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CHAPTER FOUR - SHAREHOLDER’S REPORT

After grabbing their breakfasts separately, the group assembled in the front lobby of the Hard Rock Hotel at 9:00 am for Day Two of the continued trip eastward. The weather was as one might expect from Las Vegas in June, hot but dry without a cloud in the sky. Dutch passed around tanning lotion and was particularly stern with his warning to Dylan, something along the lines of “Use it or find yourself back in Victorville.”

Dylan was surprised to see that after driving just a short 10 miles east on Interstate 15 they were rapidly leaving signs of civilization. They were now on the Great Basin Highway traveling through the moonscape of eastern Nevada on the way to Utah. After they had rumbled across the Nevada desert about 45 minutes east of Las Vegas, Barry was pleased to see wind and solar powered farms situated side by side just off the highway. “That’s great to see. Just fantastic. I think that renewable energy sources like wind and solar can really transform our economy,” Barry said brightly. “And it can lead to a revolution in high-paying green jobs,” he added.

“Yeah, it certainly doesn’t hurt. Still, wind and solar only constitute only a minor portion of our total electricity generation, well under three percent,” Pete replied. “It’s not so much an alternative fuel source as it is a supplement.”

“Under three percent? What’s the hang up? This is clean energy, and we have abundant space in this country for both solar and wind farms. They should represent a substantial portion of our electrical generation, just like in Spain. I mean, they power pretty much the entire city of Seville by solar energy alone. Now that’s progress,” Barry declared.

Dutch rolled his eyes behind the relative secrecy of his Wayfarers, while Pete and Manny drew deep breaths. To make a comment like that, Barry must not have seen the definitive research report detailing Spain’s green jobs program written by a professor at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos – or perhaps he had and was merely assuming that his friends had not seen comparable analysis. It wasn’t pretty. The upshot was that these green jobs were heavily subsidized by the government to the tune of approximately $800,000 per solar power job created. In other words, each job created in the solar power industry had required an $800,000 subsidy from the Spanish government (or, more accurately, Spanish taxpayer) in order to exist. No large government subsidies, no jobs.

The professor also calculated that 2.2 jobs were lost or foregone within the rest of the economy for every job created in Spain’s renewable energy industry. This was due to the “opportunity cost” of deploying these dollars in the renewable energy industry as opposed to other industries that were not subsidized. Further, most of the jobs produced in the solar industry were temporary in nature, and only one-tenth of the jobs were placed in the longer-term aspects of operating and maintaining the plants. Even with all of this focus and fanfare on renewable energy, solar power failed to generate as much as 1% of Spain’s total electricity production in 2008. Muy poco, as they might say in the bodega.

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Barry was also well aware that Spain was struggling mightily with a dangerous budget deficit, a meaningful portion of which could be traced back to runaway government spending and its green jobs initiative in addition to its own dangerous flirtation with a speculative housing boom. It doesn’t seem logical to risk bankrupting a country in order to deliver a measly 1% in additional electricity generation at a net overall loss of jobs. A volunteer conservation program (such as lower thermostats in winter, higher in the summer) might get you that much in electricity savings or more and, best of all, it would cost you next to nothing to implement. And to lose additional jobs in other areas of the economy than were created in the green economy in order to satisfy a government’s social engineering objectives seemed like the worst of heavy-handed public policy. You don’t exactly “make that up in volume.”

These government-sponsored programs also had a pernicious countercyclical effect that doomed them from the start. Since the programs only existed due to government funding they were entirely at the mercy of this fickle capital source. When governments pull back their funding because of tough economic times or because of other priorities – and they always seem to do so – the industry is forced to stand on its own. When it cannot do so, the industry collapses in on itself like an exploding death star, further exacerbating the poor economic situation in the country.

“Barry, it’s all about efficiency,” Pete reasoned. “And solar and wind power just aren’t all that efficient, especially when it comes to the physical footprint needed. You need a lot more space to generate the same amount of energy from a relatively efficient natural gas plant. The wind and solar farms are somewhat expensive to build and, let’s face it, the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. So, these plants can be offline for lengthy periods. Plus, the high-density electrical storage technology is not far enough advanced to compete effectively. At the end of the day natural gas, nuclear power and oil are far more efficient. Use of those fuels costs a lot less to generate electricity. And, in the case of natural gas and oil at least, we’re flush with those resources. With nuclear power we continue to build out our capabilities.”

Barry felt that such carbon-based fuels were bad, so did his friend Stephen, who studied this issue very closely and counseled him on it. It was this mindset that led to a precarious energy situation in Barry’s world. The energy crisis in Barry’s world was of a political nature; it was not an issue of inadequate resources. Take a fishing boat off the coast of virtually any area of the United States for a few hours and you will be sailing in a vast seabed of petroleum and natural gas – one that could power the country for decades and decades. To forego tapping into these resources is to needlessly, even negligently, expose our national security to undue risks.

Consider the facts. In Barry’s world, the U.S. imports approximately 50% of its oil; in 1970, that number was only 24%. This was disconcerting to Barry. In fact, he had stated at a party that he attended in 2008 that he would like to see the country end its dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf, which was about 15% of our imported oil, within 10 years. His real achievement was expressing that solemn desire with a straight face since Barry generally did not support further drilling for U.S. petroleum.

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Domestic oil production was just over two billion barrels in 2010, down from 3.7 billion in 1980. Moreover, while domestic oil production was up a bit in Barry's world from its lows of a few years earlier this is because most of the additional supply was being extracted from private and state, not federal, lands. The government in Barry’s world was being miserly in granting licenses to drill on public lands. It was difficult to understand why given the amount of government revenue that could be generated from additional drilling.

This was the case despite the fact that the Outer Continental Shelf held an estimated 85 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (an 18 year supply), and those numbers are from an old survey which did not use the latest capabilities for locating and drilling for oil and gas. As such, they are almost certainly understated. The amount of potential energy resources offshore is assuredly much higher than that. The Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (“ANWR”) has another 10 billion barrels of oil and volumes of natural gas. Granting access to this amount of oil alone would increase proven reserves in this country by a factor of one third. ANWR could be drilled on a footprint the size of a moderate-sized American airport, hardly a disruptive endeavor in the moonscape of Alaska that receives only a handful of visitors each year. A Wharton Econometrics study estimated that 700,000 jobs could be created by tapping into this vital resource.

It’s kind of hard to substitute for foreign oil when you’re not willing to go and harvest any of your own resources. Barry may have been thinking that he would buy additional oil from his Canadian neighbors but he and his friends were adamantly opposed to the Canadians building a pipeline that would ship their oil to the lower 48 states. The Canadians, who had no such reservations about harvesting their own national resources, had other more eager suitors, such as the Chinese, and were more than willing to sell to them instead. They could, and would, they assured us simply point this pipeline to their west coast instead of towards the southern part of the U.S. Barry also might have been thinking about buying from the Brazilians, but they also seemed to be interested in selling to the Chinese, who were also offering various points of access for Brazilian exports to their burgeoning domestic market.

In Barry’s world the U.S. was the only major power that was, at best, indifferent to the vast wealth of energy it controlled both onshore and offshore. At worst, it was entirely contemptuous of its own energy riches, and was acting so to its extreme peril. Many countries such as Brazil were aggressively ramping up their exploration and drilling activities. Even Cuba, that bastion of free market economics and cutting edge energy development, was operating a project to drill for the oil off its own shores within its territorial limits.

In Barry’s America we derived about 45% of our electricity from coal, 25% from natural gas, 20% from nuclear, 7% from hydro power, and about 2% from wind. Solar power hardly makes a dent in the country’s electrical power generation needs. Coal is relatively cheap to pull from the ground and its infrastructure is already built. Still, the burning of

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coal projects pollutants such as mercury and sulfur dioxide into the air and we would be best suited if there was a plan to phase it out eventually – the operative word here being eventually.

“Look, it depends on which resources you want to harvest,” said Barry. “That’s why I support pulling the plug, and immediately I might add, on new coal-fired plants.” He wasn’t kidding, either. His friend, Kathleen, vetoed the authorizations of a few new coal-fired plants in her state. This was an odd stance since the newer coal plants can cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions drastically. Kathleen’s actions had the further effect of stretching the life of the older, less efficient coal-burning generation plants. The reason for their prolonged life was that there was no other substitute that could fill in for the loss of the electricity these plants were generating. How does that make any real sense?

“Barry, we’re with you on reducing the use of coal eventually. It may surprise you to know that we don’t like breathing in mercury or sulfur dioxide any more than you do. But these newer coal plants are equipped with much improved technology. How does it make sense to keep the old plants going when they could be phased out and substituted with the newer, cleaner technology?”

“Well then don’t even give me that nonsense about clean coal,” Barry stated in a pretty forceful manner. Barry was speaking about carbon sequestration technology that would trap the carbon produced through the coal burning process and then pump it into the ground so that it would not pollute the atmosphere. The coal industry had been offering up that technology as a cleaner alternative to its standard method of operations.

“Well, clean coal was a noble effort, but the real issue was finding enough underground fields where it was economical to pump the sequestered carbon. In the end, the scale required to achieve this was just enormous, and in fact the technology never really caught hold,” Manny stated. “Anyway, the natural gas revolution is placing a de facto ceiling on coal usage. A lot of these plants have the ability to switch to natural gas as their fuel source. Since natural gas is plentiful and generally cheap, the decision is pretty much academic at that point.”

Pete tried to cut to the heart of the matter. “Still, though, Barry we need to be honest with ourselves. The rest of the world doesn’t appear to have any interest in playing by these rules we have written for ourselves.” Barry knew this to be the case. In fact, China was in the midst of an eight-year program to build 1,000 coal-fired plants to generate electricity, which, when completed, would represent 2-1/2 times America’s total installed coal capacity. They want to build out as much electricity capacity as quickly as possible. “Regardless of our desire to change the level of carbon dioxide (“CO2”) in the atmosphere, and irrespective if any such action is even needed, the rest of the world just isn’t playing ball. We couldn’t change the atmospheric conditions by ourselves no matter how badly we wanted it to occur,” Pete reasoned.

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Barry remembered the last time many countries banded together and tried to heal the Earth through the massive reduction in the use of fossil fuels. The effort was known as the Kyoto Protocol and the U.S. signed this treaty, along with 190 other countries, in 1997. The U.S. obligation from the Protocol was a 20% reduction in the level of CO2

emissions generated. The Protocol was subsequently rejected by the U.S. Senate by a stinging vote of 95-0, and the U.S. never ratified the treaty. Even those countries that did sign and ratify the Protocol floundered in their attempts at meeting their respective CO2

reduction goals.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the entire exercise was the expectation from the scientific models underlying the assumptions of the Kyoto Protocol. They projected that the reduced global carbon regime would only lower world temperatures a small portion of 1% over the ensuing 50 years. And that figure assumed general compliance with the Protocol which itself was an epic exercise in wishful thinking. No country’s residents were willing to make the sacrifices and accept the costs it would take to produce such a small impact on the globe’s temperature that was based upon one party’s colorized version of the truth. The Kyoto Protocol was a spectacular failure, a weakly adhesive Band-Aid applied haphazardly to a subjectively diagnosed wound.

Shortly after noon the crowd pulled into Beaver, Utah, a tiny town of 2,500 perhaps best known as the birthplace of Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy. Butch used to rob banks and company payrolls – presumably in order to spread the wealth around. This led to some discussion among the group regarding whether or not the story of his death in Bolivia had ever been confirmed through forensic evidence (it had not). While Dutch was gassing up the DeVille he had learned that Butch's homestead, long since renovated, was still standing in the town. Though privately owned, the group rolled by it on their way out of town.

After a short lunch and some rest under the shade of an elm tree near the Old Beaver County Courthouse, the group got on the road towards their final destination for the day, Grand Junction, Colorado. This stretch of the trip was scheduled to last nearly five hours and Dutch pulled Pete aside before they embarked and asked if he would take the wheel for this segment. Pete readily agreed and Dutch took the shotgun position, placing Dylan in the middle of the backseat. Pete quickly pulled onto Interstate 70 to continue the trip. Crossing the Utah-Colorado border a little more than four hours later was a welcome landmark. Passing through Fruita, Colorado was the indicator that Grand Junction was right down the road. Fruita's city motto of "Honor the Past, Envision the Future" seemed to be an apt maxim for the trip Dutch's crew was taking.

Pete pulled into the Hampton Inn parking lot in Grand Junction at around 6:00 pm local time. When all was said and done it had been a good day and the group was all smiles, although a bit road weary. Dutch pulled Pete aside and thanked him for the turn he took at the steering wheel. They walked through the lobby and were quickly assisted with their room accommodations. There was a manager’s reception in the breakfast room at eight o’clock that evening and they planned to come back downstairs in a few hours and enjoy some free food and a drink on the house.

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Pete and Dylan got settled into their room while Dutch and Manny shared another. Barry was by himself in a separate room. They all used the opportunity to freshen up and call home, except for Barry, who used the time for quiet contemplation. He was actually enjoying this mystical journey even though he felt that his travel partners had some narrow views on certain subjects. In all, though, it was hard to argue with the results. This was a country that seemed to have a unified sense of purpose, and to a much greater degree than he was accustomed. And some of the anecdotal evidence, such as the lower gas prices, was pretty interesting to him. Besides, he had been interested in taking a few days vacation so this trip fit the bill. And the anonymity he was experiencing, he admitted to himself, was glorious.

A few minutes before eight o’clock, Dutch and Manny took the short elevator ride down to the lobby. They saw that Barry had beaten them downstairs and was already sitting down near the large-screen television in the breakfast room. A small crowd of other hotel guests was beginning to gather for the manager’s reception.

Dutch yelled over to Barry, “Hey, turn on Shareholder’s Report, will ya?” Barry replied, “Uh, sure, which channel is it on?” Dutch then cryptically retorted, “Whichever you like, it doesn’t really matter.” That prompted a strange look from Barry, but he had trusted Dutch thus far and because of this he was a lot closer to his goal of being home with his family. Barry turned on the TV with the remote and, sure enough, he saw promo spots for Shareholder’s Report being displayed on a number of channels, not unlike a presidential press conference.

The only show from the major cable networks that hadn’t been pre-empted seemed to be the “Joy Behar Show” where water cooler issues were discussed in substantive detail each evening. The lack of pre-emption for Joy was not a complete surprise. This was sweeps week and there was a mighty temptation to run the most salacious programming possible in an effort to lure viewers and be able to charge higher ad rates for the next ratings period. Television is still a business after all. Joy was interviewing Scottish bad boy comedian Haggis MacMackin (born Declan Fitzgerald) who was promoting his soul-searching autobiography How to Kick a Nun.

Joy seemed to warm to the international comic so much that she almost appeared disappointed when it was time to interrupt the interview to remind viewers that this Friday night’s show would feature Dr. Balthazar Humphrey, Hollywood’s so-called “Shaman to the Stars.” He, too, had written a tell-all autobiography and with the assistance of a crafty lawyer helping him to skirt patient confidentiality laws, Dr. Humphrey was confident that he could offer up some interesting gossip and tidbits to Joy’s audience, and an even better read to those who purchased his book.

Barry thought about mentioning to his friends that he had actually met Joy Behar and knew her but somehow he felt that his comrades wouldn’t really understand the appeal of all that. As Barry attempted to increase the volume on the remote control he somehow hit the wrong button and lost the cable signal to the television set making the screen go

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blank. This led to a palpable level of anxiety among the crowd in the room as the show was about to start. Dutch called over to Barry for the remote. Barry wanted to set things right, however, and refused to yield it – he just kept on furiously hitting the remote's reset button. Finally, Dutch politely grabbed the remote stating, "Trust me, those reset buttons never work." With one short sequence of button pushes he was able to get the signal back on the big screen television to the delight of the assembled crowd. Shareholder’s Report was just beginning to air.

After an opening with a country/rock theme song and a camera panning the studio audience (it was said that the weekly show was sold out for the next two years, with all proceeds going to charity), the camera then focused on the stage. To say that the set was spartan would be a dramatic understatement. On the stage sat three small desks relatively close together and a podium just a few feet away to the left.

The emcee, musician Kid Rock (replete with long hair, tattoos and his trademark Fedora), welcomed everyone back and made mention of “our beloved panelists who need no introduction.” This joke caused ripples of laughter among the audience signifying that, although the panelists indeed needed no introduction, they were one of the main reasons Americans tuned in to watch and, therefore, ought to be acknowledged. In fact, the panelists had become rock stars in their own right, often making public appearances in their communities and always donating the associated fees to charity.

Kid Rock continued, “Ladies and gentlemen, as you know by now Shareholder’s Report is a television show like no other. It is of the people, by the people and for the people, and is the very embodiment of a transparent government. Each week we host a different civil servant who comes here to discuss a project that he or she is working on or considering recommending to his superiors. We do this in a collegial and non-judgmental fashion. Our panelists, drawn from the legions of American shareholders, or taxpayers, get to ask questions about the project and then offer up their non-binding advice to our presenter.”

That last line made Dutch laugh deeply. “Non-binding my foot,” he said as he looked Barry’s way.

Kid, playing his typical role, kept the show moving forward. “Alright. Alright. I know we should say hello to the panelists.” He strolled over to the first desk and approached a middle aged man who was somewhat scruffy in appearance, poorly shaven and wearing a Madras shirt that looked as if it was purchased at a John Edwards yard sale. “And how is Walter this evening?”

Walter Kern was a retired physics teacher and a bit of a legend in public education. He had taught in the Los Angeles public school system for 25 years and had amassed an excellent record of helping inner city seniors score highly on the Physics Advanced Placement exam. Walt’s mind was analytical to a fault. He once joked that this approach exhausted his wife who would often tell him, “Just say pass the salt, will you?” You couldn’t get a fastball by Walter Kern, and the shareholders loved him for it.

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“I am terrific, Kid, and I am ready to roll,” Walt answered.

The studio audience exploded into applause as did the viewers in the lounge at the Hampton Inn, and this startled Barry. He hadn’t realized that the manager’s reception in the hotel had grown so large, and he was amazed that a civic program would not only be on primetime television but also could generate so much interest.

Barry leaned over to Pete and said, “Slow night around these parts, eh?”

Pete then explained to Barry that it was quite the contrary. Shareholder’s Report, since its debut fifteen years ago, had always been a top-rated TV program, leading the major networks to basically share its airing. Before the first program even debuted there was a national search process for the panelists, and this generated a great deal of pre-launch buzz about the program. The search process for the panel members introduced to the American public a cast of characters reminiscent of one’s first Thanksgiving at the prospective in-law’s house.

Many of the panel candidates were earnest but, of course, along with them were a man who would only ask questions in the Klingon language, those obsessed with Area 51 and various other conspiracy theories, and a ventriloquist with a snarky dummy. The producers of the show held a national voting process to select the panelists, and had simultaneously raised millions of dollars in charitable contributions by encouraging voters to donate online while voting. The dummy lost. In the end, the American people selected three somewhat sober yet engaging panelists.

Shareholder’s Report had exploded in viewership to become an iconic part of pop culture. Part of reason for this was the approach to production, which was loose and entertaining. To say that this was the only motivation, though, would be doing a great disservice to the viewers. Americans turned into this program because they had a genuine interest in what innovations were underway and to see how their money was being spent. The vast majority of shareholders cared about how things were working. There was some thought early on in pre-production to call the show Respect the Taxpayer, but Shareholder’s Report was deemed to have a better ring to it.

The show had grown so large a part of American popular culture that Shareholder’s Report viewing clubs had sprung up around the country, and it had been reported that college students devised a drinking game built around the show. Whenever a panelist would come out with one of a number of pre-determined stock phrases, down would go a drink. To try and turn a situation that was difficult to reverse into a positive, the show’s sponsor made available Shareholder’s Report Designated Driver tee shirts, a hot commodity, free to campuses across the country. It’s not surprising in Dutch’s world that younger folks were interested in how all the money was being spent. After all, the younger generation understood that profligate spending today only meant they would be stuck with the bill tomorrow.

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The next panelist was a vivacious African American woman with shoulder length hair and adorned in a flowery dress, Anita Baldridge, whose desk Kid leaned over to place a small kiss on her left cheek.

“How are you, Sugar?” Anita asked.

“Oh, darling, at this moment I’m wishing I was twenty years younger,” Kid teased.

“Honey, if we were both twenty years younger, that would make me fifteen, and you would be in big trouble with my father. If I were you I would just chew on a few ice cubes and relax,” Anita shut him down mirthfully.

The audience roared. Anita was in her mid fifties but had that regal, timeless look. Of all the panelists, America loved her the most. Her personal story was compelling. She had lost one of her children a few years back and nearly gave up being on the show. But the American viewing public wouldn’t have it that way. After a suitable mourning period and perhaps understanding that being on the panel was itself a therapeutic exercise, Anita resumed her position on the program.

Kid then made his way to an Asian American male in his mid-30s who rounded out the panelists. “And, finally, we have our good friend, David Lin. David, what mind-blowing concept of which the rest of us mere mortals would have a hard time wrapping our heads around even the most elementary facts are you contemplating this evening?”

“Well, Kid, I’m having a hard time with neutrinos this evening,” David said with all seriousness.

“Wow. You sound like you’re going to be reaching for the Prozac any minute now. What is wrong with neutrinos?” Kid queried.

“Well, as you know, they are the smallest subatomic particles with non-zero mass in the universe,” David began. “In fact, you need to use quadrillions of them and move them at the highest possible speeds just to be able to detect one or two of them.”

“I’m with you so far,” Kid responded with a bemused look on his face.

“Well, in measurements at the CERN laboratory in Europe it was detected that neutrinos themselves may be traveling faster than light,” David continued.

“And that’s a bad thing?” said Kid, obviously fishing a bit.

“Kid, c’mon. Of course it’s a bad thing. I mean, sure, you might now be able to send someone back in time, but this is still troubling. This experiment needs to be verified, of course. I’m not saying the initial results are going to stand. Still, if this were correct it would seriously upend Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which has held together physics,

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not to mention the universe, for the last several decades. I’m disturbed by all of this, and I don’t need this level of stress in my life right now,” David summed up sternly.

“Wow, and I came to work today worried about my dog’s ringworm,” Kid joked directly into Camera One. Still, Kid knew that David was a major asset to the team of panelists. With a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, he was especially important in discussions on technology or alternative fuel production processes, for example.

Kid, having gone through the preliminaries, regained the initiative and began to introduce the evening’s first guest. “Okay, tonight’s first presenter is Geoff Nickels from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Geoff has worked for the DOT as a junior engineer for four years and he graduated from Wayne State University with a degree in Engineering. Ah, excellent my good man.” Kid was excited to speak with a fellow Michigander.

“Geoff, you’re here today to talk about a project that is near and dear to your heart, isn’t that correct?”

“Yes, Kid, I am. Hello everyone,” said Geoff per the show’s protocol.

“Hello Geoff,” bellowed the crowd on cue, and they followed with warm applause.

“Geoff, why not explain your project to us?” Kid asked as he took his place off the center of the stage.

“Certainly, well what we’re working on is a system that can protect both motorists and wildlife in southern Florida. It seems that turtles that have begun crossing the highways in certain areas, and this can present a hazard to motorists. What we want to do is to eliminate the hazard of turtles on highways but not to disturb their habitat.” A side shot of all three panelists showed them nodding at Geoff’s suggestion.

Geoff continued, “We propose the construction of a series of tunnels under Interstate 95 so that the turtles can cross the highway safely, and so that motorists don’t have to swerve to avoid hitting the amphibians. And what we’ve developed is really state of the art. Our tunnel will be wide enough to handle turtle traffic that is two bodies wide. This way the turtles can move back and forth. There will also be a ridge in the middle, sort of like a median strip, to ease the flow of traffic. The tunnel will have a state-of-the-art ventilation system, and there will be feeding trays along the way to provide sustenance on their journey.”

Camera Three picked up Walt Kern’s raised eyebrow on that last statement.

“Boy, if only Moses had the Department of Transportation covering his back maybe those forty years spent wandering the desert might not have been so dreary,” Walt quipped.

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“At least he would have been assured some sustenance,” David parried. When these two got going there was no telling where the dialogue might end up.

Walt was curious, “How do the turtles see inside the tunnel?”

“Oh, I’m glad you asked that,” Geoff replied. “We intend to use lighting that is solar powered. We’re talking about sunny Florida, after all. The solar panels will pull in the sun all day long and then the tunnel will be flooded with light to ease traffic among the turtles. And, best of all, the solar lights are good for our environment.”

Barry thought that this was prudent. He liked the idea of investing in solar panels. And viewers could tell that Geoff was warming up to the task. He had done his homework and he certainly seemed like an earnest fellow.

“Is there any migratory reason the turtles need to get across Interstate 95?” David asked.

“Well, Interstate 95 does intersect a turtle breeding ground,” Geoff replied.

“I see. So the real issue here is that the road makers didn’t anticipate this when they built the highway, is that correct?” Walt asked.

“Well, not exactly. There are some culverts for channeling water that already exist. These enable the turtles to pass under the highway right now,” said Geoff.

“Oh, so they can already get across the highway via the culverts?” David questioned, in a confused manner.

“Yes, they can go underneath through the current culverts, but we want to prevent them from going over the highway,” Geoff answered but failed to erase the look of doubt on David’s face.

“And how will the turtles find the tunnels?” Walt asked.

“We figure they’ll find the tunnels in the same manner they find the culverts. They will move along the side until they come across the tunnel openings,” Geoff stated.

“Maybe they could play Happy Together by The Turtles as sort of a siren song to direct them to the tunnels,” Kid added. There was only a modest audience reaction to that statement leading Kid to exclaim directly into Camera Three, “How is that not funny? Work with me, people.”

“Hmm. Okay, and what will this project cost?” Walt was often the one panelist who moved the show along and gave it a reasonable pace. Given that particularly Anita was a little quiet that evening he decided to be a bit more assertive.

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“Well, we’ve modeled it a couple of different ways but our median case has the project coming out at around $13 million for a series of tunnels in a pre-defined area of I-95,” Geoff replied with a perfectly straight face.

There was a low murmur in the studio as well as some grunts and outright whistles in the lobby of the Hampton Inn, and everyone in the studio audience turned their attention to Anita. Her stock response of “Oh, my goodness, child” was expected by every hotel guest and viewer, not to mention the thousands of college students thirstily grasping their beer cans and waiting to take a drink on that cue.

But Anita made no move to say anything. This interrupted the natural flow of the show a bit. Even Kid seemed a little perplexed. David jumped in to fill the void and asked how many turtles might use the tunnel each year. Geoff responded that it would likely be a few thousand.

Then Anita began to speak, but she avoided her stock phrase and instead started to make a statement. “Now, Geoff, I’ve heard that Florida has seen its share of species infestation, is that correct?”

“Oh yes, ma’am, from Cayman alligators to reticulated pythons, Florida has been invaded by many non-indigenous species. I guess people go on vacation and bring home these exotic pets and then, you know, when they become difficult to keep they just dump them in the Everglades,” Geoff reasoned.

“Yes, honey, I agree. Now, is it possible that some of these turtles may have come from Bermuda?” Anita persisted.

“Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact the Diamondback Terrapin, indigenous to Bermuda, has been spotted in southern Florida.”

Geoff was feeling his oats now, really hitting his stride. The frequent meetings he had held with the local wildlife officials were paying off. He was so intoxicated with his knowledge of the subject matter at hand that he didn’t seem to notice Anita’s peculiar line of questioning.

“People from Bermuda drive in the left-hand lane, do they not?” Anita pursued.

“People? Oh yes, ma’am,” said Geoff stumbling a bit on Anita’s odd question. “I’ve been there. I stopped in Bermuda for a few days during my Semester at Sea voyage. And, yes, they do drive on the left-hand side of the road.”

“And you said this tunnel has a small ridge in the middle to separate the lanes, is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s right.” At this point Geoff was at a loss to see where Anita was headed.

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“Well, Geoff, what I’m concerned about is what happens when a North American box turtle comes roaring down the right hand lane and runs into Bermudian Diamondback Terrapin going the opposite direction in that same lane.” At this point, many in the audience saw where Anita was going and they started laughing under their breaths.

“What do they do, honk?” Anita asked with raised eyebrows.

“Well, no, of course not. Turtles can’t honk. They would, gee, what would they do?” Geoff’s blustering obscured his reasoning that Bermudian turtles don’t necessarily follow the human rules of the road. Anita’s questioning was befitting of the project itself. It was well intentioned but it lacked a certain air of practicality. And it was as if the phrase cost-benefit analysis had not yet entered Geoff’s lexicon.

As the crowd’s giggling started to rise in volume Geoff became all the more flustered. Walt decided to throw him a lifeline.

“Son, have you ever seen that low orange mesh fencing that landscapers use?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Geoff replied respectfully.

“My recollection is that turtles don’t jump all that well,” Walt stated. “Wouldn’t it be simpler and cheaper just to have orange mesh placed along the roadside to keep the turtles from accessing the highway in the first place? They can walk along the orange mesh until they reach the culverts. Doesn’t that make more sense?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose but I mean this tunnel is really something else. I forgot to mention that we will be able to construct them without disrupting traffic on I-95, at least during rush hour,” Geoff valiantly tried this last argument but it was clear to all that he was pretty much punched out.

Kid chimed in at this point. “Okay, good presentation, Geoff. Ladies and gentlemen of the studio audience let’s have a non-binding vote on the prudence of Geoff’s project. You at home with internet access, you can vote as well. Get to it.”

The studio was soon rocking out to Kid's own song Born Free which served as a musical interlude while people voted. Kid insisted on this so that he would be able to donate the royalties he received from its usage on Shareholder’s Report to charities that served families of the American military, a cause near and dear to his heart.

After a ninety second period, the voting was over. For votes that were close, the voting would be held open for one hour on the internet, with the results being updated on a subsequent show. From the line of questioning Geoff had received this particular project was not expected to need the additional voting time. All three panelists held up pink placards (so painted as to increase breast cancer awareness) indicating the word “Reject.” The running total on the screen listed the results of the internet voting, and it was a bloodbath: 94% against and 6% in favor.

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“Boy, we haven’t had a vote this lopsided for a long time,” Kid proclaimed.

“Of course, we never voted on corn ethanol either,” David chimed in and the audience laughed in response. Back in the hotel lobby Dutch and the boys belly laughed pretty hard at that one, although Barry wasn’t quite sure why.

“Well, Geoff, the shareholders have spoken. What message are you going to take back to the Department of Transportation?” Kid asked.

“Well, I guess I’m going to recommend that we search for better ways to tackle this problem. I guess we’re using a hammer to kill a mosquito.” Geoff was noticeably dejected, and he had a hard time covering that.

At this point, Walt Kern chimed in. “Son, let me be clear about something. You’re a fine young man. We are honored to have you on the show tonight, and you’re a terrific presenter. This is not about roasting you or anything like that. As a matter of fact, I’d like to specifically thank your parents for raising such a fine young man. Mom and Dad, are you out there tonight?”

Mom and Dad certainly were in the studio, but given the way things were progressing up until that moment they were planning a surreptitious escape out the back door before the show was over. The spotlight caught up with them along a side wall and they shyly acknowledged their presence and the crowd offered them polite applause.

“Well, thank you for raising such a fine young man and thank you, Geoff, for choosing civil service. My father was in it for 25 years, and it is a very noble choice of professions.” Geoff nodded and got the sense that he was slowly being let off the hook.

“Son, this show is all about the taxpayer, the American shareholder,” Walt continued. “She’s worked all damn day long and she tunes into this show to find out one thing. And do you know what that one thing is?”

Geoff gave a puzzled look.

“What I’m wearing?” Anita interjected. The crowd roared with delight.

“Well, that’s for sure, Anita. But in addition to your lovely wardrobe, I think viewers tune in to see how their money is being spent. Is the spending frivolous or is it judicious? What are the marvels our government is working on to better society? We panned your baby tonight, and I know that’s not a fun thing to lose a sale, if you will. We all like turtles; hell, who doesn’t like turtles? And we certainly want our motorists to be safe. There has to be a cost-benefit analysis applied in these situations. It’s important to remember that we recommend spending more money on a lot of other projects that come before us. And it’s paramount to remember that we’re spending other people’s money, and that deserves our utmost respect.”

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He continued. “Look, there’s a spending cap in this country as we all know. At the end of the day all of the spending needs to fit under that cap, obviously. And there are a lot of priorities. I think if you re-work your numbers and consider the orange mesh fencing we mentioned you can complete this project for about $750,000.” David Lin was nodding his head at this figure. “And if that doesn’t get you promoted within the Department of Transportation, then maybe we need to speak with your supervisors because you just saved the American taxpayers $12.25 million – that’s close to $250,000 per state or, what, about 11 cents per U.S. household.” Walt possessed the level of intellect where he could perform these complex computations in his head, and often did so to the delight of the audience.

“And let me add another thing, I will be happy, check that, honored to come down to Florida and break ground with you on this fence. And I know our good friends at Home Depot will be more than happy to donate the stakes that we will need to secure this fence,” Walt said in closing.

Somewhere in the tony suburb of Buckhead, outside of Atlanta, the chief executive officer of Home Depot was watching the show and made a mental note to prepare a shipment of one by three inch furring strips, staple guns and staples for delivery to the Department of Transportation office (care of Geoff Nickels, senior engineer) in southern Florida. And he did so gladly. Such is the power of civic pride.

At this the crowd began strong applause both in the studio and at the Hampton Inn, and the show went to a commercial break. “Seems like a good kid,” one middle aged man in the hotel lobby offered to another. “I wish my daughter could meet a guy like him instead of that meathead she’s dating right now.”

“Did you watch the show last week?” one hotel patron, a man of about 55, asked an elderly woman in the lounge.

“You mean the issue over paying for internet content for rural internet users?” she replied.

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“That was one for the record books,” the woman answered.

At this point, a younger man in his twenties, who had evidently felt sufficiently bonded with the others having viewed a segment of Shareholder’s Report with them asked the question, “What happened? I didn’t see the episode.”

“Dude, don’t you have TiVO?” came the sharp rebuttal from another hotel patron.

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You hate to see a nice young kid take a shot like that one. Still, he took it like a Marine. And kudos to him for not fibbing and crowing that he “was attending on a lady friend at the time.”

The elderly woman went on to explain the highlight of the episode and offer the non-viewing apostate some salvation. “They had an official on from the Department of Interior,” she began. “He was speaking about a program that would wire rural communities with internet access.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” the young man piped up, perhaps a bit too soon to be feeling his oats after having been ostracized so recently.

“No, I quite agree. It’s not good for the community at large if these folks fall behind the rest of America in that regard. I would have preferred if we could have encouraged the private communication companies to make a contribution in this respect, but I understand their position. Anyway, the wiring and offering of internet access to rural communities wasn’t the only endeavor of this government program. They wanted to divert some of the funding to pay for the creation of internet programming targeted to the people who live in these rural communities,” the woman explained more fully.

“What’s wrong with that?” the young man asked naively.

“What’s wrong with that? Oh, my goodness, child,” the old woman stated incredulously, channeling her best Anita Baldridge. “Haven’t you ever heard of the term information overload? Good Lord. You could sit at your computer and read 24 hours a day for the next year and still not ingest more than one percent of what is available on the internet! Does the government really need to use tax dollars to create internet programming?”

Another hotel patron spoke up, “They wanted to set aside $1.5 million for the creation of an internet video soap opera and other original programming. Evidently our public officials felt that they needed to create programming that was explicitly tailored to individuals in this community to make the internet experience more enriching for them. And what guarantee would the government receive that these rural residents would even watch this soap opera? How would you even measure that?”

At that point a man in his fifties with a military bearing spoke up. “Where would we be without spending caps? We would be at the mercy of a bunch of two-bit politicians who spend our money to pay off a lot of political favors. I know this particular example is only a couple million dollars, but when you have more than 500 senators and congressmen all doing the same thing, it’s impossible to manage.”

Barry was intrigued by the woman’s comment. He sidled up to Dutch and asked, “There are spending caps for the federal government?”

“Oh, yeah. I couldn’t imagine life without them,” Dutch answered. Dutch had long been a proponent of a balanced budget amendment along with a presidential line item veto.

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The former was a difficult exercise to complete given the complexities of such an endeavor while the latter was complicated, but no less noble, due to the Constitutional implications.

Dutch explained to Barry that the proposed balanced budget amendment that had passed both houses of Congress called for government spending to represent no greater than 19% of the nation’s gross domestic product. Three-quarters of the state legislatures ratified the amendment shortly thereafter. This, of course, led to some bickering from a few of the dozen states that hadn’t ratified the amendment, and were not likely to do so. In fact, they began advocating a change to the amendment process of the Constitution to be population based instead of established on a pure count of the number of states.

"How did you come to the magical level of government spending at 19% of GDP?" Barry wondered.

"That's a good question," said Dutch. "There was some real pressure to set the level at 18% since that pretty much represented the average level of government spending for the 30 years leading up to the ratification of the 29th Amendment." This sentence made Barry's head swoon as he was more comfortable with government spending in the 23% to 25% range.

Dutch continued, "We set it at 19%, though, realizing that the retirement of the Baby Boomers would likely place some additional fiscal needs on the country. We've never had that large a cohort of citizens retire en masse like that before. We felt it was prudent if we left just a little cushion since we had higher Social Security and Medicare expenses coming down the pike. And it hasn't hurt us."

While outwardly nonchalant about a 19% cap to expenditures, inwardly Barry found this level to be too constricting. In Barry's world, there was always the looming possibility of enacting a balanced budget amendment. He didn't take it all that seriously, though. The last time the concept had gotten really close to becoming a reality was in 1997 when a similar amendment lost by just one vote in the U.S. Senate. At that time, the annual federal budget deficits were in the area of $100 billion, and the total accumulated debt of the country was about $5 trillion. In Barry's current day, though, annual budget deficits were well over $1 trillion and the size of the total debt exceeded $15 trillion, which roughly equated to the magnitude of the country's gross domestic product.

Imagine how much better things would be in Barry's world if that Amendment had passed in 1997? Did we really get $10 trillion of benefit out of all of that subsequent spending?

“And what if spending exceeds that amount during the year?” Barry asked.

“There’s an automatic sequestration process that kicks in. If we get to mid-year and we are spending too much, then there are automatic cuts that go into effect across the board for the second half of the year,” Dutch replied. “Look the easier thing, which was

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difficult in its own right, was thinking through the process to create the cap; the harder issue was getting our elected officials to bite the bullet and agree to it.”

“And you think this is optimal?” Barry asked.

“Not really,” Dutch replied. “I’d prefer a line item veto in the hands of a strong chief executive. Still, I understand the Constitutional complications with that. I also worry that the sequestration process equates all dollars spent by the federal government equally. Obviously, that assumption doesn't have a lot of merit. These days, though, there's a lot less fat to cut in the federal government so it’s not altogether sub-optimal.”

“Well, what about growth with inflation and that sort of thing?” Barry queried.

“Yes, that’s taken into effect. We factor in population growth as well, which increases at about 1% per year. Basically we add population growth to the rate of inflation and that is how we derive the amount of annual allowable growth in government spending. So, if you assume 2.5% to 3% annual inflation, then the federal budget could grow at about 3.5% to 4% per year before any cuts were necessary. Our GDP grows at about that rate per year so what we’ve created here is a virtuous cycle. Government spending always stays pretty much at its cap without the need for a lot of finagling.”

“The economy grows at 4% per year? How is that possible?” asked Barry, who was used to a more anemic rate of economic growth.

Dutch took a second to remember that Barry’s world was somewhat different. “Look, a lot of economists felt that 3% or 3.5% was our economy’s natural growth rate that was safe in that it would not increase inflation. And for a while it may have been. However, once we made these changes to the tax code, unlocked our domestic energy production and re-committed ourselves to an increased manufacturing base, we noticed that the private sector had a lot more productive capacity to offer to the nation than we had been deriving in the past. We had been underestimating our own economy and citizens. We’ve since discovered that we can grow the economy at a higher rate and not stoke unintended inflation. So, these days, we have our economy on a nice simmer.”

“Is there no way to increase the budget beyond that?” Barry asked and which suspiciously sounded to Dutch like someone looking for a loophole. "This sounds incredibly restrictive.”

“Yes, there are methods to increase the federal budget but they require different levels of authorization. When the automatic stabilization payments kick in during a recession, unemployment insurance for example, it’s expected that government spending might exceed its 19% cap for a short time. We obviously understand that. It's just that we went out of our way not to make it too easy on the lawmakers; that was the whole point of the exercise. For example, in the event of a declared war only a simple majority of both Houses of Congress need to authorize additional spending. For military conflict that is not a declared war it takes a three-fifths super majority vote to approve. Finally, in any

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given year Congress can waive the Amendment with a two-thirds super majority vote in favor. What we were trying to prevent was the runaway train effect of government spending.”

Dutch continued, “Because of this, and especially because of the unseemly love Congress had for ‘mission creep,’ there is a provision that requires Congress to cut rebate checks to the shareholders if tax receipts minus spending are greater than originally estimated and economic growth is higher than a certain threshold. This way the surplus revenues don't become part of the following year's baseline budget. When sculpting legislation such as this you need to be as deviously ingenious as those who want to tear it down or do an around end; namely, the political class.”

Barry had long felt that Dutch was transformational in nature. While Barry’s instinct would be to transform in an alternative direction, there was no arguing that Dutch’s way of thinking had a huge impact on how things were being run these days.

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