The military spends billions upon billions of dollars on science and engineering projects that are failures, and even if some of these programs had been successes, would probably contribute very little to the betterment of the country. We spent $3 billion to design a new helicopter for the president that will never, ever be used.
Spending a couple billion dollars on science and engineering projects that could have a substantial impact on big issues like energy independence and reducing our dependence on oil is a great thing to do. Even if some of the investments don’t pan out, it only takes one or two of these big impact programs to be successful to make it all worth it.
If some people are too afraid to try to make big decisions like this and roll the dice, then I have one thing to say: lead, follow, or get out of the way.
And with that, A nice guy with an opinion swept his flowing locks over his shoulder and flounced away in a huff.
But… He vowed to return one day, just as soon as he’d re-armed himself with more “appalling revelations” from the oracle known only to the brave and the chosen few as… FoxNews…
da da duuuummmmm!
Saying that because some gov. funding of projects sees the projects goes bankrupt, therefore we should leave everything to the private sector is no different than a communist saying that because some of the investments that venture capitalists make go bankrupt we should nationalize all venture capital firms.
It isn’t one or the other, and the occasional failures of venture capitalist firms is not a good justification for communism. Besides, China invests heavily in their renewable energy sector (including subsidized loans) and the US can’t compete w/o doing the same.
Plus since renewable energy, like IT is a rapidly growing and expanding field some companies will do amazing, and a lot will fail. That is expected.
Even if I had given my opinion, you all would say I was taking stuff out of context.
The videos gave Obama’s words rather than my commentary. I find that more informative.
I fail to see the overall problem. The government funds private research all the time, and sometimes that research leads to dead ends. There’s nothing unique to the Obama administration about this, certainly not since World War II.
He’s just continuing the right-wing tradition of criticizing Obama for things that most modern previous presidents did, implying they are unique to his administration.
Other examples:
Obama appointing ‘czars’
Obama family costing taxpayers $1.3B (Bush cost $1.6B for same period)
Man, I really don’t understand this line of attack. We absolutely *need *to develop alternative sources of energy. It’s conceivable that some of the methods we use, and some of the companies doing the research, might not pan out. But some of them will, and we need to be the country that finds those methods.
There are lame partisan attacks, and then there’s this horsecrap. When this is your best way to attack the president, that just tells me that he’s doing a good job.
I haven’t watched the YT videos but you realize that the legislation authorizing these loan guarantees came from the Dick Cheney energy bill, right? The alternative energy program was politically necessary to get the Democratic support he needed to pass the bill but it was Dick Cheney’s bill. So, ironically, if we achieve commercailly viable alternative energy anytime soon and we achieve super high mileage cars anytiem soon, we will have Dick Cheney’s ability to compromise to thank for that. Can you believe that you would ever look back at Dick Cheney and say, gee I wish Republicans were that moderate again.
The program is authorized to guarantee up to $36 billion dollars. Dick Cheney gave the program $30 billion dollars, Obama gave it $6 billion more. We haven’t even used the first $30 billion yet but I guess its nice to know that the extra $6 billion is there if we can identify promising alternative energy companies.
The result of that alternative energy program has been a rapid acceleration of the time horizon for solar and wind to achieve grid parity (cost about as much as coal and natural gas).
The real jackpot is finding a way to power our cars without or with less gasoline. There are a lot of ideas out there and frankly MOST of them are going to fail but we only need ONE to work.
Well, then what DID you say?
I agree, the government should be engaging in this sort of research directly. See space program, see human genome project, GPS satellite location, the internet, about a thousand military applications that have found its way into the stream of commerce.
I posted this in a GD thread but it applies here more.
Also noted in that thread - the big kahuna of EV batteries is South Korea’s LGChem. America’s Johnson Controls, which is buying A123’s automotive battery assets and contracts, is their closest competitor. The industry will see more consolidation before this is done but in terms of the return being the goal of keeping America in the game for an emerging industry and bootstrapping an emerging technology this is not a lose: Johnson Controls (also a Fed grant recipient) is now THE major American contender in the ring, and benefits mightily from the A123 intellectual property and production capacity bought on the cheap.