Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

He really is that stupid.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

We still have time to mess this up!

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

I was promised a recession.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The revolution will be supervised.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Let there be snark.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

You are here: Home / Economics / Free Markets Solve Everything / Republicans Don’t Actually Believe in Anything, Free Market Edition

Republicans Don’t Actually Believe in Anything, Free Market Edition

by | 155 Comments

This post is in: 

Except tax cuts and hating the poor and minorities, that is:

Trump administration officials are making plans to order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants in an effort to extend their life, a move that could represent an unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.

The Energy Department would exercise emergency authority under a pair of federal laws to direct the operators to purchase electricity or electric generation capacity from at-risk facilities, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The agency also is making plans to establish a “Strategic Electric Generation Reserve” with the aim of promoting the national defense and maximizing domestic energy supplies.

“Federal action is necessary to stop the further premature retirements of fuel-secure generation capacity,” says a 41-page draft memo circulated before a National Security Council meeting on the subject Friday.

The plan cuts to the heart of a debate over the reliability and resiliency of a rapidly evolving U.S. electricity grid. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants are struggling to compete against cheap natural gas and renewable electricity. As nuclear and coal plants are decommissioned, regulators have been grappling with how to ensure that the nation’s power system can withstand extreme weather events and cyber-attacks.

They’re gonna make you pay more to use dirty energy to prop up their plutocrat buddies in the coal industry. This will effectively make coal miners, you guessed it- “welfare queens.”

Reader Interactions

155Comments

  3. 3.

    TenguPhule

    They’re gonna make you pay more to use dirty energy to prop up their plutocrat buddies in the coal industry.

    Communism is here and brought to us by the Russian backed traitors.

  5. 5.

    debbie

    Five bucks says Trump’s got investments that would benefit from this “emergency.:

  6. 6.

    chris

    “Strategic Electric Generation Reserve” with the aim of promoting the national defense and maximizing domestic energy supplies.

    In case the wind and the sun disappear?

    ETA They are preparing for a war of some kind aren’t they?

  7. 7.

    mad citizen

    This is my job area. One of the grid operators, PJM, already issued a statement against this stupid idea. I’m hearing that there will be a line of lawsuits trying to stop this. It is not needed.

  8. 8.

    MomSense

    Oh brother. Republicans were outraged when Obama invested in solar. ‘Government shouldn’t be picking the winners and loswrs’ blah blah blah.

  10. 10.

    Chyron HR

    Gosh, when the guy from Vermont said the country must burn for denying his holy glory, I didn’t think it would be in the literal sense.

  11. 11.

    JPL

    What areas of the country are hurt the most? The first thing I did was google GA Power and more than half of their energy comes from coal and nuclear, so I should be okay. Other parts of the country use hydropower.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    Next up, force the Post Office to use horses and wagons. Strategic Cavalry Reserve.

  14. 14.

    Ruckus

    @chris:
    They don’t make money off of the wind and sun. They invested hugely in coal and nuclear a while ago and are going to lose a bundle because their timing is horrible. They always get in at the end of a run, a short time after the smart people started to sell. Just about the time things got cheap, just like they are. I mean who do you think bought into coal and nuclear when the smart money got out, other smart people? It was the fake rich, like drumpf.

  15. 15.

    elm

    Doesn’t even stand on its own alleged logic. If weather or cyber attacks or other vulnerability could interfere with natural gas flow or wind or sun, it could fuck up power distribution too.

    Sure, you can keep a pile of coal or fuel rods on site at one of these plants, but the wires that deliver power to homes need continuity.

    Coal and nuclear are too expensive, period, even without considering the pollution they produce.

  17. 17.

    MobiusKlein

    Since it’s going to court, and will be blocked, this is the conservative version of ‘Virtue Signaling”?

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    Is hot water in the gaudy Tower provided by a coal-fired boiler?

    No? Hypocrite.

  19. 19.

    Patricia Kayden

    I thought Republicans were all about respecting business decisions. This is not normal. Nothing about this regime is normal.

  22. 22.

    Corner Stone

    I think this is a pretty sound national security decision. In order to secure our continued march toward energy independence we need to be ready to make a few sacrifices and it seems the Trump administration is focused on doing the right – BWHAHAHAHAHA! Can’t even finish. This is too good.
    Although, I will say that I think subsidizing Ag farms and the auto industry is an actual national security imperative. This, however, is just crony payback pandering bullshit.

  23. 23.

    mad citizen

    A question I heard, though, was whether the policy could be enacted and in place before any lawsuits. That could suck bad.

  25. 25.

    JPL

    @MobiusKlein: It will convince his supporters to vote for more wingnuts who agree with the asshole.
    I believe Manchin likes this approach.

  28. 28.

    arrieve

    I can’t even. It’s not the venality or the hypocrisy or the crony capitalism — well, it is. But mostly it’s that they are so fricking stupid it makes my eyes water.

  29. 29.

    Another Scott

    @chris: I haven’t read the story, but I assume Donnie’s minions are scouring things like the Defense Production Act – Title III to justify everything they want to do.

    Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III

    The Defense Production Act Title III program provides the President broad authority to ensure the timely availability of essential domestic industrial resources to support national defense and homeland security requirements, by authorizing economic incentives to create, expand, and modernize production capacity. DPA Title III is an authority, not a source of funds; initiatives are provided by Joint or Service Program Offices of Record, Defense Agencies, or other federal agencies as funding offsets for specific Title III efforts.

    Projects are required by law to meet the following criteria:

    The industrial resource or technology item must be essential for national defense

    Industry cannot or will not provide needed capacity in a reasonable time without DPA Title III assistance
    DPA Title III incentives must be the most cost-effective, expedient, and practical alternative for meeting the need

    The DPA Title III program released a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) on February 23, 2018, allowing potential offerors to identify future projects essential for national defense. All interested parties are encouraged to visit http://www.fbo.gov and enter Solicitation Number W15QKN-18-R-01HZ for the latest version of the BAA.

    FAST FACTS:

    The President determines industrial base shortfalls, ultimately signing a Presidential Determination. Congress is subsequently notified of the planned expenditures.

    DPA Title III appropriations are no-year procurement funds and are valid until expended.

    Enacted in 1950 in response to the manufacturing challenges resulting from the Korean War, the Defense Production Act continues to support the Warfighter and is periodically reauthorized, most recently in 2014.

    (Emphasis added.)

    The President has a lot of power to do things if he can (credibly) argue that they’re related to national defense. As long as Congress goes along and gives him funding to do so.

    Of course, there’s no credible argument that we need more coal and nuclear electricity as opposed to solar and wind and hydropower and all the rest. Electrical machinery doesn’t care how the AC power is produced…

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (“Similarly with the national defense arguments that we need to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum…”)

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    OT.

    Gonna try chicken cacciatore in the Instant Pot tonight.

    Cross your paws, jackals.

    Oh, and a reminder – fewer than 10 shopping days until Kamehameha Day.

    :)

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    @Another Scott

    AFAIK, we’re still subsidizing wool and mohair, some 50 years after the Pentagon removed them from their list of strategic materials.

  37. 37.

    Ruckus

    @Another Scott:
    I’m thinking that my work as a machinist is going to at least have a hiccup or two at the higher price of metals. We make a lot of stuff out of aluminum and tool steels but most of that is imported. Right now we are swamped but things can change pretty quickly.
    It always amazes me that people like drumpf have no real clue how things work, that so many things are connected in many ways. So he does tariffs on metals and countries do tariffs on our food exports. Or our medical device exports, something we make with the metals….. Of course drumpf just has no clue about anything except his blimp sized inflated view of himself. And he gets that 100% wrong as well.

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne

    @MobiusKlein:

    Since it’s going to court, and will be blocked, this is the conservative version of ‘Virtue Signaling”?

    Yes. As usual, conservatives accuse everyone around them of doing exactly what they do themselves.

  39. 39.

    mad citizen

    I hate hate hate how much military shit bleeds into our country.

    There are a couple 1950s vintage coal plants in the Ohio valley built to provide to enrich uranium. They still operate. Ohio Valley Electric Corporation, co-owned by ten or so utilities. It takes a unanimous decision for them to do anything.

  41. 41.

    Chris T.

    @MomSense:

    ‘Government shouldn’t be picking the winners and losers’ blah blah blah.

    That’s not what they meant. They meant “Government should only be picking winners and losers when I’m the winner and you’re the loser.”

  42. 42.

    scottinnj

    This really does read like something out of Atlas Shrugged. Though I think Paul Ryan et al thought they were John Galts, rather, they are James Taggarts and Wesley Mouch.

  46. 46.

    kindness

    I’m curious how your typical non coal mining region Republican is going to run on Trump’s directive in the fall. Will they play deaf and not hear the question? Will they just say they disagree with the President and just elect me I’ll help (do nothing at all)? See. I don’t see how actual voters are going to be silent or sit still for such shenanigans. We’ll see.

  48. 48.

    rikyrah

    Waiting for the doors to open. Going to see a play-Having Our Say, based on the book of the same name about two Black sisters that lived past 100.

  50. 50.

    mark

    I read earlier today that the Buffoon want’s to keep German cars out of the U.S. Wait until your only choice is from one of the big three. I see 1970’s quality vehicles coming to a showroom near you.

  51. 51.

    mad citizen

    It continues to amaze me how mythic saving the coal miners has become. In Indiana there are many more people working in the hospitality industry than in coal. You don’t hear crap about them from politicians.

  53. 53.

    NotMax

    @rikyrah

    Know I’m going to catch holy hell for this, but it’s an honest inquiry.

    What’s up with capitalizing black? Afro-American, correctly, is capitalized (as is Asian, or Latino),. Would you write Brown? Or White? Or, for that matter, Albino?

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    Full disclosure: I’m so white, they call me “sharkbait” when I visit the state you live in. ?

    It’s capitalized because it’s a cultural reference and not a simple descriptor of skin coloration. You can talk about Black culture, but not brown culture or albino culture, because those things don’t exist.

    There’s some debate about whether or not “white” should also be capitalized since it also refers to a specific American culture.

    But that’s why, when I refer to Black people from other countries, I refer to them as “Black British,” “Black Canadian,” etc to differentiate them from Black Americans.

  63. 63.

    Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)

    @NotMax: So essentially a usage question. Hm. Dictionary (dot) com shows it lower cased when referring to a racial group. Ex. “a black teenager of Jamaican descent.”

    ETA. but that’s ex is an adjective. Let me check my CMS

    So Chicago Manual of Style says “designations based loosely on color are usually lowercased, though capitalization may be appropriate if the writer strongly prefers it.”

    So in a publication there’d be a style sheet and a mean editor. Here at BJ, we wing it.

  64. 64.

    The Midnight Lurker

    I apologize for my earlier comment. It’s just when I get to thinking about coal and how our government is loathe to support renewables, and Energy Secretary Dick Perry (it is dick, right?) telling us that it is “immoral” not to use fossil fuels, and the administration floating the idea that we’ll help a criminally corrupt regime revamp their power grid which runs exclusively on coal, and now my tax dollars are going into Don Blankenship’s campaign coffers, I just… just… @#$%!!

  67. 67.

    smintheus

    @rikyrah: Trump is adding Kim Jong Un to the US welfare rolls. There must be something in it for Ivanka, that’s the only explanation.

  70. 70.

    TenguPhule

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I drive a Japanese car, Madame drives a Korean car; they haven’t done anything with them yet.

    Trump stiffed both on the steel and aluminum tariffs, in addition to others.

    I expect Trump will remember they make cars too, eventually.

  71. 71.

    TenguPhule

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m so white, they call me “sharkbait” when I visit the state you live in.

    No, “sharkbait” refers to people who fly here from landlocked states and think that the ocean is a giant swimming pool.

    They just happen to usually be very white.

  72. 72.

    oatler.

    Hard to imagine the next civil war being anything other than neighbors stabbing and shooting each other in a screaming frenzy. No Blue and the Gray.

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    @TenguPhule

    Using TPM’s Razor rule, one of his offspring (or one of their close acquaintances) probably got stuck with a lemon from Mercedes-Benz and endlessly bitched about it.

  76. 76.

    jl

    ‘ This will effectively make coal miners, you guessed it- “welfare queens.” ‘

    I think coal industry titans and private utilities that don’t want to pay up to modernize their plants have higher priority than coal miners. They are just window dressing for political propaganda for the dupes, like the troops in the military. And, until the Trumpster can figure out how to bend the law so they can order companies to buy coal from a particular company, will mostly benefit open pit coal.

    If there is a national security issue with power plants, i wonder how many alternatives they look at (ha ha, that’s a humorous rhetorical question). As some commenters above mentioned, there are more pressing security issues with electric power, the transmission grid is a big one.

  77. 77.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @jl:

    If there is a national security issue with power plants, i wonder how many alternatives they look at (ha ha, that’s a humorous rhetorical question).

    All of them, Katie(humorous answer).

  80. 80.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    I do not grok, though, how capitalizing the term adds anything about culture that not capitalizing it doesn’t convey.

    Would not write the Poor, the Blind or the Highly Educated, for example.

    Not a complaint, shall chalk it up to being an affectation and move on.

  81. 81.

    TenguPhule

    Washington Post just realizes today that Trump is wrecking security and controls when it comes to confidential information.

  84. 84.

    TenguPhule

    Industry experts expect that the Appalachian coal mining firm Murray Energy and the Ohio-based utility FirstEnergy — which first broached the idea of a rescue plan to Perry last year — will be near the top of the list of companies benefiting from Trump’s order.

    Rick Perry’s fifteen minutes of infamy in this shithole administration have come.

  86. 86.

    TenguPhule

    Trump said Kim Jong Un’s letter was ‘interesting.’ Then he said, ‘I haven’t opened it.’

    Jesus wept.

  90. 90.

    magurakurin

    We watched, The Dark Knight last night (it was the first time for my wife…who likes Ben Affleck Batman) and it really struck me that The Joker is in the White House right now…

    …except Heath Ledger has sadly left us and so it’s really just one of the Joker’s mental patient, clown henchmen taking his place.

    so fucked, we are.

  93. 93.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    However, most people do capitalize Deaf, and for the same reason — it’s a distinct culture that has its own language and customs.

    But, as I said above, I try not to be a jerk about what other people prefer to be called since it’s no skin off my nose.

  94. 94.

    frittingitallaway

    @mark: Would that be the MBs made in Alabama and Georgia, or the BMWs made in South Carolina?

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    @magurakurin

    The Joker had a method to his madness.

    (And mention of the character is as good an incentive as any to revisit his boners.)

    :)

    @Mnemosyne

    Have been scrabbling around this spinning rock for a long, long time and that’s the very first time I’ve seen that capitalized (outside of beginning a sentence or as part of the name of an institution).

    I must lead a sheltered life.

    Also, was not being a jerk, was attempting to remedy my own ignorance.

  99. 99.

    Millard Filmore

    @scottinnj:

    This really does read like something out of Atlas Shrugged.

    Just wait until a hidden video captures one of the cabinet critters say “I need wider powers.”

  102. 102.

    Amir Khalid

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
    I remember that the house style guide at The Star was often willfully wrong. Bugged the hell out of me that I was supposed to write “percent” when I actually wanted to say “percentage points”. Also that you had to refer to the Cambodian group as “the Khmer Rouge” (singular) when its name was Khmers Rouges (plural) — just to save two letter spaces.

  104. 104.

    James Powell

    @Another Scott:

    The President has a lot of power to do things if he can (credibly) argue that they’re related to national defense.

    The Cold War was one of the worst things the US ever did, or that ever happened, however you look at it. So many stupid, harmful, ridiculous vestiges of that “pay any price, bear any burden” mentality. We will never be rid of it until the American empire truly collapses.

  105. 105.

    Ohio Mom

    @rikyrah: I used to have the book Having Our Say, loaned it out and didn’t get it back. It’s a great story, they were an endearing pair.

    On another note, I’ve been busy and not around here as much as I’d like. So I might be skipping the threads he’s on but I haven’t seen efg lately — is he all right?

  107. 107.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ohio Mom: He was in a thread earlier. He isn’t dead and is doing better (paraphrasing fairly closely).

    ETA: As proof of life, he offered this term/phrase: Fuckemall.

  109. 109.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Ohio Mom: He dropped a one-line post earlier today, that he’d been hospitalized. I didn’t get from that whether he was still in, or had gotten released.

  113. 113.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    I’m old enough to remember when goppers hated Big Government.

  118. 118.

    raven

    @Gin & Tonic: Yea that’s the limit. I’m going out again Tuesday so we can eat one-a-day until then if I don’t catch more pomp in the surf.

  120. 120.

    marduk

    This will effectively make coal miners, you guessed it- “welfare queens.”

    The miners will never see a penny.

  126. 126.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: Yup. The Internet, GPS, integrated circuits, etc., etc., all were greatly impacted by US government investments.

    There’s an excellent case to be made that the US government should invest in basic research, and promising applied research. Bell Labs and IBM and GE and lots of other huge companies had great R&D labs for a while. They’re mostly gone now, for lots of reasons. That means that long-term, basic research has to be supported by the national government. Unfortunately, the easiest way to sell that was to relate it to national defense. While there is certainly research that needs to be done for defense purposes that won’t be done by industry because there’s no commercial market for it (e.g. stealth technology), there’s a whole lot of other research that takes decades to succeed but has a huge impact on lots of markets once it is mature enough (e.g. light emitting diodes, and the other examples listed above).

    We need to be sending much, much more money to the NSF, but we also need to continue to be spending money on DARPA and ARPA-e and a whole host of other organizations in the US government that support research.

    tl;dr – the problem with this proposal isn’t that the government is involved in supporting US industries, it’s that in this instance it’s a stupid policy choice for stupid reasons.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  130. 130.

    elm

    @Another Scott:

    tl;dr – the problem with this proposal isn’t that the government is involved in supporting US industries, it’s that in this instance it’s a stupid policy choice for stupid reasons.

    Coal and nuclear plants are among the worst possible facilities to support via government intervention. This is like a government mandate that we all buy buggy whips.

    Coal and nuke plants aren’t worth the concrete and steel needed for the steam-to-power turbines and generators.

  133. 133.

    Platonailedit

    Actually, a mix of conventional aka dirty energy sources and renewable sources makes a good energy security policy. Question is how you go about doing it without harming all stakeholders.

  134. 134.

    elm

    @Platonailedit: Natural gas turbines produce reliable power much cheaper than coal or nuclear (both capital and operating costs) and pollute much less than coal.

  136. 136.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax: You’d be surprised, maybe!

    […]

    r-f-e-p-u-e-h-s-a-g-r
    welcher
    al)s w(ir schau)en
    aufnunrichht
    PFEGERURASH
    endz(u-
    mDer):s
    pr
    iU
    !ng:
    T a
    (n
    kOmMeNd .gRrEaFsPuEh)
    um
    wieder(zu)ord(were)nen(en)d
    ,grashuepfer;

    […]

    Some weird stuff there. ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  137. 137.

    Jinchi

    @kindness:

    I’m curious how your typical non coal mining region Republican…

    All Republicans are pro-coal. Even the ones from non-coal regions.

  139. 139.

    Robert Sneddon

    @elm: Gas from modern gas-turbine plants still produces about three million tonnes of CO2 per GW-year of electricity generation. Coal is less efficient and releases about 4.5 to 5 million tonnes of CO2 for the same amount of electricity. New more efficient coal plants (so-called super-critical designs being built in China and elsewhere) run at much higher temperatures than older plants and release less CO2 per GW-year than older plants but still more than gas.

    Right now in the UK which has invested heavily in wind power, with about 11 GW of installed generating capacity onshore and offshore, we’ve been getting between 50MW and 100MW from that multi-billion pound investment. Most of our power today is coming from gas with 2GW from the French nuclear reactors via an underwater link and a steady 7.7GW from our own home-grown nuclear reactors which don’t care if the sun shines or the wind blows.

  141. 141.

    rikyrah

    @NotMax:
    I capitalize Black, when referring to a Black person like myself.
    I, of course, don’t capitalize black, like, the color of my car is black. For me, it’s about respect.

  145. 145.

    Stuart Frasier

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    There was one time I was in the back of a Twin Otter and there was a leak of red fluid from the ceiling. I said to someone nearby, “I think we have a hydraulic fluid leak. Shouldn’t we tell the pilot?” He stared at me and said, ” You were never in the military, were you?” I think that’s the difference in culture.

  146. 146.

    trnc

    @JPL:

    That’s what I think. It’s going to be tied up in court a long time.

    Win win for republicans. They get to claim liberals are using the courts to stop real americans from pursuing their livelihood, in which “americans” are coal miners and “livelihood” means racing to acquire black lung.

  147. 147.

    trnc

    @Another Scott:

    The Internet, GPS, integrated circuits, etc., etc., all were greatly impacted by US government investments.

    I haven’t followed this thread back all the way, so this may already be understood, but the difference between this and propping up coal is also that Internet, gps, etc were brand new technologies that helped facilitate goals that otherwise could not be achieved. Coal is an older and generally worse way of doing something (creating electricity) that can now be done more efficiently with primary resources that earth will have until earth no longer exists. Investing in solar and wind actually makes more sense from a national security perspective because it will ultimately bring down the cost of producing energy that our citizens and military depend on.

  148. 148.

    trnc

    @Another Scott: Yup. I think the line “DPA Title III incentives must be the most cost-effective, expedient, and practical alternative for meeting the need” might make his claim difficult in the courts since ramping up solar and wind is cheaper in the long run, and probably no less expedient than retooling old coal plants.

  149. 149.

    Robert Sneddon

    @elm: That’s an average figure. Some days it doesn’t produce quite as much and the solution is to burn gas and dump the resulting CO2 into the atmosphere. From the article you quoted:

    “During Quarter 4, wind farms spent 24 hours producing less than 1 GW, and 24 hours producing more than 11.7 GW (chart, below right).”

    Actually we’re in a wind lull at the moment here in the UK, in the second day where wind generation is running well under a GW. The demand for electricity is still there though, being met by nuclear (7.6 GW of local reactor output, 1.8GW of French nuclear supply), some solar (5.7GW, it’s a sunny day), a GW of Dutch gas-fueled electricity production and most of the rest of the demand, about 13GW or so is being met by local gas-fueled generators. There’s also some “biomass” electricity, wood chips shipped at great expense from the US to be burned in a reurposed coal-fired power station. It’s green and renewable unlike the bunker fuel used to transport it five thousand kilometres across the Atlantic so it gets all sorts of subsidies.

    http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

    This is a real-time display of Britain’s electricity demand and generating capabilities. Right now as I type this the installed base of about 13GW of wind farms is producing 570MW or about 3% of what they are capable of. The demand is 31.75GW or 60 times as much as wind is generating right now.

    Wind power would be great, assuming we built out ten times as much as we’ve got (approx. cost about half a trillion bucks) and accept a few days every year when there isn’t enough electricity to go around because of the weather conditions. Gas is cheap though and no-one really cares enough about CO2 levels in the atmosphere to stop burning it while figleafing it with solar and wind.

  150. 150.

    BoDiddleySquat

    @Another Scott: Heck, the DoD is swimming in so much money now, they are seriously competing with NIH and NSF in funding research (certainly translational research).

  151. 151.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @James Powell:

    The Cold War was one of the worst things the US ever did, or that ever happened, however you look at it. So many stupid, harmful, ridiculous vestiges of that “pay any price, bear any burden” mentality. We will never be rid of it until the American empire truly collapses.

    Oh come on WWI easy is just as bad. After all it set up the siege state mentality that enable the Win at Any Cost Cold War.

  152. 152.

    Zinsky

    Drug test the rat bastard CEOs of the coal and oil companies on a surprise basis and execute those who don’t pass. It’s only fair…

  153. 153.

    Another Scott

    @trnc: It looks like Truman didn’t use the DPA Title III to seize the US steel mills in 1952 steel strike, and he ultimately lost in the SCOTUS. But it took almost 2 months for the SCOTUS to rule that he didn’t have the authority to do what he did.

    Agreed that investing in research for future knowledge and future products is different from keeping old industries afloat. But as NotMax said at #36, the US has subsidized lots of old products for nonsensical reasons under national security justifications. It can be used to justify just about anything. I recall a story about a ~ 30 page government contract in the late 1980s for some vacuum equipment that had a paragraph that said something like “if an precision jeweled movements are present in said equipment, then the jewels must come from Harvey Jones Industrial Crystal Company, Inc., 123 Main Street, West Overshoe, North Dakota…” (For those who don’t remember, “jeweled movements” were common in mechanical watches and clocks – small, hard oxide crystals (“jewels”) were used in critical points in the mechanism to reduce friction. Apparently that company had a powerful congressman and/or senator that got them an exclusive market.) I’m sure that was somehow justified under some “strategic mineral” provision of some DoD-supporting legislation. It might have made sense in the 1900s – 1950s, it made no sense in the 1980s.

    I don’t think that Trump’s minions would be able to force much to be done to support purchases of electricity from coal and nuclear plants. He could demand that the US government buy electricity from such plants, but (it’s my understanding that) the grid doesn’t have the capacity to dramatically shift supplies on a big scale like that, and the USG is a smallish customer anyway (most of the USG is office buildings after all – “The USG is an insurance company with an army” – Krugman), and of course it is going to be challenged in court (assuming it actually goes into effect).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  154. 154.

    Another Scott

    @BoDiddleySquat: No links, but it’s important to remember that while DoD funds a lot of basic research, the huge amounts of money it is getting as a whole is mostly for equipment production and things like that. And the pots of money are different. Raytheon getting $10B (or whatever) for some new missile system doesn’t mean that DARPA has more money to give out grants for $75k post-doc salaries.

    A huge amount of US government basic R&D funding (6.1 or BA1) goes to the NIH. For good reasons. They probably should get more, as should NSF and all the rest.

    In constant dollars, and as a percentage of GDP, US R&D spending has been flat or falling for decades (at least as of 2016):

    But since the 2004 peak, regular appropriations for nondefense R&D have generally either ticked down or remained flat, with increases in some years offset by reductions and inflation in others. One notable exception, of course, is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the stimulus bill), which contributed $20.5 billion in 2015 dollars for R&D.

    Recent years have seen particularly sharp reductions, with nearly five percent declines each in FY 2011 and FY 2013. These cuts were partially undone by appropriators in FY 2014 and again in FY 2015, both of which were relatively positive years for civilian R&D all things considered. But even after good news in recent years, such spending remains 5.2 percent below the FY 2004 peak.

    To be clear, I don’t think that R&D spending is somehow more valuable than essential spending on health and education and the like. But it’s important to support R&D because it creates knowledge and products that improve our conditions going forward. And R&D spending shouldn’t be falling when the economy is growing.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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