Another Obama Executive Order: Accelerating Investment in Industrial Energy Efficiency

As the GOP convention was winding down in Tampa and the preparations were in full swing for the DNC to meet in North Carolina, the President issued another Executive Order on August 30, 2012, Accelerating Investment in Industrial Energy Efficiency.

The timing is important since nobody on the GOP side is paying attention; the MSM is preoccupied with criticizing Republican attendees and praising the upcoming DNC event.

The release of this executive order days before the national Democrat convention and before the final relay of the presidential election points in the direction of a President who wants to claim, in the last leg of the race, that is he is going to create those manufacturing jobs he failed to create so far and protect nature, the pet issue of the environmental left, his most ardent supporters.

The executive order addresses the fact that the” industrial sector accounts for over 30 percent of all energy consumed in the United States.” Manufacturing should use energy more efficiently through combined heat and power (CHP).

“Instead of burning fuel in an onsite boiler to produce thermal energy and also purchasing electricity from the grid, a manufacturing facility can use a CHP system to provide both types of energy in one energy efficient step. Accelerating these investments in our Nation’s factories can improve the competitiveness of United States manufacturing, lower energy costs, free up future capital for businesses to invest, reduce air pollution, and create jobs.”

The President directs federal interagency coordination with States to “convene national and regional stakeholders to identify, develop, and encourage the adoption of investment models and State best practice policies for industrial energy efficiency and CHP.”

The Departments of Energy, Commerce, and Agriculture, the EPA, the National Economic Council, the Domestic Policy Council, the Council on Environmental Quality, and the Office of Science and Technology will:

-          Coordinate and strongly encourage a national goal of 40 gigawatts of new, cost effective industrial CHP in the U.S. by 2020

      -          Convene stakeholders in industrial efficiency and CHP
      -          Encourage investment in industrial efficiency and CHP by

a.       Assistance to States for potential emission reduction benefits of CHP when developing State Implementation Plans (SIPs) to “achieve national ambient air quality standards”

b.      “Providing incentives for the deployment of CHP and other types of clean energy, such as set asides under emissions allowance trading program state implementation plans  grants, and loans.”

            c.       Output based compliance options in power and industrial sector regulations
            d.      Expand Better Buildings, Better Plants program at the Department of Energy, seeking to” reduce energy intensity by 25 percent over 10 years”

Agencies must consult with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in order to accelerate investment in industrial energy efficiency and CHP.

According to Dr. David Sponseller, since the Arab oil embargo of 1973, industrial executives have been working to cut energy costs as much as possible without compromising the manufacturing process. “The remaining opportunities for energy saving are so dispersed and fragmented that it would essentially be more trouble than it is worth to achieve the energy saving sought, and to do so in a way that would satisfy the EPA and other environmentalists.”

The “low hanging fruit,” the easy, less-expensive, and manageable energy savings have already been made and further savings would be more trouble. A good analogy would be, “hanging” an inefficient mini power plant on every industrial process that uses a significant amount of energy. This would turn out to be a fiasco not unlike Chairman Mao ordering the installation of inefficient mini blast furnaces in people’s back yards all over China during the Great Leap Forward.

In metallurgy, a huge consumer of energy, savings were attained in refining, steelmaking, melting, and heat-treating by the use of larger, more-efficiently insulated furnaces, and simpler heat-treating procedures.

Utilities use higher temperature and pressure systems to produce more kilowatt-hours from fossil fuels. Utilities “have already built many combined cycle plants that maximize the energy recovery sought by the CHP method.” Although more energy could be saved, “every industry has already achieved major reductions in energy consumption, at the urging of the U.S Department of Energy.”

From the economic stand point, any capital investment to a manufacturing plant to comply with the CHP and clean energy requirements would have to be sunk over time and part of the cost passed on to the consumer.

The federal government should not insinuate itself into the business management of the American industry. “I am from the government and I am here to help you” is a cliché, but it fits like a glove.

The EPA is a classic example of an entity that chokes American business and increases the use of energy needlessly. For example, billions of barrels of crude have been wasted by EPA forcing engineers to recycle some of the exhaust gases back through the engine, thus reducing its efficiency. “The lower compression ratios required to meet the stringent emissions requirements on autos have lowered the miles per gallon of cars significantly.” The constant reduction of emissions requirements is not necessary since engines are now small and efficient. The low sulfur limits on diesel wastes so much crude oil in refining, that it nearly doubles the price at the pump. Power plants consume more energy in order to meet absurd limits on smokestack emissions.

The army of  agencies, national and regional stakeholders, state groups, industry groups would have to plan, monitor, and coordinate in order to achieve the planned energy savings. It would be a distraction to managers and engineers, preoccupied with running their companies.

Analyzing every stage of the production process, equipment, fertilizer, petrochemicals, oil-refining, electricity generation, manufacturing industry for potential energy savings would be counterproductive. Additional spending to satisfy bureaucrats and environmentalists would reduce the overall industrial efficiency. Government regulation would stifle industries in general and small businesses in particular, costing billions of dollars a year.

This executive order would work well in a centralized economy where everything is micromanaged by the “omniscient” and often bumbling state. There is a reason why 40 percent of manufacturing plants were closed in the former East Germany when East Germany became part of West Germany again. The industrial base was very weak. Factories were centrally planned and managed by the Communist Party and were very inefficient, seldom turning a profit, constantly subsidized by the state.

The author wishes to thank Dr. David Sponseller, President of OMNI Metals Laboratory, Inc. in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his professional insight and contribution to this article.

 

 

Silence Is Not "Golden" When Defending Liberty

 “Silence is golden,” says the old proverb. The silence in defense of liberty is deafening. American voices are silent or drowned by the liberal agenda of the main stream media, the approved elite talking heads, and the progressive academia.

Stifling free speech and political debate by using political correctness and unfounded accusations of racism are the favorite tools of the progressive movement. Every facet of the American way of life is under attack by the fringe in power. Yet, it is so quiet on the right, you can hear crickets.

The anti-American political posturing of Democrats in this presidential campaign and the Republicans’ weak defense of what has made America a superpower is a reminder of how much is at stake and how much can be lost in November – the heart and soul of a nation, her very existence.

The American “arrogance” for which this administration is constantly apologizing to the world is found in cemeteries across Europe in which American heroes are interred, having died in the defense of liberty for ungrateful and cocky European socialists who have forgotten the ultimate sacrifice paid by ordinary Americans who preserved their way of life and freedom there and around the globe.

There is a strong disconnect between the interests of the political class and the interests of “we the people.” We want to save our nation and our Constitution. Politicians are only interested in gaining and retaining power and wealth during their “service.” Their ultimate goal is to remain in office for life by pleasing constituents who send in large donations and endorsements, and by pretending to care for the downtrodden. Throw supporters a bone in the form of welfare, amnesty, or union support, and they will vote Democrat forever. Build a bridge to nowhere or a short railroad to a swamp and you gain the citizens’ undying devotion.

Politicians prefer a dumbed down electorate, uninformed, with little education, no courage, easily duped and pliable so that representatives can retain their privileged status. Politicians lie, misrepresent, sell their conscience, betray the voters’ trust, betray their country, and sell it to the highest bidder in order to keep their power and office. Should they lose an election, civilian life can provide even more spoils in the form of lobbying, in exchange for knowledge and insider information gained while in office.

History is conveniently erased or re-written to favor the latest education mandate sent in by the mighty Department of Education who decides what facts are important and what perception of reality shaped by those in power is acceptable and politically correct in order to graduate more drones.

Students are socially promoted and encouraged to attend colleges where they are advised to pursue worthless degrees in social studies, women’s studies, ethnic studies, communication, and journalism with a communist bent and social justice activism, for which there is little demand and certainly little pay or employment opportunity unless Occupy Wall Streeter is considered a serious profession.

Who wants to study hard and struggle to pass math? Liberals say that “mathematics is man-made, arbitrary, and good solutions are arrived at by consensus among those who are considered experts.” By this logic, 2+2 may equal 5 if there is enough “consensus.”

Easy As in fluff courses are guaranteed in this progressive ideology that permeates humanities and social sciences. I never understood why they call them sciences – there is nothing scientific about a subject that derives its “wisdom” from opinion surveys.

Innovations, inventions, most favored status and strategic technology are sold or made available to rogue nations and enemies while allies are slighted or ignored.

If you happen to be “rich,” and the definition of “rich” keeps changing, you did not pay your fare share. You now work for your government, the government no longer works for you. Social justice demands as much confiscation of wealth as possible from you until redistribution of wealth and social engineering is satisfied. Only then will social justice/equity reign supreme.

If you have a small business for which you had worked very hard for many years or perhaps generations, you did not build that, someone else helped you because the government built roads for you to travel on and engage in commerce. Never mind that you were levied confiscatory taxes by the government, thus paying for the construction of roads and for the right to travel on them.

Government spending is out of control. Congressmen in both parties cannot help themselves in the drunken deficit spending frenzy. They are so irresponsible, they have not passed a budget in three years, one of  their primary missions.

Yet Congress and the government would like to tell you how irresponsible you are with your finances, how much more taxes you must pay, what to eat, what to drink, how much salt to consume, what drugs to take, what kind of insurance you must purchase, what vaccines you must receive, what engineered foods you must eat via Codex Alimentarius, what supplements to take, what cars to buy, where to live, what to do with your own property, where to work, how to raise your children, and what schools to attend.

Meanwhile, Congressmen exempted themselves from Obamacare, protected themselves against the very fraud they punished their constituents with, and were lawless and unaccountable for their misdeeds, protecting each other like thieves in the night.

We’ve lost our Space Shuttle program with the stroke of a presidential pen, but landed successfully the rover Curiosity on Mars. The fantastic journey took 8 months and millions of miles. It boggles my mind how precise and tedious the entire process was. Nobody paid much attention to this momentous occasion in the history of our nation or cared to rejoice in such an accomplishment, except for the jubilant and marvelous engineers at NASA. Everyone else was busy with mundane living or tired of hearing the MSM disingenuous non-stop praises of a failed administration. Why spend money on our stellar space exploration program when we can rent a chair on a Russian shuttle like a poor and distant relative who cannot afford a car.

Silence may be golden in some cases, but, in defense of liberty, we must hear more than a whimper from our pro-America politicians if we are to save our constitutional republic - it must be a roar in order to protect our country from extinction.

 

Butler on Business WAFS 1190 - Food Police

My 9 minute commentary on Butler on Business WAFS 1190 Atlanta, 8-29-12.
Topic: Food Police, 9 minutes
I come on at the 32 minute mark.
http://www.cyberears.com/cybrss/16756.mp3

UN Agenda 21 - Got Milk, Cheese, and Hot Dogs?

Exiting the Metro at Union Station in D.C. on my way to a TV interview on UN Agenda 21, I spotted three ads on both sides of the wall close to the escalators where they could not be missed. I turned around and froze - I could not believe my eyes what the ads were advocating. Few bothered to read them in their hurried passage.

The first ad showed the portrait of a Pennsylvania family with two kids who were saying, “Let’s move milk out of school lunch” A much smaller print said, “One in eight Americans is lactose intolerant.”  Really? Because 12.5% of the population is lactose intolerant we must now remove milk from everyone’s diet because the 12.5% are not smart enough and would drink something that would cause them to be sick? Should we take all peanut butter out of consumption because some people are allergic to peanuts? Is there perhaps a more onerous reason why we would want to ban anything that comes from animals, especially cows because they are the primary “emitters” of methane gas, a gas blamed for global warming by the left?

The second ad, with a smiling 9 year old girl from Georgia said, “Let’s move cheese out of my school lunch.” Much smaller letters proclaimed, “Most cheese is 70% fat.” Would the food police go next after all products that contain cheese? Do we need the nanny state to tell us what to eat? Should we be using children as pawns to advance liberal agendas?

In the third ad, a 6 year old boy from New Jersey says, “Let’s move hot dogs out of my school lunch.” In smaller letters, the ad continues, “Processed meats increase colorectal cancer risk.” Aren’t most meats, by definition, processed? Should all humans become vegetarian or vegan?

The three ads are sponsored by Let’sReallyMove.org, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a pro-vegan group. I have no problem with people following a vegan diet, other than the fact that they look kind of ashen, waxy and sickly. Millions of Americans, however, prefer to get their protein from meat, cheese, eggs, and milk. Besides, there are not enough vegetables cultivated on the planet and grasses to satisfy all demand from 7 billion humans, domesticated animals, and wild animals. In liberal opinion, which ones should be sacrificed first through starvation, humans or animals? Do humans take a back seat to nature as animals gain rights and can sue us as part of the planetary stewardship?

UN Agenda 21’s 40 chapters outline human activities and decisions that are not sustainable based on environmental impact on global land use, global education, and global population control and reduction: family unit, farming, commercial agriculture, livestock, pesticides, herbicides, grazing cattle, irrigation, paved roads, private property, fossil fuels, golf courses, ski lodges, consumerism, logging, dams, reservoirs, fences, and power lines.

Food must be controlled through regulations and interdiction of agriculture achieved through water control, land usage control, genetically engineered seeds that do not germinate again after the first year’s crop, pesticides and herbicide use. The planet must be de-populated to manageable levels, no more than a billion people, and the family unit must be restructured. As Harvey Rubin, the Vice Chair of ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) now called Local Governments for Sustainability, has said, “Individual rights must take a back seat to the collective.” Is that not communism but on steroids?

Education curricula must purposefully dumb down education for Sustainable Development. Agenda 21 for Dummies quotes, “Generally, more highly educated people, who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people, who tend to have lower incomes. In this case, more education increases the threat to sustainability.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEEgtOFFlM)

Good stewards of the planet, young and impressionable students have to “construct [their own] understandings of reality and [realize)] that objective reality is not knowable.” The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values.” (‘Constructivism’ as defined and quoted in Agenda 21 for Dummies You Tube video)

Suddenly, foods that have sustained generations around the globe, preventing malnutrition, calcium deficiency, osteopenia, and osteoporosis are now maligned by the nanny state, by the elites who know what is best for us. Is it any wonder that we are skeptical?

 

Silvio Canto Jr. One Hour Friday Radio August 24, 2012

Europe, national news, national economy.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2012/08/24/our-friday-chat-with-dr-ileana-johnson-paugh

Butler on Business WAFS 1190 August 22, 2012

My ten minute radio segment with Alan Butler of WAFS Atlanta 1190 on the topic of global warming as pseudo-science. I come on at the 30 minute mark.
http://host1.cyberears.com//17266.mp3

Fear and Anxiety Replaced "Hope and Change"

There is palpable fear and anxiety blanketing the souls of hardworking Americans who get up every day and go to work hoping with increased trepidation that things will improve. The MSM and the President are telling them that the economy is doing well when reality paints a different picture.

In light of the forced passage of Obamacare, there is fear of loss of health insurance, of the best health care in the world, of doctor shortages, of the dreaded 15 bureaucratic death panels appointed to deny as many procedures as possible, and of shortages of medications. There is anger at the loss of $700 billion from Medicare funds now earmarked to help implement the socialist Obamacare, substituting one socialist program for a disastrous one.

There is fear stemming from the loss of jobs and involuntary reduced work hours. Almost 14 percent of the labor force is unemployed – the Bureau of Labor Statistics massages the data monthly to keep it at the media reported 8.3 percent level, but everyone knows the real numbers.

College graduates cannot find jobs much less the six-figure salary employment that academic advisors promised. Instead, they are moving back with mom and dad, gladly crashing in the basement for free.

There is a real fear of punishing success and rewarding sloth under the guise of social justice, fitting in the grand scheme of the world elites of redistribution of wealth from the haves to the have-nots, those who like to stay home and draw welfare checks and benefits in exchange for a vote for those who promise more welfare.

There is fear of confiscation of property under eminent domain, by EPA fiat regulations, and re-zoning rules of the UN Agenda 21’s smart growth, green growth, sustainable growth plans designed to save mother Earth, Gaia, from human activity. Farming, the family, private property, recreation, mobility, the car, suburbia, traditional education are not sustainable under the global elite’s master plan. Everything must follow an environmental design carefully laid out in the 40 chapter document titled Agenda 21 of the Rio 1992 Treaty.

There is fear of government, of police, of loss of freedom, of drones, of FEMA camps, TSA molestation at airports in the name of supposed safety, and unwarranted immigration checks. TSA agents are now at metro stations, train stations, interstates, stadiums, political events, bus terminals, and truck stops. States are being sued by our government because they are trying to enforce the law that the federal government refuses or fails to enforce.

Many government agencies are ordering hollow point bullets by the millions and Americans are anxious. Should they not protect our borders first?

When more soldiers commit suicide than those killed in combat in Afghanistan, there is a problem. Some of them have never been in a war zone. What is so frightening to them?

There is anxiety over the ever-rising government corruption, lack of any indictment for highly publicized crimes swept under the rug, and for the billions of dollars stolen from the American taxpayers. The law now sends only little people to jail, just like under communism.

There is fear of losing free speech and anxiety over the concentrated racial hate stoked from many directions and the never-before seen utter divisiveness among Americans. There is fear of loss of freedom. Many books have been written about the perceived tyranny by the few.

There is anxiety over possible shortages and rationing of food, fuel, electricity, given this summer’s wide spread drought. We are the world’s biggest exporter of corn and many nations depend on us for their food supply. Yet we are still turning corn into ethanol.

We are fearful of the jihadis infiltrating our country and our levels of government since 9/11. Americans are afraid of jihadi schools that preach hate against the infidels instead of peace and love. We are afraid for our faith and cry for the loss of Christians slaughtered or crucified in Egypt. We are outraged at the senseless killing of Sikhs, a peaceful religion. Yet the only way citizens show displeasure is by showing up en mass to support a restaurant chain under assault for its Christian values.

Americans are anxious over possible bank runs, loss of pensions, of their life’s savings, their homes, the weakening of the dollar, the endless printing of currency by the Fed (monetization), borrowing from China, outsourcing the manufacturing sector, and the general never-audited secretive policy of the Federal Reserve to manipulate the money stock and interest rates.

There is fear and anxiety in the hearts of those who make this country great through hard work. They are more and more resentful of the welfare class that votes to fundamentally change this country without questioning what kind of change that would be, and what would happen when they run out of other people’s money? Would the benevolent government still support them? Americans are resentful of those in power who no longer represent “we the people” but the interests of the rarefied elites and the banking powers of the world.