Danny Newton

A Longer List of Employment-Reducing Public Policies

Cap and Trade
Energy Projects with a low Rate of Return
Failure to approve additional refining and oil exploration
I would also nominate any government debt increase. The reason is that incurring the debt employs practically no one except maybe a grant writer. You do have to have employed people to pay it off but not to increase the debt.

The Straw Man in the Incentives Debate

There seems to be no lack in faith in incentives when it comes to energy. If incentives seem to be lacking in their ability to deliver a value added project, we simply imagine external benefits that make up the difference like added security. Once intangibles become monetized, there is no policy that does not seem to be a good idea. The more that incentives are polluted with intangibles, the less one needs a rational side of the brain.
The ultimate faith is that the wealth of the rich will never exceed the needs of the non-rich. The Post Office can make money on a 44 cent stamp only if the delivery is local. There is no tipping point until the winners encourage the creation of added losers that need to go longer distances, like Alaska. As long as there continues to be cash in the register at the end of the day, there is no need to worry that the wealth created by the winners may have created an increased demand by the losers. There is no curiosity about a rational analysis or crafting a rational system of control defining or causing one to be aware of where the tipping point is as long as the answer continues to be raising the cost of the stamp. If there is a lack of incentive, it is a lack of incentive to study the effects of Socialism.

5 Things You Need to Know When Analyzing Corporate Debt

No highway Department could withstand this scrutiny of their debt utilization. It is very typical to pay for new infrastructure and have no way that the concurrent cash flow in terms of tax money per vehicle mile traveled actually exceeding the initial cost and ongoing maintenance. There are reports that some highway departments are using stimulus money for and payrolls.

The stimulus package, as it pertains to transportation spending, targets underperforming counties and cities or areas with median income below 80% of the national average. This assures that money will be spent in areas with low probability that the new infrastructure will actually pay for itself. Instead of trying to get the greatest good for the greatest number, the spending tries to optimize the dollars spent regardless of the possibility of a return on investment.

Hopefully, the respent dollars by contractors and their employees will be handled with greater sophistication and care.

Newspapers: Seeking the Original Sin

Maybe the money saved by cancelling the subscription to the newspaper helps to buy a laptop or helps to justify a DSL line. Someone who pawns their laptop to get a newspaper subscription would be a great story but not likely to happen.

How PHEVs and EVs Will Sabotage America's Drive for Energy Independence

The rush to be independant is being neutralized by the willingness to be constrained by debt for decades. A person who owes, along whith their grandchildren, foreign governments interest is not truely independant. Debt can be bought and traded. What keeps the Arabs from buying our debt from the Chinese so that they own our windmills and batteies too?

Emerging Economies: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I think property rights are critical to any kind of development no matter how old people are. Is the government encouraging individual ownership and does the government support such ownership? A system of reasonable laws about foreign investment is also critical. This leaves Mexico down the list.

Stimulus Calculations Laid Out

At least a few people recognize how difficult it is to estimate an alleged stimulus. I think there are only two examples of true stimulus to the economy in the past 70 or so years and that would be the building of the Interstate and the establishment of Rural Electric Cooperatives. In both cases, the productivity of the users improved and the costs were offset by greater productivity.
There was massive restructuring required in the road side service industries after the Interstates were built. The hotels aand motels along parallel roads died rather quickly and the cost of land at Interstate Exits was very high because Interstate Exits were not to be conferred on any community as a matter of their convenience. Many claim that the Interstate caused a decline in the central core of cities.
Rural electric service was hampered by the cost of line losses in remote locations. Companies had a duty not to serve customers and investors at a loss. The cost of rural electrification was eventually socialized by making low cost loans available. Money could be made in cities where distribution costs were lower because there were more meters per mile of line.
It would be an interesting exercise to explain why Rural Electrification worked while Barney Frank's Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac was a disaster. Both programs socialized costs. I think meters prevented over use of electricity while there was no meters in the home mortgage fiasco.
There is a push on to build new Interstate Routes, Like I-69, and there is an expectation that they will bring forth economic development as they did in the mid Fifties. I doubt that because the utility, if I may refer to roads as a utility, is at the saturation point. There is no incremental value to new routes or a lesser value. Additional value is still within adding lanes to the existing system however to maintain capacity. The average speed of Interstate Travel, will decline within the next fifteen years and those productivity gains will be lost.

The Truth About Fossil Fuels and Renewable Energy

Capitalism and raw property rights have made people statistically less fertile without government mandates of the Chinese or Indian variety. If someone really was afraid of the planet being over populated, they would embrace government protected individual property rights first and then Capitalism.

Q2 GDP: Better than I Thought

When Cap and Trade kicks in, things will get a lot worse and I am still trying to imagine what health care "reform" is going to do. How can anybody be for lower health care costs and Cap and Trade at the same time. Does it not take electricity to make an MRI ? Does it not take oil and energy to make all the little plastic do-thingies in a hospital? Does it not take energy to make the glas that they use.? What about the gas to go to the hospital or doctor's office? My insurance company has been using my premiums to pay claims but they also invest those payments, if insurance comany no longer invests my money because I am in a government plan, where will that earned income go?

Cash for Clunkers May Cost Up to $45,354 Per Vehicle

What about the tax consequences? More efficient cars have in the past encouraged driving., I don't think that is going to happen now because of the Baby Boom Demographic getting out of their cars and not going to work as after as in the past.

Better gas mileage will mean less money for state highway departments and less gas tax money means that this will put the pressure on for more gas taxes. The Federal Highway Trust Fund has been bailed out three times recently if you count stimulus money going to states. The current bailout is not settled yet because there is a difference in the House and Senate version. This money is required to pay states back for work they already did so there is a lot of pressure to at least give back the money that they borrowed from the Highway Trust Fund in this time of need.

In my state, a vehicle getting 12 miles to the gallon netted 1.533 cents per vehicle mile federal and 1.78 cents per mile state taxes. If the new car gets 20 miles per gallon, the state will get 1.07 cents per vehicle mile for the state and .92 cents per mile for the feds. It looks like the total difference between the clunker and the new car could be 1.32 cents per vehicle mile. The average two years ago was 2.5 cents per vehicle mile from all transportation taxes, state and federal. If all cars dropped overnight this much it would be a disaster. It takes about 20 years to totally turn over a fleet of non-truck vehicles. All this cash for clunkers thing is doing is accelerating the inevitable anyway, unless you foresee people trying to perpetuate their transportation forever, like in Cuba.

Cynical and paranoid people think that all of those orange barrels are just there to slow the traffic down so you can burn more gas to offset the losses to the Highway Trust Fund from CAFE standards.

Think Taxes Are on the Rise? Consider These Municipal ETFs (Part I)

Bailing out California would be rewarding bad behavior. I've got bailout fatigue.

Too many governments have a problem with their retirement plans. If they can not grow the government with new programs, the empoyees are going to have a less luxurious retirement. Debt is being spent as if it were income and as if it was coming in as reliably as tax collections. Also, I have noticed that many large cities are using blended funding options for goofball economic development projects like sadiums and convention centers. The IRS has cracked down on the assumption that just because the local government says that it is a public purpose, that it is a legitimate purpose and has refused tax exempt status for some activities. The convention center might be built with bonds or maybe the utility relocations will be financed with muni bonds but there will be a big whack furnished from local taxes to cover loses elsewhere in operational expenses.
There is also a big risk in being lured into goofball transit projects that are chronically underfunded by the passenger. One city in North Carolina charges nothing to ride and still can not get 100% ridership. These projects just cannot pay for themselves and anybody issuing a bond on transit related projects should be absolutely sure that at least the capital portion is well covered with grants. The Obama Administration is going to be making it very easy to get your own little light ral or high steed starter kit but getting the cash to sustain and operate it into the future is an exercise left for the next election.

How (and Why) to Replace the A.P.

AP is not an honest news organization. Their product stinks. The coverage for so called alternative energy projects is inferior to that of Reuters because of the lack of believable and accurate technical and financial reporting. They(AP) are leaving out the bad news and hyping the good news with alternative energy. They are equally willing to keep people in the dark about the short commings of High Speed Trains and financing of Transit.

Locally in Nashville, they also support any activity that has anything to do with getting more tax money. During the infamous tax revolts in Nashville and all over Tennessee, that almost no one has ever heard of, they chronically under reported the crowd sizes and the impact that people had on the legislature. A local TV reporter characterized the people who were against new taxes as the "Lexus Crowd" of rich people and the AP not only abused it's journalistic mandate, it used photographers that shot pictures of the occassional Lexus that was in queue around the legislative plaza to be included in the local paper. I don't think I have ever seen any AP product that suggests that there is not total scientific agreement on global Warming as a man-made phenomenon either.

What Really Led the Rally? Weighting by Sectors

It seems like the top four areas are all subsidized by state, local and federal governments in some way.

When News People Lose Common Sense

In my state, there are several aspects of the law that require a public notice entered into the "local newspaper of record." There is no sales taxes on news papers. Even the local governments must use the local news paper to notify the public via newspaper of an intention to borrow money. The symbiotic relationship between the government and the newspaper is not new.

Why Mandated Health Insurance Is a Bad Idea

I have always wondered why we can have a situation where drivers are mostly insured but can not get people insured for illness. On the other hand, even if the states have been fairly successful in getting everyone insured with respect to driving, that insurance system has in no way assured that the costs of the insurance was controlled. The federal government tracks auto ownership costs and if you inflation adjust it, the cost of the median new car is more flat than the fixed costs like insurance.