frflyer

Cramer's Lightning Round - Don't Give ADM (2/9/09)

So Cramer thinks being windmill related is a negative?

Wind power in the U.S. grew 50% year over year, adding 8.3 GW, with 4 GW going online in just the last 3 months of 2008.
Wind is now over 25 GW in U.S.

Wind jobs grew 70% to 85,000 -and now exceed coal mining employment.

China is growing wind power at a nice clip too.
Just the beginning of a long period of growth.

Study Shows Ethanol Energy Efficiency Is Growing

My source for the $84 billion in oil subsidies and tax credits comes from www.setamericafree.org...

The reason these numbers are not well known is that it takes a Sherlock Holmes to uncover all the tax credits and subsidies that oil and gas have received over so many years, often tucked into bills as earmarks.
I did make a mistake about getting rid of subsidies. I wasn't so much thinking about ethanol. It was just my reaction to the often heard complaints that say "oh but solar and wind can't survive without subsidies". So, I mispoke. I'm not a big advocate of ethanol unless it proves to be economical and environmentally makes sense.

Study Shows Ethanol Energy Efficiency Is Growing

Calls to get rid of subsidies for renewable energy are rediculous when we are giving $84 billion annually in tax credits and subsidies to big oil. Nuclear and coal are also heavily subsidized.

Nuclear power is the worst choice. Please read the pdf The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy. Please read what cleanwisconsin.org has to say about nuclear power. It as many problems than oil has. In a dangerous world with terrorists and rogue nations, the last thing we need is to build thousands of nuclear power plants all over the world, further spreading the availability of fissionable material. Look at the angst over Iran's pursuit of supposedly peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Argonne national labs says that an airliner crashing into a nuclear power plant could cause a complete meltdown, even if the containment building isn't compromised. Think the twin towers was bad?
Nuclear power plants need billions of gallons of water each to cool. Each reactor will cost over $500 billion to clean up and dismantle when it is used up. Each reactor's share of Yucca mountain storage is $200 million.
The entire process of aquiring uranium has a huge carbon footprint and is generally very dirty. Nuclear power takes much longer to get up and running than solar and wind. Nuclear plants cost three times as much to build per kilowatt than wind farms. If you read the proposals by T Boone Pickens and setamericafree.org and the proposal published in Scientific American called A Solar Grand Plan, you will see that we could easily have 80% of our grid powered by solar and wind by 2050.
We are being dis-informed about the potential of these renewable sources. Don't believe the lies.

Ethanol: Three Developments to Watch

I fogot to add one of my sources

www.monitor.net/monito...

Ethanol: Three Developments to Watch

"The House approved $18 billion in new taxes on the largest oil companies"
This is a bold faced lie. It isn't new tax, but elimination of preferential tax breaks.


"The top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, which developed the tax proposals, he cited statistics that show that oil companies already pay more taxes than many other industries."
Here's another lie. Here's data from a 1995 study, has anything fundamentaly changed since then?

"According to estimates by
the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), federal
corporate income tax credits and deductions result in
an effective income tax rate of 11 percent for the oil
industry as compared to a non-oil industry average of
18 percent

The average effective tax rate on integrated
oil operations has fallen from 21.5 percent in
the early 1980s to only 8.7 percent in the 1990s (both
figures are significantly below the statutory rate of 35%."

from the same study, (note these aren't wartime figures)

"US Defense
Department spending allocated to safeguard the
world's petroleum resources total some $55 to $96.3
billion per year."

"Program subsidies that
support the extraction, production, and use of
petroleum and petroleum fuel products total $38 to
$114.6 billion each year."

"When you consider that researchers have
conclusively linked auto pollution to increased health
problems and mortality, the CTA report?s estimate of
$29.3 to $542.4 billion for the annual uncompensated
health costs associated with auto emissions may not
adequately reflect the value of lost or diminished human
life. "
and from a later study

"The total of all oil-related external or “hidden” costs of $825 billion per year. This
total is nearly twice the figure authorized for the Department of Defense in 2006."

"Based on the studies reviewed, our best-guess estimate of the subsidies received by petroleum each year is $84 billion per year"


www.setamericafree.org...

and from another study:
Citizens For Tax Justice Report

"The Bush administration, which claims to support free-market policies, may find it difficult to
oppose a proposal to stop using the tax code to subsidize large energy companies. This is
particularly true of the latest round of energy tax breaks, which were added in the Energy
Policy Act of 2005. These were so embarrassing that even President Bush (hardly an enemy of
Big Oil) opposed them and only signed them into law when it was clear that they were
necessary to get a bill passed through Congress"

"Tax subsidies do not end at the federal level. The fact that most state income taxes are based on oil firms' deflated federal tax bill results in undertaxation of $125 to $323 million per year. Many states also impose fuel taxes that are lower than regular sales taxes, amounting to a subsidy of $4.8 billion per year to gasoline retailers and users. New rules under the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 are likely to provide the petroleum industry with additional tax subsidies of $2.07 billion per year. In total, annual tax breaks that support gasoline production and use amount to $9.1 to $17.8 billion. "

"Together, these external costs total $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year, which, when added to the retail price of gasoline, result in a per gallon price of $5.60 to $15.14. "
This was when gas was $1.20 a gallon or so

www.progress.org/2003/...


"To this base, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 added an additional $85 billion in subsidies over 10 years, according to consumer group Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS, 2005), and legislative activity to bring still more continues. Earth Track's preliminary subsidy estimates (Exhibit 2) for 2006 peg federal support at between $49 and $100 billion per year. This is well above the 2003 estimate. Neither the 2003 or the 2006 estimate includes credit subsidies to energy enterprises, which would boost the totals by a few billion dollars more."

www.earthtrack.net/ear...


"A number of other factors that in the past have helped to constrain spending have also weakened of late, and are likely contributors to the current spending challenges. For example, Presidential vetoes have historically played a role in curbing Congressional power. The current administration has used its veto only once -- less than any other President in the past 150 years. The Bush administration has vetoed no appropriation bills, in comparison to 6 for Ronald Reagan, 8 for George H.W. Bush, and 14 for Bill Clinton. (Kosar, 2006). Without actual vetos, there is also little threat of a veto to legislators. Both help to constrain spending."

"Growth in particular budget areas have been even higher. A survey of Highway Reauthorization bills, for example, showed an increase from 10 earmarks in 1982 to nearly 6,400 in 2005."


So now, what do you think is Really wrong with the U.S. economy?

And none of these costs reflect the cost of the war in Iraq. Add another $trillion and 4,000 American soldiers lives and maybe 200,000 Iraqi lives, and oil i kind of getting expensive, wouldn't you say?

And talking heads have the temerity to say solar is too expensive. Huh?