Language Abuse and the Federal Budget

Sometimes people use misleading titles to try to make an assertions that is not supported by the facts. Shocking, I know.

This article in Forbes - "Who is the Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama?" is a good example.

The phrase "Smallest ... spender" gives the impression that less money is being spent under Obama than under any other president since Eisenhower.

BUT

What he's actually talking about is the percentage change. The title is misleading. It should be "Who increased government spending least over his predecessor's last budget."

Percentage change tells us nothing about how much was spent, or how much was added to the deficit. All this is saying is that Pres. Obama thinks that post-stimulus spending level, and trillion dollar deficits every year are almost enough, he only increased spending a little.

Because each of Obama's budgets has been larger than any Bush budget, but only a little larger than the last Bush budget. He also doesn't point out that the 2009 budget, the last under Bush, contained the $787 billion stimulus, and was a bipartisan panic reaction to the financial crisis.

The key in the article is the second paragraph:

"...the first year of the Obama presidency where the federal budget increased a whopping 17.9% —going from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion."

The author assigns that increase to Bush, not Obama. (it was passed under Pres. Bush -- For the record, Bush requested 3.1 trillion, Congress passed 3.52. The blame for all budgets should rest on Congress, not the president).

So the current president hasn't had to increase spending much. It was done for him by Congress in 2008. He just maintained that level, and added a bit here and there. The raw numbers show this:

2006 - Bush - $2.66 T.
2007 - Bush - $2.73 T.
2008 - Bush - $2.9 T.
2009 - Bush - $3.52 T. (stimulus and financial crisis)
2010 - Obama - $3.72 T.
2011 - Obama - $3.63 T. (he asked for 3.8)
2012 - Obama - 3.79 T.

A bipartisan panicked 18% increase in 2009 has been expanded still further. So 2009 is the pivot point where the "new normal" level of spending was established. All the talk of "cuts" in spending are referring to the base level of the previous year (which is at least 600 billion higher than natural growth would have been).

What we really need is cuts back to the levels of spending before 2009, before the various stimuli were passed. Cuts need to be on the order of 1 trillion dollars every year, not the 4 or 5 trillion over 10 years people are touting as "big cuts"

Alternative Energy and the Importance of Scale

It's vital to have the right perspective on any problem you face. It's especially important to grasp the scale of the problem. Otherwise you end up either "using a wrecking ball to hammer a nail," or "drinking from a fire hose. A more everyday example would be something like driving 20 miles (using a $3 worth of gas) to save 5 cents on toothpaste.

A person, group or country can make great progress and produce impressive results in pursuit of a goal, and yet not realize that they are losing ground. It's the classic "Can't see the forest for the trees"

This article at National Review provides the "forest-level" perspective that I haven't seen discussed in the context of wind and solar power. For all the progress they've made, and the impressive amounts of energy produced, you never see the scale of the problem. They aren't keeping up with the yearly growth in electricity use:

Between 1985 and 2011, global electricity generation increased by about 450 terawatt-hours per year. That’s the equivalent of adding about one Brazil (which used 485 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2010) to the electricity sector every year. And the International Energy Agency expects global electricity use to continue growing by about one Brazil per year through 2035.
How much solar capacity would be needed to produce 450 terawatt-hours? Well, Germany has more installed solar-energy capacity than any other country, with some 25,000 megawatts of installed photovoltaic panels. In 2011, those panels produced 18 terawatt-hours of electricity. Thus, just to keep pace with the growth in global electricity demand, the world would have to install about 25 times as much photovoltaic capacity as Germany’s total installed base, and it would have to do so again every year.

Another way to look at it:

To keep up with the growth in global electricity demand by using wind energy alone, the global wind industry will need to cover a land area of some 35,000 square miles — about the size of Indiana — with wind turbines. And it will have to do so every year from now through 2035....the wind industry would have to cover 96 square miles every day with wind turbines. That’s an area about the size of four Manhattans.

At that rate, by 2035 additional area in use by wind farms (and, therefore, not used for anything else) is 805,000 square miles. That's the same size as:  California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming COMBINED.

Additional land needed for wind power to cover growth in demand through 2035.

Finding that much land close to where the power demand is (can't put it all in the Sahara) is.... well..... impossible. Some can go offshore, but that's expensive.

In terms of power per acre, nuclear, coal and oil are a much better bet. We should focus on cleaning the supplies that will work rather than subsidizing technology that can't keep up with demand.

ObamaCare and the Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling this month on the constitutionality of certain parts of President Obama'a Healthcare reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, (or ObamaCare for short).

This analysis of 4 possible outcomes is very interesting. It's written from the perspective of an opponents of ObamaCare, and includes advice for how opponents of the law should react to each of the scenarios. In brief, the 4 possibilities are:

1. The Court rules that the individual mandate is constitutional. ObamaCare remains the law.
2. The Court rules that only the individual mandate is unconstitutional.
3. The Court rules that the individual mandate is unconstitutional and that certain other provisions depending on that mandate should be struck down.
4. The Court rules that the individual mandate is unconstitutional and ObamaCare in it's entirety should be struck down.

(There is a fifth option, which is very unlikely given the circuit split. The Court could decline to issue a ruling, and let all lower rulings stand).

It's interesting to note that three of the four likely outcomes are not good for the Obama administration. If I had to bet, I'd bet on option 2 or 3. The Court is likely to make the ruling as narrow as it can to get a majority to agree.

I do think it will be a 5-4 or a 6-3 decision. That's unfortunate, because those decisions usually are narrower, and are interpreted by the press as having less authority than unanimous (or nearly unanimous) decisions.

Utah Redistricting 2010

All you people who are angry at the map. I hope you submitted your own during the many weeks the public was invited to do so? No? hmm. Utah's population patterns are unique. Some thing to keep in mind before you dismiss the whole effort:

1. The districts have to have equal population, Geography is secondary.
2. Salt Lake county has to be split at least in two. There are too many people to have it in one district.
3. The districts have to have both urban and rural, That's just how the population is. All the districts need part of the Wasatch front in order to have enough people. All counties in the state except the 5 on the Wasatch Front (SL, Utah, Davis, Weber, and Cache) put together do not have enough people for one district.
4. More than just SL county must be split. Utah county is too small. Davis and Weber together are too small, Cache and Washington are too small. The only other way to do this is to have 3 mostly urban districts along the Wasatch front and one containing the rest of the state plus chunks of the Wasatch front counties adding up to about 50,000 people. Having 4 urban/rural districts is at least as logical as having 3 urban and one rural with selected chunks of urban gerrymandered in.
5. There aren't enough Democrats living close to each other to have a safe democratic seat. So, even if that was a valid concern, it just isn't possible.
6. There aren't enough Democrats in the legislature, and they aren't united enough to make a difference. That's why the map from the Rep. caucus was passed, all they need are most of the Republican votes.

Conservative Multiculturalism

No, it's not an oxymoron. In this article, Eugene Volokh perfectly captures the way our country has benefitted from multiculturalism, and how it's written into the Constitution.

I Wonder Why People Mistrust the Government?

Maybe because some governments (Multnomah county, Oregon) threaten 7 year-old girls with a $500 dollar fine for running a lemonade stand without the proper permit.

Darn kids, always flouting regulations, that's what's wrong with young people today . . .

But, you say, "the county apologized, and no real harm done, right?" (except for fixing permanently in that girl's mind a terrifying first impression of government - oh, wait, that's not harm, sorry). Yes, this was a mere county government worker just acting "by the book." It was easily cleared up by Jeff Cogen, chairman of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.

(By the way, when you need a board to manage all your commissioners, doesn't that tell you something?)

But this was one smallish county in a meduim sized metro area in a smallish state. Very few levels between the health department employee and Mr. Cogen. Imagine the same quick corrective action happening in LA county, or New York City . . . yeah, I can't either.

County regulations are simple when compared with State regulations, and nothing compared to the massive and ever-expanding river of regulations continually spewing from Federal agencies.

The photo above is of titles 12 to 26 out of 50 titles of the Code of Federal Regulations. Yes, that's only about one fourth of the Federal Regulations out there - and this is before agencies start creating regulations for "Health Care Reform." (the bill itself was 2000 pages, but it left most of the rule-making to Federal agencies. 2000 pages? That's nothing compared to the regulations that will come out of it - wait and see).

This site gives some scope to the problem:

According to the Office of the Federal Register, in 1998, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), the official listing of all regulations in effect, contained a total of 134,723 pages in 201 volumes that claimed 19 feet of shelf space. [Note: 10% or 13,458 pages are IRS regulations alone]. In 1970, the CFR totaled only 54,834 pages.

The General Accountability Office (GAO) reports that in the four fiscal years from 1996 to 1999, a total of 15,286 new federal regulations went into effect. Of these, 222 were classified as "major" rules, each one having an annual effect on the economy of at least $100 million.

134,723 pages?!?! A person could literally be crushed by the weight of Federal regulations, ha ha . . . . sorry bad joke. But seriously, if you could read 1 page a minute, 24 hours a day, you'd finish reading it in a little over 93 days.

There are entire paid publications dedicated entirely to informing industry attorneys that a single Federal agency is going to change regulations. There are currently about 14,800 notices, rules, or proposed rules open for comment on regulations.gov. According to that site, "On average, federal agencies and departments issue nearly 8,000 regulations per year." (Double what they issued in 1996 - 1999).

But why fear the government? Those 134,723 pages of regulations (plus 8000 new regulations per year) plus all the state and local regulations would never affect the average person, would they?

Lets ask the little girl from Oregon . . .

Happy Independence Day

"All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re- appearing tyranny and oppression."

-- Abraham Lincoln