Its good to be friends with The One – from The New York Times:

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion…

How is this done? Because GE is such a gigantic corporation, they can afford the army of lawyers, tax experts and lobbyists which allow them to dodge America’s high corporate tax rate. By massaging the government with money and perks, GE has managed to screw the American people, rake in vast profits on overseas enterprises and not pay any taxes. Meanwhile, small and mid-sized firms – which make all or most of their profits in the United States – lack these resources and so are forced to bear the burden, thus limiting the ability of the domestic economy to grow and provide jobs. GE’s success is the product of the union of Big Corporation with Big Government…and GE’s boss – Immelt – becoming a top Obama economic adviser just demonstrates what has really been going on.

So it has been for about 100 years now – even back in the days of the trust-busting Theodore Roosevelt, laws, taxes and regulations were being written by Big Government types (and the “Progressives” of the early 20th century were in favor of Big Government, just as today’s progressives are) in order to favor Big Corporation. By increasing the regulatory and tax cost of doing business in the United States we have progressively (and that is a very apt word here) made it harder and harder for regular folks to engage in business. We’ve essentially frozen out the man with an idea and a dream and made the world safe for the guy with a business degree and solid, political connections.

In order to really fix what is wrong with America the “Bigs” have to go – both Big Government and Big Corporation. Though the emphasis must remain on curbing government – which will, in and of itself, lower the ability of Big Corporation to twist things around – we must give time and thought to how we ensure a level playing field in a genuinely free market. Tax rates must be reviewed to determine if they are really for revenue, or just for harming competitors; regulations must be reviewed to determine if they really meet a public need, or if they are just part of an inside deal to favor some group. All persons must be able to enter the market place in the time and manner of their choosing without having an onerous burden of taxes and regulations placed upon them. With all due heed to healthy, safety and reasonable environmental concerns, the path to a start-up should be wide and open.

From the Des Moines Register:

Foes of illegal immigration are up in arms over plans for a weekend disaster exercise in western Iowa with a fictitious scenario in which young white supremacists shoot dozens of people amid rising tensions involving racial minorities and illegal immigrants.

The exercise is planned for Saturday at Treynor High School in Pottawattamie County and will involve more than 300 people, confirmed Doug Reed, the lead exercise planner for the county’s emergency management agency. Some 30 to 40 “victims” will be transported to area hospitals. He said a terrorism scenario is required by federal officials for the exercise to be eligible for funding…

Why not have a exercise where Islamists attack? Because to do so would be both relevant and true – and liberalism cannot do that. And for two reasons:

1. Islamist front groups in the United States would have a fit, and a host of lawyers and pressure groups would immediately start demonstrations and file lawsuits, thus spiking the drill and jeopardizing the federal swag.

2. For liberals the threat is always from white, male Christians who own guns. It doesn’t matter what else is going on – we are always on the verge of going on a murderous rampage as our inherent racism and violence bubbles to the surface. To liberals, the Islamists – even if they are really a threat – pale in comparison to what white, male Christians are always just about to do. Gotta be prepared for the day when the TEA Party activists take the mask off and just start killing everyone.

In itself, this drill is just asinine. It should be opposed, of course, and it is to be hoped that the publicity now surrounding it will kill it, or at least make everyone more wary of doing a repeat. But as an illustration of what we’re up against, this is invaluable. This is how we’re viewed – the left hates us with a white-hot passion and simply cannot let it go. This is why their nastiness comes so swiftly to the surface…they have so endlessly talked themselves in to really believing that we’re all racists and fascists that they don’t even live in reality.

Remember this as we go in to political battle with the left – they will not quit and they will never, ever accord us respect. All they do is designed to defeat us, even if part of the plan becomes a tactical retreat. Unless we completely uproot them from power and influence they will eventually completely uproot us.

I’m a Christian – specifically, of course, a Catholic Christian. As such I hold that homosexual acts are inherently disordered and can never be considered licit. But here’s the difference – I and the rest of my Christian brothers and sisters will not deny the right of homosexuals to live as they please. We are free – and that means free to do wrong things. As G. K. Chesterton put it:

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

The gay man owns himself – if he chooses to engage in behavior which puts at risk both his health and his immortal soul, then that is his choice…his decision. He will bear all the consequences of his decisions before God. The problem with Islam is that in their search for virtue, all they’ve done is create a society of dogs – whipped dogs who don’t dare stir from the kennels. The problem here in the West is similar – our whipped dogs are the liberals, who have so shackled themselves to a series of lies (in this case, most notably, the insane, politically correct concept that no society is better than any other) that they, also, don’t dare stir…and so we have Islamists demanding that everyone be put in to a moral straight jacket, while liberals refuse to call them on it because to do so is to assert – correctly – that our society is better.

Those of us who are neither Islamist nor liberal are the only people who can set things right – who can both instruct liberals in the truth of our society as well as instruct the Islamists that you can be morally good without resort to a whip. Our problem is that we are caught between two fires – we must both defend morality against western liberalism while also defending liberty against Islamist tyrants. A difficult task, to be sure, and we cannot tell if we’ll be able to do it.

From ABC:

Just over ten months before next February’s Iowa caucuses Sarah Palin is returning from a recent trip to Israel. But Tea Party darling Rep. Michele Bachmann is already hitting the Hawkeye state capital.

Unlike Palin, all signs point to Bachmann running for the Republican presidential nomination later this year. In an Iowa version of ABC News’ “Subway Series” shot on the Des Moines city trolley, the Minnesota Republican told ABC’s Jonathan Karl, “I’m in.”

Well, sort of.

“I’m in for 2012 in that I want to be a part of the conversation in making sure that President Obama only serves one term, not two, because I want to make sure that we get someone who’s going to be making the country work again. That’s what I’m in for,” Bachmann said…

To translate from the politician, “I really, really want to run, but before I go putting myself out there as an official candidate, I want to raise some money, raise my national profile and do some polling to see if I’ve got a chance…”. If you want to bet, then bet she throws her hat in to the ring.

Now, does she have a chance? Not much. House members tend to lack the “oomph” necessary to win a major party nomination. They often don’t even have full name recognition their home States, let alone name recognition around the country (I bet that not 4 in 10 Americans could identify who the Speaker of the House is…for a back bencher like Bachmann, though a darling to the right, it would be less than 1 in 10). It is an extraordinary uphill climb for Bachmann to even become competitive in Iowa and New Hampshire, though she is helped in Iowa by her roots in that State, and she does represent neighboring Minnesota. For Bachmann to really have a shot, she’s going to have to do it entirely by retail…she’s going to have to stump from one end of Iowa to the other and then duplicate that in New Hampshire.

That can be done – but it takes enormous dedication and discipline. Essentially, from now until next January, she’ll have to do pretty much nothing but campaign. And that, on the other hand, puts her at risk of becoming stale in both States – allowing someone else to rush in late and scoop up her voters (which does make me think she might be a stalking horse for Sarah Palin). The one thing to keep in mind for 2012, however, is the fact that while someone like Bachmann doesn’t have much of a shot, she does have that shot…literally anyone who can put together any sort of credible campaign can catch fire for 2012 and sweep it all. The GOP base is that restive and the American electorate in that revolutionary a mood. So, don’t count anyone out – but don’t sell yourself on any one candidate any time soon.

From a friend of my brother-in-law, a nuclear engineer for a national defense contractor:

Several people have called asking for my perspective on the events in Japan; it seems appropriate that I share some written thoughts and perspectives. You can share this with others if you desire.

First of all, it is important to keep an overall perspective on this situation. This is one of the most devastating natural disasters in our lifetimes. At last count, there were approximately 9000 people dead and 12,000 still missing. The remaining people are cold, hungry, and without power. Unfortunately, natural disasters tend to be high drama when they happen; the recovery garners less public interest. A nuclear accident, on the other hand, stays high drama for a long time. I don’t blame anyone for this – it is just basic human psychology, but it is important that we as rational people don’t allow our fear and ignorance to contribute to misdirection of concern.

Let me provide some perspective on engineering for disasters (this is one of the classes I teach at University of Idaho as well as at work). Power plants are some of the largest and most complicated systems of machines ever made. This is true for hydro-electric, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and geothermal plants alike – but even more so for nuclear power stations. (I don’t include wind farms and solar plants because they are only capable of producing very small amounts of electricity for short periods of time and won’t ever be a significant factor in meeting the world’s energy demand.)

It’s important to recognize that each of us uses more electricity today that our parents did and our parents use more than their parents did. We do this by choice. Every time we plug in a cell phone, iPad, computer, TV, etc, we place a demand on the electrical distribution system. This demand either has to be met or the electrical grid shut off. Since people don’t like blackouts (and since they are dangerous), electrical utility companies continue to add more generating capacity by building more power plants. This increase in demand has also kept many nuclear power stations on line beyond their design life spans.

When we design power plants, we have to establish a basis for how much force the plants can withstand and how long they need to last – fundamentally for how safe to make them. The safer we make them, the more expensive they are and the more everyone pays for their electricity. Consequently we do not design power plants to be as safe as they can be. We (engineers, companies, governments and society at large) accept a certain amount of risk as a tradeoff between the cost and the benefit of the plant.

We can understand the concept of risk as the mathematical product of the probability that a particular event will happen and the consequence of that event. Risk = Probability X Consequence. So something that isn’t very likely to happen, but produces a very negative result would get the same attention in the design as something that is very likely to happen but produces a relatively benign event.

There is risk in all forms of power generation.

Let me provide a few examples and then we’ll get back to Japan. In the last few years there have been several power plant accidents around the world. Last summer there was a major disaster at a hydroelectric plant in Russia. It killed 69 people. There was a natural gas explosion in Pennsylvania in 2009 that killed 5 people and another in 2010 at a power plant in Connecticut that killed 6 people. Coal fired power plants release more radioactivity and toxins to the environment than nuclear; in 2008, a coal plant in Tennessee leaked a billion gallons of toxic sludge and contaminated over 300 acres. Fatalities and damage to the environment happen in power plant accidents routinely and the events barely make the news – unless it happens at a nuclear plant.

The reactor accidents in Japan are bad. The economic cost of the cleanup is going to be staggering – in fact it is possible that this event will start the end of the commercial nuclear industry. However, the risk of anyone actually dying is very low. What this accident really shows is that a 40 year old nuclear power plant, that was not built to withstand a magnitude 8.9 earthquake and a 30 foot tsunami at the same time, is still a safer form of energy than coal, hydro, or natural gas. But somehow, if not a single person dies from this accident – an accident caused by a natural disaster so catastrophic that 20,000 people die from the disaster itself, we’ll walk away thinking we learned that nuclear is unsafe. We’ll get the wrong message because almost no one understands what is happening, the people who are doing their best to report on the events lack even basic understanding of the words they are using, and the rare people who do understand what is happening don’t have the communication skills to explain it.

OK, so what is happening in Japan? There are six boiling water nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power station. Each of these plants is designed to pump distilled water into a reactor, boil the water, use the steam to turn a turbine (think of blowing on a pinwheel) to make electricity, cool the steam back into water and pump it back into the reactor where the process repeats over and over. When the fuel in the reactor becomes inefficient at producing heat it is moved to a storage pool and replaced with fresh fuel. The spent fuel will cool off over several years and become less radioactive until it can be removed from the pool and is either chemically reprocessed or stored in dry casks.

When the earthquake hit, the power station did what it was designed to do. It shut down. When the tsunami hit, the sea water flooded the area and shorted out the electrical distribution systems. With the reactor off and no ability to get power from another plant a nuclear reactor normally uses back up diesel generators to power the pumps that circulate the cooling water through the reactor and spent fuel pools. Unfortunately, the diesels were also damaged by the tsunami.

This left the reactors in a position to not be able to circulate cooling water, allowed a buildup of heat and hydrogen gas. (When water is in the presence of some forms of radiation it will separate into its constituent parts: hydrogen and oxygen. If the water cannot be circulated and the concentrations of hydrogen and oxygen gas built up, and some form of ignition occurs – say a spark or other heat source – the hydrogen and oxygen will recombine to form water again. This process releases energy – it is exothermic. ) This happened several times in the Fukushima plants and there were several hydrogen explosions that further damaged the buildings.

These events can be easily misunderstood when you hear about them in the news.
“An explosion occurred at an uncontrolled and overheating nuclear power station that is now leaking radiation” communicates a very different message than “A power station had a power outage and made some water” but they mean exactly the same thing. For the people who get to repair and clean up these plants, these are significant events; to the general public they are not. Let’s address the radiation part of the story and see why.

Radiation comes in several types. Generally what is being discussed during this event is a type called gamma radiation so I’ll provide a little background on this one type. Gamma radiation is like sunlight. It is an energy wave. It can’t be blown by the wind or leak like water. Just like sunlight, too much is not good for us and increases the chance of getting cancer. Like sunlight, in the right quantities it is actually helpful. Gamma rays and x-rays are only distinguishable by where they originate. In other words, getting a dental x-ray is the same thing to your body as being exposed to radiation from a nuclear reactor. Every human on earth is exposed to gamma rays every day from birth to death. In fact, each of us is naturally radioactive – we are ourselves sources of radiation. This is because radioactivity (the characteristic of something that gives off radiation) is quite natural. Of all the elements in our bodies, one of them is potassium (K-40) which we get from potatoes, bananas, etc.

So how much is too much? Let me try to help with a perspective again. The biological effect of radiation exposure is measured (in our country) in units called ‘rem’. A typical person receives 0.3 rem a year from natural sources and about another 0.1 rem from consumer products and medical procedures. By law, a person in the nuclear industry can receive about ten times more than that – up to 5 rem a year . This is safe, but the nuclear industry also works to keep radiation exposure as low as they reasonably can. For instance, in my entire career I’ve received a cumulative dose of 0.25 rem. If you fly on an airplane, you are closer to the sun so you receive more radiation – about 0.1 rem per 1000 miles of flight. A lethal dose of radiation of radiation is approximately 500 rem in a single dose or about 100 times the legal limit.

So when you hear about “abnormal radiation levels” or “radiation leaking” etc you have to keep it in perspective. People who get on planes to fly away from Japan will likely receive more radiation from flying than if they had stayed in Japan in the first place. I know radiation is scary to people, because it can’t be perceived by our senses and become of all the myths we’ve been exposed to. A radiation level that is “100 times greater than normal” doesn’t necessarily mean anything scary at all – if “normal” is a low number – which it usually is. For instance, if a typical radiation exposure rate outside a nuclear reactor is 0.001 rem per hour and it’s a now “a hundred times” above normal it would now be 0.1 rem per hour. You could sit there for two or three hours and get the same dose you’d get flying across country without even being concerned.

I know there are people getting worried about radiation exposure on the west coast of the US, so let me try another perspective. I work for the navy. When we got word of the events in Japan, we sent one of our nuclear powered aircraft carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan, straight through the radioactive plume to Japan to provide humanitarian support. We voluntarily sucked up the radioactivity into the ventilation system, cleaned it up and are still there trying to help the people of Japan. Some of the people who know the most about this stuff are voluntarily going right into it to help. The radiation levels in the Fukushima plant are dangerous to people inside the plant, but they know this and are trained to deal with the risks (the highest cumulative dose I’ve read about to any of the workers is 10 rem or about 50 times lower than a lethal dose).

If you wanted to limit your exposure to sunlight, you’d restrict your time in the sun, move to a place where there is less sunlight and wear clothing that covers your body when you do have to be in the sun. In radiation protection language we call this time, distance, and shielding. The same principles of time, distance, and shielding apply to this situation. For instance, since California is about 5000 miles away from Japan even a lethal dose in Japan would likely be unmeasureable in the United States. (If you want the math it goes like this: Let’s say the radiation level a mile away from Fukushima was outrageously high – say 500 rem/hr. What is the radiation level in California – 5000 miles away? It would be 500(12/50002) or 0.00002 rem/hr –which is too low to measure.)

I understand people’s concerns but I’d advise you to stay away from the news, if you can. The poor reporters are just not equipped to be able to explain this event. They consistently say things that aren’t true because they don’t understand the words they are using. They are also scared themselves. If you do feel the need to follow the events, the IAEA website isn’t bad: http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Let me summarize a few things. The reactor accident in Japan is the result of a natural disaster that was worse than what the plant was designed to withstand. It’s a bad accident and is going to be wildly expensive to clean up (cost has always been the problem with nuclear). I don’t expect anyone to die from the events going on in the power plant; I don’t believe there is any significant risk to people anywhere, but especially not outside the plant itself; I believe our focus, concern, and attention as a society should be placed on supporting the victims of the natural disaster; Since I have the skills and knowledge to actually help with the nuclear end of the crisis, I am volunteering to go and help. I don’t suspect the Navy will take me up on my offer, (we have a team there already) but if I can go I will.

President says it will be a short engagement…just a bit of bombing and we’re out out of there. Not so fast, says Defense Secretary Gates:

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday there was no “timeline” for when UN-backed military operations in Libya would end, and that the outcome of the conflict remained unclear.

Speaking during a visit to Cairo, Gates said the UN Security Council resolution that authorised a no-fly zone was “not time-limited” and that it was unrealistic to expect military action to be over in a matter of weeks.

“So I think that there is no current timeline in terms of when it might end,” Gates told reporters…

No surprise here. After all, our stated goal is democracy but not getting rid of Gaddafi, though we’d be happy if he were forced out…but its not like we’ll try to kill him, or anything. This is turning in to quite a nightmare…a genuinely aimless military operation being done for who knows what real reason…or perhaps being done for no reason at all, but just because someone in the Administration figured we had to do something.

As you all know, I favor US intervention in Libya – but only if its assist in forcing out Gaddafi. If we’re not doing that – if we’re not acting with a specific, measurable goal – then it is best we shut down the operation as swiftly as possible. If we keep going without a goal then we’ll just be sucked in, step by step, and might be deeply involved in Libyan affairs for a decade or more…and still never get Gaddafi out of power. All the way in, or all the way out…pick a course of action and stick to it to the end. But don’t just fritter away lives and resources in service to an attitude, or to the worthless United Nations.

Its really just a government bubble – from SBS:

Vast new cities of apartments and shops are being built across China at a rate of ten a year, but they remain almost completely uninhabited ghost towns.

It’s all part of the government’s efforts to keep the economy booming, and there are many people who would love to move in, but it’s simply too expensive for most.

Video journalist Adrian Brown wanders through malls of vacant shops, and roads lined with empty apartment buildings… 64 million apartments are said to be empty across the country and one of the few shop owners says he once didn’t sell anything for four or five days.

Click here for the video report. It is a must-see report – not because it shows the whole truth (no short, video presentation can) but because the truth of China is only slowly dribbling out…most “experts” are still talking up China’s growth as if it is real. It isn’t – it is a fraud; the Chinese government has built up a gangster economy in which a select few are allowed to rob the people of China (and foolish western investors) to their heart’s content as long as they provide swag for the Ruling Class and, of course, agree to the continued repression of the Chinese people.

The most telling quote in the piece is where it is noted that if the Chinese government sets a GDP growth target, the lower level officials will make it happen – regardless of whether or not there is any economic sense. This will come crashing down – you can’t actually do this. You can’t command an economy to prosper…and the people of China are noticing that a very few are getting fabulously wealthy while most Chinese continue on in poverty, a lot of it quite grinding.

Here’s the really bad news – a lot of large, western banks are deeply invested in China, and when China goes down, they go down with it…and take us with them.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

And here’s why – from Inside Higher Ed:

…The first, which was reported favorably by the Appropriations Committee to the House, would bar any public union from automatically deducting dues from members’ paychecks. Specifically, the language of the bill would bar deductions for dues that fund an employee organization or its political activity. The measure also would require unions to get written authorization, each fiscal year, from members to use their money. Unions would, moreover, have to produce reports detailing their revenues and expenses over the preceding 24 months…

Unions will fight this tooth and nail because it cuts in to their main function – money laundering for the Democrat political campaigns. Essentially, the unions are just slush funds for politics…collective bargaining takes a gigantic back seat to providing the funds to elect Democrats who will expand the size of government, thus expanding the number of dues-paying union members, thus providing more funds to elect Democrats, ad-nauseum. This is what it really is all about – don’t buy stories about “workers rights” or other such nonsense…this is about raw, political power and the money necessary to secure it.

On its merits, the law must be enacted – before any group proposes to speak for a person, that group must first obtain permission…and getting it in writing is just the best and most secure means of doing so. If you don’t get permission, you can’t act on that person’s behalf, period. This is a very American act – it holds, per the principles of our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that the individual must be allowed to govern himself…and those who would act in place of a person must do so only by consent.

These are the sorts of laws we need to de-fund the left and restore American constitutional government – and I hope more and more States and localities will follow suit.

…then why is the use of petroleum distillates 13% lower in Q1 2011 than in Q1 2007?

As I keep saying about everything – never pay attention to what people are saying, look at what they are doing. Right now, people are buying a lot less gasoline and other petroleum products…that isn’t what would be happening if the economy was really in recovery.