Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
There’s a new study out, under the imprimatur of the Energy Institute of the Haas School of Business in Berkeley, California, entitled The Distributional Effects of U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits. As the title implies, it looks at who actually profited from the various “green energy” tax credits across the United States. SPOILER ALERT! It wasn’t the poor folks.
How much money are we talking about? Well, the paper says that from 2006 to 2012, the taxpayers have been on the hook for $18 BILLION DOLLARS to fund these subsidies, money that would have otherwise gone into the General Fund.
And just how much money is eighteen billion dollars? Here’s one way to think about eighteen gigabucks, regarding safe, clean drinking water.
Water Wells for Africa reports from their ongoing projects that on average it has cost them about $3.50 per person ($7,000 per well serving 2,000 people) to provide people with clean safe well water. So eighteen billion dollars is enough money to drill drinking water wells for three-quarters of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants. (Yes, I know that’s a gross simplification, some folks don’t live over a subterranean water table, and so on, but it is still enough money to drill the two and a half million wells that would be needed.)
So what did we do with this huge amount of money, enough wealth to truly change the lives of the world’s poor?
Well, following the brilliant policies pushed by the Obama Administration and the climate alarmists, we took enough taxpayer money to truly change the lives of the world’s poor folks … and instead, we gave it to the American rich folks.
No kidding! This is not a joke. This is what passes for moral activism in the liberal American universe. Throwing money at the rich is seen as striking a noble blow for POSSIBLY saving the poor from a tenth of a degree of warming by 2100.
Sadly, it’s no joke at all—the whole war on carbon has been a tragedy for the poor. In this case, the result of these misguided tax subsidies, of the type which have been pushed by climate alarmists for years, has been to create a real climate “hockeystick”. Here is the data from their paper:
Figure 1. Distribution of benefits of the “Clean Energy Tax Credits” by the income class of the benefit recipient for the period 2006-2012. All values are percentages of the given benefit. “Residential” is subsidies for residential solar systems and weatherization. “Hybrid” are the subsidies paid to the owners of hybrids, as well as hydrogen, fuel cell and natural gas vehicles. “Electric Vehicle” is the subsidy paid to the pure electric vehicles like the Tesla, Leaf, and Volt.
Note that in all cases, the bottom half of the income scale got 4% or less of the benefits …
Look, if someone wants to fight the claimed evil menace of CO2, that’s their business.
And when they want to justify it on the basis that to them, it is a deed most noble and virtuous to be POSSIBLY helping the poor in 2050 by POSSIBLY reducing the future global average temperature by a few tenths of a degree … well, I gotta say that’s as dumb as a bag of ball bearings, but there’s no law against dumb.
But that’s just for starters. From there, it gets ugly fast. Tragically the preferred method of fighting evil carbon is to increase the cost of energy, which is an extremely regressive tax. Not only is it regressive, but unlike many taxes, there is no escape at the bottom of the income scale from increased energy costs. The poor pay no income tax, but they pay energy costs, and energy costs are a greater portion of their expenses than for the rich. So rather than going down with decreasing income, the effect of hikes in energy costs go UP with decreasing income. Like I said, it is among the most regressive,inescapable kinds of taxes you could design.
Raising energy costs sentence the global poor to further impoverishment, sickness, and even death. And hiking energy prices based on the pathetic justification of a POSSIBLE cooling by 2050 of a few tenths of a degree is a crime against the poor of unimaginable size and ubiquitous effect. The war on carbon literally hurts, sickens, and kills poor people all over the world. And I can assure you … the poor are not amused.
But I guess that merely shafting the poor by increasing energy costs doesn’t help the rich enough. So the other noble and virtuous method for POSSIBLY helping the future poor is to fling tax money at various pluted bloatocrats … yeah, that’s the ticket. We’ll help the poor in 2050 by making it easier for rich people to buy a new $100,000 Tesla, and meanwhile Elon Musk is laughing all the way to the bank … at this point, we have to wonder how much folks like Al Gore and Warren Buffet and the UN Climate Ambassador Leonardo Dicaprio had to do with the design of these tax subsidies for the rich.
And of course, these are just the income tax subsidies. They don’t include the massive subsidies handed out directly to the solar and wind industries. They don’t include the subsidies paid to the people wealthy enough to justify rooftop solar when the utilities have to buy their electric production at three times market value … or the cost that I and millions of others pay as electrical consumers to subsidize those over-the-top rooftop solar payments. They don’t include the cost of Solyndra and the other solar companies slurping at the public trough. They don’t include the millions of dollars that with one stroke of the pen Obama gave to his billionaire pal Warren Buffet by vetoing the Keystone pipeline. This is merely the Federal tax-related subsidies, nothing more … and this tiny part of the global waste in the war on carbon is eighteen billion freakin’ dollars.
But always remember … this is all being justified by the alarmists on the basis of “Think of the grandchildren”, and because they’re saving the planet from imminent doooom and destruction.
And if you are someone saving the planet from imminent doooom and destruction, well, you are the man. There is no action that you shouldn’t take if it is in the service of your noble cause. You know that you have right on your side, you’re preventing disaster. You know you are fighting the good fight to cool the fevered brows of those sweltering in the 2050 heat by at least a tenth of a degree, and that it is a fight that has to be fought if we are to save the very planet. Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure, and you have the moral high ground. As a result of all of that, there is no transgression you won’t commit in order to have other people pay to make your beautiful Elysian (and slightly-cooler) dream come to fruition … and meanwhile, let’s go for a spin in your new Tesla. After all, you only bought an electric car because it’s noble and virtuous and pollution-free … if you don’t count the coal-fired power plant providing your electricity.
I have a proposal for a new name for the Holocene, and it’s not the Anthropocene like some folks claim.
I think we should call it the Egoscene …
Regards to all,
w.
My Plea For Better Understanding: If you disagree with someone, please have the courtesy to quote the exact words you disagree with. This will allow all of us to understand precisely what you are objecting to.
About The Title: For those not up on their English history, Robin Hood was the name of a legendary English outlaw whose most notable characteristic was that he robbed from the rich and gave to the poor … hence my invention of the term“Hood Robin Syndrome” to describe the opposite action.
Fossil Fuel Subsidies: To me, the issue is never the existence of a subsidy. It is whether we get something for the subsidy. For example, one of the fossil-fuel subsidies in the US is the tax exemption for diesel used by farmers and fishermen … in exchange for which, it encourages production and so we get more food. To me, that’s a good deal. The problem with renewable subsidies is that we’ve been subsidizing solar and wind since Jimmy Carter was President, and they are still not economically competitive in the grid-scale marketplace.
We get large value in return for fossil fuel subsidies, whereas for solar and wind subsidies we get almost nothing. Per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy produced from solar and wind, there is a subsidy to the producers of about two cents/kWh. Since base electric price in the US is around 8-10 cents per kilowatt-hour, that’s about a 20% subsidy.
The subsidy for oil, on the other hand, is about a hundredth of one cent per kWh, coal is about two hundredths of a cent per kWh, and nuclear is about eight hundredths of a cent per kWh.
Why the huge disparity? It’s because solar and wind don’t produce economically, so they have to be artificially propped up. I wouldn’t mind the subsidy if they actually produced. It’s the lack of getting value in return that is the problem.
“And hiking energy prices based on the pathetic justification of a POSSIBLE cooling by 2050 of a few tenths of a degree is a crime against the poor of unimaginable size and ubiquitous effect”
Shouldn’t that be Warming by 2050 Wills ?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/24/uk-met-fastest-decline-solar-activity-last-ice-age/#comment-1972538
PROPOSAL – SUE THE WARMISTS IN THE USA UNDER CIVIL RICO
I have been considering this approach for several years and I think it is now time to proceed..
Civil RICO provides for TRIPLE DAMAGES. Global losses from the global warming scam are in the trillions, including hundreds of billions on the USA.
We would sue the sources of warmist funding and those who have significantly profited from the global warming scam..
The key to starting a civil RICO action is to raise several million dollars to fund the lawsuit, which will be protracted and expensive.
If serious funders are interested, please contact me through http://www.OilsandsExpert.com
Regards, Allan MacRae
Calgary
The fact that coal fired power plants emit considerable amounts of heavy metals and other pollutants is also a part of the equation. There are no such pollutants from wind power.
when comparing alternative power sources on a national level, all factors should be counted in, including the health effects of small particulares and heavy metals. This make the cost comparison between wind and coal a bit more complicated.
And it doesn’t help on our understanding that the heavy metals lowers our IQ.
/jan
Poppycock. Whatever health effects there may be from our modern coal-fired power plants, they are miniscule, and deliberately overblown by those pushing so-called “green” energy for ideological reasons.
I guess I should have used the word balderdash instead. So my comment instead is;
Balderdash. Whatever health effects there may be from our modern coal-fired power plants, they are miniscule, and deliberately overblown by those pushing so-called “green” energy for ideological reasons.
But Jan, since wind power is intermittent, every megawatt of production capacity must be backed up by an additional megawatt of fossil fuel powered generating capacity. Additionally, the infrastructure required to build wind turbines as dirty as any other, as is the construction industry,…not to mention that the effing turbines dont last as long as advertised, nor do they ever generate anywhere near faceplate specs…theres that.
Look: if wind power made sense, people wouldn’t need subsidies to create capacity. its really that simple.
You need some backup capacity, but not necessarly fossil backup. Hydro is also renewable and since it is easy to store in water magazines, and quick to start and stop, it is a very good backup for wind and solar.
/Jan
hydropower isn’t exactly in favor in the states at least, because of the effects it has on spawning fish, as a result there have been no new hydropower generating facilities built in the States for decades.
You present an alternative that doesn’t, in fact exist.
In any case, the additional cost pf creating duplicate power generating capacity isn’t included in most cost analyses of nontraditional sources of electricity, do you agree?
Jan Kjetil Andersen
Hmmmn.
Show these measured heavy metal “traces” that can actually get through the particulate filter and electrostatic precipitators of coal-fired plants in the Western economies. (Not China nor India, but the Western economies.) it is physically impossible for such amounts as you imply emitted are released. Wind turbines REQUIRE the less-efficient continual running of fossil plants at standby to makeup for the unreliable variations of wind power in rapid, unpredictable shifts. Or the very rapid startup of gas turbines under emergency conditions that break the heavy-walled castings and thick forged steel pressure vessels of the turbines. A 200 million installed machine that should run for 30 years will be destroyed by cracks and fatigue in 3-7 years.
And, for worse measure, the millions of tons of dissolved acids and heavy metals that ARE released from China’s pits, mines, and dump ponds ARE draining from those waste pools from battery, wind mill and rare earth magnets, and heavy metal manufacturing sites NOT covered by ANY emissions policies nor safeguards.
But they are draining from communist factories and mines, and so are immune from your enviro-concerns, aren’t they?
The portion of US air pollution that comes from power plants are:
• Arsenic 62percent
• Acid gases 77 percent
• SO2 60 percent
• Nickel 28 percent
• Mercury 50 percent
• NOx 13 percent
• Chromium 22 percent
http://www.epa.gov/airquality/powerplanttoxics/powerplants.html
/Jan
so jan, how much arsenic SO2 and the like are actually being emitted?
percentages are useful, but actual amount might be more illuminating..
@Jan
You need to do your homework and look at all of the mining, processing and manufacturing processes related to the production of these beasts that are polluting the atmosphere just as much and with heavier, more dangerous poisons than emitted by the burning of coal. There are some rather dangerous materials in the magnets of the generators, and these rare-earth meatless are in the same ground as other even more dangerous elements. all released to the atmosphere in mining, manufacturing and disposal.
Also, the EPA in the USA basically will never let another dam, be built, thus Hydro is not an option, they are presently removing dams – then studies show that the elimination of the foliage caused by a dam-reservoir creates a net positive increase in CO2 balance. No trees/vegetation – no CO2 adsorbed. and worse yet, the rotting vegetation releases CO2.
Also, it seems like most of the EU is now burning Lignite (they call it coal, in the US, power plant workers call it dirt as it looks like hardened clay.) The US EPA basically outlawed burning that stuff many years ago. Check out its heat capacity, that means you have to burn twice as much to get out the same amount of electricity as decent coal. Then, the byproducts given off when it burns, Hint – look at China that is where all of their hazy atmosphere comes from. Remember the masks and horrendous atmosphere at the Olympics there? When the EU shuts down all of the Nukes you will witness it also. Move now while property values allows you.
According to the American lung association coal fired power plants produce more hazardous air pollution in the U.S. than any other industrial pollution sources.
• More than 400 coal-fired power plants located in 46 states across the country release more that 386,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants into the atmosphere each year.
• Particle pollution from power plants is estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people a year.
http://www.lung.org/about-us/our-impact/top-stories/toxic-air-coal-fired-power-plants.html
Coal is quite clean. Standards were upped considerably with the sulfur scare a few decades back and continue to improve – with real technological improvement. Meanwhile, emissions from an average coal plaint in Wisconsin are equal to or even more dilute than levels found in the surrounding environment. Except for CO2 and steam. (You can be pro-technological improvement and pro-coal. You can be anti-technological improvement and pro-wind.)
Another critical piece of information about hidden costs that EIA does not include
The INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY RESEARCH in their report called HARD FACTS state
The American Tradition Institute conducted a study
to calculate wind’s “hidden costs” They found
that when the hidden costs were taken into account,
including
• the cost of fossil fuel power as back-up
when the wind is dormant,
• the additional cost of transmission that frequently occurs with wind farms
due to the inaccessibility of the best wind resources,
• the cost of wind’s favorable tax benefits in
‘accelerated depreciation’,
• and a shorter estimated life of a wind turbine of 20 years (versus 30 years
assumed in most cost estimates)
• the cost of wind power is if natural gas is used to back-up the wind
energy or 19.2 cents per kilowatt hour if coal is used as the back-up fuel
then the costs are 1.7 to 2.2 times the 8.66 cents per kilowatt hour estimate the
EIA is using for generating electricity from wind in its models
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Hard-Facts-May-2014-Final.pdf
If you also read the IER report called WHAT IS THE TRUE COST OF ELECTRICITY
Electricity from New Wind Three Times More Costly than Existing Coal
WASHINGTON – Today, the Institute for Energy Research released a first-of-its-kind study calculating the levelized cost of electricity from existing generation sources. Our study shows that on average, electricity from new wind resources is nearly four times more expensive than from existing nuclear and nearly three times more expensive than from existing coal. These are dramatic increases in the cost of generating electricity. This means that the premature closures of existing plants will unavoidably increase electricity rates for American families.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/what-is-the-true-cost-of-electricity/
The graph below further illustrates how the EIA data is distorted.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=22452
This graph clearly shows that the average monthly or yearly capacity factor is not 35% which EIA use for their levelized electricity calculations and comparisons for wind turbines vs conventional options like coal and nuclear . Using the 35% factor instead of 20- 25% lowers the cost per kwh and makes it look more competitive when in fact it may not be so.
An engineer acquaintance at a nuke that is threatened with closure over costs notes that the underlying cause of the threat is that wind is on a different economic footing. Wind not only keeps the nuke plant from producing at capacity and requires technical use of the nuke plant at the nuke plant’s cost in order for wind to sell its energy, the nuke plant must price its electricity under a different, unsubsidized structure competing with fossil fuels in an auction. All necessary by green government interference.
Willis wrote: “Per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy produced from solar and wind, there is a subsidy to the producers of about two cents/kWh.”
As herkimer points out, that is only the tip of the iceberg of wind subsidies. I had not seen the report that herkimer links to, but the American Tradition Institute report “The Hidden Cost of Wind Electricity” is quite good. It is a rough but fair attempt at finding the true costs.
A good example of a hidden subsidy for wind is the $7 billion that ERCOT (the Texas grid operator) just spent on upgrades to the transmission grid to better accommodate wind power. It is apparently paid for by charging electricity customers more, not by charging the wind producers for the upgrades. That amounts to a $7 billion gift from the ratepayers to the wind producers, who can now get a better price for the subsidized electricity they produce.
Misinformation continues to be fed to the public about global warming issues. This is what Paul’s article addresses. Here are some other examples.
• NOAA and Karl et al who alter observable climate data at will and seem to issue biased reports to suit political agenda
• EPA who seems to creates impossible and over restrictive environment regulations to shut down coal plants and invents unsupportable “ carbon pollution”
• Energy Dept. that continues to misinform the public about the true cost of wind turbine energy
• EIA who claims to be neutral but seems to create and issue biased levelized cost data favouring renewables
• Environmental consultants who do the bidding of the government in order to qualify for free research money
• Universities and science societies who fail to police and rein in the flawed global warming science in order to get governments grants
• Rich billionaires who fund only those politicians who support their global warming initiatives
• Special interest groups and supplier industry that benefit from all the subsidies , tax benefits , grants
• Politicians who support carbon taxes and cap and trade taxes, not to fight climate change, but to raise more taxes which they use for other pet purposes
Here is the latest example of not telling the public the real facts about wind energy as already noted in the earlier or previous posts
WIND TECHNOLOGIES MARKET REPORT
According to the 2014 Wind Technologies Market Report released today by the Energy Department and its Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, total installed wind power capacity in the United States grew at a rate of eight percent in 2014 and now stands at nearly 66 gigawatts (GW), which ranks second in the world and meets 4.9 percent of end-use electricity demand in an average year. The United States was the global leader in total wind energy production in 2014. The report also finds that wind energy prices are at an all-time low and are competitive with wholesale power prices and traditional power sources across many areas of the United States.
Well Willis, I’ve at times taken issue with you for your cantankerousness, but this time it has really paid off.
Fantastic article. Well done.
Good article, Willis. However, as I try to tell people here in Canada, if the UK/EU/UN support any action, do the EXACT opposite. You will only benefit, and be better off for it. Oh. And never trust a Brit’s word on anything. They created the asinine gubermint we now have.
Imagine if the spawn of a Commie and the village hippy idiot, gets elected. Justin will do to Canada what Kathleen Wynn has done to Ontario.
In the states we have out front a village hippy idiot, a career crook and a hustler from brooklyn that became a multi billionate realeatate tycoon that wings campaign speeches like hes on the street corner in brooklyn. I have no idea how this will turn out but you cannot write this stuff.
These policies sound ridiculous, unless you keep in mind that all these people and groups want to reduce the population substantially, and starvation is the way to go. Driving up fuel and food costs in a cooling world is a terrific method to eliminate the pesky poor, the staving attend to their dead.
Willis:
The poor have a role to play in this war, their duty is to use less energy, sweat in the summer, shiver in the winter, pay more in taxes, pay more for energy, and then die.
Get with the plan.
Although “green” energy policies do essentially rob from the poor, they have a far more insidious and damaging effect on the overall economy, and on democracy itself by putting further economic stress on, and further shrinking the middle class. We are shooting ourselves in the foot ecomically, for absolutely no reason. And as we all know, it is only wealthy, vibrant economies who are able to put resources into cleaning up their environment. A vibrant economy can offer the poor a way out of poverty through jobs, instead of government handouts which only make them dependent.
I like science better then economics as a study. At least when science and politics mix it is obvious. When economics and politics mix it is nothing I care to discuss. At least with cagw we have physics and chemistry. Its pretty hard to lie about science to everybody forever. Climate change is testing this.
These numbers put me in mind of those impoverished regions where the self professed ‘Helpers of the poor” have held elected office for generations.
Their only measurable effect?
More poor.
Detroit being a proud North American example.
However when you view them as parasites their actions are very rational, no matter how the money flows, our “helpers” get their cut.
Given that self reliant,informed citizens are the natural opponent of such freeloaders, one can see why government funded academia treats taxpayers as the enemy.
Charlatans, high priests and witch doctors have always relied on FUD.
Have to quibble here:
“one of the fossil-fuel subsidies in the US is the tax exemption for diesel used by farmers and fishermen”
That’s not a subsidy by most definitions.
Correct. In th US, on-highway fuel has a road use tax collected at the point of sale for non-commercial vehicles. Commercial vehicles pay road taxes separately by mileage per state, typically.
It would not be right to collect road-use tax on vehicles that don’t use roads!
Willis,
Excellent points (as usual). I do take issue with your statement that Robin Hood took to from the rich, and gave to the poor. Actually, he took from government bureaucrats who became rich by taking from the poor (for example, the Sheriff of Nottingham). He then gave it back to the poor.
Sir John Houghton; the deeply religious, skull faced, puritanical, former cochair of the UN IPCC wrote that climate change was a “moral issue” and that efforts to combat it would “contribute powerfully to the material salvation of the planet from mankind’s greed and indifference.”
So, after reading this post I’d just like to ask dear John, “How’s that working out?”
Tom Judd
This is reminiscent of a quip about NGO charities ‘getting money from poor people in rich countries to give it to rich people in poor countries’.
Home energy costs have lots of subsidized programs for the poor. IOW, it’s not really a regressive tax, as Willis claims. The only real regressive tax is the gasoline tax….and recall, by regressive, we mean fair, lol, cuz everyone pays the same.
I might dispute you. I’m living on Social Security Disability payments. I’m on medical oxygen and in my home I have a plug in oxygen concentrator which, besides supplying me with oxygen, can also supply a pump which fills a travel tank with 2,000 psi of oxygen. Both devices are energy hogs yet there is no provision whatsoever for a modification in my electrical bill to compensate the costs of operating them.
Thanks, Willis. A brilliant but very sad article.
Historically, not a new thing though, this fleecing of the poor by the very rich.
If you cannot stay in business or make,a profit on the merits of your product or service you do not need to be in business. You certainly don’t need my tax dollars. Subsidies are unjust and they distort the one crucial aspect of an economy; information.
Nothing new here though this presentation of the facts is more lucid and succinct than most. The rich have always taken from the poor. The peasants in feudal times, sharecroppers in more recent times, the proletariat in the iron curtain countries and the rank and file in today’s various types of governments have always been preyed upon. And the taking has always, and continues to be, by force of arms, or the threat thereof. Just try not paying your taxes and eventually government employees with guns will come to visit you. Today’s systems for redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich are simply more complex and devious. And all forms of government, today,eventually get down to some form of crony capitalism, even communist China as even partial capitalism works better than complete central planning in poducing economic success.
As if it isn’t bad enough that the Greenie thieves have to rob from taxpayers and ratepayers alike just to stay in business, but they, along with those in cahoots add insult to injury by pretending they are doing this “for the good of the planet”. It’s an outrage.
“Raising energy costs sentence the global poor to further impoverishment, sickness, and even death.”
Even death? I thought that was the purpose of the excercise. The target being: the useless eaters and those welfare recipents from a different and more caring political age – now, however, finding themselves excess to requirements in an overpopulated world..
I have a question – If clouds can block the sun and cool the earth below, what about solar panels? They block the Sun, all day long. Also, we all know that a nice breeze can cool you down on a humid day. How much energy do windmills rob from the wind, slowing them down and lessening the cooling effect, downwind? Not a scientist, probably a dumb question, but I am curious about how the various types of energy transfers balance out.
While I am a true fan of your essays in this forum, I am underwhelmed by this finding. Of course most of the benefit of a tax subsidy goes to the people who pay taxes, in rough proportion to the taxes they pay. Residential subsidies, for improved insulation, solar photovoltaics, etc., account for the vast majority of “green” tax subsidies. If those making over $200,000 are harvesting 56% of the residential tax subsidies, but are paying 56% of the taxes (which is approximately true), then these “green” subsidies make the tax code neither more progressive (as some might wish), nor less progressive (as others might wish).
However, I am in total agreement with you about the disproportionate burden increased energy costs places on the poor. What is regressive in the extreme is the burden of increased energy-related prices on the cost of just about everything for those of limited means.
UnfrozenCavemanMD August 30, 2015 at 10:16 am
Thanks for the compliment, Doc. However, I fear you miss my point. They have decided to fight evil carbon, and the way they’ve decided to do it is to help finance luxury cars for the rich. You can justify that any way you want. I still find it a bizarre and horribly unjust way to fight any war, even a war on carbon.
In addition, you didn’t read the underlying paper. You say:
They give graphs in the paper that show that your claim is not true. Even when you account for relative wealth, there is STILL extra money flowing towards the rich.
But again, that misses my point. A bunch of rich people sat around and decided that the way the US Government could truly be of use in the fight against CO2 is to subsidize the purchase of expensive fossil-fuel-powered electrical toys for the rich … you may find that explainable and justifiable under some rubric or other.
I don’t.
w.
Besides the deplorable aspect of having the world’s most powerful (Obama’s not quite done yet), and wealthy (aggregate wealth; and again, Obama’s not done yet) country subsidizing a rich man, or woman’s, electric playtoy (I’m thinking about a car here in case you have other thoughts) to the detriment of its poorer inhabitants there is the additional deplorable aspect in that this car the country is subsidizing is also a wienee car. Yes, I’m talking about the Tesla. And yes, it is a wienee car. In fact, the wieniest of wienee cars.
It’s been said that the the speed limit free German Autobahn is the anvil on which the world’s finest cars are forged. So, a collection of wieners took the wienee car out for a spin on that anvil to see if it would prove to be forged steel or a limp noodle. These kilometer illiterate wiensters were zipping (a gross exaggeration) along at 90 kmh in their Tesla. Of course everybody was passing them including geriatrics walking their Dachsunds. I mean, for chrissake, 90 kmh is equivalent to 55 mph which, when it was in force, nobody but nobody in the US drove at either. And these guys are on the autobahn! Ah, but then they decided to let ‘er rip! 90 kmh. 100 kmh. 110 kmh. 120 kmh. One of the wiensters goes; ‘Whoee, this is faaast!’ They actually move over into the left lane at that speed. Memo, to the wiensters; 120 kmh is less than 75 mph which is almost the legal limit in control freak Illinois. And, it’s also a rear end collision on the autobahn in the left lane. Alas, that didn’t happen because that 120 kmh became 130, then 140. Our daredevil wiensters did, however, notice a rather significant armada of traffic building behind them. Ya’ think? Anyway, they got the wiener mobile up to about 150 to 160 kmh; about 90-98mph. Heck, I got my 90 year old mother’s Mercury Grand Marquis up to 100 mph in Montana a few years back while she was in it, and she was happy we were getting to where we were going faster.
Faaast!
Now, let me ask you. Would you be proud to inform somebody that you’re a citizen of a country that subsidizes the purchase of something where its only accomplishment is backing up traffic for miles on the autobahn. I’m surprised that action didn’t start another World War.
I’m not making any of this up. Just Google ‘video of German autobahn’ and you’ll see Tesla pop up and be able to watch a truly embarrassing YouTube video of what I’ve described.
It’s funny but it’s also quite pathetic. A year or so ago Car & Driver did a comparison between a Tesla and a … Ford Model T. From their home base in Michigan to New York the Tesla got there faster than the Model T by … 2 hours. Progress?
I mean, c’mon, if we’re going to subsidize toys for wealthy people why don’t we at least be honest and subsidize Ferraris?
I’ve had a judge get very mad at me for doing 90 mph.
So I was very careful when letting my BMW run out to 140 mph, on an empty American highway.
Only did that once (the car was limited to 155 mph).
Congratulations! That’s faster than I’ve ever gone. Years ago a coworker got me up to 120 mph in his Camaro.
I did have an opportunity to drive my Alfa Romeo Milano through Montana back in 1998 when there was no speed limit in the state. 782 miles in 9 1/2 hours with stops. Glorious!
Someday I’ll divulge some of my speeding tricks to you. One hint is that Ford Crown Vics and Mercury Grand Marquis are excellent speedsters. Police don’t look for those kind of cars to be speeding. Especially really fast.
Tom J
Except Crown Vic’s had speed limiters on them in Canada and when you hit the limit the engine shut right down. Scary the first time but kinda fun after you figured it out ;-). I had two of them. Great cars.
Our new “witch doctors” , “shaman’s” and or “medicine men” now chant the “Climate Change” chant in unison from MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, C-Span, in a never ending mind numbing chorus that now has the deliberately miss-informed, miss-educated, and dumb-ed down population lusting to be saved by the tax credit for wind energy fake etal other medicines these co-corrupt liars dish out 24/7/365.