The New Electric Vehicle Paradigm, 200-mile EVs as the Norm

For those of you who haven’t been tuning into what has been going on in the automotive industry with respect to electric vehicles (EVs) lately, from 2008 when Tesla introduced the first viable electric vehicle to the market there have been more than 1.5 million electric vehicles sold world wide, and over 500 thousand EVs sold in the US alone. Most electric vehicles sold by the major automakers to this point have had the distances that they can travel on a single charge, also known as range, limited to between 65 to around 100 miles. Tesla Motors, on the other hand, has had its vehicle’s ranges typically set at 200 miles or above. They flirted with a 160 mile range vehicle for a while, but sold few and dropped the production of such vehicles as of March of 2013. Tesla’s vehicles so far have been marketed to upscale luxury/performance market, which inadvertently is like saying its vehicles were expensive. Tesla introduced itself to the automobile market with it’s Roadster, which sold for $109,000, and gave consumers a two seat sports car with 221 miles range. Tesla then introduced an electric full-sized luxury sports sedan called the Model S with a 265 mile range and a price tag of around $86,070. They then introduced an SUV into the market known as the Model X that started with a sale price of $80,000 and a range of around 250 miles per charge. Despite the higher price tag of Tesla vehicles Tesla has managed to sell a very large number of vehicles and its sales are increasing month over month allowing it to capture a lion’s share of the sports/luxury car market segment. When we look at the EV market from its current renaissance that began in 2008 to now we see Tesla with vehicles having ranges of 200 miles and above and the major automakers producing and selling quite a few electric vehicles with ranges of 100 miles range or less.

Now, I have owned experimental converted production electric vehicles, home built EVs, and production EVs, and I have found that they have been useful even with ranges as low as 50 miles. However, having more range does open up the possibilities of more opportunities to do more things with an EV than is possible with lower range vehicles. A greater range is a more desirable aspect when comparing EVs as well. I now live out in the country about 40 miles from the center of the nearest big city. Big cities have a natural draw with the possibilities of seeing cultural events, conventions, shows, etc. Even though I can easily find charging stations from where to charge, the range limitations of my current EV, a Nissan, Leaf (EPA 75 miles) does lead me to make decisions limiting my activity. I don’t plan long trips with my EV. If I travel someplace where driving around is part of the attraction I might limit my driving while there because of the need to conserve my range to get back home. I do have the option to use my hardly ever used gasoline vehicle, but I really don’t like using my gasoline vehicle. As soon as I get into the other vehicle, from the roar of starting it up, to trying to hear the radio over the engine noise, to the smell of gasoline and oil when filling it up, to the sluggish performance when I hit the accelerator pedal, the experience is unpleasant for me to say the least. I love driving my electric car, but on occasion I do wish it had greater range.

I wouldn’t need a lot of range. Just enough to drive to the city and drive around and still be able to get back home without needing to charge again. Just enough to drive around 3 hours, around 150 miles, before needing a quick charge. I don’t like driving more than three hours without a break anyway. Three hours is just about all my bladder can take. I figure if my EV had about 200 miles of range before needing a charge that would be really comfortable for me. Of course it would have to be affordable. From the latest news coming from the EV world it looks like I will be in luck.

In 2007 Tesla’s visionary CEO, Elon Musk put in its business plan that it would make an affordable electric vehicle. Typical for Tesla, this vehicle, which was later named the Model 3, would have a range of more than 200 miles. Two hundred miles! This summer Tesla began taking orders for this vehicle and took around 400,000 $1,000 deposits for it. As excited about this vehicle as I am, this isn’t the point of this article.

The point of this article is that with Tesla’s announcement of a 200-mile range, affordable EV, the reality of the EV world has changed. In particular the 200-mile range EV has changed the infrastructure question for EVs. You see, ever since Elon Musk tweeted out to the world the idea of the Model 3 on July 16, 2014, major automakers have been making plans for their own versions of a 200 mile range electric vehicle. First to market will be GM with its Chevy Bolt EV (not to be confused with the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid). The Bolt will be available for purchase late in 2016 with a price tag of $37,495 and an EPA rated range of 238 miles. Tesla will be out with its Model 3, priced at $35,000 with a 215 mile range beginning in 2017. According to Kazuo Yajima, Nissan’s global director of EV and HEV engineering, Nissan plans a completely redesigned Leaf with at least 210 mile range for 2018. Hyundai has announced that it will be coming out with a 200-mile EV also coming in 2018. Ford first announced that it would not be following other automobile manufacturers into the 200-mile range EV market was quickly followed by Ford’s president and CEO Mark Fields announcing that the automaker wants to be the leader in affordable 200 mile EVs starting with an entry that he claims is well on its way to production to come out some time in 2019. As you can see, ever since the announcement of Elon Musk for Tesla to produce an affordable 200 mile range EV, several major automakers have solidified their commitments to producing 200-mile range EVs, but that isn’t the end of the story. Nearly all other major automobile manufacturers, VW, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and others have since then put forward that they too are going to be producing 200-mile range EVs, sounding a death knell of sorts for the low range EV. This future onslaught of 200 mile range EVs entering the market in the next few years dramatically changes downward the infrastructure needs for EVs.

The problem is that the current model for EV charging infrastructure is based on low range vehicles of less than 100 miles range. The charging behavior of EV drivers under that model is based on long time periods of charging typically at home, work and other places. Both home and work charging allow for long stretches of charging, which allows for charging at 240 volts, also called level 2 charging. This level 2 charging or the SAE j1772 standard is a standard all electric vehicles being manufactured today are compatible with. Outside of home and work the charging model strategy is to develop convenience charging opportunities at places like businesses, shopping centers and public parking. Typically this type of charging uses level 2 charging, which depending on the amperage can take a vehicle like mine with 75 mile range between 4 to 8 hours to charge. In this model battery capacity is small and most charging is done at home where there is plenty of time to charge over night. If you work at a place that is over half of your total range this model would want you to add a charging station at your work place so that you can get home. If you are planning to go to an event that is over half of your available range you may want to find a place to charge near the event so you can charge while you are attending. Are you getting the picture? Low range EVs require a greater infrastructure to deal with their low ranges. It also increases the hassle of owning an EV since you have to look for charging stations to help you complete trips and hope that they are close to where ever you are going and not occupied by other vehicles charging when you get there. Sometimes when you do find an acceptable charging space the charging spot is occupied by an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. This is called among EV owners being ICEd.

There is a way out of this hassle. Most EVs are equipped with quick charger options. For the mainstream automakers these are also known as level 3 charging. Level 3 charging is done at 480 volts and can charge a vehicle like my Nissan, Leaf up to 80% typically in a half hour. Unfortunately there are three standards for quick charging. The Nissan championed Japanese model is called CHAdeMO. There is the challenger to CHAdeMO called the SAE Combo developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) championed by GM and is considered the US and European standard. The third option is the Tesla Supercharger. Tesla, since it’s vehicles have much larger battery capacity, need a system that is much more powerful then the standard ones being championed by the major automakers to achieve that half an hour charge time. The idea behind quick charging is that long distances can be traversed with shorter, half hour or so stops, or trips to areas without chargers could be still accessed as long as a quick charger is available near by or along the way.

Tesla’s long range vehicles simply don’t need an extensive infrastructure of convenience chargers since even at 200-mile range Teslas have plenty of range to do commutes, event trips or shopping and return home. Where charging was needed for Tesla’s long ranging EVs was on long trips between cities. The concept is to travel a few hours stop at a Tesla Supercharger area, plug-in, go to the nearby place to get food, use the restrooms or just relax for about a half hour and then unplug and drive for a few hours again before repeating the process. Tesla built out its own charging infrastructure to advance this concept. They focused their proprietary infrastructure on connecting cities. Tesla continues to add to its charging infrastructure and makes it available to most of it’s Model S and X owners for free. It is now possible to travel from coast to coast in the US via the network of Tesla Superchargers, as well as travel between most major cities.

The quick charger long distance model for the major automakers doesn’t really exist. Nissan has moved to mimic Tesla’s model by insisted that its Nissan dealers install CHAdeMO level 3 chargers and make them available to Leaf owners for free. However, Nissan dealers are a hit and miss proposition for travelers, typically located only in or near cities. They also are known to close their charging stations down when the dealership is closed, or require subscription to the chargers charging plan or other confusing hassles. Also, not all of the Nissan dealers have installed CHAdeMO quick chargers despite the urging from Nissan corporate. The other quick chargers that have become available have been installed by personal, institutional or business investment and not by coordinated planning. Where I live some churches have installed CHAdeMO quick charging stations, while, some retailers have installed some SAE chargers. A grocery store here, a local government office there, a business here and there, all installed willy nilly, and willy nilly is not a plan designed to make the quick charging infrastructure useful. From my perspective there needs to be a change in how charging infrastructure is being done. Especially since the EV world will change due to the coming 200-mile range paradigm.

This new move to 200-mile range EVs gives us an opportunity to rethink what we are doing. First, it means that all the money being used to develop level 2 convenience charging infrastructure will be, in the very near future, unnecessary. With 200-mile range EVs, slow level 2 charging simply doesn’t do enough to help at shopping centers, restaurants and convenience stores to be useful. They will still be useful at hotels since plenty of time can be devoted to charging overnight, given that the wattage of the charger is brought up to the maximum of the SAE j1772 standard (19.2 kW) and the vehicles are redesigned to accept this much higher wattage through their j1772 standard charge port. However, level 2 charging at work would only be useful if the employee has a longer than 2 hour or 100 mile commute each way, which would be highly unusual. I believe that the Tesla model for EV charging infrastructure is a glimpse at what the EV charging infrastructure from now on should be. Let the infrastructure for level 2 charging build out organically, based on requests and particular need. However, the focus of nearly all of the money available for developing charging infrastructure from governments, businesses and other sources should be used on developing a network of quick charging stations connecting cities and at strategic locations in city centers.

You would be surprised how relatively few quick charging station locations are needed to service the entire country. I calculated out that around 60 quick charging locations would meet just about all of the charging needs for my home state of Wisconsin, and that is with charging stations spaced only 50 miles apart. The entire United States would be fully serviced with somewhere around 2900 charging station areas. For example the state of Hawaii would only need around 12 level 3 type quick charger stations to meet all its needs on all its islands. Surprising isn’t it? Especially when you think there are 168,000 retail gasoline stations nationwide in comparison. Why? How? You say.

The reason why EVs need much less infrastructure then internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles do is that the infrastructure that powers electric vehicles is already at our homes, and electric vehicles get their fuel to move mainly at home. Let me give you an image that might help you understand how EVs are different. Just imagine that you had a gasoline pump at home where the gasoline was piped to it directly from the refinery. Also, imagine that you got in the habit of filling up your car before going to bed every day. You would have a full tank of gas every time you left your home in the morning. The only time that you would need a gasoline station would be on long trips that were beyond the range of the gasoline in your tank. Now imagine everyone having the same pump as you do. The need for gasoline stations would drop dramatically. Well, with electric vehicles that pump at your home exists with the electricity that comes to your house anyway to power your lights and appliances.

You might ask how does charging at home work? With this I can give you the benefit of my experience owning and driving experimental electric vehicles. When I drove around in my Destiny2000, which was a Fiero converted to run on electricity that had a custom front hood and back deck with solar panels on them. The Destiny 2000 was an attempt to make a mass market EV by a group of engineers way back in the mid 1990s. The powertrain system was simple, just 18, 6 volt deep cycle lead acid golf cart batteries, an off the shelf motor controller and a large and rugged DC electric motor. Where the engineers really advanced things was in the onboard charge controller that could use from a regular household 110 volt outlet electricity to the electricity from a 240 volt appliance outlet. What this meant was that where ever there was access to electricity I could charge the vehicle. I even carried with me a standard lightbulb socket adaptor that I could use to charge up from. My Destiny2000 gave me 50 miles range consistently and even though the battery pack was 26 kWh big; bigger than my Nissan, Leaf’s 24 kWh battery is now, it would charge fully overnight on a regular 110v outlet.

How is this possible? Batteries are funny creatures. When they are empty they charge fast until they pass 80% then they develop resistance and slow down. At around 90% they charge much, much slower. So even though you can get to 80% of charge in a relatively short period of time it will take much longer to get from 80% to 90% and from 90% to 100% it would take a great majority of the time charging. I lived in a close in suburb of a major city. My fully charged Desitny2000’s 50 mile range could get me from where I lived on one side of the city to the suburbs on the opposite side of the city and back on one charge. Most of the time I would only drive to work, take my kid to soccer practice, or do some grocery shopping and still only use around half my charge. Since I didn’t typically drive all the way to empty on my Destiny2000, the charge time needed, even at 110 volts, was shortened dramatically. It allowed for the majority of the time charging to be spent on that part of the charge cycle where the battery’s resistance didn’t allow for lots of electricity. The extra electricity would only be turned into heat that might damage the batteries or it would electrolyze the water in the batteries into hydrogen and oxygen. My charge controller was sophisticated enough to determine how many amps it could push through the batteries safely. All this stuff came together to make using a regular 110v outlet just fine for charging up overnight. Even though I had a 240 volt outlet available to me to charge the Destiny2000 faster, I never used it, being perfectly content with a regular outlet that charge my battery to near 100% by morning. AAA in a resent survey found that all drivers on average drive about 32 miles a day. If you were to double that amount to 64 miles encompassing nearly all drivers you could easily recharge those miles overnight with a level 2 type charger. Which is to say that for the most part you will be able to leave your home every morning with the full complement of the 200 mile range of the battery pack.

You may have noticed that the battery on my converted Pontiac Fiero/Destiny2000 was 27 kWh and that it was bigger than my Nissan, Leaf’s battery of 24 kWh, yet my Destiny2000 could only go 50 miles on a charge while the Nissan, Leaf, a bigger vehicle, could go 75 miles on a charge with a smaller battery. This is because lead acid batteries are extremely heavy, 1080 pounds heavy for my Destiny2000. A large amount of the stored energy in the batteries is used to just push these very heavy EV batteries around. The Nissan, Leaf uses a lithium ion manganese oxide battery that weighs 660 pounds, much less than the battery in the Destiny2000. That weight difference and better control over power electronics in the Leaf make all the difference. As EVs advance greater ranges will be possible with smaller lighter batteries. Hopefully, big jumps in technology will make even longer ranges possible. Just as an example of how advances in technology can affect existing EVs, Tesla has offered owners of the original Tesla Roadsters a battery upgrade that transforms the Roadster’s original range of 221 miles to a 330 mile range in the same battery space.

The paradigm shift to 200-mile range electric vehicles is upon us with production by nearly all the major automakers set to begin now. This new paradigm has changed our charging infrastructure needs going forward. Gone is the need to have a bunch of level 2 charging stations all over the place, 200-mile range EVs don’t really need them. Also, having quick chargers placed willy nilly about based on random funding and support should give way to having level 3 quick charging stations positioned mainly on the highways spaced at 50 mile intervals connecting major cities and much fewer but more strategically placed quick chargers located inside cities. Government, businesses and other organizations investing in building out the EV charging infrastructure should concentrate their efforts on the 2900 or so quick charging locations needed across the country to make EVs fully competitive with liquid fueled vehicles. The pieces for creating a world of truly cleaner and quieter transportation is nearly in place thanks in large part to the vision of Elon Musk and the willingness of the rest of the industry to follow suit. All we need now is for us to take the desperate pieces that make up that future and put them together in a cohesive plan of action we can all participate in.

Plug-Ins, Not Your Father’s Energy Thinking

Energy is found in many, many forms, many of which we name and think of as substances. We often call things like oil, coal and natural gas energy. We call the companies that extract these substances energy companies, but these substances are not energy and the companies that extract these substances are not energy companies. Have you seen a shack-it-up flashlight? Ever walk barefoot on sand that was so hot it burned your feet? Ever watch a sail boat move across a bay? Energy is equal to the movement of your hand, it is equal to sun shine beating on the sand, it is a breeze flowing though the air. Energy is energy and it cannot be created nor can it be destroyed, it is merely converted from one form to another. We don’t loose energy as we use energy; energy becomes dispersed. It goes from being directed and useful to being spreading out and less useful that is only if it is not contained or recaptured. This energy stuff is hard to understand because we have wrapped language around it that is more metaphor than a correct understanding of energy.

Movement is energy that can be converted into other forms of energy such as the movement of water through a water mill wheel moves the grinding stone to make flour. In a hydroelectric dam that energy is used not to turn a grinding stone but a turbine, which spins a generator to produce electric energy. In much the same way the movement of your hand in a shake-up flashlight accumulates electrons either in a battery or in a capacitor and then the electrons/electricity move through the light circuit and are converted into light. Movement = energy, energy = electricity.

In the hydro-energy cycle the sun heats up water that converts to vapor, vapor becomes less heavy then air and travels up in the atmosphere where its heat energy is dissipated. It eventually condenses back into water and ice around small particles of dust, once heavy enough it returns to earth in the form of rain and snow it collects in the streams and flows down hill by the force of gravity. We capture gravitational energy and covert it to mechanical energy as in the form of a flour-mill or in the turbines that produce electricity.

Let me break for a quick aside. Huge dams don’t have to be built to capture this cycle. It is money interests, politics and poor engineering that have given us the gigantic hydroelectric dam. We can do much the same energy capture by making small structures over various places along a river that allow the river to flow freely and yet capture its movement so we can harness the power of the hydro-cycle with minimal impact to the environment and without endangering wildlife and vistas. It is only poor engineering and shortsightedness by those involved that has given rise to the giant hydroelectric dam.

Have any of you gone on to your roof on a sunny day?  Were the roof shingles hot? Where did that heat come from? You are right. It came from the sun. We build roofs to protect us from the sun and rain. When the sun hits our roofs it turns sunlight energy into heat energy. That heat energy radiates through the rafters into our attics and ends up heating our houses. We spend energy mostly from burning substances to remove that heat energy from our houses through the use of air conditioners. Instead of fighting energy with more energy and pollution, why not use the roof’s surface to make electricity and hot water? Solar panels are one of the more benign ways to capture energy. They capture energy from sunlight and turn it directly into electricity. If not photovoltaic solar panels, we should at least be looking at using the sun’s rays to produce hot water. We use hot water everyday. Making hot water would also allow us to heat our homes through radiant floor heating. The sunlight energy is hitting our roofs anyway.

Ever go out in a storm and see the trees whipping around? That movement is a sign that there is energy out there applying force to the branches to move them around. What is making the branches move? Oh, wind, of course. Wind power makes sense since the wind blows trees, leaves and dust around. Why not put it to used generating electricity? Wind has been used for thousands of years as a source of energy. In farms across America windmills on top of towers were how farmers pumped water out of the ground for their livestock. In Ocean City, Maryland the trees are all bent over in one direction because most of the year the wind blows constantly in one direction. Going to the beach in the winter is amazing. All the flags are tattered because of that constant, heavy wind. I looked at the power lines stretched along the highways of the ribbon like islands along the coast coming from some far away power plant where literally tons of coal are burned every day to produce electricity for these sea shore towns, all the while there is wind traveling through and over and around the buildings. Thousands of watts of wind power only being used to provide the flapping motion in flags.

There are other sources of energy that have minimal environmental impact and have gone largely unused such as geothermal, wave action conversion systems, tide conversion systems, systems to take advantage of the steady ocean currents, harnessing the power of the jet stream and ambient temperature conversion systems. WE LITERALLY ARE BATHED IN ENERGY. As Obi-Wan Kenobi said of the force the same can be said of energy, “It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” We don’t have to burn a single thing to get useful energy from our surroundings, and converting or capturing all that energy and turning it into electricity, the cleanest and most universally useful form of energy, is a no-brainer. We can convert various naturally accessible energies to electricity and we can use electricity to produce heat, light, radio waves, microwaves, electron beams, motion and on and on.

The solar powered vehicles of the World Solar Challenge run for more than 30 hours during the that race at average speeds greater than 60 miles an hour, powered only by sunlight hitting the surface of the vehicles. Thirty hours is only the length of time of the race however, these cars can travel continuously on the power of the sun. (Google: Xof1) What this proves is that we can make vehicles that can get their energy to move from their surroundings alone. This is quite a radical departure from our standard idea for transportation; however, it is one that can help us think of energy in a different way. It used to be that we couldn’t think of a vehicle that used anything other than gasoline or diesel. Then came ethanol first as a blend and then with the advent of flexible fuel engines vehicles that can take up to 100% alcohol. We have come to learn that there are vehicles that can be powered by natural gas and liquid petroleum gases like propane.  Now we have electric vehicles in the mix. All these things have merged to allow us to think of automobiles as possibly being fueled differently. Electric energy generation can be though of in this way as well, and there is where the connection to electric vehicles changes the entire paradigm. If electricity can come from renewable energy sources and electric cars use that electricity, electric cars are renewable energy vehicles. Yes you can power a car with a wind turbine.

Energy is found in many forms and much of it is convertible into electricity. In our human history we have used biomass (wood in a fire) to keep us warm when it was cold and to cook our food. Then we learned to tame animals and hitched rides on their backs. The grazing that the animals did provided the energy we needed for transportation. We discovered how to use the wind to travel over water with sails and later we harnessed the movement of water and wind for mills to grind grain. There we stood for hundreds of years until we discovered that coal burned especially hot and water expanded tremendously as steam when boiled. With that knowledge we powered the first industrial revolution, then came oil and we got another shot in the arm for industry. Then our tinkering with electricity led us on a different path. Innovations turned away from energy and transformed our world through the advent of the computer and access to information. The usefulness of electricity has proven to be far more world changing than any other form of energy however, we were still generating it just one step up from the caveman burning wood. Our thinking surrounding energy had not changed significantly for over 100 years. However, electric vehicles allow us to think of energy differently. For example, our breaking systems in cars had not evolved that much from pressing a piece of wood against a wheel to get it to stop and we referred to the heat energy given off by friction brakes as waste heat.

Regenerative braking is part of that out of the box thinking that is opened up when we think of powering our vehicles with electricity rather through internal combustion. Before stopping a car meant converting momentum energy into heat energy and transferring it to the air, now it means taking momentum energy and converting it into electric energy to slow down and storing that electricity in batteries and then using that energy captured through regenerative braking now in the batteries to over come inertia, which then deposits the energy in momentum energy again. When I look at the Metro rail trains around Washington, DC the most evident feature of their undercarriage is their huge disk brakes. When the all-electric trains slow down to stop at a station, part of the sound that you hear is the braking noise from those monstrous disk brakes. I look at those disks and think what an absolute waste. The Metro trains using regenerative brakes could help power the trains going up hill with the trains trying to maintain a controlled speed while going down hill. The engineers who designed those trains just don’t get it.

To get it you need to think of energy in a different way. For example, the idea of one central location providing the energy needs for a wide area, especially by using fossil fuels, when we think about it, should seem ludicrous. Nikola Tesla made the big electric power plant possible with AC power originally to move the energy harnessed from Niagara Falls to Albany, New York, but energy is abundant and all around us. We don’t need to do it that way anymore. The water movement in your pipes when you are taking a shower has energy in its motion sufficient if captured to power a clock. We see the heat of the day move Mercury up the thermometer, ambient heat turned into the motion energy of an expanding metal fluid. That expanding metal could push a piston that would turn a crank that would turn a gear that would spin a turbine that could produce electricity. When you start thinking out of the box like this, you discover that the number of ways to produce electricity from the energy around us are innumerable.

To solve the power plant problem we need to arrive at a more distributed or self generated form of energy generation. This new way of thinking of and capturing energy can be for all of us. It is only a matter of investment, smart design and strong political action.

Even if we don’t fully move to renewable and distributed energy production, when it comes to our personal vehicles, we can make a difference. Trying to wring out greater efficiencies, and lower and lower pollution standards out of millions of internal combustion engine cars on the road is ridiculous. As internal combustion engine cars get older they become less efficient and pollute more and more. It is infinitely easier to regulate and convert a single power plant then millions of power plants on our roads and highways. Electric cars, even when being powered by coal in a power plant are far more efficient then gasoline powered cars.

The renewable electricity that I purchase for my home also powers my Volt. The energy I put into my car when going up hill comes back to me when I am going down hill. The energy I put into getting up to speed comes back to me when I am braking with regenerative brakes. Energy is momentum. An object in motion remains in motion. Energy is potential as a rock high on a mountain about to be cut loose and travel down the mountain with great force and speed. Energy is the movement of wind. Energy is heat on a hot day, the movement of waves, the tide coming up and going down, the warmth that you feel when you hug your loved ones. Energy is sunlight knocking electrons around on a solar cell and those electrons traveling down the attached wire into a car battery where it can be used later to move the car through an electric motor. If we concentrate on what energy really is we can find energy enough for all we wish to do with it without ever having to burn, pollute, fight wars for, or pay extortionist prices to get at it. All we need to do is think of energy in a different way.

Is the Tea Party Real?

Is the Tea Party Real? The reason that I ask this question is because I was doing research on the Web to get a better understanding of who and what the Tea Party was and what it stands for and found things that seemed inconsistent. For one, according to a Gallup poll conducted on April 5, 2010, the “Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics.” This seemed odd to me because the rhetoric that I heard coming from those said by the media to be most associated with the Tea Party, namely Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul and Dick Armey, many times expressed that particular segments of the US population were the sources of our ills. I couldn’t imagine Hispanics, for example, being part of the Tea Party in a big way since many of the Tea Party spokes people have worked xenophobic ideas about Hispanics into their utterances. Without Hispanics, the United States largest single minority, demographic figures could not be mainstream. Also, given Ron Paul’s denial of the importance of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, his refusal to vote to grant Rosa Parks a congressional coin for her part in the Civil Rights Movement and his view that shop owners have the right to deny service to any patron they wish even if the denial is because of their sex, race, religion or sexual orientation, why any of the members of these groups would support the “intellectual godfather of the Tea Party” (The Atlantic) or the Tea Party itself. My feeling is that those that claim to be the leadership of the Tea Party movement actually have little to do with the actual people who answered the poll identifying themselves as of the Tea Party movement. I also think that outside of claiming that they have views that are inline with the Tea Party movement, Tea Partiers don’t actually think in the terms that are used by those who have put themselves out in front of the Tea Party.

The Tea Party’s beginning dates back to February 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli ranted on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as a CNBC on floor editor. In the rant Santelli responded against the idea of helping ordinary American citizens to stay in their homes. Mr. Santelli in his rant doesn’t call them ordinary American citizens, however, he refers to them as “losers.” Having watched family members go through the pain of foreclosure, I could never lower myself to call anyone dealing with foreclosure a “loser.” Most of the people I know that have been caught up with the foreclosure process have done so because of circumstances beyond their control. Santelli’s rant showed his upset with the idea of using taxpayer money to help just such people about to be foreclosed on to refinance their loans at lower interest rates. Supposedly this rant went viral. There is some speculation as to the validity of the true viral nature of the rant, because in extremely short order, I am talking within a few hours, there were Websites featuring the rant and calls for the establishment or claiming the existence of a “Tea Party,” something alluded to in Santelli’s rant and, much of the early activity on the Internet about the rant was conducted by well-established conservative Internet sites.

What doesn’t ring true to me is that this request to solve the financial crisis through the refinancing of mortgages compared to what had already been earmarked for stimulus to banks, state and local governments and large corporations was a relatively small amount of money, only a few hundred million dollars as opposed to billions and trillions used so far by the Federal Government. It also doesn’t ring true since this part of the stimulus was nearly the only part aimed at helping ordinary citizens, and despite what the media tells you ordinary citizens typically act in their own self-interest. Rick Santelli’s rant dealing with refinancing goes against people acting in their own self-interest. By having the Federal Government deal with the deflation that had occurred in houses everyone benefits. For example, if you are a home owner who has borrowed responsibly but there are dozens of homes about to be foreclosed on in your neighborhood, what better way for the value of your home to be protected than having someone, anyone, offer those people a chance to refinance their homes so that the monthly payments are manageable. No one company, no not-for-profit group, no bank has stepped up to offer what the President has proposed. For those struggling to meet their mortgages this would have been a real good thing since it would have most definitely stopped the downward slide of home prices, stopped mortgage-backed securities from becoming completely worthless, something that would have prevented Europe from having as many problems as it is having at the present, and put a large group of Americans back on a solid financial footing. Americans back on a solid financial footing would in turn have spent into the economy quickening the economic recovery. Refinancing is not like granting money, the Federal Government will eventually get it back with interest. Going down the path recommended by Santelli and then forced upon us by the newly elected “Tea Party” candidates actually has helped prolong the problems that we have experienced with the economy. So, with some calm and some understanding of the bigger picture you can see how the Rick Santelli’s rant was counter intuitive, counter effective and doesn’t make sense as something that people would really want for themselves. This leads me to believe that most people wouldn’t go for Santelli’s solution and that there was something else at play.

What I believe was at play here was that a relatively small group of people, upset by the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States, in particular those who supported Sarah Palin, decided to glom onto this as their rallying cry. They would have glommed onto anything that had a faux patriotic twang to it and was anti-Obama. At its core this was an anti-Democratic and anti-President New Administration as Santelli puts it, thing to latch onto. The right-wing of the Republican Party was ready to pounce on just such a thing through their “Astroturf” program. Astroturf being the Republican program to create fake grassroots movements opposed to anything the Democrats suggest. The difference this time being that the Republicans are unfortunately using the Internet. That the spark for this faux movement came from a crazy business ranter is no surprise to me since many Wall Street commentators have been chaffing at the fact that the financial world has changed and what is worse is that things could never go back to the roaring days of excess. We know we can never go back because 99% of us have figured out that excess only leads to fiscal and financial ruin. So what remains for the financial pundits? To rant how Obama has spoiled the party for them, while in the real world President Obama probably saved their butts. These three things, the upset Wall Street pundit types, the at-the-ready Republican “Astroturf” building machine and those still upset by Barack Obama’s win, ultimately led to the first forming of the Tea Party. However, I don’t believe that it was that great of a movement until the mass media focused on to it. The mainstream media made this out to be a much larger viral thing than it probably really was and the mainstream media probably led by the conservative media also helped pick the Tea Party’s leaders that aren’t.

One of the first things I discovered about the Tea Party as a whole is that they support government action and do not hold to a strict “Libertarian” view. I found polls showing that nearly all Tea Partiers weren’t Libertarian in their thinking. However, Ron Paul, a true Libertarian, was christened the “intellectual godfather” of the Tea Party very early on by The Atlantic. Mainstream media plastered this all over the place by re-reporting The Atlantic’s opinion as if it were news. This led J. Ann Selzer, a Bloomberg News pollster to state, “You would think any idea that involves government action would be anathema, and that is just not the case.” The polls also discovered that Tea Partiers believe that they are being taxed fairly, which is another aspect of their beliefs that is inconsistent with the anti-tax agenda that is promoted by its so-called “leadership,” namely Dick Armey. We can see clearly that the views of the anointed leadership by the mainstream or right-wing media, doesn’t mesh with the views of the actual Tea Partiers. In fact the number one leader that the Tea Party people favor is “no one,” 34% of Tea Partiers stated that there is no one that represents the group; that followed by Sarah Palin at 14%, Glenn Beck at 7%, Jim DeMint and Ron Paul at 6% and Michele Bachman at 4%. That means that 94% of the Tea Party does not view Ron Paul as representing their views while the media pronounced him the Tea Party’s “intellectual godfather.” Which begs the question, is the Tea Party, as portrayed by the media, actually a construct of the media, or could it be a construct of people and organization that have substantial influence on the media, or a construct of the Republican Party?

Unfortunately, the Tea Party made up of people who identify themselves strongly as the Tea Party, is real. Fortunately, they don’t hold most of the views that their media anointed leaders hold. Unfortunately, they are far more extreme about the few beliefs they hold in common. Their common areas of support, according to a poll done by the University of Washington, are; 73% disapprove President Obama’s policy of engaging with Muslim countries, 88% support the Arizona immigration law, 82% are against gay and lesbian marriage. There you have it. Those who identify strongly that they are Tea Party members in essence are an anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic and anti-gay group. There are finer ways to put this than my putting it so bluntly, but I am talking about the essence of the Tea Party movement. The polls won’t say this outright, but it in essence the polls say the same thing. People are aware of political correctness and they know how to answer questions to remain “PC” or at least keep themselves from being exposed as extremist. Which is to say that if you asked Tea Partiers straight out in a poll if they hate Muslims, Hispanics and gays they would know to answer “no.” But, if you catch up to them at a party, especially after they have had a few drinks in them and you make sure that they feel safe for expressing their true views among what they believe are like-minded people, you will get the answer you won’t get in a poll. The University of Washington’s poll was extensive and didn’t ask right out questions of bigotry, but clearly, the three questions that rose to the surface among all the strong Tea Partiers polled ended up with a particular bent. That bent in essence is what I stated that the core of the Tea Partiers are anti Muslim, Hispanic and gay.

Given the realities of who and what the Tea Party really is, it is amazing that right-wing Evangelicals have moved in to co-opt the Tea Party after the Libertarian Paulbots and the anti-tax Armey Republicans have moved in. They jumped in to force Christianity on the entirety of the American population through government programs, to stop abortions and contraception, and to censor anything that they might think would offend the all mighty God. Evangelicals are not a perfect fit with the Tea Party but maybe better than Libertarians and tax cutters. This has created a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of the Tea Party that has to fit in the Republican construct and the mainstream medias creation, which is a Christian, gun-toting, anti-tax, libertarian, fiscal conservative group within the Republican Party. And as it is defined this way in the media, so it has attracted elements of these groups.

Given the partly manufactured and partly grassroots nature of the Tea Party, the Republicans have been having a hard time steering this monster of their own making. The Tea Party politicians that have been put forward in the last election have to have emerged from that soup that the Republicans and the media are now calling the Tea Party, but they also know that they have to feign allegiance to the real Tea Party of Muslim, Hispanic and gay haters. The politicians produced by this supposed construct must be new to avoid a connection with the Republican Party that tanked the economy. What were produced were mainstream Republican politicians that are not so versed in mainstream Republican political gamesmanship. And these new Republican’s job is much harder because they have to vote in lock step with the GOP leadership while remaining a “Tea Party” kind of guy. It is a bad mix.

As long as the Republican Party couches what they want in terms that the Tea Party Frankenstein understands it works. But if the Republicans say something like “reduce government spending” the Tea Party Frankenstein drinks the Cool-aid too deeply, and we get, things like the debt ceiling fight, which hurt everyone, Republicans, the Tea Party, American citizens and our nation’s credit rating, everyone but the Democrats. Use your best Frankenstein imitation when saying the following. “Master say reduce spending, must not allow debt ceiling to go up, must to stop Obama.” You can do a bunch of these using the Frankenstein voice like one for stopping appointments, another for taxing the rich, one for killing Social Security, another for ending food stamps, etc. The Tea Party politicians have turned out to be a blunt instrument at best for the Republican Party, a club when a scalpel will do. But as bad as these Tea Party politicians have been at doing government, they never the less don’t represent the actual Tea Party. What you are seeing is rookie mistakes by a new crop of Republican ideologues that lack the experience of good politicking. This is not, however, pure Tea Party ideology at work.

The Republicans can’t embrace the real Tea Party because that Tea Party is made up of extremists, who hold extremist views. Views, that once the population as a whole gets to look at rejects, as witnessed when watching how Arizona politicians were thrown from office, the very same politicians who crafted the controversial immigration laws for the state that the Tea Party likes so much. The Republicans in the current election cycle have shown what they really are, and that is puppets for the power grabbing, influence purchasing, media manipulating worst part of the 1%. Scott Walker may have ridden the wave of Tea Party populism into office, but he is most likely going to be recalled for his union destroying, pension killing, slash and burn cost cutting all while handing his masters massive contracts and tax breaks. Walker, is not a Tea Partier, he is a true Republican created by his billionaire overlords. Once the Muslim, Hispanic and gay hating Tea Partiers realized this they jumped on the bandwagon for kicking him out, which, brings me full circle.

Outside of their misguided and extremist ways, the Tea Party is also made up of people who have been swept up in the financial crisis of our time. Tea Partiers are people, who have had homes foreclosed on them, have lost jobs, have been unemployed and underemployed for years. Despite what they have been told what to think, by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the line, the bill collector at your door, the phone or electricity being cut off, the not being able to go to the hospital without going bankrupt are all realities tugging at all of our elbows and Tea Partiers as well. Eventually, the bigoted hatred for having a black President gives way to dealing with the reality in which we all live. Eventually Muslims, Mexicans crossing the border and the private lives of men and woman don’t seem as important as keeping the wolves at bay. And though they may resist with their thinking at first, for having been so deeply brain washed by the conservative media, they wake up to the fact that we have been robbed, and it wasn’t the gays, it wasn’t the Muslims, it wasn’t the Hispanics that did it, but white men in suits, in offices in New York. Men who have never known what it is like to work long hours for minimum wage and barely making ends meet and then having that meager lifeline cut by some suit, just so his account at Tiffany’s can be higher, or so he can trade in his yacht for a bigger one.

The Tea Party is largely an unorganized group of people who have been influenced by hate speech. Hate speech that blames their current ills on others. Outside of that there is nothing uniform about those who call themselves the Tea Party. They mainly live in the rising anti-Obama and anti-Democrat rhetoric of the Republican “Astroturf” making machine. They are in a word, “against.” What they are against is mainly whatever the individuals feeding them what to think tell them to be against. Who makes the message for this multi-headed, multi-issue grassroots movement is the Republican Party? Separately, the politicians that claim Tea Party affiliation are really just inexperienced right-wing Republicans working for their corporate overlords who also are the main contributors to their campaigns. Never has this been more evident than viewing the choices that the Republicans have put forth for Presidential candidates this election year. All of the Republican candidates are running to be puppet and chief for the Koch brothers or the like, one of them, Herman Cain, actually saying so in a speech, another a venture capitalist.

So, is the Tea Party real? It does, but not in the way that other parties and movements exist. The Tea Party exists mainly as the spirit of discontent among people who don’t know how to make things better. Because they are discontent and are searching for answers, they are easily manipulated. They have been told that the words “Democrat” and “Liberal” mean accepting things that they don’t want to accept, such as Muslims, Hispanics and gays. So they seek answers in “Conservative” forms of mass communication. When the Republican Party failed them by bringing on two wars and a great recession, they went seeking new answers. Since they couldn’t seek the answers to what they wanted with the Democrat liberals, the Republican “Astroturf” team was ready to provide them with an alternative, the Tea Party. It was the very same tactic that the Republicans used to get Sarah Palin into the Governor’s mansion in Alaska. The former Republican Governor was ousted for corruption. A Democrat should have been a shoe in to the office; however, Sarah Palin came in vowing to clean house, and ran as the anti-corruption candidate for the Republican Party and she won! It was like watching a crime family member named Vinny Gepetto getting caught for steeling money from a church’s poor box, so he is fired. When it comes time to hire someone else to watch over the poor box the people of Alaska chose his brother Joey Gepetto over one of the church’s trusted altar boys because Joey has assured Alaska that he is going to clean house at the Gepetto family and that his family’s stealing days are over. What did George Bush say? Fool me once…

The Tea Party as a political movement as we know it in the end is largely a construct by those who control the Republican Party and the right-wing media, similarly in the way that Sarah Palin is a construct of those who control the Republican Party and put her forward as a capable politician that could have been the President of the United States and withstand the rigors of national and international politics. After having put forth a person who couldn’t remember her puppet master’s talking points well enough so as to need to write them down on her palm and have her win the Governor’s office for Alaska in the midst of a Republican corruption scandal, and again putting her forward as the Vice-Presidential candidate for the nation with all her shortcomings, and having her accepted by some as viable, the puppet masters of the Republican Party realized they could manipulate a good portion of the electorate. When disgusted over the financial crisis and scandal threw the Republicans out of office in 2008, the forces behind the Republican Party knew they had to do something. If the prolonged financial crisis were to remain identified with the Republican Party, then the electorate would most likely continue to punish them for the problems they created. To change their situation the Republicans went to the Sarah Palin playbook and decided to create the Tea Party as an alternative. The Tea Party, carrying their Sarah Palin shovels, were going to clean house while never having to leave the Republican fold. The Republicans imbued the Tea Party with the attributes of the disenfranchised Libertarians, Evangelical and xenophobic groups often independent of the Republican Party and worked them into a frenzy against the Liberal Democrats in 2010, and it worked!

In conclusion, the Tea Party as a true grassroots movement is not real. The Tea Party as a group of politicians representing a large group of a dissatisfied electorate also isn’t real. The Tea Party as a mishmash of Libertarians, Evangelicals and xenophobic as created by the Republican Party does exist, but the only thing that holds them together is their xenophobia, something that is not ascribed to by a great majority of American citizens.

A PS of sorts to Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC, his tea party reference in his rant was a description of what he thought should be done to derivatives saying in essence that there should be a “tea party” to gather up derivatives and dump them into the Chicago River. Santelli’s reference to a “tea party” was at its core a protest against Wall Street and not against Obama and Washington. Something that is disconnected from Tea Party rhetoric now.

Electric Vehicles = Emissions Free NOW!!!

It drives me absolutely crazy when I am accused of polluting the air for driving an electric car. They accuse me of polluting the air even more than if I drove a regular car. I scratch my head and wonder where are they getting their information? The argument goes somewhat like this; electric cars run off electricity and electricity comes from coal, so when I drive an electric car I am in essence driving a coal-fueled vehicle. In fact I keep running into more and more incorrect information like this about electric cars as range extended electric vehicles like the Volt, which I have, and pure electric vehicles like the Leaf begin their entry into the marketplace.

I have found that trying to convince people who electric vehicles are better through argument doesn’t always work. However, informing people who have been misinformed about plug-in cars and letting the information sink in on its own sometimes helps. I know that providing information tends to get the far right mantra that Obama is shoving electric vehicles down the throats of ordinary Americans to stop. I am an ordinary American and I jumped at the chance to have one of these vehicles. No one had to push me at all. There is a genuine curiosity about these vehicles shared by nearly all Americans, so most people are quite receptive and welcome to information, especially if it surrounds my personal experience. If you just give those willing to listen the facts, they tend to stop and listen.

Here are the tools that I use to talk to people who come at me with the accusation that electric cars are really coal-powered cars.

Pie Chart of the USA’s fuel distribution for electricity generation (2009).

The US power grid is made up of a lot of different fuels and renewables. The grid’s fuel distribution is as follows according to the Energy Information Agency for 2009:

1% is from Petroleum
4% is from Wind, Solar, Geothermal and other renewables
7% is from conventional Hydroelectric dams
20% comes from Nuclear
23% is from Natural Gas
45% comes from Coal.

54% of the grid is clean energy.

I am saying 54% is clean while including Natural Gas because Natural Gas, even though it produces CO2 it does so in far lower quantities than coal or oil and it has nearly no other contaminants such as particulate matter, VOCs, mercury, leads, etc. that come from coal and oil electric generation. Oil has similar problems to coal only its pollutants are split, releasing heavy particulates and other toxic pollutants at the refining process and then VOCs, NOx, and other pollutants again during combustion. This holds true with the use of oil in vehicles as well. The 1% of oil powered electric power plants are well over 40 years old, built before the oil crisis of the 1970s and are either ready to be decommissioned or are being decommissioned. Oil electric production in the US has dropped by nearly 50% in the last 5 years as plants are either removed from service or converted to other fuels.

31% of the grid is air pollution free.

Nuclear, traditional hydroelectric dams and other renewables produce electricity without emitting air pollution. Wind is the fastest growing sector of the power grid.

Electric vehicles pollute less than gasoline cars even when their energy comes from the combustion of coal since both the coal power plant and the electric vehicle are built on an efficiency model that by far out perform petroleum in terms of energy per volume of fuel. Gasoline is energy dense, however, the refining process to get us gasoline is highly energy intensive. Coal, on the other hand, is typically burned relatively unrefined. Electric companies are highly regulated monopolies that typically operate under government regulated pricing. Electric companies can expand their margins by improving efficiency. Power plants make more money when they are more efficient, therefore power plant operators try to wring every ounce of efficiency out of their plants to maximize their profit. It is, however, the efficiency of electric cars that reduces the pollution per mile to below that of its internal combustion counter part. An electric motor is typically upwards of 85% efficient in its use of electricity, while an internal combustion engine is somewhere around 17% efficient.

Oil currently produces more CO2 than coal and is projected to do so well into the future. (EIA)

NRDC did a study of electric car charging habits of electric car users like me. Most of us do all our charging at night when there is massive amounts of unused capacity at the power plants. Power plants are built for the time when the most users use the most electricity. In the middle of the night there are very few people using electricity. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory figured this out also and crunched the numbers. They found that the nation’s existing electric power grid could fuel as many as 180 million electric cars without us needing to build a single new electric power plant. It makes sense to me. I am watching TV, getting ready for bed, asleep, waking up, exercising, eating breakfast and getting ready for work for more than 8 hours a night. That is the time I am going to use to charge my car. According to NOVA’s “Making Stuff” a portion of the fuel burned at power plants at night goes to making electricity that is unused. By charging at night we are using some of the pollution that goes for naught and not polluting during the day, which we would with petroleum.

As much as I have finalized the arguments to debunk that electric cars are cars whose tail pipe are the smoke stacks at a coal power plant, there is a new aspect to electric power generation and sale that change plug-in cars that makes them much cleaner NOW!!! My Chevy Volt is for the most part an electric vehicle for me. I go out of my way to try to not use gasoline. The only times that I have truly used gasoline is when bringing it back from the dealer who was far away from my home, where I used 1.3 gallons of gas, and driving to visit family in Wisconsin. I used 73 gallons of gasoline to do that, the Volt is a vehicle that goes around 36 miles on a charge and then switches over to run on gasoline, which allows it to go an unlimited number of miles as long as you have access to gasoline. At about 76 gallons in 11 months is pretty good. If I hadn’t taken the vehicle to show family, I would have used around 2 gallons in 11 months, which is to say that I normally used the vehicle like it is an electric vehicle only. Because I use the vehicle as an electric vehicle I was conscious about the source of my electricity. My vehicle, when using electricity was largely a coal powered vehicle that is until I received in the mail from my power company information about a program that they were running called “Green Power.” I was intrigued. In the Green Power program my power company would purchase an equal amount of electricity of what I used in wind, solar or bio-gas. I could have all or a part of my electricity switched over to Green Power. For me it was a no-brainer, I wanted 100% of my electricity to be green. I would have to pay $0.015 per kilowatt more, but to go green, it wouldn’t be that much of a sacrifice. It turns out that for me, with an electric vehicle plugged in it was costing about $8 more a month. (I have a very energy-efficient home) Dominion claims that on average it cost customers about $15 per month more to purchase their power through the Green Power Program. So, at this point not only is my car 100% green when I am using electric power, but so is my house. I am very happy with that. But don’t stop reading, there is more.

Dominion is not the only electric utility company that has programs like this. In fact there are green programs in nearly every state of the United States of America. Here is a list of the programs around the country compiled by the US Department of Energy’s office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE), Green Power Markets. This means that everyone who has an electric car can unplug it from a coal power plant, or nuclear, or oil, or anything that you don’t want to support, and get your power from green, renewable sources.

In the end electric vehicles by themselves are a big plus on the side of reducing pollution, and depending on where you get your electricity, an electric vehicle can be anywhere from a vehicle that just pollutes less to one that is truly a zero emission vehicle. All in all the argument that electric vehicles are merely coal powered cars with their tail pipe at the power plant can’t hold up under a clearer understanding of where and how we get our electricity.

Remembering What We Stand For in the Occupy Movement

I was trying to think of ways that we could remember the basic tenets of the Occupy movement so that when people ask what we stand for we can more easily recall them. In this way we don’t spend time arguing over the things that are being yelled at us (lazy, socialist, get a job, bums, etc.) and keep the conversation about what is really important.

What I thought we could use to help us is our hands as we do with our hand signals together with some easy to remember mnemonic devises. My idea started with the convenient fact that we all have ten fingers. This can be the beginning reminding ourselves first that we have ten basic tenets.

Tenet 1

I put up my right hand pointer/index finger up. One. I think, my index finger is attached to my hand, which is attached to my arm and body. My body, when I am dead, is a corpse, my body is a corporation. I lower my index finger in the air and remember that we first want to reduce corporate influence on politics.

I imagine a corpse dressed in a hooded sweatshirt under the corporate uniform of a pinstriped suit. I imagine that corpse suddenly getting up like a zombie. I think, “that corpse is a person with a hood,” and remember that we want to eliminate the “personhood” legal status for corporations.

I look back at my hands and see my fingers as citizens united by my palm and I flip my hand of citizens over to see the reverse side of my palm. I remember that we want to reverse the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision. To remember why we need to reverse “Citizens United,” I think back to the corporation corpse (zombie) and imagine it trying to speak, but instead of audible word coming out money keeps coming out of its mouth instead. Then I remember that “Citizens United” was the Supreme Court ruling that designated dollars as free speech and therefore could not be limited.

Then I imagine our corporate zombie trying to give money to a politician on an elevated platform and Occupy movement trying to stop him, and remember that we want to limit campaign contribution. I then imagine our hooded corporate zombie with the word “lobbyist” emblazoned across the shoulders of his pin stripped suit, trying to give money to a government official at a desk while the Occupy people try to prevent him from doing that, and I remember that we want to stop the influence of money and lobbyist on government officials.

When I go back to my fingers and look at my index finger I remember:

1. Stance on reducing or eliminating corporate influence in politics

Eliminate “Personhood” legal status for corporations. The interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations.

Reverse Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission (2008 Supreme Court decision), the decision that states that dollars equal free speech.

Fix our broken electoral system by limiting campaign contributions.

Eliminate the influence of money and lobbyists on government officials.

Tenet 2

Then I put my index finger and my middle finger up at the same time indicating 2, the second tenet of the Occupy Movement.

I bend my fingers down imagining they are crumbling as I do this. When I put them back up I imaging they are reforming into the walls outside the New York Stock Exchange, and remember stance number 2 is for the reform of Wall Street. I look into the palm of my hand and I imaging that there is a glass there with an image of a seagull on it and remember that we want to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which keeps brokerage houses out of regular banking.

I look back at my two fingers and I imagine them gripping the handle of a broom and I go into the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and begin to sweep out Black Jack tables, roulette wheels and slot machines and remember that we want to remove the casino like aspects of investing now practiced on Wall Street. Once I’ve finished with sweeping the casino stuff out of Wall Street, I go back in and cuff all the brokers responsible for the gambling, and lead them out of the NYSE, all of them wearing blue trader coats like prison garb and all chained together like a chain gang. This reminds me that we want those who caused the financial crisis to be held accountable.

2. Stance on reforming Wall Street

Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, keeping brokerage houses out of mainline banking.

Eliminate the “casino” aspects of business investing currently practiced on “Wall Street” and place serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and banks.

Hold the people who caused the financial crisis accountable.

Tenet 3

I now have my index, middle and ring finger up to signify 3. I go back to my hand and cup them as if to hold water. This reminds me of a dam. I imagine my hands making a life-like model of the Hoover dam on my palm and thousands of tiny workers helping me put it together. This reminds me that Occupy wants the government to be active in creating jobs and one solution for this is to massively expand public works projects. I imagine my hands paying all these tiny workers money, which reminds me that all workers should be paid a living wage.

3. Stance on creating jobs

Massive expansion of public works projects or projects in general designed to employ people directly.

Guaranteed living wage income for employment.

Tenet 4

I now have 4 fingers up with my thumb tucked into my palm. I put my 4 fingers together and take my left hand and create a flat top on top of my right hand to form a “Timeout” T. Only this time the T stands for “taxes.” I put my hands together with the palms facing my eyes, tuck my thumbs in and bend my spread out fingers to form a bush, and remember that we want to end Bush-era tax cuts to the wealthy and put in a progressive income tax structure. I now cup my hands together to form a hole and imagine our corporate zombie trying to squeeze through, but then I collapse the hole so he can’t. This reminds me that we need to close corporate loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes. Then I imagine that I have money in my hand and I am giving it to our corporate zombie, but then I don’t, which reminds me that we want to end corporate welfare and handouts.

4. Stance on reforming the tax structure

End the Bush-era tax cuts, institute a progressive income tax that asks more from the wealthiest Americans, close corporate tax loopholes and eliminate corporate handouts.

Tenet 5

My right hand is now wide open showing all five fingers. I look at my hand and think how much it is like the leaf of a palm tree and how it would be a shame if that palm tree leaf would be damaged by pollution or burned by climate change. And I imagine it catching fire. And I see the flame turn into the burning flair off of oil well heads and the flames seen above refineries. I remember that we want to strengthen our environmental laws in order to hand future generations a world undamaged by our callousness to the environment. I also remember that we want to end the fossil fuel economy and replace it with clean, renewable energy.

5. Stance related to the environment and energy

Strengthen environmental laws to guarantee a clean, undamaged environment to future generations.

Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same time bringing the alternative energy economy up to current energy demand.

Tenet 6

Now my right hand is wide open and I have the index finger of my left hand up. I move my hands over and under each other as if I were holding a globe the size of a softball between them. I move my hands close to my heart and I remember health, which reminds me that all Americans should have healthcare.

6. Stance related to healthcare

Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers all Americans.

Tenet 7

I now have two fingers up with my left hand and an open hand with my right. I move my hands to point up, fingers together and parallel, like the “touch down” signal, but only in front of my face. I bend my fingers over and touch my middle fingers together to form a roof and remember that we want to freeze foreclosures until we can figure some way to keep families in their homes during this crisis.

7. Stance on how to deal with the mortgage crisis

Keep working families in their homes by putting a freeze on all foreclosures until a solution can be put in place.

Tenet 8

I now have three fingers up on my left hand and all five fingers up on my right. Eight. I move my hands together and open them up as if they were a book. This reminds me that college education should be free and that the overburden of college loans currently being held by students needs to be eased.

8. Stance on reforming education

Tuition free public college attendance.

Ease current student debt.

Tenet 9

I now have four fingers up on my left and all fingers up on my right hand. Nine. I move my right hand to the edge of my brow then I put my index fingers out with my thumbs up, point them straight ahead and pretend to shoot as if they were pistols. This reminds me that we don’t want to be the policeman of the world and we don’t want to be an empire by force or arms. We want to reduce our military presence around the globe and immediately withdraw our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.

9. Anti-war stance

Reduce the U.S. military globally. We are supposed to be an empire of peace, freedom and liberty, and not of war, force and oppression.

Immediate withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Stance 10

My palms are facing out and my fingers are flared. Ten. My fingers are now American workers in their various worker uniforms and clothes. Little by little their clothes signifying their jobs begin to disappear and corporate zombies fingers begin to transform to have the American workers clothes. Before I can do anything, corporate zombie jumps on a corporate jet and flies off. This reminds me that corporations should be taxed for moving American jobs off shore and that goods coming back to this country should have tariffs imposed on them so as not to unfairly compete with wages here in the United States.

10. Stance on out sourcing and moving jobs off shore

Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries.

Impose trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for American family farms, American manufacturing and the American worker.

A Draft Declaration of Demands for the Occupy Movement

We the people of the Occupy movement state the following obvious truths, that we are all equal under the law, that as humans we have certain rights that are incorporated into our very being. Among these are the right to live, the right to be free from restriction of movement, the right to speak freely and the right to pursue what ever it is that we believe will add to our happiness as long as it does not harm others. We here and now affirm that because of these rights governments derive their permission to govern from the people, and that people to protect these rights create governments. When any form of government acts against these rights it is the privilege of the people to change their government to a new government that affirms the commitment to preserving these basic rights.

For practical reasons government that satisfies these responsibilities should not be changed for fleeting reasons. However, it is up to us, the people to decide what reasons are weighty enough to warrant change. As our history has shown us, people are more apt to tolerate distress as long as the distress is not too great. We are more apt to go on suffering rather than change the things to which we have become accustomed. But when we suffer many abuses and face a callous disregard of our rights, all designed to subjugate us under the rule of the wealthiest 1%, it is our right, in fact it is our duty, to throw off that government and make provision for a new government that is committed to protecting our freedoms and liberties.

The present leadership of our country has allowed many times for our rights to be curtailed. It has even violated our rights to freedom of assembly. It is apparent that they are working their way towards a kind of despotism after having removed all of our rights and prosperity. We have awakened to the realization that we live under a tyranny of the few. With this awakening we have also realized that it is time for us to change our current system of government and what we want is a political system based on genuine democracy and social justice.

To this end we demand:

1. That specific and effective rules be passed to eliminate the influence of corporations, personal financiers, banks and brokerage houses over elected and unelected officials everywhere in all government. Specifically, that contributions of money, favors of any kind, and promises of employment after leaving office be made strictly illegal. That contributions of any kind, either delivered directly to politicians, or delivered through lobbyists, or made through contributions to campaigns or made through pledges of employment of staff or family also be illegal.
2. That the government enact legislation that reverses the effects of the “Citizens United” supreme court decision
3. That congress pass the “Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2011” (HR 1489) and restore the spirit of the Glass-Steagall Act
4. The elimination of the “Personhood” legal status for corporations
5. That the government enact a taxation policy that does not over burden the majority of citizens and looks to the very wealthy to contribute more for the greater good of the nation
6. That appropriate Federal agencies fully investigate and prosecute the “Wall Street” actors for crimes leading to the current financial crisis
7. That “Flash Trading” be outlawed and the “casino” aspects of business investing currently practiced on “Wall Street” be terminated
8. That the practice of private banks owning shares in the 12 Federal Reserve Banks be ended
9. That public college attendance be free
10. That healthcare be nationalized and available to all citizens
11. That environmental laws be strengthened to guarantee a clean, undamaged environment to future generations
12. That the Patriot Act be repealed
13. That the attacks of 9-11-2001 be vigorously investigated again

We, the people of Occupy Wall Street, assembled here in Zuccotti Park, and in the other Occupy demonstrations being held in cities across our great nation, and the like-minded people, otherwise known as the 99%, in their homes and on the streets all over the United States, and Occupy movements being held in parks and streets around the world do solemnly declare our solidarity in the support of this declaration and its demands to which we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Extacy of Gold

Gold doesn’t have the capacity to do anything that the Federal Reserve Bank can do to regulate inflation or deflation. Gold doesn’t allow money supply to keep up with money creation, which is what happens in a sound economy. Gold is a limited supply commodity that is finite. It won’t reach to cover the United States economy and there ain’t a prayer that it can cover the world’s economy. Deflation has economic problems that can be just as bad as inflation. If we tried to use it as our currency, we would have massive deflation. Massive deflation leads to money hording rather than investing and banks can’t lend because the value of things are going down. Deflation is mostly associated with depressions.

Let me explain. Remember when real estate was the only sure bet investment? It had real… estate value. You could pass it down to your children. You could live on it, or in it. It had physical size and was tangible. However, its value went up and up and up, far beyond its real affordability. Why? How? Because the banking game had changed and people who were not bankers were throwing money at unsophisticated ordinary citizens and telling them they could afford these homes and the extra demand pushed the price of houses up. When the houses became more expensive they just increased the amount of money they could loan people of a certain income. Prices went even higher and these non-traditional bankers started making loans to people without checking their credit worthiness or doing a check on anything. Volume was the watchword for these brokers. With every loan they made they collected a fee, and they experienced none of the consequences if the loan went bad after. Then they turned around and sold these mortgages in pieces of paper, telling the purchasers that the value of their paper was guaranteed because, even though these were risky investments, they were backed by something of real value, actual houses, which at the time was an unmistakably safe investment. Real estate had only gone down in value once in the United State’s history and that was during the Great Depression. Even though they were doing the very same things that lead to the Great Depression, in their eyes, the United States was an endless ocean of prosperity, it was like the atmosphere, their illegal activity couldn’t possibly pollute it, at least not to the extent that it would create any real damage to our economy. For them there wasn’t any danger of the United States going into anything that remotely looked like a Great Depression. That was ancient history. Things are different now. We have smart phones and super fast computers; we drive sophisticated cars that run on gasoline. Besides, real estate is real estate and will not go down in value. Unfortunately we know now that, that type of thinking is ludicrous. So use that critical thinking to think about what people are telling you about our money and gold?

The true value of gold is what others are willing to give up or do to get it from you. Gold, just like real estate, only has value when conditions are right to support that value. The value of gold is relative to the value of its importance to what you buy given a particular set of circumstances. Let me give you an example. If I am starving and I will die soon if I don’t get food and I have gold in my pocket, I will want to exchange that gold for food real fast. Gold has no value for me in comparison to food. However, if the food supply is limited and the person who has food also needs it to survive, my gold is worthless. It is worthless to both him and I because you can’t eat it and survive. The decision of to whether you will get food at all depends on either the goodness of the food holder’s charity or the timing when the food holder thinks there will be more food. Chances are the food holder will only give you at most a portion of his food for gold, and more likely than not, they will want all your gold for an amount of food that will most likely not sustain you. You can substitute anything that has a myth of value for the word gold here, such as jewels, platinum, stocks, bonds, money and even mansions. Let me explain. During the Bataan Death march wealthy people signed over mansions for food only to die anyway. Suddenly faced with dying their mansions weren’t that valuable anymore. Back to my point, things only have value relative to their worth during a given circumstance. It is an illusion to thing otherwise. So I am going to ask you, why do you think gold is any different from paper money? Remember real estate?

Paper money is the truest form of exchange under trading goods themselves for goods, or at least it should be. It truly has no value on its own. The value of paper money is in the exchange of goods. For example, socks are worth a buck a pair let’s say, and shoes are worth 10 bucks. You can also say shoes are worth 10 pairs of socks. Money is just a medium of exchange. If you put gold into the equation things get more complicated. Let’s say that you purchase wool and knitting needles with 2 bit of gold and you make ten socks. You go to buy shoes but the person isn’t willing to sell you his shoes for your 10 socks. He wants gold. He says you must have ten bits of gold first. So you have to go to someone who has gold to buy gold but the only gold in this economy is the gold you first used to purchase socks and it is with the person who sold you your wool and needles. You go to him and he wants three pairs of socks for the one bit of gold, because he wants to rent the shoes from the guy with the shoes when he goes outside and renting shoes only costs one bit of gold. Now, think of this simple example on a Macro level. Why is gold valuable? One reason is that it is not a commonly found metal, found in abundant quantity. It is scarce compared to the demand for it. Just imagine how valuable gold would be if it was the medium of exchange for the world’s economy. Very few people would be capable of possessing it. All the gold in the world would not equal all of the active money being handed over for goods in a single day in the current size of our world’s economy. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that gold simply doesn’t work in a modern economy as it didn’t work in my example.

There is another factor, perhaps an even more important one about how money works in our economy that makes using gold not beneficial to the ordinary citizen, which is how ordinary people and businesses create added value goods and the value of services. Money is created in an economy by adding value. For example, clay has little value alone. You or I, if we know where to look for it, can probably get clay for free. However, you take that clay, shape it, glaze it and fire it and it becomes a useable bowl. This is something that has value to a lot of people, especially people who specialize in making spoons, or soup or something else. Let’s say you have made more bowls than you need and you want to explore the idea of not using your hands to eat your food. You are willing to exchange a bowl that you made to a person who has made spoons in excess of what they need. You come to an agreement that the bowl is worth four spoons. The value of the clay, plus your know-how and labor now has a measurable value in spoons. For a period of time spoons became the de facto currency since compared to other goods spoons have a traded value in the bowl standard. Substitute spoons for currency and now the bowl has an added value over clay of some figure of money. You, the lowly bowl maker has just created money in an economy over clay. This happens almost every time goods or services are exchanged in our economy. I know it is hard to believe, but you can replace the word “profit” quite comfortably with the words “value added” without messing up the meaning too badly. You purchase bowls in bulk that are priced at a value added over clay, and you sell the bowls in smaller quantities in a nice display at your retail establishment at an added value over bowls purchased in bulk. Every step of the way creates money. In order to deal with the ever-expanding value of raw materials being turned into value added goods you need something that will grow with it, and gold can’t do that. In order for gold to keep up with this enormous engine of economies creating money, mining of gold would have to be on a level comparable to how we mine for coal or drill for oil. Gold, like oil and coal is a finite commodity. We probably in a year or two after switching to a gold standard would begin talking about peak gold. Currency, however, doesn’t have these problems. It is just a medium of exchange. The value of goods and services are not based on the currency, but the value of your goods or services against all goods and services. What makes the value of money go up or down isn’t a factor of the money itself, but its supply in the economy. In order for money to not go up or down in value is how close the government agency hits the mark of how much money was created during a particular period. In the United States that agency is the Federal Reserve.

Our reserve bank tries to keep the amount of money in our economy at the level of the economies creation of money. This is a bit of guesswork and is not an exact science. If they project to low then the value of currency will increase and you have deflation, if they put too much money into the economy the value of currency will decrease and you have inflation. The Federal Reserve adds or detracts money from the economy by printing money and lending it to the banks that circulate it into our economy in the form of loans. If interest rates are high, fewer people get loans and the money supply in the economy drops, if interest rates are low, loans are more affordable and many more people barrow money and increase the money supply.

The Federal Reserve is not a private institution, it is, however, an independent institution wholly owned by the Federal Government and the therefore owned by the citizens of this country. It is independent to free it from politics, so that it may act in the best interest of the citizenry.

The Federal Reserve System fulfills its public mission as an independent entity within government.  It is not “owned” by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution.

As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the Congress of the United States. It is considered an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.

However, the Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by the Congress, which often reviews the Federal Reserve’s activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute. Therefore, the Federal Reserve can be more accurately described as “independent within the government” rather than “independent of government.”

The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by the Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized similarly to private corporations–possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.” For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year. ~ Federal Reserve website

The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks are the functioning portion of the system that carry out the requirements put upon them by the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board or the Fed has two mandates, the first is to keep inflation under control and the second is to keep unemployment low.

The Federal Reserve is necessary because we industrious Americans keep taking things that are worth nothing or of little value and making them more valuable,  (i.e. making clay into bowls). We create money in our economy and so the money supply has to increase with that. The Federal Reserve controls interest rates at the bank level by the interest rates it is willing to lend to banks. (Oh, so that is why they report the Federal Reserves interest rates so much on the news.) The interest rates asked for by the Fed are directly linked to two things, the cost of borrowing and the rate of inflation; however, inflation has other factors affecting it as well. Remember that when interest rates are high people and businesses tend to barrow less. This dampens economic growth, but maybe necessary to slow down inflation. If it makes interest rates low then businesses and people tend to barrow more and grow their businesses and employ more people. However, more money flowing to people and businesses tends to increase demand and that causes inflation. One example of this was the low interest rate mortgage loans that were too easy to get by nearly everyone, caused housing prices to go up and up, in other words, caused there to be inflation in the housing market.

Gold doesn’t have the capacity to do anything that the Federal Reserve can do to regulate inflation or deflation. Gold doesn’t allow money supply to keep up with money creation, which is what happens in a sound economy. Gold is a limited supply commodity that is finite. It won’t reach to cover the United States economy and there ain’t a prayer that it can cover the world’s economy. Deflation has economic problems that can be just as bad as inflation. If we tried to use it as our currency, we would have massive deflation. Massive deflation leads to money hording rather than investing and banks can’t lend because the value of things are going down. Deflation is mostly associated with depressions.

Just like what happened in the housing market and the supposed incorruptibility of the value of real estate, we have been manipulated in believing the value of certain things such as gold don’t go down only to have them change in value dramatically typically at great cost to ordinary citizens.  If you can’t remember back 12 or 13 years ago to the end of the 1990s let me remind you, gold had gone down in value to a 22 year low. That means that those who had purchased gold close to their retirement as a sure bet for the intervening 22 years of their life would have seen their savings drop by nearly 70%. If someone had saved 100 thousand dollars to retire on, then at the end of the 22 years, provided that they hadn’t touched it for living expenses, they would have had only 30 thousand left. Compare that to what would have happened if they had put their money in a bank and kept it as cash, they would have been far a head even at a 3% interest rate.  I am sure with every drop in the price of gold during that period investors were told that gold had enduring value.  The reality was that gold went from a high of over $800 per ounce around 1976 to a low of somewhere around $250 in 1998 and it stayed around that price until 2001. That drop in value would have given us an average inflation rate of over 14% a year for 22 years. The truth is that most of that drop occurred within the first 5 years. Most average citizens would have experienced an inflation rate of 50% or more per year for that period of time. Gold would have been devastating to our economy if it had been our currency for that time period.

One last thing to think about. If we truly are thinking of social and economic justice then remember this. Forty percent of the wealth of the United States is controlled by 1% of the population. Murphy’s golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules. The 99% aren’t the people who have the gold.