The United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place in Copenhagen this week, and is said by many to be essential for the world’s climate, because now is the best of times, the worst of times, etc.
Twenty five years ago, a friend wrote an editorial for his college newspaper called “The Trouble with Earth Day,” in which he observed that it had been a grave strategic error to closely align Earth Day with sit-ins, tie-dye and flower power. These fads and the emblems of a social movement would fade, he wrote, and they would drag Earth Day with them down into the scrapbook of quaint 70’s memorabilia. Though Earth Day has a bit of a renaissance, through much of the past few decades the astute college man was right. Is this relevant for Copenhagen?
Los Angeles makes me sick. So do Mexico City, Beijing and Tokyo. Within a day of arrival my eyes burn and I get a sore throat. My two years I spent in Long Beach (back when it stunk) brought me two cases of pneumonia – something I’d never had before, nor have had since I left. While great progress has been made in LA, the rate of asthma for adults and children is still twice the national average. The cause of problem is almost certainly air pollution.
Pollution – remember that word? It predated climate change, the concept that elevated environmental concern to global political activism. Fighting pollution, a quite worthy cause, is not as easily rolled into a whole outlook on one’s place in society as is climate change.
Recently in San Francisco I observed a “Mobilization for Climate Justice.” Its members blocked the doors of Bank of America, announcing, "We want Bank of America to know we are aware of what they do, and we won't give up until they take responsibility for their actions." Signs, transparent in their position that climate change was a convenient tool to promote a broader ideology, read "System Change, Not Climate Change." As with most San Francisco protests, the usual protest scavengers appeared with the usual causes – Israel out of Palestine, US out of Iraq, etc.
In Copenhagen, the official (“scientific”) conference seems to be dwarfed, not by sideshows, but by entire circuses of people’s and alternative Copenhagen conferences and rallies. Revival might be a better term, for there’s a lot of religion going on – hope being a core component (“faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” – Epistle to Hebrews 11:1). The Hopenhagen.org site bears the appeal to mobocracy, “When People Lead, Leaders Follow,” and asks you to join this fledgling religious movement.
I learned of the Copenhagen People’s Climate Summit from good old SocialistWorld.Net. There I found that I could head to Copenhagen to join a meeting titled “Save the planet – fight capitalism.” On Tuesday in the Red Room I could hear “Tackling Capitalism and the Climate Crisis.” Too bad my work kept me from “Climate, Trade and Development from a Gender Perspective.” I’m not making this up.
A decade or so back the phrase, “Think globally; act locally” urged people to take action in their own communities. Today’s version should perhaps read, “Think globally; act up globally” (for the end is near).
So what happens when and if such activism has been fully effective in converting the heathen – will this collective mindset somehow produce a perpetual motion machine? If you want to do something about pollution (uh, I mean climate change) try going to school and getting a degree in engineering or science. As a byproduct you might learn the lost art of analysis. Then graduate and work on a way to build a car, refrigerator, refinery or sheet of paper that uses less fuel and spews less CO2, heavy hydrocarbons or dioxin. If 100% of us chose a course of activism in parallel with Women’s Studies, African American Studies or any other social studies, we will all, at best, have great hope for change while having zero ability to effect that change.
If citizens had a bit more of a clue about how science works, we might be directing a bit more of our attention on increasing efficiency and sanely reducing fuel usage than on worship of Al Gore or Mother Gaya.
I’m for reducing pollution independent of whether man has affected the climate. Focusing on that question may ultimately be counterproductive; it implies that if we find that man hasn’t caused global warming, industry and consumption need no further attention. It is unfortunate that environmental zealots have chosen the strategy of bonding with media to evangelize that there is scientific consensus on this question, that it warrants no further study, and that anyone who questions it is evil (the Papal Bull of 1484 and the subsequent “Hammer of Witches” concluded that anyone who denied the existence of witches was a witch).
As an example of this approach I’ll cite Steven Cohen, Executive Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, writing in the Huffington Post, who authoritatively reports, “This consensus has prevailed despite the shameful emails of some deceptive climate scientists who really should know better. The fact of climate change is obvious.”
Well, actually Steve, science invites vigorous skepticism, and no real scientist would ever say that the fact of something as complex as climate change is obvious. You might know that if you’d studied something other than Political Science (social studies) for your three college degrees that led to your position at the Earth Institute. Vigorous skepticism is painfully lacking in the environmental movement, as it is in Columbia's hiring process. Its absence has led to government subsidies for corn-derived ethanol and rooftop wind turbines. We wish and we hope that such efforts will save the planet, but hope just doesn’t burn green, because it doesn’t burn at all.
Less hope, more science.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Dear Newsweek, Al Gore is not my thinking man
The latest cover of Newsweek informs me that Al Gore is the thinking man's thinking man. I'll do my own thinking, thank you.
In his famous July 18, 2008 talk, Gore said, “enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year." From an engineering point of view, this statement is true but “trivial” – meaning that while true, it is useless. In other words, why not extend the solar panels that would collect this energy out into space a few thousand miles and then we can use the surplus energy to power our warp-drive vehicles.
Such concepts are useless because solar panels that occupy a significant portion of the earth’s surface have practical limitations. Not only do they require huge amounts of expensive material to build, but they have significant side-effects. Covering the earth with solar panels or building 8-mile high windmills across the central US would both have rather undesirable effects on the weather.
When proposing solutions to rally all the young activists who apparently opted out of high school physics, why stop with such environmentally flawed concepts as huge solar panels and windmills, Al? A more creative futurist would point out that there are enough free hydrogen atoms around our solar system to supply the needed energy with much less environmental impact. For a Nobel prize, I could explain how we might build a tethered Bussard ramjet that could spin around the solar system and pipe the energy home. I might enhance it with moon-sized magnetic sails and a giant electrostatic ion scoop or two – all of which are at least as feasible as extracting that wind energy that Gore correctly claims exists in the Midwest. For an explanation of why extracting all the energy from any amount of wind defies the laws of physics, see my previous post here. Like giant solar panels, my tethered hydrogen collector would work; all we need to do is build it. Ah, but doing so – for all these “solutions” - would require mining away a large part of the planet.
Of course solar panels will likely become technically feasible long before Bussard accelerators, perhaps even in the near future. But the technology is not “on the shelf” waiting to be used as Gore claims. And claiming that failure to take wind and solar power “off the shelf” is all that stands in the way of energy independence is a profoundly irresponsible (or ignorant) assertion.
I used to think Al Gore was just a crank (misinformed but well-intentioned) as opposed to a charlatan (knows better but deceives for personal gain). I’m less sure about this as time goes on. Maybe the distinction isn’t important anyway. Highly effective charlatans might succeed in deceiving themselves – at that point their conscience is clean and they become cranks. Cranks who become belligerent when presented with valid counterarguments are at that point charlatans (see his response to a challenger here).
Environmentally conscious Gore devotees should note that I’m not challenging Gore on the need to do something about pollution. This is a matter of values, and I agree with him on this. Nor am I challenging him on whether man has altered the climate; this will likely not be known with certainty in my life and probably not in yours. Gore’s science on this matter is horribly flawed, but that doesn’t impact my desire to clean up the environment. I am challenging Gore on his proposed solution to the problem and his duping the science-challenged nation with magic windmill schemes that will enrich him greatly (NY Times first carbon billionaire story) and divert precious attention from real engineering challenges.
In his famous July 18, 2008 talk, Gore said, “enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year." From an engineering point of view, this statement is true but “trivial” – meaning that while true, it is useless. In other words, why not extend the solar panels that would collect this energy out into space a few thousand miles and then we can use the surplus energy to power our warp-drive vehicles.
Such concepts are useless because solar panels that occupy a significant portion of the earth’s surface have practical limitations. Not only do they require huge amounts of expensive material to build, but they have significant side-effects. Covering the earth with solar panels or building 8-mile high windmills across the central US would both have rather undesirable effects on the weather.
When proposing solutions to rally all the young activists who apparently opted out of high school physics, why stop with such environmentally flawed concepts as huge solar panels and windmills, Al? A more creative futurist would point out that there are enough free hydrogen atoms around our solar system to supply the needed energy with much less environmental impact. For a Nobel prize, I could explain how we might build a tethered Bussard ramjet that could spin around the solar system and pipe the energy home. I might enhance it with moon-sized magnetic sails and a giant electrostatic ion scoop or two – all of which are at least as feasible as extracting that wind energy that Gore correctly claims exists in the Midwest. For an explanation of why extracting all the energy from any amount of wind defies the laws of physics, see my previous post here. Like giant solar panels, my tethered hydrogen collector would work; all we need to do is build it. Ah, but doing so – for all these “solutions” - would require mining away a large part of the planet.
Of course solar panels will likely become technically feasible long before Bussard accelerators, perhaps even in the near future. But the technology is not “on the shelf” waiting to be used as Gore claims. And claiming that failure to take wind and solar power “off the shelf” is all that stands in the way of energy independence is a profoundly irresponsible (or ignorant) assertion.
I used to think Al Gore was just a crank (misinformed but well-intentioned) as opposed to a charlatan (knows better but deceives for personal gain). I’m less sure about this as time goes on. Maybe the distinction isn’t important anyway. Highly effective charlatans might succeed in deceiving themselves – at that point their conscience is clean and they become cranks. Cranks who become belligerent when presented with valid counterarguments are at that point charlatans (see his response to a challenger here).
Environmentally conscious Gore devotees should note that I’m not challenging Gore on the need to do something about pollution. This is a matter of values, and I agree with him on this. Nor am I challenging him on whether man has altered the climate; this will likely not be known with certainty in my life and probably not in yours. Gore’s science on this matter is horribly flawed, but that doesn’t impact my desire to clean up the environment. I am challenging Gore on his proposed solution to the problem and his duping the science-challenged nation with magic windmill schemes that will enrich him greatly (NY Times first carbon billionaire story) and divert precious attention from real engineering challenges.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Why I Hate Hate-Crime Laws
Independent of any feel-good legislation regarding the viewpoints and mindsets of criminals, all judges have considerable leeway in adjusting the sentences of those convicted of crimes where racial or other bias of the criminal is at issue. Criminal law in the US was designed to punish acts, not thoughts underlying them. It would seem that many of those most enthusiastic about the value of hate crime laws are in fact the same citizens most opposed to the concept of thought police. How do they reconcile this?
The obvious problem with hate crime laws is that they implicitly order the value of the lives of members of various groups. If the penalty for the death of a gay man at the hands of some homophobic redneck is steeper than the penalty for the equivalent crime in the opposite direction, the law has thereby established a hierarchy of value of lives of members of various groups. San Francisco’s published crime data shows that the rich are targeted preferentially for auto theft and home burglary. So do we need a set of hate crime laws that give the rich special status as victims of such crimes. I think most citizens of San Francisco would oppose such legislation.
Now what if the perpetrators of crimes against certain of our wealthy citizens chose to attack on Yom Kippur and scrawled something nasty about Jews on the wall as they left? Does that change anything? If so I fear we face an endless task of ordering and reordering a constantly shifting hierarchy of victim statuses.
As good as it feels to know that we now have an additional legal defense against bigots, hate-crime laws, in addition to appearing unconstitutional, are merely a feel-good distraction from good government. Avoid populist legislators.
The obvious problem with hate crime laws is that they implicitly order the value of the lives of members of various groups. If the penalty for the death of a gay man at the hands of some homophobic redneck is steeper than the penalty for the equivalent crime in the opposite direction, the law has thereby established a hierarchy of value of lives of members of various groups. San Francisco’s published crime data shows that the rich are targeted preferentially for auto theft and home burglary. So do we need a set of hate crime laws that give the rich special status as victims of such crimes. I think most citizens of San Francisco would oppose such legislation.
Now what if the perpetrators of crimes against certain of our wealthy citizens chose to attack on Yom Kippur and scrawled something nasty about Jews on the wall as they left? Does that change anything? If so I fear we face an endless task of ordering and reordering a constantly shifting hierarchy of victim statuses.
As good as it feels to know that we now have an additional legal defense against bigots, hate-crime laws, in addition to appearing unconstitutional, are merely a feel-good distraction from good government. Avoid populist legislators.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Another Rooftop Wind Turbine Defies Physics
I just read about a new rooftop wind turbine invention in the October 2009 Inc. magazine. “The answer is blowing in the (very gentle) wind”, the piece starts in the magazine’s Innovation section, and describes this new gizmo that can generate electricity at wind speeds of just two miles per hour. The inventors, Windtronics of Muskegon Michigan, claim that the $5500 device could supply roughly 18% of an average household’s electricity when an average wind speed of 12.8 miles per hour is present. “We’d like to think we can put a turbine on every rooftop,” says the company’s CEO.
Inc’s reporter, Nicole Marie Richardson, notes that most homes would see far less, but ends: “Nevertheless, the machine brings wind power within reach for low-wind areas.”
It’s hard to know where to begin to address this from an engineering or laws-of-physics standpoint. I’ll start with what should be obvious - this is bullshit on quite a few counts; and Inc. should be ashamed of themselves for not hiring a science editor.
To start, let’s look at the assumptions. Chicago, “the windy city”, has an average wind speed of 10 miles per hour. I haven’t researched statistical distributions of winds speeds, but my personal experience with wind suggests wind velocity is rarely very constant. Gusts and changes in wind direction very dramatically reduce the efficiency of wind turbines for reasons I’ll explain below. But at this point we should note that Windtronics’ 12.8 mph basis is wind pie in the sky.
Now the average citizen or financial analyst at Inc. magazine might be thinking that, ok, well, half the wind velocity might yield half as much energy; and that such would still be pretty good. Unfortunately, physics rarely works like that. Before even approaching the matter of efficiency fluctuations as wind velocity varies from that for which the machine was designed, let’s look at how wind makes energy.
Kinetic energy is equal to ½ the mass of the moving matter times its velocity squared. Therefore wind energy extracted from the mass of moving air – if you could catch it all – would be proportional to the square of the wind speed. Cut the speed in half and you end up with one fourth of the energy – yes, you would cut the ideal maximum by 75 percent, assuming the turbine were equally efficient at both wind speeds – which is impossible.
Large modern wind turbines have an efficiency of about 40%, however they reach this maximum efficiency at an optimum wind speed, constrained by frictional losses at low speeds and back pressure (the “lift” that makes an aircraft fly) on the blades above the optimum speed. Above or below the optimum wind speed, efficiency drops off steeply. For example, at twice their optimum wind speed, the efficiency of commercial wind turbines drops to about 10%.
To check Windtronics’ claims, I applied Betz’ Law, a principle of hydraulics that demonstrates that the maximum energy that a turbine of any design can extract from wind (in this case) is exactly 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy of the moving fluid (wind). The Windtronics machine is six feet in diameter. Assuming its blades go to the very outer diameter of the housing, its wind area is 28 square feet. Using average air pressure, temperature and humidity and a Rayleigh distribution of wind speed, one can then calculate the energy in a 6-foot diameter tube of air moving at 12.8 miles per hour. 59.3% of that will be the maximum possible energy that the Windtronics machine could produce if it were a perfect machine. Coincidentally, that value is almost exactly 2000 kWh per year. But that value is for a machine that is the windmill equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It cannot and does not exist.
At an optimistic real efficiency of 40% and a wind velocity of 6.5 miles per hour, the calculated yearly output is 337 kWh, which is 3.0% of the average household’s electrical usage, based on the Department of Energy.
Also per the DOE, the average cost of residential electricity in the United States was 12 cents per kWh in April 2009. The average household uses 11,000 kWh per year, and therefore, pays about $1300 for all their electricity. If the rooftop turbine supplies 3% of that and costs $5500, you could amortize your purchase in a mere 138 years, assuming your installation costs are zero and the unit lasts a century without maintenance. Nicole, it might be “within reach” but I’m not sure it’s worth reaching for.
The environmentally conscious reader might say, big deal, if it reduces greenhouse gases and such, I’ll be a good citizen and eat the $5500. Not so fast, fellow new age environmentalists and investors. Such a turbine might reduce by 3% (for a reasonably windy city) your consumption of generated electricity. But that electricity probably comes from a coal-powered plant, and they typically burn very clean. Only about 1.6% of our electricity comes from petroleum. First and second destination transport of rooftop wind turbines is very reliant on petroleum however, and its manufacture may be as well. Of course its manufacture also consumes a considerable amount of electricity; metal refinement (ore to alloy) and metal forming tend to be very energy-intensive processes. All these considerations eat into that 3%. We might do better for our wallets and for the environment with a different approach to reduce our consumption of generated electricity.
By the way, the Inc. article's hook and claim of novelty for this brand was that the machine can generate electricity with wind speeds down to two mph. Applying what we learned about energy, velocity squared, and Betz’ Law, one can also calculate the power (not energy) output of a perfect turbine driven by a constant 2 mph wind at somewhat less than one watt. You might power an LED with it.
Inc’s reporter, Nicole Marie Richardson, notes that most homes would see far less, but ends: “Nevertheless, the machine brings wind power within reach for low-wind areas.”
It’s hard to know where to begin to address this from an engineering or laws-of-physics standpoint. I’ll start with what should be obvious - this is bullshit on quite a few counts; and Inc. should be ashamed of themselves for not hiring a science editor.
To start, let’s look at the assumptions. Chicago, “the windy city”, has an average wind speed of 10 miles per hour. I haven’t researched statistical distributions of winds speeds, but my personal experience with wind suggests wind velocity is rarely very constant. Gusts and changes in wind direction very dramatically reduce the efficiency of wind turbines for reasons I’ll explain below. But at this point we should note that Windtronics’ 12.8 mph basis is wind pie in the sky.
Now the average citizen or financial analyst at Inc. magazine might be thinking that, ok, well, half the wind velocity might yield half as much energy; and that such would still be pretty good. Unfortunately, physics rarely works like that. Before even approaching the matter of efficiency fluctuations as wind velocity varies from that for which the machine was designed, let’s look at how wind makes energy.
Kinetic energy is equal to ½ the mass of the moving matter times its velocity squared. Therefore wind energy extracted from the mass of moving air – if you could catch it all – would be proportional to the square of the wind speed. Cut the speed in half and you end up with one fourth of the energy – yes, you would cut the ideal maximum by 75 percent, assuming the turbine were equally efficient at both wind speeds – which is impossible.
Large modern wind turbines have an efficiency of about 40%, however they reach this maximum efficiency at an optimum wind speed, constrained by frictional losses at low speeds and back pressure (the “lift” that makes an aircraft fly) on the blades above the optimum speed. Above or below the optimum wind speed, efficiency drops off steeply. For example, at twice their optimum wind speed, the efficiency of commercial wind turbines drops to about 10%.
To check Windtronics’ claims, I applied Betz’ Law, a principle of hydraulics that demonstrates that the maximum energy that a turbine of any design can extract from wind (in this case) is exactly 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy of the moving fluid (wind). The Windtronics machine is six feet in diameter. Assuming its blades go to the very outer diameter of the housing, its wind area is 28 square feet. Using average air pressure, temperature and humidity and a Rayleigh distribution of wind speed, one can then calculate the energy in a 6-foot diameter tube of air moving at 12.8 miles per hour. 59.3% of that will be the maximum possible energy that the Windtronics machine could produce if it were a perfect machine. Coincidentally, that value is almost exactly 2000 kWh per year. But that value is for a machine that is the windmill equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It cannot and does not exist.
At an optimistic real efficiency of 40% and a wind velocity of 6.5 miles per hour, the calculated yearly output is 337 kWh, which is 3.0% of the average household’s electrical usage, based on the Department of Energy.
Also per the DOE, the average cost of residential electricity in the United States was 12 cents per kWh in April 2009. The average household uses 11,000 kWh per year, and therefore, pays about $1300 for all their electricity. If the rooftop turbine supplies 3% of that and costs $5500, you could amortize your purchase in a mere 138 years, assuming your installation costs are zero and the unit lasts a century without maintenance. Nicole, it might be “within reach” but I’m not sure it’s worth reaching for.
The environmentally conscious reader might say, big deal, if it reduces greenhouse gases and such, I’ll be a good citizen and eat the $5500. Not so fast, fellow new age environmentalists and investors. Such a turbine might reduce by 3% (for a reasonably windy city) your consumption of generated electricity. But that electricity probably comes from a coal-powered plant, and they typically burn very clean. Only about 1.6% of our electricity comes from petroleum. First and second destination transport of rooftop wind turbines is very reliant on petroleum however, and its manufacture may be as well. Of course its manufacture also consumes a considerable amount of electricity; metal refinement (ore to alloy) and metal forming tend to be very energy-intensive processes. All these considerations eat into that 3%. We might do better for our wallets and for the environment with a different approach to reduce our consumption of generated electricity.
By the way, the Inc. article's hook and claim of novelty for this brand was that the machine can generate electricity with wind speeds down to two mph. Applying what we learned about energy, velocity squared, and Betz’ Law, one can also calculate the power (not energy) output of a perfect turbine driven by a constant 2 mph wind at somewhat less than one watt. You might power an LED with it.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Dismay at upheld Prop 8: democrats against democracy
Many of my friends in San Francisco are expressing dismay and anger that Prop 8 was upheld by the California high court. The LA Times article ends with a quote from Jon W. Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal, a gay rights organization, that sums it up well. "It leaves us to the kindness of strangers," he said. "They could take away anything."
Hey, how about that, all you progressive liberals. Liberal Democrats and the populist politicians they elect have built a sytem in California over the last several decades that encourages mob democracy, largely as a means of appropriating the money of large corporations and the wealthy. Lo and behold, an unintended consequence - religious zealots and bedroom busybodies took their tolls at the polls.
"Democrats against democracy" is a common insult tossed at democrats by disingenuous Republicans. They lob this insult every time majority rule is out of step with the liberal agenda - something that has happened rarely in the last two decades but seems likely to happen quite a bit more in the future. One possible remedy will be that liberals and Democrats will stop being such democrats. Republicans are disingenuous in their criticism of democrats being unhappy with democracy, because those Republicans (like all true republicans) don't like democracy either. Nor do I; and nor should you.
"Democracy" is what we've come to call our constitutional government. This is unfortunate. Perhaps more accurately, our government is a constitutional democratic republic. It was designed to prevent the tyranny of majorities, be those majorities races, religions, income brackets or any other kind.
Those who see this system as the backward product of rich white men like Thomas Jefferson and yearn for the wonderfully progressive system of, say France for instance, should probably read more history and less social studies. They might note that the USA never succumbed to mob-organized violence and institutionalized murder, as did France and quite a few of its neighbors.
I hope that liberals - hopefully before any more unfortunate cases of mob democracy - will ease up on democratic ideology and embrace and promote constitutional government in general, not merely as a legal technicality that can be employed to undo the Prop 8 mess.
Hey, how about that, all you progressive liberals. Liberal Democrats and the populist politicians they elect have built a sytem in California over the last several decades that encourages mob democracy, largely as a means of appropriating the money of large corporations and the wealthy. Lo and behold, an unintended consequence - religious zealots and bedroom busybodies took their tolls at the polls.
"Democrats against democracy" is a common insult tossed at democrats by disingenuous Republicans. They lob this insult every time majority rule is out of step with the liberal agenda - something that has happened rarely in the last two decades but seems likely to happen quite a bit more in the future. One possible remedy will be that liberals and Democrats will stop being such democrats. Republicans are disingenuous in their criticism of democrats being unhappy with democracy, because those Republicans (like all true republicans) don't like democracy either. Nor do I; and nor should you.
"Democracy" is what we've come to call our constitutional government. This is unfortunate. Perhaps more accurately, our government is a constitutional democratic republic. It was designed to prevent the tyranny of majorities, be those majorities races, religions, income brackets or any other kind.
Those who see this system as the backward product of rich white men like Thomas Jefferson and yearn for the wonderfully progressive system of, say France for instance, should probably read more history and less social studies. They might note that the USA never succumbed to mob-organized violence and institutionalized murder, as did France and quite a few of its neighbors.
I hope that liberals - hopefully before any more unfortunate cases of mob democracy - will ease up on democratic ideology and embrace and promote constitutional government in general, not merely as a legal technicality that can be employed to undo the Prop 8 mess.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
More Innumeracy in High Places
I recently posted on the matter of some gross errors in mathematics made by Robert Reich in a piece on the economy. This time the culprit is Gavin Newsome, a good man, on whose campaign I volunteered. But in a recent radio interview where he addressed the inequities of taxation, Newsome left me disappointed if not worse. "Sales tax is the most regressive form of tax there is", he announced with great passion.
Hmm, well, no Gavin, actually any kind of parcel or per-unit tax is more regressive. Sales tax is, by definition, a flat tax. The terms “progressive” and “regressive” as applied to tax do not refer to a political opinion. Liberals do indeed lavish themselves with the self-congratulatory progressive label while branding their backwoods opponents as regressive, but progressive taxation refers to a tax calculation (or tax tables) where the amount of tax increases nonlinearly with the tax basis. Sales tax is a flat tax; it is a constant percentage of the purchase price, the basis for the tax. Regressive taxes are less taxing – percentage-wise – on big purchases. Google pays the same $20 per year tax that I pay to file my annual report with the State of California. That’s regressive, independent of the fact that progressives don’t like it.
Honest people can argue over whether flat taxes such as sales tax are harder on the poor. This would be the case if poor people spend a higher percentage of their income on taxable items. Such a discussion will likely get bogged down on the effects of exemptions, tax credits and rebates. But that does not alter the fact that by definition, sales tax is a flat tax, not a regressive one. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of definition and mathematics.
That should be pretty obvious. Or so I thought. I googled the topic, and found quite a few articles explaining that sales tax is not a flat tax but a regressive one because it soaks the poor. Uhh, perhaps a good liberal education should include a course in algebra. Pat Moynihan (a great progressive) comes to mind: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” That goes for you too, Mr. Newsome.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Jane Fonda Is Not That Bad
I am greatly concerned about our inability to get history right. We rewrite it to suit our needs, just as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and especially Christians did (see my other blog for more on that http://www.thoughtlikeachild.blogspot.com/). Along these lines, I see that, once again, the "Shame on Jane" emails are in circulation. The last batch I received was during the John Kerry campaign. Now they've shown up again, perhaps related to the desperate state of the flailing Republican party. The emails point out that Jane Fonda is a traitor, directly responsible for the torture and death of American soldiers who were POWs in Vietnam.
Whether Jane is a traitor can be debated. I find her Vietnam actions despicable. She really was quoted as saying that Vietnam POWs were not heroes, but hypocrites and liars. At the time she also stated emphatically that US soldiers had not been tortured or starved in Vietnamese prison camps. These points are hardly arguable, as now public records of war-era Vietnamese government attest. One might even argue that Fonda's Vietnam appearances aided and abetted the enemy, and therefore she truly is a traitor. So understand that I am not defending her.
Instead I want to point out that no good cause is helped by lies and the introduction of fiction into history. Fonda is guilty of what she did, but not of what she didn't do. The emails I've recently received repeat the claims that Jerry Driscoll, a downed F-4 pilot was tortured after spitting at Fonda, and that Fonda betrayed attempts by Larry Carrigan and three other POWs to slip her notes during her visit and that this resulted in the deaths of three of them. These stories have been forcefully and repeatedly denied by Driscoll and Carrigan, who have never met Fonda, and by the handful of POWs who actually did meet her.
Fonda should be ashamed of enriching herself by making false and ignorant claims about the state of Vietnamese prison camps. Worse yet, she deserves wrath for rewriting her past in recent times by saying that she was "merely trying to stop the war." This lie is not arguable; plenty of public record exists from those days. Fonda praised the USSR for opposing the US in Vietnam, lobbied against aid to South Vietnam, and actively supported the North Vietnamese cause. She was and still is a liar of the worst sort. But lies about her, like the stories of Driscoll and Carrigan, don't help matters.
In fact they hurt quite a bit, because they discredit the valid claims against her. They allow writers - take me for instance - to make statements like "Fonda is not that bad" that (literally) can't be argued with. After all, she is not as bad as the inflammatory emails say she is. They encourage academic, psuedo-intellectual bullshit journals like Peace and Change - A Journal of Peace Research to print stuff like Mary Hershberger's "Peace Work, War Myths: Jane Fonda and the Antiwar Movement", where she summarizes Fonda in Vietnam as, "[Fonda] travelled to Hanoi, carried family mail to imprisoned American pilots, met with some of them and returned with their antiwar message." Hershberger also reports there that the FBI and right-wing quarters spread lies about Fonda that have crept into popular memory. Well, that statement is at least half true. I don't know about the FBI part, but we unfortunately have to grant her the rest - unfortunate because Hershberger really is a disgrace to the discipline of history, but popular lies about Fonda have given her credibility.
For the sake of history, please don't repeat bullshit. Think before you hit that "Forward" button. Better yet, research.
Links:
Peace and Change: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118771047/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Snopes on Hanoi Jane: http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp . I particularly enjoy all the liberal/academic sites that quote snopes on the falsity of the Driscoll/Carrigan stories but never mention the snopes material on Fonda's false recent claims of her actions at the time.
Whether Jane is a traitor can be debated. I find her Vietnam actions despicable. She really was quoted as saying that Vietnam POWs were not heroes, but hypocrites and liars. At the time she also stated emphatically that US soldiers had not been tortured or starved in Vietnamese prison camps. These points are hardly arguable, as now public records of war-era Vietnamese government attest. One might even argue that Fonda's Vietnam appearances aided and abetted the enemy, and therefore she truly is a traitor. So understand that I am not defending her.
Instead I want to point out that no good cause is helped by lies and the introduction of fiction into history. Fonda is guilty of what she did, but not of what she didn't do. The emails I've recently received repeat the claims that Jerry Driscoll, a downed F-4 pilot was tortured after spitting at Fonda, and that Fonda betrayed attempts by Larry Carrigan and three other POWs to slip her notes during her visit and that this resulted in the deaths of three of them. These stories have been forcefully and repeatedly denied by Driscoll and Carrigan, who have never met Fonda, and by the handful of POWs who actually did meet her.
Fonda should be ashamed of enriching herself by making false and ignorant claims about the state of Vietnamese prison camps. Worse yet, she deserves wrath for rewriting her past in recent times by saying that she was "merely trying to stop the war." This lie is not arguable; plenty of public record exists from those days. Fonda praised the USSR for opposing the US in Vietnam, lobbied against aid to South Vietnam, and actively supported the North Vietnamese cause. She was and still is a liar of the worst sort. But lies about her, like the stories of Driscoll and Carrigan, don't help matters.
In fact they hurt quite a bit, because they discredit the valid claims against her. They allow writers - take me for instance - to make statements like "Fonda is not that bad" that (literally) can't be argued with. After all, she is not as bad as the inflammatory emails say she is. They encourage academic, psuedo-intellectual bullshit journals like Peace and Change - A Journal of Peace Research to print stuff like Mary Hershberger's "Peace Work, War Myths: Jane Fonda and the Antiwar Movement", where she summarizes Fonda in Vietnam as, "[Fonda] travelled to Hanoi, carried family mail to imprisoned American pilots, met with some of them and returned with their antiwar message." Hershberger also reports there that the FBI and right-wing quarters spread lies about Fonda that have crept into popular memory. Well, that statement is at least half true. I don't know about the FBI part, but we unfortunately have to grant her the rest - unfortunate because Hershberger really is a disgrace to the discipline of history, but popular lies about Fonda have given her credibility.
For the sake of history, please don't repeat bullshit. Think before you hit that "Forward" button. Better yet, research.
Links:
Peace and Change: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118771047/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Snopes on Hanoi Jane: http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp . I particularly enjoy all the liberal/academic sites that quote snopes on the falsity of the Driscoll/Carrigan stories but never mention the snopes material on Fonda's false recent claims of her actions at the time.
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