Thirty Two Questions

Thirty Two Questions from Congressman Ron Paul's farewell address -  (watch it here)

1. Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?

2. Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?

3. Why can't Americans manufacturer rope and other products from hemp?

4. Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?

5. Why is Germany concerned enough to consider repatriating their gold held by the FED for her in New York? Is it that the trust in the U.S. and dollar supremacy is beginning to wane?

6. Why do our political leaders believe it's unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own gold?

7. Why can't Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?

8. Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?

9. Why should there be mandatory sentences--even up to life for crimes without victims--as our drug laws require?

10. Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?

11. Why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize AIPAC ?

12. Why haven't we given up on the drug war since it's an obvious failure and violates the people's rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can't even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?

13. Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world-the one between Mexico and the US?

14. Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?

15. Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?

16. Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?

17. Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?

18. Why do so many accept the deeply flawed principle that government bureaucrats and politicians can protect us from ourselves without totally destroying the principle of liberty?

19. Why can't people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?

20. Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a "kill list," including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?

21. Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it's wrong.

22. Why is it claimed that if people won't or can't take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?

23. Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?

24. Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?

25. Why do some members defend civil liberties but not free markets? Aren't they the same?

26. Why don't more defend both economic liberty and personal liberty?

27. Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?

28. Why does the use of religion to support a social gospel and preemptive wars, both of which requires authoritarians to use violence, or the threat of violence, go unchallenged? Aggression and forced redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the teachings of the world's great religions.

29. Why do we allow the government and the Federal Reserve to disseminate false information dealing with both economic and foreign policy?

 30. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it's the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority?

31. Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there's such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?

32. Is there any explanation for all the deception, the unhappiness, the fear of the future, the loss of confidence in our leaders, the distrust, the anger and frustration? Yes there is, and there's a way to reverse these attitudes. The negative perceptions are logical and a consequence of bad policies bringing about our problems. Identification of the problems and recognizing the cause allow the proper changes to come easy.

I don't recall either presidential candidate ever bringing up any of these important questions. Awkward!

ALARA and LNT

ALARA and LNT are the twin nemeses of commercial nuclear power.  I have written about them before, but I want to share some additional thoughts.

ALARA is a misnomer, and a large one at that.  As low as reasonably achievable - a bureacronym that means in practice that the regulatory agency, in this case, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will use this innocuous sounding theory to add nearly unlimited cost to the nuclear industry.  Perhaps some, already in the nuclear industry welcome this, because it keeps out interlopers/competitors, but it also keeps 300 million Americans from enjoying the fruits of nuclear power.

What a thinking person needs to ask themselves is why, in a grand, universal way, should the regulatory goal be to reduce the exposure to radiation to below naturally occurring levels?  To do so is simply stupid, inefficient, and wasteful.  

Natural background radiation levels range from around 3.6 mSv/year to as much at 260 mSv/year in Ramsar, Iran.  Regulating the nuclear industry to achieve levels below this is not science.

BTW, it makes no difference to your cells whether the radiation is natural or man-made.

Lazy Saturday Afternoon

What to do on a boring/lazy Saturday afternoon:

Hook your electric guitar up to your oscilloscope and play "Dust in the Wind" while you watch the scope.

David Stockman on CNBC

David Stockman, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget recently appeared on CNBC and had some choice words for the FED and both political parties:


"Ron Paul is the only one who is right about the Fed, and the Fed is the heart of the problem. They have destroyed the capital markets and the money markets; interest rates mean nothing; everything is trading off the Fed and Wall Street isn't even home – as it's now a bunch of computers trading word-clouds emitted by this central banker and that"

"The Fed (and the lunatics that run it) are telling the whole world untruths about the cost of money and the price of risk."

“TARP was an abomination”

“Why should the government reform when they can borrow money at essentially zero interest?”

“Morgan Stanley should have been allowed to go down”

“If you can’t fail, you shouldn’t succeed”

“We have no industrial enemies, but we spend $800 billion per year on the military industrial complex.  I would cut it by a third”

“Means test social security and Medicare”

“We are crushing savers”

“The Obama budget is total fantasy”

“The problem we have now is two free lunch parties in Washington”

“Republicans are out of their minds”

“We can’t keep simulating this economy by borrowing from the future”

“We have to eat our broccoli”

“We have all these boys and girls on wall street begging the FED for another injection of sugar.”

“Day one, hour one, job one for Romney is to fire Bernanke”

“Clean house at the Fed.  That is where the crisis came from and that is why we are still buried.”
  
Too bad we Americans vote for people who tell us Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are real and we think that this fiscal disaster is going to hurt the other guy.

The Fundamental Reason I am a (Commercial) Nuclear Power Advocate

I am holding in my two fingers a plastic replica of an uranium fuel pellet of the type used in light water reactors.  I got this one at the visitors' center at Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant.

 The following graphic shows how much energy such a pellet (yes, just ONE pellet) can produce compared with coal, natural gas, wood, and oil.

This is the fundamental reason I am an advocate of nuclear power - it is dense and clean and there is enough for everyone on earth - all 6 billion or 10 billion or whatever for millenia.

PS. The last statement is what scares the beejeebers out of the green movement.

PPS.  Molten Salt Reactors are even better than what this graphic shows.

Congress' Addiction

Every so often a great chart comes along to really illustrate a point:

(Reference: Wikipedia article)

As you can see, Congress consistently spends more than it takes in.  Average expenditures for the last 41 years have been 3% of GDP greater than revenues.

Don't get me wrong, I am by no means suggesting that Congress increase its revenues to cover the gap.  Instead, I offer this as evidence that Congress is fundamentally incapable of balancing its spending. Increasing its revenue will only widen the gap because of their insatiable spending appetite.

OIE

OIE is the acronym for "Oil Is Everywhere", the new phrase I have coined to describe what Thomas Gold wrote about in "The Deep Hot Biosphere".

BTW, the subtitle of the book is "The Myth of Fossil Fuels".  The carbon in "fossil fuels", oil, coal, gas, and tar did not come from ancient dinosaurs and swamps, but has been present in the earth from its creation.

The fracking revolution in natural gas production, I think, is proof of Gold's theories and OIE.  How else do you explain drilling wells into rock, fracturing them under pressure and putting grit (proppants) into the resulting cracks to allow the gas to come to the surface.

Gold drilled some test wells into bedrock granite in Sweden years ago and extracted some oil, but his critics weren't convinced.  Too bad fracking technology wasn't developed then.  He could have extracted some serious gas and oil.  Who knows, maybe they can reopen the wells and frack them?