November 10, 2006 :: After election day thoughts

US Constitution Photo by Mark Solomon, Nov 4, 2006

These are some of my thoughts. It's about 4am and Bella woke me up to bark at something, so I sat down and wrote this.

After election day, is there hope for the future?

Since the next congress is chaired by all democrats, (committees, the floor, etc) I looked at the Democratic National Convention's agenda at http://www.democrats.org//agenda.html

I wonder how much of this will actually be pushed and signed in the next two years?

Their six-point plan's top three points are:

1. Real honest/open govt. Something I know we've been lacking

2. Real security. Interestingly, at least four sub-articles referenced on this page are about Donald Rumsfeld needing to be replaced (Overcome By Events...as we all know), and at least another five articles are about Iraq. I'd like more definiteness here. Are we talking about the security of building a new fence along our southern border that gets mandated but not funded? What security are they talking about specifically?

3. Energy Independence. Simply put, this is the root of almost all of the world's evils right now, and with the current presidential administration's uber-close ties to big oil, it's no surprise that oil prices doubled in the six years of their presidency terms. When I was first learning finance, I was told to look for approximately 20% increases per year of investment, as that was a five year doubling plan. This was in the late 1980's regarding mutual funds. Today, when must mutual funds are earning half that, Bush has been fortunate to create those great, 6 year doubling rate of earnings again for his real constituency in days when the rest of America's investors are making half that. Kudos to a brilliant plan for making money to those in the oil industry.

Not much has been done to effectively become anything but more dependent on oil. In our time, when twenty years of technology can go from four megabytes of RAM costing $400 in the late 1980's to putting 60 gigabytes of songs in a 12 year old's back-pocket for under $250, the entire automobile industry "boasts" about today's sedans fuel efficiency when it gets a whopping 25+ miles per gallon. This is essentially the same as the comparable models of cars from the late 1980's when honda's were getting upper 20's and lower 30's of MPG. Today, same models, same MPG. Why? Toyota's advances in fuel efficiency caused by electronically controlling intake and exhaust valves to most use all combustible fuel while minimizing pollution would have allowed for increased fuel efficiency, but those same smaller engines gave Toyota the ability to make their trucks larger; result: no net decrease in fuel usage, but a more impressive "ride," to be sure.

Consumers have been mislead with the addition of ethanol in gasoline, as its production is cheaper with the goal of lowering petroleum use. Drug dealers call this "cutting" their product, as a less expensive additive can "stretch" their product. So, if gasoline at the pumps is being cut because oil prices went from $30 a barrel to $60-70 per barrel, the price should go down, right? Well, it's stayed the same with the addition of 10% of ethanol. Why? Market burdens/fluctuations, oil reserves, cost to industry to get ethanol, etc. Someone is making a lot of money. Heating oil costs and natural gas prices have tripled over the last six years, too, and their use of "bio-diesel" and the like have had the exact same effect on heating oil prices: stabilized at the tripled rate.

According to a Feb 2, 2006, article at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06033/648770.stm, venture capitalists "invested" $4.4 billion in alternative fuels between 1999 and 2004. The Bush administration was investing over $26 billion in wars to secure the oil pipelines in Afghanistan while searching for Osama Bin Laden, and securing not only democracy and freedom in Iraq, but also their oilfields. Hmmm. There seems to be a vast imbalance of both priorities and funding in the world of the energy industry in modern times. Maybe the democrats will do better, since this is, after all, number three on their to-do list of priorities.

My conclusion to all these thoughts, for now, anyway, are that now that Congress is no longer a "rubber stamp" for the Executive, for the next two years there may be more "uniting" being done by the Executive now that it HAS to. Maybe there will be more discourse between branches and less mandating to the people. Much in the way a sculptor sees a vision and creates that vision, perhaps Congress will see a future where technology and funding will be used to make a sustainable environment where the environment can co-exist peacefully with cultures, who, by the way, get along better between themselves, too.

We can hope...

It can't hurt to cross our fingers but watch this Congress with the same skepticism that those in power often loose focus, and, irrespective of political ideologies, power corrupts. Fast government = bad government. More discussion/public civil argument = good politics. A longer "news cycle" that focuses on actual, important issues is good; week long "media circuses" about the latest food health scare, who can marry whom, and the latest holiday game console only distract people from war, people still dying in Darfur, daily violence in the middle east, and executives indefinitely holding suspects without any judicial process... all bad things... but all old news.

But, still, let's hope.