Category Archives: Musings

The (Solar) Farmer in the Dell

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Here in the south, where the summer sun blazes and bakes man and beast and flowering field, growers often cover their youngest and most delicate plants with shade cloth.

A couple of weeks ago, driving to the Outer Banks, I saw a field full of shaded frame structures, under which appeared to be growing row upon row of young flowers. The shaded frames stretched off into the distance, and it occurred to me that if the cloth protecting those plants was photovoltaic, it could allow enough light through to promote photosynthesis (commercial shade cloth comes different grades, by percent of sun it passes) while generating some moderate amount of electricity. It might produce an appreciable amount by virtue of providing so much surface area.

I found a couple of web pages and recent articles that documented progress in developing photovoltaic cloth. Whether it can be made cost-effective, efficient enough to be worthwhile, and durable enough to withstand years of wind and sun and rain, remains to be seen. But if it could be made cheaply enough, farmers in hot spots around the world could benefit from it. I don’t know if it would generate enough electricity to sell, or just enough to run some of the farmers’ own devices, but in either case it seems like a beneficial arrangement.

If I had money to invest, I might invest in that kind of research.

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Image: “Corolla Sunrise,” by jvader33, licensed under Creative Commons, from Flickr

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Back to Grinding Stones …

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… or something like that.

After my closest approximation to an actual vacation in many years (i.e., a trip away from home and Internet, during which I worked very little [on one or two days I didn’t do any work at all]), I’ve found it very hard to get back into the groove.

I’ve got to start turning the grindstone faster. So much to do …

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Lack of Security at the Department of Homeland Security

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So the Secretary of Homeland Security announced that DHS would remove the “right-wing extremist” report from their web site.* The horse-and-barn-door metaphor seems appropriate, because it’s a meaningless gesture: the report’s been cached and will continue to be available on other sites (for example, the Anti-Secrecy Society … a.k.a. the Federation of American Scientists).

The real question is, why was it on-line in the first place?

I have a copy of the report, which I downloaded almost a month ago; I don’t remember whether I got if off the DHS site, but I don’t think so. Notwithstanding the other controversy surrounding its contents I was more disturbed by the fact that several of the paragraphs are not marked FOUO, but instead are marked LES. Most people can recognize FOUO as “For Official Use Only,” but LES may not be as familiar. LES means “Law Enforcement Sensitive.”

How sensitive? The paragraph in the report that describes the LES marking says,

This product contains Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES) information. No portion of the LES information should be released to the media, the general public, or over non-secure Internet servers. Release of this information could adversely affect or jeopardize investigative activities.

Let’s see that again: “No portion of the LES information should be released to the media, the general public, or over non-secure Internet servers.”

I got the report over non-secure Internet servers. Who put it there? A reprimand would seem to be in order.

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*According to this report.

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The World Owes Me Nothing

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Not too long ago I had a brief conversation on Twitter* about whether the world owes us anything. I say, the world owes me nothing.

I’ve heard people say, “I didn’t ask to be born,” and proceed to demand recompense from the world.

I say, the world didn’t ask for any of us to be born. We owe something for what we have, and get.

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*See http://twitter.com/GrayRinehart.

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Bonus Entry on Taxes: Guest Post on Withholding

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My series on taxes officially ended yesterday, but here’s a bonus entry submitted via e-mail by my college buddy David O’Nan:

Personally, although tax changes are needed badly, the first action that should be taken is to do away with withholding. Make every taxpayer pay a check to the government every month for taxes and another check for their FICA/etc (and quit allowing them to move surpluses from one to the other to hide their spending). It’s so “hidden” now that most only have general ideas and don’t feel the pain the same way they would if they consciously had to pay the taxes. And any changes are similarly “hidden.” If every time they made a change in taxes you had to change the amount you paid (up or down), everyone will know exactly the difference rather than relying on pundits and wonks and people with agendas to tell them a slanted view of the impact.

People will start to think twice about what they expect government to fix when they get slapped upside the head with the tax bill the first few times. Once that object lesson is learned, then you could make better headway in addressing some of the ridiculous stuff that doesn’t raise widespread ire because the consequences are out there in the ether somewhere.

In a separate e-mail, he wrote,

It would be a fun idea to implement, but even if someone has direct-deposit and banks online, they still get to see the impact on every bank statement (paper or online). Every taxpayer already has a taxpayer ID number so it can’t be any more difficult to track than tax returns. Have them pay their tax within a month of the paycheck (more than one paycheck a month, more than one tax payment and FICA payment a month).

I don’t know about having to write so many checks based on how many paychecks you get — for those of us with multiple jobs, that would be a real pain. But I do know that my tax burden became much more real when I started paying estimated taxes, since part of my income has no withholding and my income fluctuates from time to time. So with respect to making it more obvious just how much everyone is paying in taxes, David is certainly on to something.

Thanks, David, for sending that in and letting me post it!

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For Those Overloaded on Inauguration Coverage …

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We all live through little slices of history every day, but not like today. More words will be spoken and written about today than we can ever count — especially with blogs and tweets and squirts and whatever-will-be-next-in-the-crazy-world-of-the-Internet — and certainly more than anyone will ever read. All the historians through all the years will never catch up with all the words written and to be written about today.

Because of that, I will only say: Congratulations, Mr. President, and good luck.

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Happy Civil Rights Day

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Here’s wishing you and yours a happy Civil Rights Day, with hope that your civil rights are intact. If you live in the U.S. and are a law-abiding citizen, I believe your civil rights are as secure as ever … despite the protestations of the fear-mongers in this and other media.

I cannot, of course, evaluate the condition of the civil rights of people from countries other than the U.S. If you do not enjoy the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I hope soon you will. Remember: no matter what your tyrants tell you, we in the U.S. desire only your freedom and friendship.

For those wrongly accused, denied their civil rights for illegitimate reasons, I wish for you justice.

But for people living in the U.S. who are plotting violence against our country, its leaders, or its institutions — no matter your ideological bent — you have no civil rights in my eyes. You abrogated your civil rights the minute you donated money to the terror-supporting organization; the second you agreed to do the bidding of your brooding, bellicose bosses; the instant you decided that your vision of unrest and death was preferable to our vision of peace and freedom. I hope the full force of our domestic intelligence apparatus is working to ferret you out of the holes in which you live and work and plot our downfall.

So, again, happy Civil Rights Day.

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A Micro (Really Micro) Economic Observation

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In the anti-gravity category:*

Last year, when gas prices were moving up toward record highs, the company that operates the vending machines in our building raised its prices. My twelve-ounce can of diet liquid caffeine carbonation went up, as did the prices of all the anti-diet items in the snack machine one pace to the left. This was concurrent with prices of almost everything everywhere going up and being blamed on the high gas price.

But since gas prices have come down to the lowest seen in years, the prices of these other things are still at their elevated levels.

The main effect of the lowered gas prices, then, appears to be higher profit margins for the purveyors of consumer goods. If they were wise, they’d plow those increased profits back into their businesses to improve their products, distribution systems and other practices, so that when the next increase in their operating costs comes along they don’t have to pass it on to the consumer right away — using the fat years to store away surplus for the lean years.

Wishful thinking.

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*I.e., the what-goes-up-doesn’t-always-come-down category.

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Missing A Sense of Perspective

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When I read the headline that Adolf Merckle, a German industrialist, had committed suicide over recent financial losses, I wasn’t too surprised: after all, accounts of businessmen jumping to their deaths after the 1929 stock market crash are legendary. When I read the early report, though, I thought there had to be more to the story.

The original story I saw highlighted Mr. Merckle’s $9.2 billion fortune and losses that were reportedly in the “hundreds of millions.” It seemed almost impossible to me that someone would choose suicide over losses that amounted to less than a tenth of their wealth.

And, as I suspected, there was more to the story. According to this Bloomberg report, “Merckle, 74, spent December negotiating with banks he owed about 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) to save the family empire he built over four decades.”

So he was struggling with the potential loss of over 70% of his personal fortune. That’s a lot, no doubt, and quite a shock to the system, but it still would have left him with a cool $2 billion or more. That’s a quite different position from folks who start off with fewer zeroes and end up with next to nothing.

Maybe my perspective is skewed because I don’t have a lot of zeroes behind my personal fortune. (In fact, like many people, my personal fortune is effectively nil, since most of what I have is largely owned not by me, but by the bank that holds the note on my house.) And maybe there’s still more to this story, more than will ever come out. But it’s a cautionary tale, and a warning that we should maintain a sense of perspective that emphasizes what we still have, rather than what we’ve lost.

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North Carolina Residents: Beware Another Tax Idea

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A couple of days ago Michelle Malkin wrote about a proposed law here in North Carolina that would assess fees on motorists based on how far they drive in a year. She included some very sound objections to the idea in her post, Nanny State alert: Meet the mileage police. My only quibble with her is over her characterization of it as a “nanny state” action, because its aim is not to protect us from ourselves or anything else; instead, it’s more a “greedy state” action, because it seems to be aimed solely at increasing revenue.

Why do they need to increase vehicle tax revenue? Because in the wake of high fuel prices, people started driving less … meaning less consumption … meaning less tax revenue. They want to make up shortfalls in the state government’s income.

On the surface, it seems fine that people who drive more should pay more — after all, people who use more electricity pay more. But while we may think of roads as public utilities, “consuming” your share of the road does not require someone to lay out the new roadway ahead of you or produce more roadway behind you because you’ve used it — unlike electricity that has to be generated and then is used up, or water that has to be treated before and after use. Once the road is built, it continues to exist for a long time, and the wear and tear of one vehicle at a time seems too miniscule to meter.

Speaking of the possibility of “metering” our vehicles, how much more state bureaucracy would be needed to collect this tax? The data collection, tax assessment, payment processing, accounting, disbursement, and tax fraud investigation would probably cost far more than this tax would ever produce. (I say that based not on knowledge of the numbers of people involved or any other specific facts, but rather on my own assessment of the inherent tendency of government offices to develop extra layers of oversight and other non-value-added functions.)

The same day that Ms. Malkin presented her argument against the tax idea, Raleigh area blogger Tabitha Hale took aim at the proposal in her post on Red County, NC Road-Use Tax A Privacy Violation? She looked at the issue from a different angle, considering the longer-term view in which GPS-capable data recorders would one day download driving patterns that would be used to assess the tax. Her argument against the bill is also a sound one.

The best case scenario would be for this proposal to be pulled from the table entirely; next best would be for it to die in committee; and next would be for it to be voted down. It seems little good can come from it. Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped our government in the past from passing laws that have caused more harm than good.

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