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T. Boone Pickens Has Another Big Idea
Is it just me, or do all of his business models depend on sticking the taxpayer with the cost of the project while funneling the profits to T. Boone Pickens?
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/011409...
WASHINGTON – T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday that he’s asked congressional Democrats to include funding to convert 350,000 commercial trucks to natural gas in their $800 billion stimulus package. Pickens’ latest lobbying effort comes as his “Pickens Plan” to replace foreign oil with natural gas and wind power – the focus of his own investments – appears to have lost momentum. Despite a $58 million advertising blitz and a web of grassroots supporters, none of Pickens’ recommendations have been enacted by Congress. Pickens said he discussed his requests Tuesday at a meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, and two other top Democrats. An effort to convert 18-wheelers and other large trucks to natural gas would cost $75,000 per vehicle, Pickens said, for an estimated total cost of $26 billion. The stimulus package being considered by Congress may cost as much as $800 billion. “350,000 [trucks] on natural gas would decrease – get this number – your [oil] imports by 5.14 percent,” Pickens said at a news conference after his meeting. A longtime Republican partisan, Pickens said top Democrats have been “very responsive” to his ideas. “They of course didn’t jump up and give me a standing ovation,” he said. “But we talked about the subject, and I think they are thinking about all of this very seriously.” Pickens also wants the government to fund new transmission lines to transport renewable energy -- if private capital can’t do the job. His partner at the Tuesday press conference, environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said the government should fund the transmission, to the tune of $150 billion. “I think we really are on emergency footing here,” Kennedy said. “We need to spend the money, and I think the government is probably the best one to do this and do it quickly.” Key Senate Democrats are likewise pushing the Obama administration to devote more stimulus funding for renewable energy investments. Sen. John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he agrees with some of Pickens’s goals, but not necessarily the need to further subsidize natural gas consumption. Kerry is a key proponent of devoting more stimulus funding to green energy investments. “I’m not convinced fossil fuels are in need of further subsidy,” Kerry said. “Given the power of natural gas as a foreign policy tool now, particularly being used by Russia in Europe and elsewhere, the more rapidly we can transform the better we’re going to be.”
T. BOONE PICKENS SEEKS STIMULUS FUNDS TO CONVERT TRUCKS TO NATURAL GAS
02:32 PM CST on Tuesday, January 13, 2009
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- Stephen M. Smith
Holy cow. Can somebody lock that guy Pickens up before he hurts us?
Jeesh! What a JERK! It's almost beyond describing!
So, what you're saying is that there can be NO advancement when politicians move forward with economic plans liek this? What about the moon program?
Clearly, ther ARE areas where government is the only entity that can make paradigm shifts, and this move away from oil is one.
No, that's not clear at all. Other technologies have not replaced petroleum for two reasons - one economic, the other political. The economic reason is that oil prices have not gone high enough yet to outwiegh the cost of new technologies. The political one is that the development of new technologies is itself practically strangled by government regulation and protectionism.
Without those factors, the price of pretroleum-based energy would continue to rise as it has been, but at the same time the costs of new technologies would plummet as free entry into the market is achieved. At that time, the opportunity cost of new technology as opposed to petroleum technology would approach zero, and petroleum would be quickly replaced.
Calling for more government to solve the problem when the government is already preventing the solution makes absolutely no sense.
As for NASA, you assume that just because the government has had a monopoly on space-related technology that the private sector would be incapable of doing it. That's a fallacy. In fact, the government usurped pre-existing private developments in many cases and incorporated them into their program. The program itself was a brilliant example of the wastefulness of government (funny, since it was supposed to be proving to the world the superiority of liberty over economic control). They did for the equivalent of billions of today's dollars what private companies could have done for millions.
Of course since the government is funded through theft and counterfeiture (and therefore has no incentive to be frugal), that is to be expected. They habitually spent $20 for a $2 pair of pliers, $5000 for a $200 volume of plastics, etc - giving vastly inflated manufacturing and supply contracts to politically-connected businesses. And they almost never used models in their testing. They built freaking multi-million dollar rocket ships just to see if they would work, and then built them again when they blew up on the ground. It was one gigantic pork barrel. The rationale for NASA is nothing short of the broken window fallacy writ large.
Government is not a necessary evil. Rather, it is an evil of such great power that it has been able to convince us of its necessity.