Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Wild Hoss]

I'm a lucky guy.

[CGVT]

More good news from the guy elected to look out for the little guy.

Do you think net neutrality was a good thing? Too bad. Kiss it goodbye

http://qz.com/843999/donald-trumps-fcc-appointments-jeffrey-eisenach-and-mark-jamison-are-great-news-for-your-cable-provider-awful-news-for-netflix/

Nov. 21, president-elect Donald Trump named two men to his FCC transition team: Mark Jamison, a former Sprint lobbyist, and Jeffrey Eisenach, an economist who worked for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) during the Reagan administration. Eisenach was most recently a consultant for Verizon, and once wrote that “declaring the Internet a public utility is not necessary.”
The duo’s views on net neutrality may be a departure from the Obama administration, but Trump is staunchly against net neutrality. Telecom lobbyists, who have long hoped the case would end up in the Supreme Court, could doubly benefit if Trump also ends up choosing the next SCOTUS justice.

[Da Geezer]

Hack, all good posts on Keystone.

The "price" of oil in the teens is inflation adjusted. 40 dollar oil is not nearly so burdensome today as it was in 1980.

And, remember, Keystone is a private investment. All the government has to do with it is stopping it through environmental regulation. It would be far cheaper to build a "heavy oil" refinery near the tar sands, but environmental regulation prohibits that too.

But, I believe your basic point is that oil (and I also mean nat gas too) is cheap in the US. That is true. But it doesn't mean that it couldn't go lower, actually much lower. Being a low price vendor of gasoline could just as well be caused by even more massive regulation in other countries along with substantially higher taxes on oil and oil products. So many of the rules that suppress supply in the US and the world came into being when computer modeling "proved" that we would run out of oil worldwide by 2000. Everyone believed that in 1972-3. It didn't happen partly because of disruptive technology. Now we are swimming in the stuff.

And, a while ago, you posted something about how Norway had developed and sold its North Sea oil. Your premise was they had done a good job of maximizing their asset, and you convinced me. The US has massive reserves of O+G. Much of the world is committed to being 80% renewable energy by 2030. Question: Shouldn't we get our oil on the market ASAP before all the renewables become the norm? If not, why not?

[Da Geezer]

SLF:

Just to correct the record, the Federal Judge enjoined the implementation of a clearly unconstitutional Labor Department rule:

Mazzant heard arguments for the preliminary injunction last week. On Tuesday, he gave his opinion saying the new rule improperly created a salary test to determine worker eligibility under the Fair Labor Standard Act’s “white collar” exemption. He reprimanded: “The Final Rule…is contrary to the statutory text and Congress’s intent” and “Congress, and not the Department, should make that change.”

This applied to salaried, white-collar workers. It further increased the threshold at which business owners were to be required to pay overtime from $ 23,700 to a little over $ 47,000. What you posted is simply untrue.

I might suggest avoiding National Propaganda Radio. As a point of interest, I am being required to pay for NPR through my taxes. How would you feel if you had to pay for Breitbart News?

__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _______________

sorry, I posted before reading the subsequent Talent post, to which I respont, "Yup, what he said!!"

[froot loops]

You certainly won't see Breitbart news asking questions about rural medicaid issues. But they may have something in the budget to find out about Obama's true Kenyan birthplace.

[hack]

Hack, all good posts on Keystone.

The "price" of oil in the teens is inflation adjusted. 40 dollar oil is not nearly so burdensome today as it was in 1980.

And, remember, Keystone is a private investment. All the government has to do with it is stopping it through environmental regulation. It would be far cheaper to build a "heavy oil" refinery near the tar sands, but environmental regulation prohibits that too.

But, I believe your basic point is that oil (and I also mean nat gas too) is cheap in the US. That is true. But it doesn't mean that it couldn't go lower, actually much lower. Being a low price vendor of gasoline could just as well be caused by even more massive regulation in other countries along with substantially higher taxes on oil and oil products. So many of the rules that suppress supply in the US and the world came into being when computer modeling "proved" that we would run out of oil worldwide by 2000. Everyone believed that in 1972-3. It didn't happen partly because of disruptive technology. Now we are swimming in the stuff.

And, a while ago, you posted something about how Norway had developed and sold its North Sea oil. Your premise was they had done a good job of maximizing their asset, and you convinced me. The US has massive reserves of O+G. Much of the world is committed to being 80% renewable energy by 2030. Question: Shouldn't we get our oil on the market ASAP before all the renewables become the norm? If not, why not?

Well no matter where the refinery is, you are going to have the cost of refining and the cost of transporting to the port. If the Canadians thought they would save on costs by refining locally, there are refineries in Alberta. It's a lot easier, due to regulation, to expand a current refinery than it is to build a new one. They could have done that. Remember though in this case Transcanada is a pipes company, and not a producer. Maybe they were offering a pipeline fee low enough to quash the idea of refining near the fields.

As for pushing costs much lower, well, I don't see the point in a regulation discussion. Taking ``do no harm'' as a base justification, I see Deepwater Horizon, the Lac Megantic crude-by-rail crash, the pipeline leaks and failures we see, etc. etc., as evidence that regulation is important. If you don't, you don't. End of story,. and no point arguing values. But we can argue the numbers and be much more productive. How much lower do you really think costs can go? If you're really curious about that, you could look at how much an environmental/social impact assessment costs as part of overall capex for a project. I don't really care. My position is that energy is cheap enough to be a competitive advantage. And for that matter I really don't think regulation is a problem either. The World Bank's Doing Business rankings measure the ease of doing business in a country based on regulatory environments. The US is eighth. http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings. Find a country that ranks higher where you'll also get the same cheap energy. Good luck!

Overall, I think the bottom line is that if this goes back to the reseeding of manufacturing, anyone with money to invest is not going to say ``things are difficult in the US or one variable isn't ideal, so fuggit''. They are going to do a comparative study of possible locations and then decide. Some things are going to be energy intensive and others labour intensive, and a much smaller number of things exposed to both. So what variables investors will use to decide will vary by activity. But I think that ultimately the idea that the US could attract more investment through improving regulations is BS. They are already comparatively better than everywhere else where you can also find competent labor and an accessible customer base. I think the debate needs to move on from what the government is and isn't giving and taking, because we can measure it and see that the basic offering here remains better here than anywhere else. on. Marginal improvements to them like a slight improvement to the competitive advantage from energy costs isn't going to put Trump voters back in the jobs they had 40 years ago. The problem lies elsewhere.

[Da Geezer]

Regarding net neutrality (another example of butchery of the language by the left)

All NN is really about is trying to lock in Amazon's (and Netflix to a lesser degree) overwhelming market share, and guaranty monopoly profits to Amazon. Bezos owns the WaPo too, one of the most anti-Trump outlets in the country. Bezos had a deal, ...you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.." to help the Dems in exchange for the Dems locking in his real cash cow as a monopoly.

Trump's position is let's do nothing. It ain't broke. Let competition run its course.

[CGVT]

Regarding net neutrality (another example of butchery of the language by the left)

All NN is really about is trying to lock in Amazon's (and Netflix to a lesser degree) overwhelming market share, and guaranty monopoly profits to Amazon. Bezos owns the WaPo too, one of the most anti-Trump outlets in the country. Bezos had a deal, ...you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.." to help the Dems in exchange for the Dems locking in his real cash cow as a monopoly.

Trump's position is let's do nothing. It ain't broke. Let competition run its course.

Wrong. (where the hell is my bullshit flag?

net neu?tral?i?ty
noun
the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.

Why do you think that the big wireless corporations are against it?

They have the monopoly and want to price the "competition" out of business.

Net neutrality is a good thing if you truly want the competition to sort it out.

[Whitley]

Trump names Betsy DeVos as his education sec.

This means the destruction of public education on k-12 level starts now. I expect charter schools for profit to be everywhere now. public money vouchers probably too.

[CGVT]

Trump names Betsy DeVos as his education sec.

This means the destruction of public education on k-12 level starts now. I expect charter schools for profit to be everywhere now. public money vouchers probably too.

Yep.

People have no idea what they really voted for.

[Da Geezer]

....As for pushing costs much lower, well, I don't see the point in a regulation discussion. Taking ``do no harm'' as a base justification, I see Deepwater Horizon, the Lac Megantic crude-by-rail crash, the pipeline leaks and failures we see, etc. etc., as evidence that regulation is important

Well, I could point out that the same examples are evidence that regulation doesn't work. And keep in mind that these tragedies cost the corporations involved money for damages, in the case of BP over $ 10 B.

As I've said repeatedly, I believe a valid use of government power is to protect that which we all hold in common, and I call it the Commons. No business has the right to push their cost of production onto society. This would entail polluting rivers, fouling the air, or shooting 1,000 deer for sport.

But, where we differ is when you say "do no harm". That would be "no" as in zero. I just can't think of any human activity that someone can't claim somehow "hurt" them. Further, it seems to me is there is an actual hurt, then the harmed party can collect damages.

I favor a cost-benefit analysis as part of any regulation. First start with the question "is any action constitutional", then move on to whether it is wise in terms of cost benefit.

Go back to my anthropologist and Indian Chief during a tear-down. Having them on site cost me about $ 7,500.00. And that doesn't count the effort I or my employees have to expend. Respectfully, I doubt if you would feel the same about this regulation if you were writing the check.

And what benefit did the regulation produce? Remember, this is a tear-down, so no one is digging into the dirt. Why not make it a felony to remove any aboriginal antiquity from the place where it is found and leave it at that. I spend my days dealing with this nonsense that has very low probability of happening but does provide a "job" for the two required attendees and a bureaucrat to oversee them. Parenthetically, this kind of thing multiplied by a billion is why I maintain that GDP growth is and has been for some time, negative.

Of course, the US is a good place to do business. Again, I'm an American nationalist, and I don't really give a rip how other countries "manage" their economies. An American gets to keep about 50% of what he creates (the balance to the government), or what we find on property that is owned by Americans (why fracking won't work in so many other countries). Things are comparatively good in the US, but they could be so much better if we stop duplicating the governmental activities that harmed other countries' productivity.

And the idea that these costs of regulation are somehow not relevant:

As for pushing costs much lower, well, I don't see the point in a regulation discussion.

or not included in "cost" and therefore "price" is just beyond me. Suppose we cut EPA regulations to what they were in say 2000. (don't want to argue about which, and I know some recent ones are necessary) Now the post-election bump to the Russell 2000 (smaller companies) has been 11% just on the prospect of sane regulation. What if I figured the Dow would hit 30,000 without the EPA nonsense? What if everyone's 401(k) doubled. What if fixed-benefit pensions are suddenly funded? What if we got only the "pop" that we got during Reagan (look it up)?

Why would we not do that?

[Da Geezer]

This means the destruction of public education on k-12 level starts now. I expect charter schools for profit to be everywhere now. public money vouchers probably too.

Well, one can only hope for charter schools and vouchers. Whitley, are you by chance a teacher? If not, don't worry. Your kids will get a better education, and if you are not satisfied where they are going, just change schools.

On the other hand, if you are a teacher, be afraid, be very afraid. The hostage crisis may be ending.

[CGVT]

The best education money can buy! The rich get richer and the poor? Fuck 'em

[hack]

I'm skeptical of 100 percent of that, and really it's just fiddling around at the margins based on some weird notion that the only constituents of government worth heeding are commercial interests. But if you really believe it go get some numbers. You can posit the value of ESIA studies against S&P EPS or something like that. A least put some facts to the fantasy.

[entropy]

Biggest problem with our school systems are parents.


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