We Vote on Tuesday Because…..?

HT: Carpe Diem

Battery Maker A123 Goes Under: More DOE Money Down the Drain

'Ultimately, the fate of US battery makers will remain tied to that of the electric car itself. And for now, no battery technology can compete cost-wise with the internal combustion engine.

“The outlook in the near future for electric cars does not look that promising,” says Daniel Scherson, an electrochemist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. “They are still just too expensive.” ' - nature.com, 10/24/2012

Link to the entire article appears below:

http://www.nature.com/news/pioneering-battery-maker-files-for-bankruptcy-1.11646

GM Bail Out, Upon Further Review, 7 of 10 GM Vehicles Made Outside the USA

ObamaCare Guts Medicare Advantage: A Video from Oversight.house.gov

Richard Epstein, The Means of Production and The Zebra Changes Stripes

“Today there is little general sentiment in the United States or abroad in favor of the collective ownership of the means of production that bore the brunt of Hayek’s withering criticism. Instead the newer pattern is to preach the virtue of markets in the abstract, and then to insists that government regulation of private enterprises is necessary to correct the legion of supposed specific market failures that arise in complex modern institutions.” (1)


“Rather, regulation takes certain elements from the owner’s bundle of rights and transfers them to the state, where they again fall prey to the same difficulties that arose when central planning was defended on a grand scale.” (2)


"Even the failure and disintegration of socialism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has not led to a clear response to the next question: if government ownership of the means of production is so bad, why is government regulation of the private means of production so good?" (3)

　

“…..there is today (fortunately) very little support for the direct government ownership of the means of production. As a political theory today, the socialist remnant operates on a different level. At a personal level, it speaks to the alienation of the individual, stressing the need for caring and sharing and the politics of meaning. At a regulatory level, it seeks to identify specific sectors in which there is market failure and then to subject them to various forms of government regulation. It removes more and more activities from the private area by creating affirmative rights to housing, to education, to welfare, and to health care. The remnant of socialism works, as it were, on the installment plan, where it acts as a powerful counterpoint to the vision of the night-watchman state, chiefly concerned with the maintenance of public peace and order.” (4)


Notes

　

　
(1) Simple Rules for a Complex World, Richard Epstein, Harvard University Press, 1995, preface pages xii and xiii.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid, page 15.

(4) Ibid, page 23.

http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Rules-Complex-Richard-Epstein/dp/0674808215#_



 

What happens if there is an electoral college tie?

Milton Friedman’s 1979 Kansas State University Lecture on Free Trade

Eastwood's Empty Chair.......

Tesla Motors: When “Green” is Sold Upscale Via Taxpayer Subsidies and Debt Repayment Delays

Tesla Motors Inc. said it plans sell as many as 8 million shares at about $28.25, raising as much as $225 million to avert a cash squeeze amid production delays.

The Palo Alto, Calif., electric-car maker earlier said it hoped to raise about $130 million by offering about 5 million shares after receiving a waiver on terms of a $465 million U.S. Department of Energy loan. The DOE on Monday agreed to delay a $14.6 million payment due next month to February and required the company to submit a plan by Oct. 31 that would repay the loan ahead of its 10-year schedule. - Wall Street Journal, 09/28/2012

Entire story is available at the following link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444712904578024071333648886.html