PLEADING WITH JOURNALISTS: Please use MARGINAL electricity rates when telling us how cheap it is to drive an All Electric Vehicle. It is DISHONEST to quote the cheapest possible rate for electricity, when they know that it is the MARGINAL rate that we pay when we add an Electric Car to the household electricity budget.
I was just reading an article today in the SLO Tribune about the new Electric Honda Fit. I am a huge Honda fan (1974 Civic, 1983 Accord, 1994 Accord), or at least I was until we recently replaced the '94 Accord (manual trani) with a 2010 Hyundai Elantra Touring (automatic - bought in November 2009). The article in the Tribune points out how the average buyer can save $1,000 to drive 12,000 miles per year in the All Electric Honda Fit compared to the All Gas Honda Civic.
All good and well? Save $1,000, assumedly by charging batteries instead of buying gas.
Then the article goes on to quote an electricity rate of 12 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh). Pulling out my monthly electrical bill from PG&E, I find that I pay an AVERAGE of 19 cents per kwh. However, the marginal rate for the next kwh of electricity that I would pay, were I to own the All Electric Fit, would be 31 cents per kwh, or 260% higher than the rate quoted in the article. I'm sure that punitive marginal rate from PG&E would move the needle on the savings calculation from the article.
LITHIUM-ION BATTERY SUSTAINABILITY: Electric Honda Fit and Nissan Leaf Lithium-Ion type batteries are made from some pretty nasty materials that have to be mined out of the ground. I'll track down some scientific articles on this subject, but here's one I found in just a few minutes: Lithium Battery Sustainability Analysis. This article notes that the Lithium-Manganese battery used in the Nissan Leaf is composed of a number of chemical compounds and aluminum and polyethylene foils, copper foil, graphite, and lithium based salt brines. Last time I checked, mines used a lot of dynamite and diesel and electricity to come up with their desired end product (see the popular reality TV show Gold Rush, to see how much material and energy is expended to get an ounce of gold).
BACKGROUND: My family (2 parents, kids) are careful users of electricity, especially considering that my wife and I spend all day behind a computer for our work. We routinely spend less than our neighbors on electricity, despite the fact that we both work all day at home. In fact, that's the reason we temporarily decommisioned our All Electric Hot Tub until we could plumb a Natural Gas Heater up to it instead. Because of the punitive marginal PG&E rates, our Hot Tub (back when we used it), added AT LEAST $100 per month to our electrical bill. Had we been charged the same rate per kwh for the FIRST kwh as for the LAST, our hot tub would only be costing us $30 / month in electricity, and we would probably still be using it.
NOTE: I am not pro or con All Electric Vehicles. However, I am in favor of factual reporting about the economics and environmental impacts of competing technologies, such as gas vs. electric vehicles.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
NATIONAL: ObamaCare Prevails with the Supremes
UPDATE July 3, 2012: Romney and Obama refuse to call the mandate a Tax, and BOTH presidential candidates insist that it is a penalty, thus illustrating how desperately Justice Roberts needed to preserve the Commerce Clause of the Constitution AND uphold ObamaCare. For me, the Supremes are the law of the land, and if the Court rules it a tax, then the powers-that-be have spoken, and it should be called a tax (even though it isn't!).
There are plenty of articles out there explaining the recent victory on Thursday 6/20/2012 of ObamaCare at the Supreme Court. The massive 2,500+ page legislation is way too complicated for ANYBODY, not to mention me and my puny brain, to comprehend. This link to an article is as good as anything at explaining the result of the Supremes decision: Supreme Court Upholds Obama's Health Care Law.
Rather than try to tackle the complexity, I'll just make a few key points that are seldom made re: ObamaCare.
1) I always wondered, if fixing the health system in this country was so urgent, why did we have to wait 4 years for it to kick in? After the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor, if we took 4 years to build up our military (a vastly larger job), we'd all be speaking Japanese now and bowing instead of waving. There's a reason that our smart President decided ObamaCare should kick in AFTER his second inauguration - I'll leave you to guess what that might be? (Hint: ObamaCare goes into effect AFTER a certain President has been re-elected).
2) The Supremes essentially told us that the government cannot compel us to do anything it wishes, but it can tax us incessantly until we have no rational alternative but to acquiesce to their demands. To wit: the government cannot make us eat broccoli (which, BTW, I love and eat all the time), but it may levy a no-broccoli-eating tax on me until we do.
3) Clearly, ObamaCare is a tax program that throws more dollars at healthcare while fixing few of the underlying problems. The last thing a country staggering under a massive soon-to-be $17,000,000,000,000 debt and a sluggish economy (and that's generous) is a new Rube Goldberg-styled health care entitlement.
4) Chief Justice Roberts was apparently desperate to uphold ObamaCare and found a most convoluted way to do so. Though rejecting that it met the requirements of the Constitution's Commerce Clause, it passed the test by being seen as both being a Tax and Not-a-Tax (aka Penalty) concurrently! Amazing sleight-of-hand for Justice Roberts- Bravo. As a Tax, the Mandate is clearly constitutional. As a Not-a-Tax Mandate, the Court did NOT have to wait until the tax was levied (i.e., not until 2014) to make a ruling on it (try googling "Anti-Injunction Act"). Roberts treated the mandate as a tax when a tax was favored constitutionality, and as a penalty when a penalty was similarly favored. Wow - didn't know you could do that. Roberts created a Tax/Penalty hybrid that's never been seen before - does that mean we'll be seeing such a creation again?
5) I'm actually somewhat relieved that ObamaCare passed Supreme Court jurisprudence largely unscathed: I just couldn't stand the idea of dealing with the near-term chaos that would ensue, had it been struck down in its entirety. Now, as our leader Pelosi pointed out so clearly to us: "we're gonna get to find out what's in the new Health Care Law". I know, she didn't say that. What she said was basically that Congress would have to pass ObamaCare before anyone could find out what was actually in it (it makes me ill every time I hear her utter her famous remarks).
6) So far, the things that personally benefit me about Obamacare: My kids can stay on my insurance until they are 26 years old (allowing them to take jobs that do NOT offer healthcare for a few extra years); preventative health care is provided through insurance companies at little or not cost to me (but don't think you do not pay: whatever is saved through bypassing the deductible is passed on as part of the rising medical expenses). These things could have been passed by themselves WITHOUT the massive ObamaCare package.
There are plenty of articles out there explaining the recent victory on Thursday 6/20/2012 of ObamaCare at the Supreme Court. The massive 2,500+ page legislation is way too complicated for ANYBODY, not to mention me and my puny brain, to comprehend. This link to an article is as good as anything at explaining the result of the Supremes decision: Supreme Court Upholds Obama's Health Care Law.
Rather than try to tackle the complexity, I'll just make a few key points that are seldom made re: ObamaCare.
1) I always wondered, if fixing the health system in this country was so urgent, why did we have to wait 4 years for it to kick in? After the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor, if we took 4 years to build up our military (a vastly larger job), we'd all be speaking Japanese now and bowing instead of waving. There's a reason that our smart President decided ObamaCare should kick in AFTER his second inauguration - I'll leave you to guess what that might be? (Hint: ObamaCare goes into effect AFTER a certain President has been re-elected).
2) The Supremes essentially told us that the government cannot compel us to do anything it wishes, but it can tax us incessantly until we have no rational alternative but to acquiesce to their demands. To wit: the government cannot make us eat broccoli (which, BTW, I love and eat all the time), but it may levy a no-broccoli-eating tax on me until we do.
3) Clearly, ObamaCare is a tax program that throws more dollars at healthcare while fixing few of the underlying problems. The last thing a country staggering under a massive soon-to-be $17,000,000,000,000 debt and a sluggish economy (and that's generous) is a new Rube Goldberg-styled health care entitlement.
4) Chief Justice Roberts was apparently desperate to uphold ObamaCare and found a most convoluted way to do so. Though rejecting that it met the requirements of the Constitution's Commerce Clause, it passed the test by being seen as both being a Tax and Not-a-Tax (aka Penalty) concurrently! Amazing sleight-of-hand for Justice Roberts- Bravo. As a Tax, the Mandate is clearly constitutional. As a Not-a-Tax Mandate, the Court did NOT have to wait until the tax was levied (i.e., not until 2014) to make a ruling on it (try googling "Anti-Injunction Act"). Roberts treated the mandate as a tax when a tax was favored constitutionality, and as a penalty when a penalty was similarly favored. Wow - didn't know you could do that. Roberts created a Tax/Penalty hybrid that's never been seen before - does that mean we'll be seeing such a creation again?
5) I'm actually somewhat relieved that ObamaCare passed Supreme Court jurisprudence largely unscathed: I just couldn't stand the idea of dealing with the near-term chaos that would ensue, had it been struck down in its entirety. Now, as our leader Pelosi pointed out so clearly to us: "we're gonna get to find out what's in the new Health Care Law". I know, she didn't say that. What she said was basically that Congress would have to pass ObamaCare before anyone could find out what was actually in it (it makes me ill every time I hear her utter her famous remarks).
6) So far, the things that personally benefit me about Obamacare: My kids can stay on my insurance until they are 26 years old (allowing them to take jobs that do NOT offer healthcare for a few extra years); preventative health care is provided through insurance companies at little or not cost to me (but don't think you do not pay: whatever is saved through bypassing the deductible is passed on as part of the rising medical expenses). These things could have been passed by themselves WITHOUT the massive ObamaCare package.
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