The Super Blog

The house passed a version of the stimulus package sent back in a slightly revised form by the Senate. The bill will raise the American national debt by an additional $168 billion. (10^9). Here is CNN’s writeup.

The plan will provide tax rebates of up to $600 for individuals and up to $1,200 for couples filing jointly, with an additional payment for families of $300 a child, and a minimum payment of $300 for individuals who pay less than that in income taxes.

Payments will be reduced for individuals with adjusted gross incomes above $75,000 and couples with incomes above $150,000, with the wealthiest taxpayers receiving nothing. The Treasury Department said checks would be distributed beginning in early May, after the crush of the tax filing season.

The rebates and the business incentives, including a doubling to $250,000 from $125,000 in the amount of expenses businesses can immediately write off, are intended to jolt the slowing economy with new spending.

I do not think that this a good idea, but I am not going to decline the check if I get it. I think that raising the debt even more is not an appropriate answer to our economic woes. I know it is complicated. Trying to take advantage of complicated and convoluted processes is what got the banks in this mess as it is. If you aren’t aware, the United States economy is doing a little woefully after a large swath of badly sold mortgages began going late and being foreclosed on. Part of the reason for the mess is called a CDO. Here is a story about Merrill Lynch on CNN that does a fair job explaining what those are. Anyone hoping to defeat pretenses about the viability of fully free markets need only look at the current mess, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and how much money has been sent to other countries to the detriment of most Americans. The worst part of all of this is that there are enough resources for just about everyone to live comfortably, but a few ultra rich, the top .25%, hoard enough money that it could provide for most or all of the bottom 20% that can’t afford to lead a reasonable life.

Two new studies have concluded what I believed to be the case all along. Biofuels release more greenhouse gases than standard fuels. The reason being is that there are environmental costs of requiring new fields to replace the food production that was displaced by earmarking a crop for ethanol production. These extra carbon figures have not, in the past, been properly correlated with biofuels. If you’re driving an E-85 Tahoe, you’re causing even more damage than if you just went with the Gas version. Murphy’s at the Walmart in my town has 10% ethanol in the gas. That means it is more polluting than standard gas.

Personally, I think the answer to the greenhouse problem lies more along the lines of our power generation than with our cars anyway. Switching our coal plants to nuclear may be the best answer of them all. Some, like this, think that coal and nuclear are equally bad, but most are not so disingenuous. Once people get past the activism and false propaganda floating around about how difficult and dangerous nuclear is, they tend to switch sides. Coal burned for energy production is the single largest contributor in the US, and China’s use of coal has pushed it ahead of the United States in greenhouse emissions.

Pretty graphs to follow! Source.

The first graph is general sources of greenhouse gases produced by the US.

This graph is a breakdown of the biggest line, the one that was truncated, from the above graph.

Once again, in my opinion, the two biggest bars from this second graph can be handled. I think the way to do so is to significantly reduce our reliance on coal for electricity by switching to nuclear generation at central locations, and requiring new and remodeled buildings to include some self energy production, primarily solar. The best ways to reduce the transportation usage, is to require cleaner, more economical diesels for transport trucks and to require smaller vehicles with higher fuel economy for regular transportation. It is difficult and expensive to retrofit effective mass transportation onto cities, but more people driving fewer vehicles would help a lot.

People who, like in the link above about neither coal nor power, advocate against all forms of electrical generation, really just hate all humans and want to move us pre-industrial revolution while killing most humans on earth. They are not so much into saving the planet, but rather, killing the humans.