Morning Babble-On 5

Ah Wednesday!  Half way to the weekend ...

Sole-O Diplomacy - After years spent attempting to perfect the 'shoe bomb', radical islamic terrorists have been shown the way forward by an Iraqi TV reporter.  Getting an American president to duck (twice) from shoes (allegedly size 10) tossed by an indignant newsie was a public relations coup. One of a magnitude that has left Osama bin Laden Kermit-green with envy. We can expect elite shoe-tossing squads to form soon.

Free Money - A new low in both interests rates and governmental sense and reason was reached on Tuesday, when the Fed announced it would cut it's prime rate to 'between zero and .25 percent'.  What's next?  Maybe Ford, GM, and Chrysler will announce an incentive deal for negative 0.99% financing.  Under the plan, the longer the loan period, the less you pay! I can gel with that.  Meanwhile banks will likely raise the rates they charge consumers for credit cards by 5%. Again.

Will the last honest person please turn off the lights - Are there any honest brokers left on Wall Street?  There must be at least one.  Ironically it is probably someone nobody trusts, unlike Bernie Madoff, who everyone trusted.  Anyway, if you are there, please turn off the lights when you leave.  Cancel the mail, close shop, and take up a job at Ford, GM, or Chrysler. 

20 Megawatts

It is raining here in Los Angeles this evening.  The skies clouded up at dusk, building into a solid grey overcast, and now we are getting it.

Odd, then, that I should be telling you about a milestone in clean energy our family reached not long ago.  

We passed 20,000 kilowatt-hours of power generated by solar panels we installed back in 2003.

That's 20 megawatts we've poured into the 'grid' that otherwise wouldn't have been there.  Useful, stuff, especially if more people were doing it.

But there is a catch.  It's expensive.   And even though we generated all that power, we may never see the cost of the system paid back.  That's because our Department of Water and Power (DWP) charges a minimum fee for connection to the grid.  Even in months where we generate more power than we use, giving the DWP extra energy to sell, we end up paying for the privilege.

Of course, our monthly energy costs are lower than they would be without the system.  The power generated in excess of what we use goes into the grid and as it does it spins our electrical meter backwards, taking power off the scale.  That energy 'credit' helps keep the electric portion of our energy bill manageable.

Still, if Governor Schwarzenegger wants his 'million solar roofs' dream to succeed, he'll need to create incentives that work.  That will mean battling both the greed of the private utilities and the sluggish bureaucracy of the public ones (like our DWP).  Rebates must be offered and paid promptly (ours still hasn't been - after 5  years), and there should be no such thing as paying to provide power.  If you generate more than you use, then you should pay nothing - or maybe get paid for the excess (but let's not hope for too much).

Economic snafus aside, though, it feels good knowing we are helping...

Every little megawatt counts!

Paranoia Normal

What horrific crisis of the soul befouls our American news media these days?

That brief phase of euphoric hope that warmed even the cold-pressed hearts of the press after Obama's election win? Gone. Vanished into the greedy, needy, rush for news that grabs attention.

There are plenty of depressing actual facts to report, so you would think that would be enough.

But no, our media feel the need to serve up heaping helpings of dire speculation on a dismal future.  It's as if they want society to collapse into chaos so they have something interesting to report - and maybe sell tickets to.

It's paranoia sold as a commodity.  Let's not buy.

Morning Babble 4

T.G.I.F. has never been a more apt sentiment than this week.

Die Detroit Die - Is it just me, or does it seem to everyone that our congressional representatives are behaving like spoiled, quarreling children at recess?  Now, I am not personally in favor of a carte-blanche bailout to the Big Three, but I think they deserve a little more respectful attention than our reps have given them.  And who is responsible for the latest snafu?  The party of business, of course, the GOP, the Re-pub-li-cans!  It might be up to their lame duck President to save the day. Woo-boy, are we in trouble...

Oh My, Chicago, Oh My - Some things never change.  The City of Broad Shoulders, famed for its entrenched political machines, seems destined to forever carry that weighty ethical burden.  This latest (and perhaps greatest) involving an arrested and amazingly corrupt Governor, may in fact be a problem for the whole state of Illinois, but everyone will blame Chicago and it's rough and tumble politics.  This whole mess makes shamed ex-New York Governor Elliot Spitzer's peccadilloes look positively lame by comparison, in a Clintonian sort of way.  And no-one blamed New York City politics for that one.  

Watching The Jobs Fly - Away that is.  What on Earth was Bank 0f American thinking?  That already giant banking enterprise took full advantage of the woes of other banks and brokerage firms in the economic meltdown, and bought them up to make itself even more powerful and massive. But now we hear they are laying off up to 35,000 workers over the next three years.  I'll bet that wasn't listed in the takeover plans!  The absolute worst example of corporate greed and callousness to come out of this whole mess.  

Toys For Boys - Not Less, But Fewer

This is shaping up to be a miserable Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or whatever you might be celebrating this season.  Miserable, that is, for 'boys' old enough to shave, and even worse for those able to remember the Reagan administration from direct experience.

And pretty darn frustrating for wives, lovers, mothers, and friends who can no longer find that 'perfect' gift.

A recent exploration of the local malls revealed a dearth of stores hawking the kind of goods that older boys love to get as presents.   The Sharper Image is gone, gone, gone.  Brookstone is still there, but somehow just doesn't fill the gap left in the shopping continuum.  The Discovery Store seems mostly gone - the web site doesn't even provide a store locator, meaning one less option for last-minute gifts.  The Apple Store is present and accounted for, but how many iPods does a boy need?

So. Fewer weird, all-but-useless, yet interesting electronic gadgets for us this year.  No quiet air filtration fans to remove allergens from our playrooms.  No vibrating chairs with built-in iPod chargers and drink coolers.  Looking happy and surprised when getting gifts will be tougher.  

The picture is brighter for girls, though, if that aforementioned mall exploration is any judge.  No shortage of stores selling apparel of all styles for that demographic. 

At least we poor, gadget-bereft males can take solace in providing our wives, lovers, mothers, and friends with the perfect gift.

More Fewers and Fewer Lesses

In less time than it takes for you to read slightly fewer words than there are in this sentence, some highly-paid writer, somewhere, will mix up their use of the adjectives 'fewer' and 'less'.

Most of the time it's a case of 'less' being used when the correct option is 'fewer'.  As in 'the change affects less people', or, 'the downturn may end up  costing the economy less jobs than expected.'

Often the negative effect is barely noticeable, and the mistake can be tolerated.

Sometimes it can't.

I was watching a movie on TV the other day and one of those 'tags' popped up at the bottom of the screen.  

It read,  'Move Movies,  Less Commercials'.    

The tag popped up so often and for so long each time during the movie's run that I began wishing for,

'Less Movie, More Commercials'.

Maybe that was the plan all along.

The Big Three On Welfare

Well-televised 'negotiations' continue around the 'bailout' for the Big Three US automakers.  They wanted $25 billion initially, then $34 billion.  Now it seems like they will get $15 billion to start, with more later if they behave themselves.

Part of the deal is the appointment of a 'car czar' to oversee the bailout.  This czar will ride herd on the automakers to make sure they are 'responsible to the taxpayers'.   Like the defense industry is responsible to the taxpayers ...

So what does this mean?  Will cars be made by congressional committee?  Will we end up one day driving the US equivalent of the Yugo?  Or will we end up paying $5000 for a shift knob?

Given Congress's current plan - and it does belong to Congress, since President Bush is nowhere in the mix and President-to-be Obama is keeping his head down on this issue (smart man), I'd really prefer the Big Three just go quietly bankrupt.

After all, what have the US automakers done for us lately?  

Well, they have:

- Closed factories and sent jobs overseas since the late 80's

- Persisted with fuel and environmental unfriendly SUVs 

- Bought foreign makers and ruined them (e.g., Ford and Volvo)

- Were bought by foreign makers and nearly ruined them (e.g., Daimler-Benz and Chrysler)

- Killed the electric car at the exact moment the US makers had a lead in that technology (GM)

- Blocked every attempt to start a new automaker in the US since the 30's.

A sterling record, I must say.  But not sufficient to hate the Big Three enough to subject them to the ministrations of a 'car czar', or any kind of 'czar'.   When has an appointed 'czar' ever done anything right in US government (remember the 'energy czar(s)')?  

No. Better to let them go into bankruptcy and try to renew themselves.  If they can't, that's business, and maybe we can finally get some new car companies in the US who embrace technology and don't try to squash it.