. Punters? Not such a priority.
But when it comes to field position, no player has a greater impact—and more coaches appear to be coming to that realization. Wing is Exhibit A. …
Here’s more on Brad Wing from Sports Illustrated. “After all the buildup, Game of Century decided by … kickers.”
… After all that buildup and all that pounding, the two best defenses in the country nullified two decent offenses. In the end, a 5-foot-11, 183-pound walk-on kicker and an Australian punter decided a game contested — for the most part — by 300-pound men beating the stuffing out of one another. Alleman made three short kicks (19, 30 and 25 yards), while his Alabama counterparts, Cade Foster and Jeremy Shelley, failed to score on four of six kicks. One was blocked, and the average distance of the three misses was 48.7 yards. Meanwhile, Wing, the former Australian rules football player best known prior to Saturday for having a trick-play touchdown against Florida called back for taunting, was LSU’s most valuable player. He pinned Alabama inside its own five-yard line twice, and he crushed a 73-yarder that flipped the field in the fourth quarter at a point when the exhausted Tigers defense probably couldn’t have defended a short field.
Alleman and Wing would like the world to know that they were all for a fake at the end of the first half — which is probably why they kick and don’t coach. Wing said the conversation with Miles was more motivational and less tactical. “If he’d [asked about a fake], we would have said yes,” Wing said. “We would have done something stupid.” Miles, in spite of his reputation for brass calls, chose the sure points. …
… When the teams went to overtime, it seemed pretty clear the end zone was off-limits. Montgomery’s third-down sack of AJ McCarron forced Foster to kick a brutal 52-yarder into the wind. The kick died short of the crossbar. “It just came down to who executed on the chances they had,” Alabama linebacker Courtney Upshaw said. “They did.”
On the Tigers’ possession, LSU’s offense finally moved the ball a little. Michael Ford took the Tigers to the seven-yard line on an option pitch. Everything Alleman visualized was about to come true. Miles, Mr. Play-It-Safe, called for the field goal on third down. That way, if the snap went awry, Wing could fall on it and the Tigers could try again.
Just before he called for the snap, Wing looked back at Alleman. “You ready to go?” Wing asked. “You know it,” Alleman answered.
Snap. Hold. Kick. Celebration.
Daniel Hamermesh explains how economics can be fun. There is a lot more than this example, but you must follow the link.
Is economics actually fun?
Oh gosh, yes! Of course it’s fun. Partly because it’s relevant, but partly because there are an awful lot of things that are basically just fun stories. I wrote a book, Economics is Everywhere, which contains stories from my life and things I see, designed to illustrate economic ideas. Some of them are just hilarious. And it’s not just me, whose humour is sort of weird, I admit. Almost anyone can read them and get a good laugh out of them, while learning something. And that’s the best way to teach, I think.
Can you give me your favourite example?
I have lots of favourites! It’s like choosing among my children. How off-colour are you allowed to be on this?
It’s completely up to you.
Every year 500 students in my introductory economics class have to write a story like the ones in my book. Last year one student wrote that it was three in the morning on a Sunday, and she was in the dormitory lounge having been “sexiled”. Her roommate had thrown her out of the room, for reasons that are implicit in that term. She argued that this was a wonderful example of what we call “externalities” – her roommate and the roommate’s boyfriend were making so much noise it was impossible to sleep there. Moreover, they were also disturbing people down the hall, because the walls are so thin. There’s also the question of who owns the rights to the room – this is called an issue of “property rights”. So what the girl illustrated was both the concept of an externality, and the notion of property rights in a very cute way. I thought that was a winner. It’s not the best, but it’s well up there. The top 10 each year out of the 500 get extra credit, and I steal a few stories for my book too, with full credit to them. …