Do you know...Where we're going To?

A song, a direction, what?

Barack Obama has announced his energy team, and his Interior secretary. Where do we go from here?

I'm impressed with the energy secretary and equally unimpressed with the Interior secretary.

Here's my view:

• Corn Ethanol has to be OUT!
• Natural Gas should be IN!
• Nuclear power should be IN!
• Clean Coal shoud be OUT, unless it is really Clean, if so, it should be IN!
• Wind should be IN in every way.
• There should be a federal policy that overrides any homeowner association restrictions on Solar power installations for domestic power generation.
• There should be mandatory acceptance of reverse power credit. (meaning if you generate more than you use, the power company must give your credit.)

Regarding Interior department positions:

• I support 'right to carry' based on states policies on weapons
• I want increased funding of National Parks
• There should be 'line of sight' restrictions on BLM development
• We should allow ANWR development with strict restrictions.
• There should be mandatory air quality improvements in critical parks such as 'Great Smoky Mountains National Park'

These are my views as of today, December 18, 2008

Super Highway Corridor of the Future

Why not build a new kind of superhighway consisting of an integrated set of components.

1. An underground high voltage transmission line as a part of our next generation transmission grid.
   
   The underground transmission grid is already being proposed by advocates of a new grid system. The advantage of integrating the transmission grid with tracks and roadway are to take advantage of this proximity to massive power to make adding the infrastructure for the trains and the roadways significantly less expensive because of the power availability.
   
2. Tracks and supporting infrastructure for high speed magna-lev and / or conventional electric trains
   
   Inexpensive high speed transportation point to point could provide a quality alternative to air travel over short to medium distance hauls. For distances of 500 miles or less, high speed 'bullet' type electric trains or magnalev trains would likely be able to provide shorter total transit time from downtown to downtown than air travel.
   
3. Roadways for electric cars.
   
   The electric car roadways would both power and charge electric cars using this roadway. This roadway would be a limited access toll road providing not only and electricity supply to power and charge the cars using it, so that batteries would be fully charged on exit of the roadway. Toll charges would automatically be computed based on KW used. There could be automated lanes, similar to the HOV lane concept, that provided computerized control, such that, once entering the lanes, the cars could literally drive themselves along the route with drivers taking over again on exiting the automated portion of the roadway.
   
   This concept could work with any of the electric car designs currently in progress with the addition of electrical pickup hardware and control logic. The cool thing about this proposal is that once a pickup and charging standard were developed, there could be benefit even if the road segments were discontiguous as they would provide a 'charge on the fly' capability for whatever length they exist.

This is probably not an original idea. It may not even be a good one, but it seems so logical to me. It rolls a set of ideas and directions proposed by so many of our energy leaders into an ultramodern composite. It's the stuff of sciencefuture.

If the next administration is going to invest in a massive energy independence program, a massive jobs program, and a massive infrastructure rebuilding program why not build the future, not just more of the past. Integrate the ideas I say.

Elections over, now the environment!

Tonight the voting is over but the counting is just beginning. No matter who wins, tomorrow is a new day. The exit polls say the number 1 issue is the economy. That's American...whatever ails you most at the moment.

I'm in the midst of a 2000 mile driving trip. With gas prices less than half what I paid this summer on my trip to Yellowstone, it's no wonder Americas short term memory is wrapped areound saving us from the misdeeds of a Wall Street few.

I hope that the new president will take a serious look at ranking the energy alternatives in terms of the total environmental cost of each, and choose some national priorities to pursue with an unprecendented national goal.

Good luck to the winner. You will need it.

A lot of damage can be done in a very short time

Remember the election of 1992? Bill Clinton, a relatively unknown Democratic Govenor, was elected president, and inheirited a Democratic Congress in both the house and senate.

And then what happened? In late 1993, the democratic triumferant passed a retroactive tax increase that caused me, and many other Americans great pain.

This is what happened to me. I had an opportunity to take an early retirement incentive, and use the incentive dollars to start my own consulting business. The retirement incentive was paid as a lump sum, using the then in effect withholding guidelines.

I took the money and invested in my new business. Then, along came the retroactive tax increase. This caused an unexpected and significant tax burden which severely damaged my new business.

I tell this story because we are in danger of having this same exact thing happen again. We are possibly going to elect a new democratic president with a possible filabuster-proof democratic congress. We are about to get reamed again. It won't be me this time, but the next generation.

America woke up in 1994 and resoundly defeated the democratic congressional majority, but in those short two years, the damage was done. Don't let this happen again!

Colin Powell endorses Obama. Now what?

Colin Powell gave an eloguent endorsement of Obama on NBC's Face the Nation this morning. I understand Powell's rationale, and it is pretty sound. Obama could be a 'New Frontier' kind of guy, in ways similar to JFK. There is no doubt that Obama has skills as demonstrated by his oratory. He is intelligent. Of that there is no doubt.

My concern remains 'Where is this man on the liberal scale?' His record puts him way left, further left than I have ever voted. His rhetoric moves him slightly right of his voting record, still left of my idealism.

I had wanted McCain to choose Joe Lieberman as his running mate. Now this is a true 'Maverick' position. Instead, he cowtowed to the conservative right and chose Sarah Palin. Palin is an interesting character, besieged by liberal media who want to declare her unqualified. The media crucify her for her lack of understanding of international affairs. How unfair! She is a state govenor. Her qualifications for being a govenor of a state is that she understand the state issues. She beat out a lot of people to be elected govener because she has spunk.

Sarah Palin has shown she can compete. Her qualifications are very similar to Bill Clinton's when he was elected president. True, Bill Clinton is an eloquent speaker, and true, Bill Clinton is a bright guy, but both Clinton and Palin had similar experiences before emerging on the national scene. And there is another important difference. Clinton was running for president, and Palin is running for vice-president.

McCain is clearly the more experienced leader of the bunch, and has consistently demonstrated his ability to work both sides of the aisle to get things done, collaborating with the liberal likes of Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold to introduce legislation.

Powell's dismissal of Palin as unqualified is assuming that she is running for president. She is not. McCain is running for president, and the odds of Palin ascending to the presidency in McCain's first term are less than 20% from a health standpoint.

Consider this: a 20% probability Palin will be president in the next 4 years if McCain is elected vs. 100% probability that Obama will be president if he is elected.

I stand with John McCain, because I believe he will maintain some semblance of Federalist principles, while taking a far more moderate approach to governance. Sorry, General Powell, we just disagree. I still plan to vote for John McCain.

Politics and Energy - My Perspective

I have been a political maverick all my voting life. The first time I could vote was 1964, and I voted for Goldwater. In 1968, I voted for George Wallace, although it wasn't because I particularly liked Wallace, it was because I din't like Nixon and would never vote for as liberal a guy as Hubert Humphfrey. Since then, it has been mostly republican except that I voted for Ross Perot when he ran.

This year, I promised myself I would vote for the guy with the best energy policy, because it is my number one issue. Obama has the best energy policy, but I am shaking in my Texas boots because of his very liberal record and relative lack of experience.

I definitely was impressed by Obama's ranking energy as his number 1 priority, and equally unimpressed by McCain basically waffling on his priorities.

My issue is does Obama walk the walk as well as talk the talk? I am really nervous about that.

Energy Priorities of the candidates

With all of the obfuscation caused by the financial crisis, it's hard to figure out where the candidates are relative to energy priorities. If you look at the websites http://www.barackobama.com and http://www.johnmccain.com, you will discover that each has a well articulated energy policy.

Barack Obama would, on the surface, seem to be more agressive. John McCain's police is actually more believeable, having slightly more conservative but possible more realistic goals.

Here's the rub. With all of the recent economic calamities, where do each put their energy priorities? Reading their websites leaves me not totally clear on their priorities. Obama seems to put social issues first. McCain isn't clear at all.

Inquiring minds want to know where they stand on the energy independence/environmental issues exactly,