What if President Obama loses ?

[thankyouOB]

="DaveinOlyWA"
does not matter who wins; EV subsidies are safe. (they are so small, its simply not a real budget concern despite what anyone thinks about them)...

The $7500 tax credit is certainly not "safe", IMO.

One of the more prominent lies by Willard last night was his contention that he would find ~$5 trillion in tax "loopholes" to close, to offset his proposed huge tax cuts for the very high earning taxpayers (like himself).

Depending on their success in Congressional races, I expect that the republicans will definitely go after the EV tax credit.

Sure it's relatively tiny, but EVs have the same iconic status as Big Bird (the much smaller PBS subsidy) does, as part of the Socialist-Kenyan-Muslim conspiracy, against real-Christian-God-fearing-SUV-driving-Americans, to the know-nothing Tea-partier republican base.

Ed is right, again.
killing credits for solar is about proving how manly you are. clean coal is the way to go and drill for oil off the Alaska and everywhere and frack frack frack.
the idea that a gooper president would keep a tax credit for cars CARS!!! at the expense of some other
tax credit, or even a credit for solar installations is just plain wrong.

remember st. ronnie? he took the solar off the white house to prove his manhood.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

I wouldn't be so certain that the party of slavery is as effective an advocate for the causes people here hold near and dear as they might think. Let's not forget it was republican presidents who brought us the EPA and signed the $7500 EV tax credit into law. Consider too that Romney's business experience could be helpful in filtering out things that actually produce results rather than a bunch of failures and schemes to launder taxpayer money into campaign contributions.

As one example, does anyone here think Fisker is a good way to be spending taxpayer money? Or as Romney pointed out, it isn't even spending taxpayer money, it's spending money borrowed from China. It's like racking up tons of credit card debt on QVC and bad dinners out.

From Romney's energy policy:

Focus on Basic Research

There is a place for government investment when time horizons are too long,
risks too high, and rewards too uncertain to attract private capital. However,
much of our existing energy R&D budget has been devoted to loan guarantees,
cash grants, and tax incentives for projects that might have gone forward anyway.
As president, Mitt Romney will redirect clean energy spending towards basic
research. Government funding should be focused on research and development of
new energy technologies and on initial demonstration projects that establish the
feasibility of discoveries. This approach offers the best opportunity to promote
innovation without distorting the market.

Design Long-Term Funding Sources Free from Politics
From the perspective of creating new jobs and strengthening our economy, the
main line of policy should be directed toward technologies that will replace imported
oil with domestically produced fuels or electric power. Mitt Romney believes the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) model—ensuring longterm,
non-political sources of funding for a wide variety of competing, earlystage
technologies—holds the most potential for achieving significant advances
in the energy sector. Investment should be channeled through programs, such as
“ARPA-E,” that seek to replicate DARPA’s success in energy-related fields.

 

[AndyH]

The problem with that statement, LT, is that it's just a bunch of words designed to take real action off the front burner and put it away in the basement - exactly as the American Petroleum Institute prefers.

While we certainly do need basic research, what we desperately need is more deployment of the things we have TODAY that work.

2. “All of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land, not on government land.”

Under Obama, domestic energy production has soared: The number of oil drilling rigs have quadrupled in number over the past three years. This has brought U.S. oil imports to the lowest level since 1996. And the Congressional Research Service issued a report showing that oil drilling on federal lands is higher, not lower

3. “About half of [the clean energy companies that] have been invested in have gone out of business.”

This is blatantly false. In this statement, Romney is conflating the loan guarantee program with all economy-wide clean energy companies. And even when isolating the loan guarantee program that supported the bankrupt solar company Solyndra, an independent investigation led by John McCain’s former finance chairman found that these investments will cost $2 billion less than initially expected.

(Michael Grunwald, who literally wrote the book on the stimulus package, estimates that about 1 percent of the stimulus-funded clean-energy firms failed, not 50 percent. “Seriously, that was the lie of the night,” he said.)

4. “In one year, you provided $90 billion in tax breaks to green energy.”

This is also a piece of masterful spin, though not an outright lie. Since the stimulus package was passed, the Department of Energy has put $90 billion toward grants, loan guarantees, R&D programs, competitive prizes, and demonstration projects — everything we need in order to build a foundation to allow clean energy to scale. They are not all tax breaks and they were not all implemented in one year as Romney claimed. And according to the Government Accountability Office (h/t Washington Post), fossil fuel subsidies outnumbered clean energy investments 4 to 1 before the stimulus package was put in place.

What have these clean energy investments spawned? Renewable electricity has doubledin the last four years; we’ve built some of the most innovative “first of a kind”renewable energy projects in the world; content sourced from domestic wind manufacturing has doubled; we’ve created more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobsin the solar industry; and leveraged $100 billion in private investments.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/20...romney-ignore-climate-change-in-first-debate/

 

[mkjayakumar]

From WallStCheatSheet:

According Jim Cramer, of MSN Money, a Romney victory would give coal-related stocks, including American Electric Power (NYSE:AEP), Southern Company (NYSE:SO), and CSX Corporation (NYSE:CSX), a boost, while any alternative-energy related companies, like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), would likely become short candidates.

 

[edatoakrun]

Hey Ed: I'l bet you voted for Nancy Pelosi?? :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

You lose. Pelosi wasn't on my ballot. But you have inferred correctly, that I would have voted against any republican running against her.

I live in republican-dominated North California, and I have first-hand experience with the corrosive economic effects of the political corruption republicans have institutionalized at the local level.

Below are excerpts from my comment on the current state of the republican party, posted following an editorial comment in my local newspaper by Marc Beauchamp, on my present and Hopefully not future ) republican congressmen:

"You've got to wonder why we consistently elect so-called "small government conservatives" like Wally Herger and Doug LaMalfa when we in the north state are so addicted to and subsidized by government entitlement programs..."

I suggest, Mark, that you should not use "conservative" where "republican" is the correct term.

The tendency of less-prosperous regions trending towards republican electoral victories (or perhaps it’s the republican elected officials, causing these regions to be poorer) can be seen nationwide, as well as in the state statistics you cited. But I’d like to point out that there is nothing “small government”, or more broadly, supporting of the free-market approach to economic affairs, in the present republican party.

In fact, the modern republican party gives no more than lip service to liberty, economic or otherwise, while consistently supporting a policy of institutional corruption, completely devoid of any coherent beliefs....

The fact that Stillwater (a local welfare-for -property -developers-business-park) is still vacant, is an object lesson in the failure of "big government” incentives, to overcome market fundamentals.

It is also an indictment of the local politicians, who call themselves “conservative” but in fact are just run-of–the-mill corrupt pols, abusing their offices to funnel taxpayer's, and REU ratepayer’s, funds, to their supporters, under the guise of “economic development”.

This misallocation of public resources makes the region, on the whole, poorer, but produces higher incomes for the select few, who are cut into the scheme.

As near as I can tell, as this local example of institutional corruption shows, the only operating principle of the republican party, today, nationwide, is to exploit government office, for private gain.

That does not strike me, as “conservative".

http://www.redding.com/news/2012/feb/18/marc-beauchamp-were-conservative-and-were/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[DaveEV]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/20...romney-ignore-climate-change-in-first-debate/

The title of that photo reminds me of this video: Mitt Romney Style

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

What, no quote from Pravda?

 

[scottf200]

If we keep harping on those failures like Solyandra, we will never make progress. On a new technology, there is bound to be some failures. And also Solyandra failed not because of mis-management, but due prices crashing from cheap Chinese manufacturers and an alternate Solar film technology taking over.

If you look at the bailouts the big banks received, these are chump change. I would not call Aone, Envia Systems or Tesla a failure.

In general I don't like political discussion in places because they quickly turn emotional vs logical.

I wonder if "we" will be sorry in the future that "we" did not continue to back A123.

A Chinese auto parts company, Wanxiang, has come to the rescue of cash-strapped A123 Systems, an American high-tech lithium-ion battery maker...

 

[mkjayakumar]

Solar panels and windmills are for weenies and wussies. Real men burn real oil and coal that belches big black smoke.

 

[AndyH]

What, no quote from Pravda?

The quotes from Pravda ('true/truth' in Russian, oddly enough...) were used during the debate, in truly Orwellian fashion.

What - no comment on the facts?

 

[mazdaboi]

I can seel Romney allowing the 7500 tax cuts on EV's to expire...yes. However with his so-called track record, I dont believe he will nix the entire program as it will result in job loss. He may look forward into drilling more oil and mining more coal as it is additional energy. But I feel his idea is to look into alternative energy, YES we still need to use COAL and OIL for shipping, trucking, warming homes, power plants, etc, right now. But the plan for EV's is the future and for the west coast the 7500 credit helps ALOT. For us here on the East Coast, we dont see as many EV's on the road, but there are still a good amount, the credit in this area just pushs early adopters/testers like myself over the hump to recoop negative equity and push me into the EV Realm.

Everything is too far away to predict what might happen. 4 years ago Obama was named as the # gun salesman of the decade by NRA. Everyone was frightened he would tighten laws, sales and restrict ownership...that has yet to happen.

So lets just wait and see....in the mean time, use the credits while available and ejoy EV'ing.

 

[cdub]

Everything is too far away to predict what might happen. 4 years ago Obama was named as the # gun salesman of the decade by NRA. Everyone was frightened he would tighten laws, sales and restrict ownership...that has yet to happen.\

Ahhh.... but that lie was based on complete and utter fiction and projection so of course Obama hasn't done it. It was never his policy.

But Romney has said that he'd do it. (practically)

HUGE DIFF

 

[Herm]

How do you guys feel about having the Chinese finance your $7500 tax credit?.. you know they eat dogs in China.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

How do you guys feel about having the China finance your $7500 tax credit?.. you know they eat dogs in China.

Yes, but it's really our own money first. We just send it to China in payment for them stealing our technology and taking our jobs. Then they give it back to use in the form of buying our debt. In truth, we export just as much to China as we import. What do we export you ask? Our values, our sovereignty, our future. :evil:

On a serious note, as far as eating dogs (they eat cats too), you say that as if there's something implicitly wrong. Here in America, we eat all sorts of animals. No, typically not dogs. Dogs are usually pets. But chickens and goats are often pets too. I don't know about you (maybe you're a vegetarian), but I personally enjoy chicken.

 

[cdub]

How do you feel about the Chinese paying for the billions in oil subsidies? $7,500 vs billions? Come on man. Be realistic.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

The left wants to create the image that within hours of Mitt Romney taking office there would be a mass confiscation of electric cars and birth control pills. My belief is that his attention would be more focused on the fiscal cliff and things like the corporate tax rate that are killing U.S. competitiveness.

Assuming EVs gain popularity as we all here hope, no sane person would think that the U.S. taxpayer putting $7500 on the hood of each one indefinitely is sustainable. Even Carlos Ghosn was clear that he expects the subsidies to be withdrawn over time and the product needs to stand on its own in a free market, and that they plan to get costs in line accordingly. Witness the plastic hubcaps on the 2013. Even if you make the case that using subsidies to promote the establishment of EVs, is it really appropriate to ask your neighbors to pay for your navi, bluetooth and rims?

As for the subsidies of oil, even that left wing extremist T Boone Pickens has noted that we have huge defense expenditures to secure the free flow of oil. But the solution to market distortions is not to add more market distortions.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

is it really appropriate to ask your neighbors to pay for your navi, bluetooth and rims?

The $7500 isn't paying for that stuff. You are. That will be even more clear in 2013 - if you want that stuff, it will be an additional premium. Or, better put, if you don't want it, the car will be cheaper.

The $7500 goes towards offsetting the higher initial cost of a technology that doesn't have a 100 year head-start. It is a concession to ease some of the risk burden assumed by those who are brazen enough to be the pioneers.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

is it really appropriate to ask your neighbors to pay for your navi, bluetooth and rims?

The $7500 isn't paying for that stuff. You are. That will be even more clear in 2013 - if you want that stuff, it will be an additional premium. Or, better put, if you don't want it, the car will be cheaper.

The $7500 goes towards offsetting the higher initial cost of a technology that doesn't have a 100 year head-start. It is a concession to ease some of the risk burden assumed by those who are brazen enough to be the pioneers.

I'll cede your points, and I do support the subsidy. But not as a forever thing.

 

[WetEV]

The left wants to create the image that within hours of Mitt Romney taking office there would be a mass confiscation of electric cars and birth control pills. My belief is that his attention would be more focused on the fiscal cliff and things like the corporate tax rate that are killing U.S. competitiveness.

Fiscal cliff was created by the Tea Party wing to put pressure on Obama. It might be interesting to see if this trap can disarmed by a Republican President, or if the Tea Party wing wants to bring down the US government aka "Starve the Beast" regardless who is President.

But the solution to market distortions is not to add more market distortions.

Some market distortions can't be removed. An example is a "natural monopoly", such as a drinking water system for a city. There are two reasonable choices: operate as a service of the government, as some cities do, or operate as a regulated utility, where a private company has legal restrictions on the prices it can charge. Both of these are a market distortion. The alternative isn't reasonable, as a non-regulated utility could charge vastly higher prices, limited only to the level that threatened the viability of the city.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

Fiscal cliff was created by the Tea Party wing to put pressure on Obama. It might be interesting to see if this trap can disarmed by a Republican President, or if the Tea Party wing wants to bring down the US government aka "Starve the Beast" regardless who is President.

The fiscal cliff was created by the adults stepping in to deal with runaway budget deficits. We have a massive spending problem. And yes, Big Bird is part of it. A small part perhaps, but he is a part of it.