How the DOE gave millions to a company with no business model.
Category Archives: Business
My Interview With Glenn Reynolds
In which I talk about the book, which should be for sale in the next week or so (I’ve been having a nightmare experience with the printer, which I hope is almost behind me).
The US Energy Boom
Fully maximizing the opportunities presented by the American energy revolution will require a concerted national effort that prioritizes investment in the development of advanced energy technologies—such as low-cost advanced batteries for electric vehicles and more-efficient home refueling units for natural gas vehicles—along with continued growth in domestic energy production. The volatility of oil prices, the presence of anticompetitive forces like OPEC, and the political and fiscal risks to significant and sustained energy-related research and development create an acute need for strong leadership from Washington if we are to capitalize on this moment.
Yet important philosophical differences now divide the major political parties on energy and environmental policies. Pretending such differences do not exist, or dismissing them as petty politics, defies reality and prevents progress on the pressing challenge of oil security.
To move forward, we suggest establishing oil displacement as a national goal. Such a target would advance the goals of robust economic growth, improved environmental protection and effective foreign policy. Best of all, a national consensus on reducing oil dependence should be possible without the resolution of the energy and environmental issues that will continue to be debated for some time.
It would be nice if we had people running the country who understood business. And technology.
A Message To Millennials
Kurt Schlichter expresses his gratitude:
I have been told that being hard on you Millennials will turn you against conservatism, that I should offer you a positive, hopeful message that avoids the touchy problem of your manifest stupidity.
No. There’s no sugar-coating it – your votes for Democrats have ensured that you are the first generation in American history that will fail to exceed what their parents attained. Embracing liberalism was a stupid thing to do, done for the stupidest of reasons, and I will now let you subsidize my affluent lifestyle without a shred of guilt.
I’m a 48 year old trial lawyer living on the coast in California – I should have “Hope and Change” tattooed on my glutes. I’d have an excuse to be lib-curious, but you Millennials? Why do you support an ideology that pillages you to pay-off Democrat constituencies? Your time in the indoctrination factories of academia trained you in a form of “critical thinking” that is neither. Somehow, you came to embrace the bizarre notion that conservatives are psychotic Jesus freaks who want to Footloosisze America into a land of mandatory Sunday school and no dancing.
But liberals, in contrast, are nice. Obama is cool. You chose petty fascism with a smile. Not a lot of thought went into it. Facts, evidence – these were mere distractions from the feelings-based validation that came from rejecting us wicked conservatives.
What did you get? The chance to be forced to buy health insurance you don’t want at inflated rates so my rates can be lower. You get to pay more out of your monthly barista take – liberalism ensured that the tanked job market foreclosed a real career – so that I get to pay less out of my lawyer checks. Thanks, suckers.
RTWT.
[Update a few minutes later]
Hey, remember back in 2008, when Barack was going to make government cool again?
Idiots.
How Safe Should A Frontier Be?
I have a piece up on that subject over at Reason. It’s a reprise of some of the arguments I make in the book, which I now expect to be available next week (my printer screwed up). I’d hoped to have them available for SpaceUp LA this weekend, but that’s not going to happen.
The ObamaCareBear
The web site has a new mascot.
Updated #ObamaCareBear poster, to better accentuate our compassion (ignore previous). But don't forget the rabies. pic.twitter.com/JResyN6i1h
— HealthCareDotGov (@HealthDotGov) November 5, 2013
NFL “Bullying”
Call me crazy, but I think that it’s possible to have a good football team without some team members calling others racist names on their home phone.
The Inner Solar System
Rick Boozer (who has a book out
Meanwhile, Bob Crippen is spinning fairy tales about SLS:
The combination of SLS and Orion will effectively establish a highway to the entire solar system.
It will be obsolete before it flies.
ObamaCare And The Widening Disconnect
A good piece by Salena Zito:
Our relationship with government is in shambles, our feeling of disconnect with Washington at an historic level.
Yet the real problem is not a health-care website that doesn’t work. The real problem is a president and a Washington culture which both believe it is okay to lie to get a bill passed.
Hey, gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette. As I said before, I hope that this is an asteroid smashing an ideology.
The “Second-Term Curse”
Really? That’s Obama’s problem? Not listening, but that’s the title of the panel segment on This Week.
Of course, if we’d known half of what we know now a year ago — about Benghazi, the IRS targeting of conservatives, the blatant deliberate lies about keeping your health plan, period, etc., there wouldn’t have been a second term.