Replies to post #79918 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Re: Tilting at Green Windmills

If windmills could power cars, they’d be awesome. Unfortunately, they can’t, and transportation is the only use of energy for which the US is not self-sufficient.

[bladerunner1717]

Stephen Herrington:

I have been waiting a long time for a President of the United States to utter the phrases that shall not be spoken. Obama's Tuesday press conference did it, "...why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business?" The pure music of truth, so long forbidden by howling, fang-baring dogs of deception, that it has become impossible for a mere politician to think it, much less speak it.

Private business is no better at running anything than is the government. Despite annals filled with examples confirming otherwise, business continues to harp on the outright lie that they are better at management, creativity and efficiency. Evidence to the contrary: the Manhattan Project; the Apollo Program; Medicare -- which operates on a third of the overhead of private medical insurance. Yes, the private medical insurers should be afraid. Government can kick their ass.

So, also Tuesday, a consortium of medical insurers issue a bawling complaint that they will accept close regulation rather than accede to a government health program which would cause their bread and butter, the grossly inefficient employer based health insurance system, to be jeopardized.

The complaints and pleadings are too little and too late. They held the public and employers hostage and soaked them, soaked them until medical bankruptcy is 62% of all bankruptcies, precisely the thing that insurance should be in business to protect you from. Too little and too late because the public has believed and been betrayed. The greed would not stop even as the prospects of Americans has steadily declined for 30 years. People simply can't pay any more. It is a matter of life and death and death is the only alternative after you fall below the line of ability to pay.

If the alternatives are no health care or rationed care, most Americans are ready to make the only plausible choice. Some health care is better than none. It is beyond any question of socialized medicine. The greed of providers and insurers alike has driven costs so high that the working public simply no longer qualifies as a paying customers. If the question becomes the financial destruction of your family's prospects versus saving your own life, what can be done but to make the most impossible of choices?

Far from sharing the misery of decline, hospitals and insurers are a super capitalism unto themselves. If prices can still increase, there are still enough customers to cover profitability even as more and more people can't participate. Where does this end? The logical conclusion is that only the rich will have medial insurance, and that that insurance will take more and more of their wealth until even they can't pay. Then the system will break completely. For many it has already broken. It is a health care profit bubble that must necessarily break. The problem with letting it break is that people will suffer and die rather than lose some investment, bad enough.

So the socialization of medicine is, like all social interventions, a remedy for the excesses of business. Had they been sober enough to foresee the logical outcome of their quarter on quarter quest for higher profits, they might have seen that they were pricing themselves out of business. They might have seen stiff price controls or even socialized medicine coming. They did not because greed has no foresight, ever. Greed is today, now, and never tomorrow, even though the impulse to greed is to have enough for tomorrow, now.

But words matter. If our President is willing to take on the most sacred cows of business mythology, like that business is superior to government at everything, then the time for change is come. You wondered what the change was? This is it, one word, one sentence at a time. And he can speak in complete sentences.


Bladerunner

[DewDiligence]

House Passes Climate Bill—Barely

[In my humble opinion, this is the stupidest piece of legislation in a long, long time. The tally in the House was 219-212. Now it’s on to the Senate.]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124602039232560485.html

›JUNE 26, 2009, 7:24 P.M. ET

WASHINGTON – In a triumph for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House has narrowly passed sweeping legislation calling for the nation's first-ever limits on pollution linked to global warming.

The bill also aims to usher in a new era of cleaner, yet more costly energy.

The vote was 219-212, capping months of negotiations and days of intense bargaining among Democrats. Republicans were overwhelmingly against the measure, saying it would cost jobs in the midst of a recession.

The 1,200 page bill -- formally known as the "American Clean Energy and Security Act" -- will reach into almost every corner of the U.S. economy. By putting a price on emissions of common gases, such as carbon dioxide, the bill would affect the way electricity is generated, how homes and offices are designed, how foreign trade is conducted and how much Americans pay to drive or to heat their homes.

The House climate bill would give a big boost to a number of nascent industries, such as wind-generated electricity and solar power. The bill would mandate that 15% of the nation's electricity come from sources such as wind and solar power by 2020 [which does nothing to address US reliance on foreign sources of energy for the transportation sector], greatly expanding the market and profit potential for investors in those sectors and potentially creating thousands of new jobs.

But it isn't clear how much of the sprawling House measure will survive in the Senate, where moderate Democrats and Republicans could form a majority that backs less ambitious action. Among the potential problem areas in the House bill is a provision that would impose tariffs on goods imported from countries that don't match U.S. carbon dioxide restrictions -- a slap at China that some business interests fear could provoke a trade war.

Mr. Obama and House leaders struggled to win over a large group of rank-and-file Democrats who expressed doubts about the climate bill. The president lobbied hard personally and through aides to secure votes from wavering members over the past several days.

Mr. Obama and other Democratic leaders insisted the measure will spur job-creating investments in "green" technologies, while lessening U.S. reliance on foreign oil. They said the fear that higher energy costs will result is overblown, in part because savings from energy-efficiency investments could offset most or all of the costs to consumers.

"The need to act is clear and urgent," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman. The California Democrat is the chief architect of the bill, along with Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would have a modest impact on family budgets. The CBO projects an annual economy-wide cost in 2020 of $22 billion, or about $175 per household.

But Republicans said that estimate lowballs the actual cost for families, and they have noted that a CBO report last year said a tax on emissions would be "the most efficient, incentive-based option" for cutting emissions. They said the measure amounted to a job-killing tax on consumers and businesses. "The Waxman-Markey bill promises to destroy our standard of living," said Rep. Frank Lucas (R., Okla.).

The big-money piece of the bill is a proposal to require companies to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases [what about water vapor?] that scientists have linked to changes in the earth's climate, causing such phenomena as melting polar ice caps. The bill would put caps on those emissions, with the goal of reducing overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by the year 2020, and 83% by mid-century.

In a series of deals meant to ease the impact on businesses and their customers, Democratic leaders agreed to give away to the business community more than 60% of pollution permits in the early years of the program.

The concessions would benefit electricity-producing utilities, oil and gas refiners, auto makers and trade-sensitive industries such as steel and cement, giving them a 10-year window to make the investments needed to reduce emissions and comply with the long-term caps. [I have a problem with calling these “concessions.”]

After 10 years, companies would start paying for the permits.

Supporters say the bill will have a modest impact on electricity ratepayers, and in many cases will save them money. That is because the legislation directs state regulators to make sure electricity-producing utilities that receive free pollution permits pass along the savings [LOL].‹