Counterfeiting and Piracy Costing Us Jobs and Money!

The International Chamber of Commerce Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (ICC BASCAP) reports that the volume of counterfeit and pirated goods increased more than eighty percent over the five years between 2008 and 2013. Not so coincidentally, this is the same period of time in which President Obama funneled over $4,040,800,000 of your tax money to foreign companies under the guise of “Obama-Stimulus”. Yes, that's right, President Obama, along with your Congressmen and Senators, sent over four billion of your hard-earned dollars to create jobs in foreign countries. The US Department of Energy hired eighteen firms with your tax money courtesy of Obama-Stimulus, and of those eighteen contracts, eleven went to Chinese companies, two went to Indian companies, and one each to Denmark, Japan, Germany, and the USA. At this point it won't come as shock to learn that ninety-three percent of the jobs that were actually “created” by Obama-stimulus were in foreign countries.

Keep in mind that as you read this in 2016, there are currently over ninety-five million Americans unemployed, that includes the ones collecting unemployment compensation that the government counts, and all those who have exhausted their unemployment compensation claims and are still out of work. And thanks primarily to the insane costs mandated by Obama-care, we have approximately one-hundred-thirty million Americans who are identified as being “under-employed”; that means they are working less than forty hours per week. Obama-care has also given us sweeping changes in that employers now consider “full-time employment” as meaning sixty hours or more per week.

While the few Americans who are working, are being forced to work multiple part-time jobs for low pay, or full-time jobs with twenty-plus hours per week of mandatory overtime, as a country we're losing over five-hundred billion dollars annually, and nearly three million jobs!

All this brought to you by the same government that is now taking your tax money and giving more than seventy-thousand dollars per year of it to illegal immigrants and Islamic invaders! Wouldn't it be great if government worried about American and Americans as much as they do foreign countries and people who hate us? 

Solar Subsidies ... Wasting Taxpayer Money!

I posted the following on our local power utility's Facebook page in reply to people whining about wanting to get “government subsidies” to finance solar PV installations. Before you continue reading, just keep in mind that none of the things you enjoy in your daily life came about as a result of government subsidies, they came about because inventors and innovators creating things worked well and saved you time or money. If solar PV systems cannot produce an ROI (Return On Investment) either in dollars or energy, then why do people think that the government should confiscate money from taxpayers to fund things that waste energy, time, and resources? …

My Reply:

I was "green" before it became the "cool thing" and while we managed to survive the "imminent ice age" hoax, and now the "global warming" hoax ... the one thing they have in common with solar power plants, is that none of them have any facts to support the claims.

From Japan, to Norway, to Australia, to Iceland, to the USA, not one single utility-scale solar plant has prove profitable. The Ivanpah plant in California has not been able to operate without burning massive amounts of N-gas, and doing it exceeding inefficiently at that!

Government involvement has done nothing but stifle innovation by subsidizing technology, methods, and project we know will fail, while simultaneously prohibiting the implementation of technologies and methods that have been proven viable. Government has wasted massive sums of our tax money, and destroyed countless acres of land with solar and horizontal wind farms we knew would fail before they were even proposed. Meanwhile we have 1350 miles of shoreline and dozens of rivers and canals going to waste. Doesn't anyone else find it curious that government will subsidize small-scale solar projects they know will never produce an ROI, while at the time prohibiting low-impact hydro, and wave-pneumatic which are proven efficient and environmentally sound technologies? Private companies have been denied permits to construct those hydro projects, as well as vertical wind turbines, at zero cost to the taxpayers because they are proven to produce rapid ROI. Government is also the reason why over 18% of our total energy demand is being dumped into landfills rather than utilized! Not to mention that over 40% of landfill material can be recycled or repurposed if not for the hideously stupid government mandates!

Jimmy Carter created the Department of Energy, and in the thirty-nine years since October 1977 they have not only NOT solved the so called "oil crisis", but they've only managed to amass one vehicle for every employee, hire foreign workers instead of Americans, sell Energy Star stamps to the highest bidder, and make it so that "durable goods" which used to have an average thirty-year lifespan, now last less than five years while costing exceedingly more money! Just look at the massive waste of taxpayer money going on Bushnell*, and not a single thought was given to implementing thermal-solar into the massive heat-islands they're building that are going to increase the amount of energy required for cooling.

* Road and other taxpayer-funded construction projects currently happening in Bushnell, Florida.

Flaming Hypocrisy - NFL & Kaepernick 

In recent weeks there's been all sorts of hoopla surrounding the so-called “demonstrations” these hypocritical imbeciles like Kaepernick are taking part in. Now why is it that not a single member of the media, nor any official of any of the professional sports organizations, nor any one else in the spotlight, bothers to ask why these clowns like Kaepernick run around in clothing provided by Nike brand while collecting advertising money from the same, and not of one of them is in the least bit concerned about the slave, child and oppressed laborers Nike is exploiting in Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia, India, and elsewhere?

Where is all the outrage and protests about the “evil corporation” of Nike exploiting underprivileged people for profit? Oh, that's right … they conveniently ignore those facts when those facts are what's putting massive sums of money in their pockets! How convenient it is that this Kaepernick clown doesn't say a word about the royalties he's collecting on jerseys produced by Nike with his name on them. Isn't it also amazing how these spoiled brats are so concerned about “black oppression”, yet they don't say a word about all the black folks that Nike and other other sports-funding corporations are exploiting in Africa?

Does it not warrant asking the questions as to why these imbeciles lay claim to being “African-American”, while not having the least bit of concern about the real Africans being exploited for their personal gain? And, doesn't it also bear asking why not a single one of these Kaepernick clown types don't bother to say a word about all the “minority” children being exploited as sex-slaves for sports fans? Why yes, these “protesters” are so concerned about the plight of others, unless it comes to admitting that the Super Bowl is the single larges sex-slave exploitation and sex trafficking event in America! Nope, the players and the NFL remain completely silent on the matter, and even go so far as to prohibit journalists who would ask these questions from even entering into press events. Isn't the extreme hypocrisy simply amazing?

Green Car Reports: "2017 Chevy Bolt EV electric car: 238-mile EPA range rating, 119 MPGe combined"

_____________________________________________________

When it comes to the claims made about EV ranges and lifespans, it's fair to say that I am very skeptical based on real world data. These big boasting claims are short-lived when the real world data comes in. Experience shows that vehicles are rated like air compressors at the local DIY store where the Hp rating is the sum total of the unit running at maximum delivery and the maximum power stored in reservoir ... two things that cannot happen simultaneously, yet the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection does nothing about the false advertising.

One must also question why the EPA insist on using the hideous MPGe rating when it should be using the MPkW rating? EVs are primarily powered by coal-fired power plants, so how does one equate pounds of coal to horsepower of steam to generation of electricity by some mythical means to come up with MPG? Makes me SMH! 　

While we're on efficiency, note how they are so careful as to avoid discussion of the battery limitations and degradation. Nonlinear degradation increases in Li-ion batteries in temperatures above 86°F so consider the results of batteries inside vehicles exposed to internal temperatures that can easily exceed 135°F without even considering the radiant heat absorbed through the bottom from road or parking lot surfaces at 50-85 W/sqft. Consider also that cycle life of Li-ion batteries is greatly reduced by the number of full charges, and the length of time they are allowed to remain at full charge.

Going back to the range claims as they related to battery life, take note that EV manufacturers and radical proponents conveniently omit information concerning Li-ion battery life cycles and capacity degradation. Li-ion batteries loose approximately 15% of their total capacity after the first 250-500 charge cycles. The depth of discharge also negatively affects the total capacity of the battery whereby the further the battery is discharged, and the higher the level it is charged to, the greater its total capacity loss will be. Li-ion batteries are happiest when they are not discharged below 40%, nor charged to more than 70% of their total capacity. Now keep in mind that those number change according to the degradation associated with every discharge/charge cycle. Thus, after 250-500 cycles, the 70% charge level actually becomes 55% or less depending on how much the battery has degraded to that point.

So let's tie this all together and realize that your new 200 mile range EV is probably going to be limited to about 150 miles, and considerably less than that if you're running the heater or air conditioning. After the first year or so, your maximum range is going to be down to about 125 miles, and by year three you're going to be down to about 90 miles as long as you don't use lights, wipers, heater, air conditioner, power windows, phone chargers or anything else other than the actual drive motor. So before you go plunking down your purse of gold coins for a shiny new chariot with a great sales pitch, know what you're really getting into.

No, I'm not an opponent of EVs, I'm just a realist which makes me a proponent of hybrid vehicles as opposed to Evs. I do favor EVs in those applications where they are best suited, but as a matter of practical application, EVs are not going to prove efficient for the majority of Americans. However, properly designed hybrids can prove to be exceptionally efficient for a large portion of American drivers. Yes, I am an opponent of much of the hideous engineering stupidity that has dominated the vehicle industry for more than a century, and continues to do so for reasons as of yet remain unexplained. EVs that look and operate like what we would call a “normal” car, can never achieve peak efficiency. EVs should look and operate like a dedicated EV … imagine that, eh? Kind of like buying a charcoal grill and expecting it to perform like a gas grill. Thus, if they're going to build EVs, why do they insist on making them look like the same old crap they've been putting off the assembly lines for more than century? No, this doesn't make any more sense than the EPA mandating that reducing emissions by 0.0002% per gallon of fuel burned, is better than reducing fuel consumption by 33% … utter stupidity is what it is, and that's why we're devolving from world leading superpower, to just another third-world crap hole! 

FDR's Great Depression Proves Socialism Does Not Work!

Some things have really been poking me in the eye lately, and it's time we face the facts head-on! Stay tuned as this will be a series of posts since the material comes from comments I see posted around social media that range from misinformed, to execrably stupid. Unfortunately, the material is abundantly plentiful.

How about we start off with a little bit of Bernie Sanders's so-called “democratic socialism” … as if that in itself doesn't provide enough material to fill an entire book. With that in mind, let's begin with this quote: “President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used socialist systems to fix the social problems he saw in America.” Okay, now let's see how that worked out for America.

FDR's ballooned the national debt by 11.5 times taking it from $22.5 billion to $258.5 billion. Even when allowing a major chunk of that for the cost of World War Two, nearly $90 billion, or four times the national debt when he entered office, was caused by FDR's socialist program failures.

In 1933 FDR shut down all of the banks and forced Congress to pass the Emergency Banking Act, which gave the government police-state powers over all American banks and double-down on the socialist Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) created by FDR, forced the already economically destitute taxpayers to bail out the banks. The result of this socialist plan drove inflation through printing more devalued paper money, and reducing the buying power of the few American who were still working.

FDR's Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1934 was essentially rooted on the same central-command ideals as the 1933 national-socialist Nazi Reich Entailed Farm Law, as well as similar programs in Russia and China. The failed idea was to increases taxes on people who were already taxed into poverty to support a bunch of new bureaucrats who would give a small portion of the tax monies to farmers who destroyed crops and animals while many of their fellow Americans were literally starving to death.

Contrary to what was claimed in the sales pitch, Roosevelt's socialist programs such as Civil Works Administration, National Industrial Recovery Act, and Works Progress Administration caused the prolonged stifling of the American economy, and subsequently the prolonged suffering of the American people. While the world felt the effects of the 1929 Stock Market crash, only the American people suffered the extended ravages of the Roosevelt-Socialist “Great” depression. Like all socialist programs, what sounds great in the sales pitch, will most assuredly leave you with buyer's remorse. Just as the 1934 AAA increased taxes on, and reduced the amount of food available to starving people, the so-called “works” programs removed the ability of the private sector to generate wealth.

To follow this, one must understand that government has no wealth, and government has means of generating wealth. Therefore, everyone employed, or otherwise funded, by government is a consumer of wealth. In order for government to support its employees (bureaucrats and politicians) and dependents, government must confiscate money from the people who actually generate wealth. All wealth originates solely through the efforts of wealth generators; the people who actually make or grow things, and the people who assist the people who make and grow things by providing necessary services. In fairness, we must exclude from the “bureaucrat” label, all those government employees who fall into the “wealth-neutral” category such as the military, fire and police because they provide the services that benefit all of society.

Thus, for the purposes of discussing the mythical utopia that's being called “democratic socialism”, let's see what we've learned over the years from Roosevelt and other US presidents. The more government sticks its nose fingers into wealth-generation, less wealth is generated. FDR's Great Depression should not only be a learning tool, but the visible results should scare the crap out of anyone who thinks government is the answer to anything!

The top five points:

1. Government can only survive if there is sufficient private sector wealth-generation.

2. Government work/job programs hinder private sector wealth-generation.

3. Government wage and price mandates cause inflation.

4. Increasing taxes on wealth-generators hurts the overall economy.

5. Reducing government's consumption of wealth, benefits the economy.

In closing, the next time you encounter someone who thinks college and other things should be provided for “free”, please take the opportunity to remind them that government doesn't have any money until they confiscate it from someone who is working. Ask them to demonstrate their conviction to the cause by giving the government 88% of their pay so it can be redistributed to others. Yes, that's right folks, when one calculates the total tax burden on working people in socialist countries, it averages 78%! Compare that to how many complain now about the United State average of just 38%. Putting numbers to it, the median average household income of a working Americans is $51,900; under the alleged democratic socialism being proposed by Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party as a whole, you're income after taxes will decrease from $32,178 to $11,418 Oh, yes … kinda hurts when you put the numbers on it, eh?