Utopia, you are standing in it!

The most famous comment about the US Vice Presidency was uttered by John Nance Garner, a tough Texan who was FDR’s VP for his first two terms:

“The vice presidency ain’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”

You can hit the link for the background to that colourful phrase, including the usual debates as to exactly how it was phrased and when it was said. Incidentally the link states that Garner was the one who first turned the office into a bit of a powerhouse, helping FDR get his policies through the House and Senate, but then Garner came from being Speaker of the House, the most powerful political position in the US aside from the Presidency.

Other VP’s would try the same stunt, notably another man from the rough and barren Texas lands, LBJ, who fell into the job with Kennedy’s 1960 Presidential win. LBJ imagined the VP becoming…

John H. Cochrane writes at Project Syndicate The Fallacy of Climate Financial Risk.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The idea that climate change poses a threat to the financial system is absurd, not least because everyone already knows that global warming is happening and that fossil fuels are being phased out.
The new push for climate-related financial regulation is not really about risk; it is about a political agenda.

In the United States, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Department of the Treasury are gearing up to incorporate climate policy into US financial regulation, following even more audacious steps in Europe. The justification is that “climate risk” poses a danger to the financial system. But that statement is absurd. Financial regulation is being used to smuggle in climate policies that otherwise would be rejected as unpopular or ineffective.

“Climate” means the probability distribution…

I went along to the Hastings gathering last evening along with about 150 like minded people. The demographics of those attending were interesting. I am 75 and there were only 2 or 3 older than me while the majority of attendees were in the 40 to 65 age bracket there were a few early 20’s as well while there were also a few Maori presentl. Only two genders that I could see with men out numbering women about 2 to 1. A mix of farmers, business people and those like myself curious about what David Seymour and ACT had to say.

While the main man was David Seymour he was accompanied by Mark Cameron, Agriculture Spokesman and Damien Smith Economics Spokesman. Both spoke for about 5 minutes each and Cameron was very good while Smith was a little hesitant and his presentation suffered as a result. Interesting that Cameron is…

Want unaffordable and unreliable power? Then wind and solar are just the ticket. With their grid on the very brink of collapse, Californians are suffering from rocketing power prices – all thanks to a ludicrous attempt to run on sunshine and breezes.

Even when the sun is shining, the wind is blowing and power is being delivered to those in need, a growing number have no hope of paying for it.

Already paying America’s highest power prices, Californians are watching in horror as their power bills continue to soar.

Robert Bryce reports on California’s renewable energy meltdown.

Blackouts Loom in California as Electricity Prices Are ‘Absolutely Exploding’
Real Clear Energy
Robert Bryce
24 June 2021

Two inexorable energy trends are underway in California: soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability – and both trends bode ill for the state’s low- and middle-income consumers.

Last week, the state’s grid operator, the California…

Well, there is some hope from the subject atleast.

An interesting case of how Christine Exley and Elena Battles are using economics (market design principles) to hemp homeless puppies find homes:

So the hype for 2012 is over.  The committee has given the 2012 prize  to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapely “for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design”. In a way this paper on knowhow of math and eco was bang on.

Al Roth is ofcourse someone this blog is hugely fond of and has mentioned his research a couple of times. As mostly is the case with Nobel Prizes, I am completely clueless on Shapely’s works which is sad…

The press release says:

Below, please find my opening statement. You can find my full written testimony here in PDF.

Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey and the entire committee,

Thank you for the opportunity to share my perspectives today remotely.

I am a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and I have studied the use of science in policy for more than 25 years, including a long-term focus on climate.

Unfortunately, key scientific guidance on climate that informs policy– including central bank climate stress testing and U.S. government estimates of the social cost of carbon – has departed from basic standards of scientific integrity.

A main reason for this departure is that climate science has increasingly been enlisted in support of policy advocacy rather than to inform policy debates and decisions.

Today I Have Five Points to Make

FIRST, I emphasize that human-caused climate change is real, it poses significant risks, and…

Leopold III (November 3, 1901 – September 25, 1983) was King of the Belgians from 1934 until 1951. On the outbreak of World War II, Leopold tried to maintain Belgian neutrality, but after the German invasion in May 1940, he surrendered his country, earning him much hostility, both at home and abroad.

Prince Leopold was born in Brussels, the first child of Prince Albert, Duke of Brabant, heir to the Belgian throne, and his consort, Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria. In 1909 his father became King of the Belgians, as Albert I, and Prince Leopold became Duke of Brabant

In August 1914, when Belgium was invaded by Germany, King Albert allowed Leopold, then aged twelve, to enlist in the Belgian Army as a private and fight in defence of the kingdom. However, in 1915, with Belgium almost entirely occupied by the Germans, Leopold was sent to join Eton College, while his…

The penny is starting to drop for the anti-fossil fuel squad: reliance on chaotically unreliable wind and solar guarantees dependence on fossil fuel.

No bad thing in our view, mind you.

The wind and solar acolyte started out believing that coal was already dead as the dodo and gas would soon follow. However, already 20 years into our ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future, nothing could be further from the truth.

Indeed – in a ‘drats and curses’ moment for fossil fuel haters – the future for gas producers has never looked rosier.

Sudden and unpredictable collapses in wind and solar output, are increasingly being met by fast start-up diesel and/or gas generators, whether using Open Cycle Gas Turbines or giant ship engines.

They call it “backup”, as if wind and solar were like a car in need of an occasional push start. But, in…

I am passionate about Music, especially Rock. One of my favourite bands is Kiss. When we hear one of their songs on the radio, songs like “I was made for loving you” or “World without heroes” we just sit back and enjoy and don’t give it a seconc thought.

However these songs and so many of their other classics , may have never been written or composed. The two lead men of Kiss Gene Simmons(aka Gene Klein and Chaim Witz) and Paul Stanley (aka Stanley Bert Eisen) are both lucky they were born.

Paul’s both parents are Jewish. He was the second of two children. His mother came from a family that fled Nazi Germany to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and then to New York City. His father’s parents were from Poland.

His mother was born in Berlin, Germany on November 16, 1923. and fled the Nazi uprising she lived for a…

Lady Jane Grey (1536 or 1537 – February 12, 1554), later known as Lady Jane Dudley (after her marriage) and as the “Nine Days’ Queen”, was an English noblewoman who claimed the throne of England and Ireland from July 10 until July 19, 1553.

Jane was the great granddaughter of Henry VII through his younger daughter Mary, and was a first cousin once removed of Edward VI. She had an excellent humanist education and a reputation as one of the most learned young women of her day. In May 1553, she married Lord Guildford Dudley, a younger son of Edward’s chief minister John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.

In June 1553, Edward VI wrote his will, nominating Jane and her male heirs as successors to the Crown, in part because his half-sister Mary was Catholic, while Jane was a committed Protestant and would support the reformed Church of England, whose foundation…

Germany’s wind power transition has hit the wall: rural Germans are sick and tired of the noise, ruined landscapes and communities; and Germans of all persuasions are fed up with Europe’s highest power prices, which continue to rocket as a consequence of its so-called ‘renewable energy transition’ aka the ‘Energiewende’.

Thanks to massive subsidies and mandated targets, over 30,000 of these things have been speared into every last corner of Deutschland. But, as the team from Jo Nova explain below, the backlash against industrial wind power has brought the German wind industry to a shuddering halt.

Wind power “headed for disaster” in Germany
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
1 July 2021

Is this the future of wind all over the world?

The salad days of wind power in Germany are over. Bad news is rolling in from several directions. Twenty years of hope-n-subsidies has run aground. Profits are grinding down…

Philosophical Liberalism

By Bertrand Russell

(This is Chapter XII of Part I, Book Three of History of Western Philosophy, 1945. Transcribed by Jeffrey Ketland, May 2005.)

————

The rise of liberalism, in politics and philosophy, provides material for the study of a very general and very important question, namely: What has been the general influence of political and social circumstances upon the thoughts of eminent and original thinkers, and, conversely, what has been the influence of these men upon subsequent political and social developments?

Two opposite errors, both common are to be guarded against. On the one hand, men who are more familiar with books than with affairs are apt to over-estimate the influence of philosophers. When they see some political party proclaiming itself inspired by So-and-so’s teaching, they think its actions are attributable to So-and-So, whereas, not infrequently, the philosopher is only acclaimed because he recommends what the…