Flishback: Solar Subsidies, Another Katz Lawsuit Rejected

• "Solar Subsidies Considered Harmful" (July 9th): SB1 has been amended to require at least 10 percent of its funds to be spent on solar installations for affordable housing projects. The previous version of the bill had a weaker requirement that up to 10 percent of the funds could be spent on solar installations for affordable housing. The bill still allows only C-10 electrical contractors to install qualified solar energy systems.



• "One Property Owner, One Property Tax Vote?" (June 19th): Another of Aaron Katz' lawsuits, this one against the Mountain View-Whisman School District, has been thrown out for not being filed in a timely manner: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/12263513.htm (requires sign in)

Conspiracy Spoken Jazz

Confession: I'm a conspiracy nut! I can't get enough of stories about secret societies, UFOs, and things not being as they appear.

It's not like I believe the stuff. Really. I just find it all very entertaining. So, I was thrilled the other day when I found out that Dave Emory is podcasting.

Who is Dave Emory? Dave Emory (and here) describes himself as an anti-fascist researcher. I like to think of him as a conspiracy jazz artist.

I used to listen to him late on Sunday nights on KFJC, the Foothill College radio station. His hour-long talks, full of references to secret Nazi cells in the United States government, gives an alternative history of everything that has happened politically since World War II.

Is anything he says true? It's hard for me to say, since his conspiracy reporting never seems to come to any closure. No statement that can be tested for truth. Each program is full of references to his previous programs that refer to other previous programs. Each show contains an amazing density of conspiratorial hinting around and dropping of names of obscure, shady figures.

But here's the thing that makes it all work. The man has a great voice for a conspiracist. If you don't listen too closely to what he's saying (whatever he's talking about), it's like listening to some kind of paranoid free-form spoken jazz. The steady gush of verbiage has a wonderful hypnotic rhythm and tone to it. He must be aware of this delivery, too; the show used to open with a long stretch of John Coltrane, with a lot of the same qualities of the talk that followed.

You may not be getting it from this post, but give a listen to one of Dave Emory's shows sometime and you'll hear what I'm talking about.

Hillary Clinton To Reposition Her Image At Great Taxpayer Expense?

I hadn't been paying much attention to Hillary Clinton's recent campaign to rein in explicit sexual content in explicitly violent video games. I figured it was true what they say -- she's trying to reposition herself as a centrist in preparation for a Presidential bid. I figured it was all talk. And talk, being cheap, doesn't cost us anything. But then I saw this article that has been making its way around the blogosphere the last few days:

Steven Johnson, Los Angeles Times"Hillary vs. the Xbox: Game over"
(requires sign in)

I'm writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious "Grand Theft Auto" series.

I'm not sure I agree with Steven Johnson's glib defense of "thrill seeking" games. But I'm sickened that Senator Clinton, teamed with Rick Santorum, Sam Brownback, and Joe Lieberman, would consider blowing 90 million of our tax dollars on this investigation.

Ninety-million dollars! To put that much money in perspective, it is enough to fund the "Healthy Kids" program I wrote about the other day for 15 years. It's three times the annual budget of the Mountain View-Los Altos school district. It's money that could be used (here's an idea) to pay down the huge national debt that all those video game playing kids will inherit. Or returned to taxpayers, who could surely think of something more useful (or more fun -- video games?!) to spend it on.

A couple of parting shots: First, who spends $90 million on a study without heavy expectations of how they would like the results of that study to turn out? And, second, what good does it do to regulate campaign expenses when Senators can spend gobs of public money to build their political images?

San Francisco Mime Troupe: "Doing Good"

Today we headed over to a free performance the San Francisco Mime Troupe was giving in a Palo Alto park. The Mime Troupe is a theater collective that has been staging radical leftist plays since Hippie days.

Today's show, "Doing Good", tells the story, over several decades, of an American couple who set out to help poor people in several troubled countries. The husband, who starts out simply trying to avoid the draft, eventually becomes an operative of the World Bank and, unwittingly, of the CIA, while the wife hangs on to her ideals. Along the way, the Troupe gives a recount of American meddling in Ecudor, Indonesia, Panama, and Iran.

I'm not going to give a comprehensive review here. Just a few random thoughts and impressions:

• I approached the play with a bit of dread. It's not that I'm not sympathetic to a lot of the Troupe's political concerns. But earnest political diatribes ain't necessarily all that entertaining. To the Troupe's credit the acting and singing were top-notch, and the play did have some nuance. On the other hand, it did go on a bit long. I found myself wistfully recalling the movie, "The Quiet American". This movie makes essentially the same point as "Doing Good", but much more powerfully, with a complex mix of romance, world weariness, ambiguity, and avoidance of belaborment. Of course, I'm comparing a multi-million dollar film to a play staged in a park, but it wasn't just the budget that accounts for the difference in quality.


• Still it was cool just to watch a counterculture play in the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon. You just gotta love living in the Bay Area with all its diversity and unique culture!


• The performance reminded me that one of the qualities I find disagreeable in extremists of every stripe from conservative to liberal to libertarian: being long on criticism, but short on any positive vision. So much political thought in this country seems to follow the fallacious line of reasoning, "The other side is wrong, therefore I must be right!"


• There was a scene within a scene where an Uncle Sam-like demon, representing American imperialism, is slayed by a group of Indonesian street mimes. I got it intellectually, but it still made me feel uncomfortable and sad. I'm four square against American imperialism, but I also love America: our free, vibrant culture and our ideals. For making me feeling uncomfortable, I have to give the Troupe credit -- the scene had dramatic power. The most dramatic moment in the entire play. But it disturbed me that many in the audience applauded so joyfully at the scene. And played right into the hands of conservatives who try to paint all liberals as "hating America".


• The behind-the-scenes root of all evil in the play is the World Bank, manipulating third-world countries into taking on levels of debt impossible to repay. I have to admit I don't know enough about the World Bank to assess how accurate their charges are. I'll have to learn more. Their accusation that America forces debt on third-world countries made me think about American's own national debt, dwarfing the debts enumerated in the play -- who is forcing debt on Americans? Americans, I suppose.

If You Don't Want People To Do Time, Don't Make It A Crime

My friend, Stephanie, posted this item on her blog. In the video, an interviewer asks several anti-abortion protestors picketing to make abortion illegal, "How should a woman who has an abortion be punished?"

Their answers blew my mind a bit. All of the activists in the video, most thinking about it for the first time, answer that they wouldn't want a woman who has an abortion to actually be punished. They just want abortion to be illegal. Huh?

http://www.atcenternetwork.com/?p=64 (requires RealOne Player)

I suppose this kind of disconnect exists in a lot of people's minds. They want something to be illegal to show their disapproval, but never think through the consequences.

But What If This Is One Of The One Third?

A fun little followup to my A Skeptical Look at Scientific Studies post the other day. A new study concludes that one-third of studies turn out to be wrong:

CNN: "Research: Third of study results don't hold up"

Healthy Kids Program Doing Well

I fear a Federal or California single-payer health system would combine a lot of the worst aspects of big government: intimate control over our lives by remote, unaccountable bureaucrats and politicians, many with a not-hidden-at-all religious right agenda; rationing of treatment; stifling of medical innovation; being sold as a way to help the poor, but ending up handing most of its entitlements right back to the middle class taxpayers who could have just payed for their own health care in the first place, without entangling their health care with politics.

But what about a more human-scaled program. One run at the county level. Means-tested, so that it really helps poor people. Well, we have a program like that here in Santa Clara County. And, apparently, it's doing well:

Mercury News editorial: "Healthy Kids shines brighter" (requires sign in)

Already copied throughout California and considered a model for the nation, the program is reaching new heights. At a time when many programs are cutting or fighting to maintain budgets, the Santa Clara Family Health Plan is expanding and will insure an additional 1,000 kids this year, bringing the total number of children covered by the program to 14,000.

I think its a great idea. I know there are some purist Libertarians in this county who would oppose it automatically because it is tax funded. I say to them if they don't like it, instead of complaining, they should set up a completely voluntary system that provides assistance to the poor. If they actually showed that kind of active concern for people, they'd win over thousands of voters to believing in freedom instead of more government.

Flishback: Compulsory Narking, 200-Page Textbooks, Freedom To Read

Let's follow up on a few posts from the past:

• Congressman Sensenbrenner Pushing Nark Bill (May 26): Thankfully, this bill requiring Americans to turn in their family and friends who do drugs has made no progress!


• California to Limit Classroom Materials to 200 Pages?! (May 31): A California bill to limit the size of textbooks to 200 pages is still in committee.


• House Stands Up For Freedom To Read (June 16): The "Freedom to Read Act", a House bill which would revoke sections of the USA PATRIOT Act that authorize warrantless searches of library and bookstore records, has been stuck in the Committee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security for a couple of months.

Solar Subsidies Considered Harmful

California Senate Bill 1, the "Million Solar Roofs Initiative", with widespread support, looks to be on the fast track to becoming a law. Everybody (including me) thinks solar power is a great idea, so it's wonderful that our leaders are acting to speed up its adoption.

Isn't it?

I first heard about the Initiative on a radio program a couple of days ago. An environmental activist from Berkeley was promoting the plan on the basis that it would make it possible for low-income homeowners to afford solar power for their homes. Sure enough, in the current text of the bill there is a provision setting aside up to ten percent of the plan's funds for solar systems for affordable housing projects.

Besides this one provision, there is nothing in the bill that directs the funds towards low-income households. The actual purpose of the plan is to promote a healthy solar industry and diversify California's energy base, with no particular income level required for participation. Considering that low-income people in the Bay Area usually can't afford to own their own homes, it's more likely that they will end up subsidizing, through higher electicity bills, the installation of solar systems in middle to upper class homes.

Economics tell us that subsidizing the purchase of higher-priced goods discourages investment in and profitability of companies that try to provide lower cost solutions. And creates an unnatural incentive to inflate prices. Read what this executive who survived the last solar business bust has to say about subsidies: http://www.green-trust.org/pv.htm (scroll down to "An Experts View"):

When the solar business marketing relied solely on rebate programs, the market crashed when funds were no longer available. This hurt the manufacturers, suppliers and the consumers as well as giving solar energy a black eye.

And this article's cautions about subsidies:

Some advocates of solar power fear that perhaps too much money is flowing in ways that have not been well thought out.
Subsidies can backfire, tempting vendors to keep their prices high enough to capture the maximum subsidy offered, and propping up products that couldn't stand on their own. They can be so popular that they run out early, stranding consumers or vendors.

If the bill is passed in its current form, one interest group that will reap big profits is the small pool of contractors SB 1 authorizes to install qualified solar systems. Currently, three classes of licensed contractor (general, C-10, and C-46) are authorized to install solar systems. Even though a C-46 license is specifically for installing solar systems, SB 1 blesses only C-10 contractors. (See http://www.solarsebastopol.com/solarbill.html.)

Some argue that solar power must be subsidized so that it can compete with traditional energy sources like oil, which are heavily subsidized in direct and indirect ways. I have to admit there's a certain practical logic, in a world where the government subsidizes so many industries, in arguing for one's share of the pie.

The case for solar power is so compelling that the industry will be huge one day, whether it is helped or hindered by subsidies.

P.S. To be fair, there are a couple of good aspects to SB 1. It ups the amount of power that a solar energy system owner can sell back into the grid by a factor of 100. And, unlike the curerent subsidy program it would replace, it expands the definition of a solar energy system to allow for the possibility that there will be other solar technologies besides photovoltaic cells.

A Skeptical Look at Scientific Studies

It's frustrating how hard it is to find unbiased scientific analysis of a topic once it has become politicized. If you're interesting in getting at the truth of some controversial matter, you're left with no choice except slogging through reams of competing "scientific facts". Since most of us aren't well trained in statistics, we're subject to being fooled by numerical sleight of hand.

I ran across this article today in an old Skeptical Inquirer laying around the gym at work. It explains why studies that use econometric modeling are not as reliable as comparitive studies.

Don't let the big words scare you off. The article is written for the layperson. The author uses studies of the relationship between capital punishment and murder rates as an example, but the article is relevant to other political topics from minimum wage laws to global warming.

Ted Goertzel, Skeptical Inquirer"Capital Punishment and Homicide: Sociological Realities and Econometric Illusions"