Carl from Chicago

Business executive interested in history, economics, taxation and energy policy.

US Government is Now the New Illinois

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A while back before the election I wrote a depressingly omniscient post about the future of the US government after the Presidential election and the fact that it would look like Illinois. In Illinois the Democrats run the executive position (governor) and both state houses, and most of the big cities (Chicago) to boot. The post was called “As Illinois Goes, So Goes the Nation”

In this post I noted that in Illinois the Democrats were split as follows:

The Democrats here generally split into two camps:

1) Stone-cold redistributionists – these individuals view all people as individuals to be taxed virtually to the brink of death to fund various state schemes
2) Let’s not kill the golden goose – the rest of the Democrats fall into this camp, noting that if you tax everyone to death, they will leave, and there will be no money to fund government programs. Note that they aren’t per-se against these massive programs, they are just being pragmatic in how much they can extract from you before you expire, like a bookie’s enforcer deciding just to break your leg instead of killing you to keep you paying up

I was hoping that some Democrats would emerge as category #2 although I didn’t know of anyone who might fit the bill. Unfortunately the executive branch has come out strongly as type #1, stone cold redistributionists, as summarized below in this ABC News article:

President Obama’s $3.5 trillion budget proposal, the largest in history, presents a dramatic break from policy and a shift in governmental priorities. The administration is attempting to redirect vast sums of money from businesses and wealthier individuals to those with lower incomes and enact ambitious and costly new programs for energy, education and health care.

Only in the senate do we have any hope, and this is just a slight hope, of keeping the pace of the runaway spending train below the absolute top speed possible.

The only positive point out of this entire morass is that at least Republicans are starting to act like Republicans, instead of closet Democrats, and found their spine. I’d much rather vote for a party that is willing to go down with the ship than be craven and flit in the wind with the latest trends. The sorriest one of those was Governor Ryan of Illinois, currently incarcerated, who let everyone off death row and behaved like the wimpiest Democrat ever.

IKC Dog Show Chicago

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We have a lot of weighty posts here at Chicago Boyz so I figured I’d post one that was just fun

On Sunday I attended the IKC Chicago dog show at McCormick Center. The fun part of the show is not the judging or the agility contests like they show on TV but it is the fact that you can walk through and see all of the dog owners grooming and preparing their dogs prior to the show. It is also interesting to walk down a row and see lots and lots of dogs of the same breed, even if it is a rare one. I highly recommend attending – pretty much everyone there seemed to be having a good time.

The little dogs and the big dogs are a lot of work to prepare for judging. The effort spent on getting their coats ready to go takes hours.

I use Picasa 3 which is a google product for photo editing and made this you tube video of all my pictures. I originally had “hound dog” by Elvis in the background but You Tube stripped that out so now it is silent – use your own music. It is just a couple of minutes long and very family friendly so watch it with your kids or kids who aren’t yours for that matter. It is about 2 minutes long.

Here is a link to the movie.

Enjoy!

“Shovel Ready” Transmission

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HISTORICAL VIEWS OF THE TRANSMISSION GRID

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the nations’ electrical transmission grid. The transmission grid connects the power stations to the local distribution network. The transmission grid also allows utilities to “interconnect” and exchange / sell power between different entities.

Upgrading the transmission grid would have many advantages to the United States. Many of the lines are older and don’t have much spare capacity, or they are less efficient than new modern designs and waste less electricity along the way.

The transmission grid also does not connect to where the “new” sources of generation may lie. For example, the grid was designed to match fossil fuel / nuclear generating stations to major population centers, or to bring power from large hydroelectric facilities to the cities, as well. In some instances the grid was designed to “interconnect” major power companies to one another, such as on the East Coast.

As you can imagine, these reasons for building the original grid aren’t ready-made for new, “renewable” sources of energy. If you want to connect up a wind farm or a set of solar panels in the desert, it doesn’t matter how much power you can generate unless it can be brought onto the grid and transmitted to the cities (without excessive line loss).

When I was in the utility industry working as a consultant one time I went to an EEI conference (the big electrical utility conference) where I heard one of the CEO’s at the time talk about the transmission grid. The topic was how to value the transmission grid assets. His response was

The value of the transmission grid is infinite and unmeasurable, because we could never obtain those rights-of-way to rebuild them at any price

TRANSMISSION GRID TODAY

Since the greens and democrats have come into power energy topics are back in vogue. For a little while there was a romance with nuclear power (which will never materialize, see here) and now we see a wave of interest in transmission. Now that the democrats have to govern the country they realize that they have to actually govern and not just throw stones at a republican administration and that these are issues that require policy and resolution.

This map below shows a proposed transmission line in California (from The Economist dated February 14, 2009), designed to bring power from the desert where solar cells will be installed to the rest of the line and major cities. Note that this line is PROPOSED – this writer and most readers will likely be deceased before this line ever is accepted, built, and comes into service.

But you can see from the PROPOSED line how many compromises are needed in the current political climate. The line has to snake around any sort of park or Indian tribal area. The line is clearly not the most efficient route from point A to point B, and since you pay for transmission lines by the mile, this is going to make the cost of the line much higher than it would be otherwise.

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Africa’s World War by Prunier

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Africa’s World War – Congo, The Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe
By Gerard Prunier

I am not an expert on African military affairs but have a high degree of interest in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which many have called “Africa’s World War”. I wrote this post as I started researching this topic and will write additional posts as I learn more about the topic. I hope that this is as interesting to you as it has proven to be to me.

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