The Price Tag For Obama’s Being Able to Boast Is Hundreds Of Thousands Of Taxpayer Money For Every Chevy Volt Sold

Just imagine for a second if George Bush had this giant of an albatross hanging off his neck.  Good thing it’s Obama’s complete policy and worldview failure so the mainstream media can “spin” failure into magnificent success:

Media Fail: Chevy Volt Makes NO Money, Costs Taxpayers Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Per Car
By Seton Motley | July 17, 2012 | 09:54

The Jurassic Press is missing much in their reporting on the $50 billion bailout of General Motors (GM). The Press is open channeling for President Barack Obama – allowing him to frame the bailout exactly as he wishes in the 2012 Presidential election.

The President is running in large part on the bailout’s $30+ billion loss, uber-failed “success.” And the Press is acting as his stenographers. An epitome of this bailout nightmare mess is the electric absurdity that is the Chevrolet Volt. The Press is at every turn covering up – rather than covering – the serial failures of President Obama’s signature vehicle.

The Press has failed to mention at least five Volt fires, myopically focusing on the one the Obama Administration hand-selected for attention.

The Press has failed to mention that the Volt fire problem remains unsolved. Is it the battery? Is it the charging station? Is it the charging cable? All of the above?

GM and the Administration don’t know. And the Press ain’t breaking their necks trying to find out.

In more recent news, the Press has almost as one hailed the June Volt sales increase.

GM’s Volt Sales Up in June

Surprising June Sales for Volt

Chevy Volt Leads US Plug-In Car Sales

Chevy Volt Sales Increases

Volt Records Second-Best Sales Month

The Press has for the most part failed to mention how pathetic this “second-best sales month” actually is. And even when one Dinosaur does, the unwarranted enthusiasm is palpable.

GM sells 1760 Volts in June, double from 2011

Wow. Huge number.

The Press also fails to put this pathetic tally in perspective.

The Chevy Cruze is basically a Volt without the dead-weight, flammable 400-lb. electric battery. Which makes it $17,000, rather than the Volt’s $41,000.

Chevy in June sold 18,983 Cruzes – more than ten times the number of Volts. And that’s down 1/3 from last June’s 24,648.

But that feeble Volt tally has the Press all revved up.

And speaking of the Volt’s ridiculous $41,000 sticker price:

According to multiple GM executives there is little or no profit being made on each Volt built at a present cost of around $40,000. Furthermore, the $700 million of development that went into the car has to be recouped.

Get that? GM makes “little or no profit” on the Volt.

So it makes perfect sense that GM would spend millions of dollars advertising it, does it not? No ideological or campaign intent there, eh President Obama?

Look, I get it, it’s fun. I just spent $1 million – of your money – advertising free air. On which my profit margin is just as good as GM’s is on the Volt.

Only my ads didn’t have a song, or a dance. We just aren’t as cool as the Volt.

I mean, it’s so cool – it can travel back in time to inspire the production of cars before it even existed.

I mean, it’s so cool – it can travel back in time to offer the exact same technology as a car from 1991. And the exact same electric battery range as a car from 1897.

We’re talking retro-grade cool.

But wait – there’s so much more.

(A)dd $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

Speaking of those “tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives” – as of November of last year that tally all by itself was $250,000 per Volt sold.

And that excruciating pain is ongoing. Again, a Volt sold makes GM no money – but costs We the Taxpayers a $7,500 bribe – I mean “incentive.” Oh – and President Obama wants to jack that bribe to $10,000 per.

I guess it’s good news after all that Volt sales remain so anemic.

And with GM’s new 60-day return policy, it looks like you can buy a Volt and cash the $7,500 bribe check. Then return the Volt – and keep the $7,500 bribe cash. How’s that for Taxpayer coin stewardship?

Keep all of this outrageousness in mind when next the Jurassic Press joins with the Obama Administration in celebrating the Chevy Volt.

But it (allegedly) helps President Obama get reelected. And nothing would make the Press happier – and for that there’s (almost?) nothing they won’t do.

Pardon me while I go get myself $7,500 of free money by “renting” a Volt long enough to cash my Obama bribe check. 

It’s the least I can do to help destroy America while helping re-elect Obama – which ironically also means destroying America.

CFL Bulbs, The Bogus Bad Science Behind Them And A Democrat Party That Swims In A Sea Of Hypocrisy And Deceit

Utterly bogus claims in the name of “science” from the same left that routinely demonizes conservatives as being enemies of science.  To be a liberal is to be a quintessential hypocrite; hypocrisy defines the left; it is the sine qua non without which liberalism could not exist; hypocrisy is the ocean that liberal fish swim in.  And hypocrisy is so completely all-consuming for the left that they can’t even see it all around them.

Other than that, they are just wrong.

Yesterday I posted an article that demonstrates how utterly and completely UNSCIENTIFIC global warming “scientists” are.  It is simply amazing to watch these pathological liars play games with the truth while somehow never losing their self-righteous chutzpah.

Btw, the first article of the series referred to below is available here. And I accessed it from a very cool site on “climate change” here.

CFL bulbs: shedding light on misleading performance claims
Kirk Myers, Seminole County Environmental News Examiner
January 12, 2012

This article, the second in a series, focuses on the misleading performance claims surrounding the “more energy efficient” compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs now replacing traditional incandescent bulbs. These potentially harmful mercury-filled lamps (see my previous column describing the dangers) are being forced on consumers by the U.S. congress with support from the Green Lobby and light-bulb manufacturers like GE, Sylvania and Phillips. These and other manufacturers stand to make huge profits selling the more expensive CFLs (more on that issue in my next column).

There is a growing body of evidence undermining claims of the EPA, environmental lobby and light bulb manufacturers touting the performance advantages of mercury-laced CFL bulbs.

Exaggerated lifespan

Real-world reports from the home front show that the claimed extended lifespan of CFLs is often greatly exaggerated. There is ample data indicating that the frequent switching on and off of CFLs greatly shortens their life. A study by H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, and co-author Amanda Berg concludes:

“Unfortunately, except under a fairly narrow range of circumstances, CFLs are less efficient than advertised. Manufacturers claim the average life span of a CFL bulb is 10,000 hours. However, in many applications the life and energy savings of a CFL are significantly lower.

“Applications in which lighting is used only briefly (such as closets, bathrooms, motion detectors and so forth) will cause CFL bulbs to burn out as quickly as regular incandescent bulbs . . . When initially switched on, CFLs may provide as little as 50 percent to 80 percent of their rated light output and can take up to three minutes to reach full brightness.”

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, Pacific Gas & Electric originally estimated the useful life of CFL bulbs at 9.4 years. But based on real-world results, the company was forced to lower its estimate to 6.3 years, meaning that it had overstated bulb life by 49 percent. “The early burn-out rate, along with several other factors, meant that the actual energy savings were 73 percent less than the 1.7 billion kilowatt hours projected by PG&E,” the Journal reported.

Less bright, more dim with age

As many consumers have noticed, CFL bulbs grow dimmer as they age. In a 2003-2004 study, the U.S. Department of Energy reported that one-fourth of CFLs, after only 40 percent of their rated service life, no longer produced at their rated output.

And according to Wikipedia: “CFLs produce less light later in their lives than when they are new. The light output decay is exponential, with the fastest losses being soon after the lamp is first used. By the end of their lives, CFLs can be expected to produce 70-80% of their original light output.”

After conducting its own tests on bulbs from several manufacturers, The Sunday Telegraph in London “found that under normal conditions, using a single lamp to light a room, an 11W low-energy CFL produced only 58 percent of the illumination of an ‘equivalent’ 60W bulb – even after a 10-minute ‘warm-up.’”

The European Commission, which led the effort to ban incandescent bulbs in Europe, said that claims by manufacturers that CFL’s shine as brightly as old-fashioned bulbs are “not true.”

Posted on its website for consumers was the warning that “exaggerated claims are often made on the packaging about the light output of compact fluorescent lamps.”

Higher heating bills

Go-Green advocates like to complain about the fact that 90 percent of the energy from incandescent lights is given off as heat, with only 10 percent providing illumination. But they ignore one important fact: The extra heat given off during the winter months can actually lower energy bills.

According to a study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, “The heat of incandescent lights – more than 341 Btu per bulb per hour – can help to warm a room. Therefore, if the cost of electricity is low relative to the cost of home heating fuel, there may be an economic case for changing to incandescent bulbs in colder seasons.”

In other words, on a cold day when you’re running your electric heater, it makes sense to flip on all those incandescent heat sources. Of course, the contribution of incandescent bulbs to lower heating bills is conveniently missing from pro-CFL literature.

Unsuitable for outdoor lighting

What about the use of CFLs for outdoor lighting? Forget it. Most do not operate well in low temperatures, a performance shortfall that makes them virtually useless for home-security lighting, including as lights in motion detectors. By signing the incandescent bulb’s death warrant, congress has effectively rendered useless outdoor lighting systems that keep away intruders and discourage home break-ins.

Myth of mercury reduction

One of the most misleading arguments advanced in defense of CFLs is the assertion that they reduce harmful mercury levels (a dubious proposition given that the bulbs themselves are laced with mercury).

Case in point: In a letter to the Wall Street Journal in December, CFL advocate Nicole Lederer claimed that “coal-fired power plants produce about half of all mercury.”

In his Jan. 5 response, Charles Battig of Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment-Virginia called the statement “scientifically vacuous and misleading.”

Battig cited data from an op-ed (“The Myth of Killer Mercury” by Willie Soon and Paul Driessen) that broke down mercury contributions as follows: “U.S. coal-fired plants, about 41-48 tons per year; forest fires, about 44 tons per year; Chinese power plants, 400 tons per year, while recurring geological events such as volcanoes and geysers emit 9,000-10,000 tons per year.”

“With these missing pieces of information, wrote Battig, the U.S. power plant contribution of mercury is closer to a 0.5% value than the “half of all mercury” claim by Ms. Lederer.”

Battig then offered this advice:

“Would that Ms. Lederer and the Environmental Entrepreneurs expend an equal amount of environmental anguish over placing compact fluorescent lamp bulbs indoors in homes, schools and factories. These mercury-containing, stealth-pollution bulbs bring the mercury threat right into your living room and nursery.”

No good reason for switchover

The fact is there is no good reason for consumers – even energy-conscious go-green enthusiasts – to replace their old incandescent bulbs with the much-overhyped and potentially dangerous CFL lamps. The sole beneficiaries of the forced switchover are light bulb manufacturers who stand to make huge profits selling CFL bulbs whose shelf price has been artificially lowered (but still is higher than incandescent bulbs) through hefty subsidies paid to them by taxpayers.

In light of the facts, the switchover to CFL bulbs has become a real consumer turn-off.

Think about all the lies and bogus promises that accompanied the Democrat Party forcing you to buy CFL light bulbs because they love fascism.  Think about the complete piece of crap a.k.a. the Chevy Volt and the Obama administration spending billions to ram it down our throats.  Think about Solyndra and the $10 billion train wreck of high speed rail and think about just how BAD Democrat governance truly is.

Democrats have been caught red-handed handing BILLIONS of the American peoples’ money to their leftwing special interests.  Companies like Solyndra and GE (the company that benefitted most from the Democrat Party forcing you to buy CFLs whether you wanted to or not) and the boondoggles that crony capitalist fascist Democrats hand them are a dime a dozen.  And then let me say two words – Fannie Mae – to point out just how truly dangerous these dirty rotten scoundrels truly are.

And then vote Republican while you’ve still got a country to vote for.

P.S. Another good site on bad science and the CFL boondoggle is located here.