U.S. Energy Update
May 20th, 2009It’s like a black cloud hovering over America. The next energy price explosion. We are doing nothing about it. Whenever it is mentioned we get two answers: green initiatives and technology. When drilling comes up one answer: it would take five years to help.
These are the same responses that we have given for the past 25 years.
Two countries, the U.S. and China. China operates like a corporation, with the CEO as a benevolent dictator. Corporations have always worked better in American and around the world when it comes to running businesses. Government, especially here, has never been able to run anything. We have years of history with the Post Office, Medicare, and Amtrak. Why doesn’t it work? Because government runs a business like they run politics. Lot’s of bureaucrats who are looking for safe ground and big benefits with union protection. Medicare has more waste and fraud than any organization in the history of this country. So, government here can’t run the energy strategy as the DOE has proven for 25 years. Billions of dollars to make us energy independent and no results.
China, on the other hand, runs the energy business like a corporation. They are busy building as many as 50 new nuclear power plants. They are locking in oil supplies around the world. They are even building a pipeline from Russia to tap that source. Recently, they entered into a deal with Brazil to lock up the huge new crude reserves much closer to us than China.
The Chinese will only make token efforts to curb carbon. They will offset everything every other country does a hundred, if not a thousand, fold.
Two countries on opposite paths. One is right and one is wrong. Who are you picking? This will decide to a large extent whether China displaces America as the next big Superpower.
We depend heavily on Canada and Mexico for oil. Investment in new oil has virtually stopped in both countries. Mexico has a government run oil company. Crude reserves have been dropping for years. The Mexican government has tried unsuccessfully to get the major oil companies to come in help find new reserves. The government-run oil company does not have the science and technology to find the new reserves, but the government oil company keeps gasoline prices artificially low. The public does not want to have the private sector in the picture for fear gasoline prices will go up. One fine day in the not too distant future, Mexico will have no surplus to export to the U.S. Canadian tar sand exploration has stopped. They need $60 a barrel to make it work. So work has stopped.
We will see $100 a barrel crude sooner rather than later. We will not see the demand drop, despite the new CAFE standards, cap and tax, and all the other great plans our government has to drop it quickly. When the $100 price hits again, it may not go away.
We are betting the farm on ideas put forth by a government that is unable and unwilling to do what it needs to do to protect us. When it fails, the blame game will be back. But, blame and all that comes with it will not fix our problem.
The Chinese will stop using the dollar to buy oil as will the rest of the world. That is closer than you think. The Chinese are getting rid of their dollars as fast as they are snapping up new sources of conventional energy.
This will make the current recession look like child’s play. The government will get their wish, the environmentalists will have their dream, and we will inherit the nightmare.
Tags: Brazil, Canada, China, DOE, Energy, Mexico
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My Twin Granddaughters Would Have Died In Canada
July 27th, 2009I have nine year old identical granddaughters. They are great kids. Born three months prematurely, they weighed 1.9 ounces and 2.1 pounds. They spent three months in neonatal intensive care at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The doctors and nurses there brought them through with flying colors. It was a most difficult time for my daughter and son-in-law and our entire family. We still worried until they were toddlers and we knew they were not only perfectly normal in all respects, but even exceptional.
They are good students, average in size with their age peer group, and very good athletes and sweet little girls. They have the twin thing going which only twins, parents of twins, and grandparents of twins can ever understand. They are and always will be each other’s best friend. What a treasure they are to all of us.
If my daughter and her husband were living in Canada, they would have died. The Canadian Universal Health Care system has basically eliminated neonatal intensive care. I have done extensive research on this and preemies in Canada get an instant death sentence. It’s far too expensive to save them. The bureaucrats who decide who lives and dies in the free health care world just can’t or won’t process the decisions fast enough to save them. If you are born too soon in Canada it’s just too bad. If you live too long in Canada, it’s just too bad.
My daughter had good insurance through her employer and I’m sure the bill for two babies in neonatal intensive care was well over a million dollars. In my visits to the neonatal unit to see the twins, I saw lots of babies in the unit whose parents did not have good insurance. I could be wrong, but I would bet a lot that many of those babies were there uninsured. But, Northwester Memorial cared for them. And, in most cases saved them. And, saved them without damage. I felt so strongly about the belief that they were treating uninsured babies that my wife and I made a substantial donation to Northwester to help them pay for those kids they treated.
The facts are facts. Mortality rates are higher in all types of illnesses in Canada. The numbers of doctors and nurses per capita are much lower in Canada than they are now in the US. The fewer doctors and nurses per capita cannot treat the entire population of Canada. It is illegal in Canada to buy health care. That would mover you ahead in line. Can’t do that. You have to come to the US to pay for health care if you can’t wait for treatment in Canada. The time to get an appointment with a doctor in Canada has tripled since Universal Health Care became law.
President Obama wants the government to run everything in your life. He wants the government to decide whether you get health care, the kind you get, and when you get the care. Too much demand and too few doctors and nurses, plus cost control, mandate bad health care. Free, but bad. In a move to include 46 million uninsured, Obama will destory our health care system, add cost, reduce doctor’s pay and caseloads, and give you or my twins a death sentence.
It has not worked anywhere, so why do it?
Tags: Canada, neonatal intensive care, No out of pocket health care, Rationed health insurance
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