Hybrid stupiditiy: Hybrid Cars Burning Gas in the Drive for Power

The 2005 Honda Accord hybrid gets about the same miles per gallon as the basic four-cylinder model, according to a review by Consumer Reports, a car-buyer’s guide, and it saves only about two miles a gallon compared with the V-6 model on which it is based. Thanks to the hybrid technology, though, it accelerates better.
Hybrid technology, it seems, is being used in much the same way as earlier under-the-hood innovations that increased gasoline efficiency: to satisfy the American appetite for acceleration and bulk.
Despite the use of hybrids to achieve better performance with about the same fuel economy, consumers who buy the cars continue to get a tax credit that the Internal Revenue Service allows under a “clean fuels” program that does not take fuel savings into account.

A simple gas tax, not tax credit for specific technology, would solve such stupid developments.

Posted by: b | Jul 17 2005 8:02 utc | 4

@b

The West should be trying to break that hermetic seal, to increase interactions with North Korea and to infiltrate into North Korea the most effective subversive agents we have: overweight Western business executives.
Instead, we maintain sanctions, isolate North Korea and wait indefinitely for the regime to collapse. I’m afraid we’re helping the Dear Leader stay in power.

To what purpose infiltrate into North Korea the most effective subversive agents we have? An over-riding concern for the welfare of North Koreans?
The “West” should fuck-off and mind their own business.

Posted by: DM | Jul 17 2005 10:01 utc | 6

This from the Boston Federal Reserve PDF

Depending on the scenario, the current labor force shortfall ranges from 1.6 million to 5.1 million men and women. With 7.9 million people currently unemployed, the addition of these hypothetical participants would raise the unemployment rate by 1 to 3 ‐plus percentage points. Current low rates of labor market participation thus potentially represent considerable slack in the U.S. labor market.

As often said the US unemployment numbers are much higher than the official number.

Posted by: b | Jul 17 2005 10:26 utc | 8

Billmon has a Today in Iraq type post up now.
Surely he could link here himself.
Meanwhile Bernhard. Thanks for Moon of Alabama.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 17 2005 12:38 utc | 10

Some interesting anomalies in the Suicide Bomber view of 7/7 via the uk Mirror. The questions raised are not tinfoil in the least.
WAS IT SUICIDE?

Posted by: tgs | Jul 17 2005 16:02 utc | 12

MSNBC
Well, Cooper names Libby and Rove. This raises the stakes just a bit for the spin-machine folks, who are doubtless doling out their answers to an ever-obliging Beltway echo chamber. But one thing has to bother them: the higher one’s place in the pyramid, the broader the base of the pyramid below you, by which I think I mean that the pathways open to a classified leak at the top will multiply exponentially as the leak flows down the pyramid. However unknowable those pathways may be to the leakers at the top of the pyramid, they are discoverable by a resourceful investigator taking his time and care, yielding opportunities to persue perjury and obstruction charges all over the place.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 17 2005 16:46 utc | 14

To refine on my post of 12:46 PM: if someone lower down on the pyramid having security clearance shares a third-hand rumor about secret material with someone lacking such clearance, then the secret-sharer’s could be in deep trouble with the law. An example might be Douglas Feith leaking the Plame story to a right-wing journalist in his circle of trusted friends.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 17 2005 17:32 utc | 16

Anti Shell Protesters in Ireland Smeared By Biggest Selling Newspaper in Ireland as – you’ve guessed it –
Here are some Pictures. Do These People look like terrorists to y’all?

Posted by: d*u** as a r*le | Jul 17 2005 18:27 utc | 18

Sorry Made a bollix of that: Here’s what I meant
Anti Shell Protesters in Ireland Smeared By Biggest Selling Newspaper in Ireland as – you’ve guessed it – Terrorists
Here are some Pictures. Do These People look like terrorists to y’all?

Posted by: d*u** as a r*le | Jul 17 2005 18:29 utc | 20

LA Times Front Page Feature art. today is background piece on China’s energy situation & oil deals around the globe. It underscores why I think this Admin. is, or certainly should be, toast. China Stakes Claim for Global Oil Access
A Must Read Article for any evaluation of this Admin. Even by the most narrow minded utilitarian standards imaginable these Bastards have been a disastrous failure. The Oil Guys seize power, you’d think the one legacy they’d leave would be secure access to oil supplies. Remember Cheney’s Energy Task Force?? (But then Cheney gets rich off Halliburton, not oil companies… And throw in that it was Cheney who arranged for Piratization of huge chunks of the military, before he raced off to Halliburton to clean up on this.) In fact, their Fascist methods have insured the opposite, as countries around the globe, from Africa to Canada, rush to make deals w/China. But they’re too incompetent even to have noticed til China delivered the coup de grace, swooping in on Am. oil co:
Before the Unocal bid, Beijing’s activities had attracted relatively little attention from a U.S. administration focused on Iraq, Washington’s war on terrorism and other foreign policy priorities.
“We’re still trying to get a handle on what’s happened on our watch,” said a senior State Department official who asked not to be identified…

Putting it all in context, you get the clear impression that these guys are far more interested in War even than Oil. We’ve got to reverse this Piratization of the military to ratchet down the incentives for warwarwarwarwarwarwarwarwar.

Posted by: jj | Jul 17 2005 21:59 utc | 22

@jj While I commend your effort to ascribe some patriotic motive to Cheney and co I find it facile to imagine that Leopold’s motives are anything other than maximising profits for energy corporations and their shareholders. Leo and the gang have been pretty successful at thatconsidering that oil prices have nearly tripled during his reign and in most cases costs haven’t. That is the bulk of oil that these parasites resell has probably been bought years ago under long term fixed price contract. Is that the case with Unocal? Or do those contracts just guarantee access at current price? I don’t know but given that the talking head security spruikers that pass for economic experts are saying that the current oil price is about correct when you look at the ’72 real cost and add inflation, we can assume that the Unocal deal is about the gang exercising their god given right to sell at the top of the market.
The consensus amongst the spruikers appears to be that current prices are about what the market will bear without imploding the economy; so the sale of a second string oil producer is probably seen as little more than a bit of ‘harmless profit taking’.
Lets not be putting too big a monkey on Leo’s back! If you’re in the game you’ll be able to afford the new reality if you’re not well hell whose fault is that?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 18 2005 2:51 utc | 24

THINGS GET COMPLICATED WHEN YOU GET PAST EIGHTEEN.
SEE ABOVE LINK.

Posted by: Groucho | Jul 18 2005 3:34 utc | 26

Wasn’t any sarcasm intended BR.

Posted by: Groucho | Jul 18 2005 4:03 utc | 28

@ gylangirl
When in doubt and you need to access a site without burning yet another email addy with spam or the tinfoil hat isn’t handy I reckon bugmenot
is tough to beat

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 18 2005 5:22 utc | 30

Tube bombs ‘linked to Iraq conflict’

In the most politically sensitive finding, Chatham House, which used to be known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, concludes there is “no doubt” the invasion of Iraq has “given a boost to the al-Qaida network” in “propaganda, recruitment and fundraising”, while providing an ideal targeting and training area for terrorists. “Riding pillion with a powerful ally has proved costly in terms of British and US military lives, Iraqi lives, military expenditure and the damage caused to the counter-terrorism campaign.”
This finding runs counter to the line from Downing Street, which has sought to detach Iraq from the London attacks.

Posted by: b | Jul 18 2005 9:10 utc | 32

A good NYT OpEd: America’s Truth Deficit

But on the crucial question of how policy makers define “national interest,” Washington stands alone. Western Europe, whatever its problems, manages economic policy to maintain modest trade surpluses. Japan manages to insure far larger surpluses in recessions (its export income subsidizes inefficient domestic employers). China strives to acquire a larger, more advanced industrial base at the expense of worker incomes and bank profits. Germany and Japan, despite vast differences, both manage to keep advanced manufacturing sectors anchored at home and to defend domestic wage levels and social guarantees. When they do disperse production and jobs overseas, as they must, they do so strategically.
By contrast, Washington defines “national interest” primarily in terms of advancing the global reach of our multinational enterprises. Elites are persuaded by the reigning orthodoxy that subsidiary domestic interests will ultimately benefit too. The distinctive power of America’s globalized companies is reflected in trade patterns. Nearly half of American exports and imports are not traded in open markets – the price auction idealized by neoclassical economics – but within the companies themselves, moving materials and components back and forth among their far-flung factories. A trade deficit does not show on the company’s balance sheet, only on the nation’s. In recent years, much of the trade deficit has reflected the value-added production and jobs that companies moved elsewhere.
The United States is thus especially vulnerable to the downward pressures on working-class wages that exist on both ends of the global system. American producers are generally free – and even encouraged by Washington – to shift production to low-wage locations. Companies regularly use this cost-cutting technique as a competitive weapon without regard to the domestic consequences. The practice works for companies and investors, but not so well for a nation.
INDEED, the cumulative effects of retarding labor incomes worldwide repeatedly threatens stagnation or worse for the entire system. Workers, to put it crudely, cannot buy what the world can make. Too much capital leads to the speculative “bubbles” that bounce around the world, visiting financial crisis on rich and poor alike.
At a different moment in history, American leadership might have stepped up to these disorders and led the way to solutions. If globalization is to continue without encountering more crisis and random destruction, governments must together shift the balance of power so labor incomes can rise in step with rising productivity and profits. If the United States is to avert its own reckoning, it must take decisive action to draw firm limits on its exposure to trade deficits, that is, resign its position as the open-armed buyer of last resort. In effect, Washington would also reform its own national interest imperatives so that they more closely resemble what other nations already embrace. Ultimately, American remedial action may protect the global system from its own crisis – the moment when trading partners discover they have just lost their best customer.
But to describe plausible remedies is to explain why none are likely. The webs of mutual interests connecting government, corporate boardrooms and Wall Street are too deeply woven, as are habits of thought among policy makers and politicians. So I do not expect anything fundamental will be altered in time. We are going to find out if the dissenters are right.

Posted by: b | Jul 18 2005 9:56 utc | 34

The Russian oil and gas industry remains a font of genuinely remarkable stories.
As to the first, the process of “losing” 7.8 billion cubic meters of anything staggers the imagination, while the second makes us wonder who’s behind the Tranquillo holding
with headquarters in Panama and Sibneft Shaw Carroll of the British Virgin Islands, where Roman Abramovich’s men are involved in a murky but presumably potentially lucrative legal hassle. Seemingly we have the names of the major players here, but lack a “score-card” that tells us what they’re up to and who
is “managing” them.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jul 18 2005 14:13 utc | 36

ha. so tancredo shoots off more than his mouth, eh? thanks, slothrop.

Posted by: b real | Jul 18 2005 18:31 utc | 38

interesting drive through the ozarks yesterday..enjoying orchestra baobab while cruising along historic route 66..passed through the small town of cuba, missouri, yes, named after that island..passed a “trading post” whose sign out front had a welcoming picture of a beefy blue-eyed blond, mulleted hillbilly in dungarees & flannel, welcoming those in need of an assortment of cedar trinkets and pow/mia shot glasses..i waved back at the aryan hillbilly and pressed on, figuring if i ever needed a “round tuit”, then i’d stop..in town there were several large, freshly painted murals on the entire sides of several buildings..first block..lucky lindy & the spirit of ’76..next block..the flyboys of WWII, shipping off in a frisco car, white wives waving worriedly..third block..henry ford & a well-dressed family sqeezing into a model t for a leisurely drive somewhere..had to laugh..bookending the “heroic” fighters against hitler & fascism w/ two nazi supporters..i’m sure if i ventured off the main road that i would see murals of meyer lansky & santo trafficante..cuba, mo..yessir..american history..i turned up the boabab & headed on to the river. (and there, as i was putting my kayak in the water, several truckloads of folk started gathering in preparation for the baptism of a large woman waddling down the bank w/ her reclining lounger..i figured i’d better get the hell out of there)

Posted by: b real | Jul 18 2005 19:09 utc | 40

b real
on the advice of counsel – get the fuck out of there

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 18 2005 21:11 utc | 42

r’giap- indeed. even more disturbing, around the first bend, a bridge. along w/ the typical graffiti, was a 3-foot-tall heart outline, encasing the letters ‘kkk’. and hanging off the bridge, two ropes dangling, at the end, nooses, stopping only feet above the water’s surface. somewhere a blogger is typing the sentence ‘we want our country back’. if the shit hits the fan here in the states & you happen hear a bbc report about someone kayaking across the atlantic, there’s a good chance that it’ll be me.

Posted by: b real | Jul 18 2005 21:39 utc | 44