Professional Prevaricators

 

 

                           Professional Prevaricators

        At times it seems almost as if we are being intentionally bombarded with the most egregious bullshit using the premise of the originator that, although it's mostly crap, some of it is bound to stick and will go into the mental banks of people that are prone to listen to such garbage. This is the technique used by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s architect of Nazi propaganda, before and during World War Two. Sadly, the “big lie” approach is alive and well and lives largely in the home of the Republican Party.

        As it turns out, not all of these are even politically motivated; sometimes they're just examples of the sheer stupidity of the originator. Here is one such example: “Tylenol ruins your ability to kill the Covid virus. An infected person with a fever is better off letting it run its course.” If this actually came from competent medical authority one would probably be well advised to listen and act on it. However, this is an Instagram post from a person named Ben Lynch who claims to be a practicing naturopathic doctor but has never been to medical school. Sadly, that will not keep some of his readers from believing it.

        Closer to home, we have the babblings of former governor Rick Scott who said, and I quote, "Thanks to the insane tax-and-spending spree of President Joe Biden and Democrats in Washington, we are seeing six straight months of raging inflation."  If any of this was true, it would be less offensive, but “tax and spend” is a resurrection of the pre-Reagan era mantra of the Right. President Biden has not, as of today, raised taxes because that requires an act of Congress, not an executive fiat, a fact which Scott certainly should (and does) know. Additionally, if any taxes were increased, if one looks at Bidens tax priorities, it would increase federal revenues, not add to the deficit. Scott knows this too; he just hopes you don’t. Let us analyze the reality here.

        Right of the bat, 2020 and 2021 were exceptional years, in that significant deficit spending was involved in fighting the global pandemic’s effects here in the US.  There is no actual study (yet) of how much more healthcare spending occurred because those who refused to vaccinate in 2021 added to already overloaded hospital costs, but I believe it to be significant. That said, Scott spoke of “insane spending” which must mean he has a short memory since “his President” (the currently indicted DJ Trump) introduced an even stranger concept- “reduce tax and spend more.”  We have seen and heard it before. Reagan ballyhooed his tax cut and the deficit increased. Trump’s tax cut has generated zero increase in federal revenues, but, in the first three (non-pandemic) years of his administration, the federal deficit steadily increased from the last Obama budget. This is worthy of note since Trump, as no President has done before him, harshly criticized Obama, even to the point of essentially blaming him for the housing bubble collapse which began two years before he took the oath of office. Trump extolled his tax cut and proclaimed the “best economy ever” even as the deficit soared.

         Numerous potential factors are at play as far as rising prices are concerned. Short-term supply interruptions, labor shortages, tariffs on imported goods (see: Trump, Donald), or simply the cyclical growth in consumer demand when the economy is recovering from a downturn. Economists looking at today’s inflation caution that the precise cause is hard to pin down, and they vary on how much impact the most recent spending is having, but all of them are clear that heavy spending is not just a Biden administration phenomenon. It started well before that, as the government tried to protect Americans and the economy from the ravages of a global pandemic.                

    Biden has not raised any taxes and cannot by himself. Scott is blaming him for what he (Scott) thinks he might do. Secondly as to the “insane spending,” over two-thirds of the spending Scott is speaking of was signed into law by Donald Trump. Finally, for now, Scott also ignores the fact that his home state of Florida is one of the red states which extended unemployment benefits to anti-vaxxers who quit or were fired because they refused Covid vaccination. Yep, Rick Scott also blames Biden for inflation, ignoring what every sane economist has said regarding supply chain issues and increased post-recession demand spikes. Scott, himself a multi-billion-dollar Medicare fraud scofflaw who, in an honest arena would have been incarcerated for it, is so much less than Florida deserves.

        Finally, for now, let us revisit a man who, if he is speaking, is lying. Who might that be? Why Tucker Carlson, of course. It’s as if when Rush Limbaugh died Carlson saw an opening for the post of “media bullshitter in chief.”

        Carlson is a bit different, in that that most professionals tend to lead with a germ of truth to enhance viewer gullibility before they go to full bore dissimulation. Not old Tucker. He is so convinced that his Faux News bully pulpit is bullet proof that he just jumps right in. The Carlson whopper I’m about to discuss is yesterday’s news, but so typical of the man that when I stumbled on it, I had to rehash the events in question. Here’s what he said, verbatim: “Unbeknownst to most people, the Green New Deal came to Texas; the power grid in the state became totally reliant on windmills. Then it got cold, and the windmills broke, because that’s what happens in the Green New Deal." (Note:   I have seen actual “windmills” in Holland, and they don’t produce electricity, but hey, that’s Carlson.)  

         No, it’s what happens for other reasons unrelated to the use of wind power, and by the way, the Green New Deal is an idea which is neither federal policy nor a particularly good idea, but that’s another rant.

        For starters, yes, Texas does generate a lot of electricity with wind power. Their 17.8 Megawatts of generation leads the nation, but it must be noted that the figure represents just 10% of the winter energy supply in the Texas power grid. For comparison, wind power in Texas is a mere 22% of that produced by any of my three Submarines So how about the other 90 per cent? As it turns out, there are several factors which are “typically Texas” at work here: 

        First and foremost: Texas is the only state in the nation to not be linked to the national power grid, solely due to its fundamental business model: profit and lack of public interest meaningful regulation. Yes, that is correct, and when the Texas grid “shat its linen” during a record blizzard two years ago, there was no help to be had from neighboring states. Blaming wind turbines, which Texas Governor Abbott did initially before he walked back that claim when proven to have lied, has one great, gaping flaw.

         Both North and South Dakota, arguably the coldest states in the lower 48, generate a much higher percentage of electricity by wind turbine (over 30% in 2021). The Swedes and Finns also use wind turbines Remember the power outages there? Me neither, and that’s because wind turbine manufacturers build “freeze packs” for turbines used in low temperature applications. The largely underregulated Texas providers “went cheap “and consumers paid for it. But wait, what about the majority of Texas electric power production facilities which, by the way, run on fossil fuels? As it happened, the turbines which push gas through pipelines to the generation facilities failed, also improvidently lacking freeze protection. This is what happens when under-regulation and profit trump human considerations.

         During the period of outages, wholesale electric prices went to as high as $9,000/megawatt-hour which was only limited as a "system cap", under the loosely regulated state power authority compared to a more typical $50/MWh. Customers with pricing plans based on wholesale prices faced much larger bills. Some customers signed up for wholesale variable rates plans allowed by the Texas deregulated electricity market, found themselves facing over $5,000 bills for five days of service during the storm. The final estimate of the human cost is over 250 deaths due to conditions related to the power outages. Of course, that wasn’t the Ted Cruz family who flew to Mexico.

        Carlson simply takes any pot shot available at things, people, and principles which don’t align with his white supremacist, anti-government and complete disregard for the truth, approach. Faux News is apparently fine with that.