John Waters And His Nixon Connection

February 5, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Energy, Entertainment, Environmental issues, Movies, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

This week the Australian newspapers the Melbourne Age features an interview with director, writer and raconteur John Waters, who will be traveling to Down Under in March to present his one-man show in several of that nation’s cities. In the article, Waters mentions that he was interested to see one of his childhood favorites, Patty McCormack of The Bad Seed fame, playing Patricia Nixon in Ron Howard’s film Frost/Nixon, which leads to the surprising fact that:

Waters has a Nixon connection himself. His uncle, John C. Whitaker, was undersecretary of the interior during the Nixon years. It got a bit awkward, Waters says, “during the ’60s when I was at riots and things outside the White House but now we get along great”. Whitaker, he adds, “was never part of anything like Watergate and his son, when he was 15, worked as a craft services kid on Hairspray and went on to become a big producer with Imagine Films, producing things like Eminem’s film 8 Mile.”

As previously mentioned at TNN, Mr. Whitaker, who appeared at the Nixon Library last month, was a major figure, during the early 1970s, in the shaping of the most far-ranging and farsighted environmental policies of any Presidency since Theodore Roosevelt’s, and in the initiatives in energy policy that have become especially relevant in recent years.

It’s also worth noting that his son Jim Whitaker, who Waters mentions, was a producer of another Ron Howard film, Cinderella Man. And it was Waters’s grandmother Stella Whitaker who gave him, for his sixteenth birthday, the camera which he used to shoot his earliest films. Over forty years later, he’s at work on his next feature, Fruitcake, although, as he points out to the Age’s reporter, it’s now rather difficult for even the creator of Hairspray to get backing for any feature with a budget above $1 million and below $100 million.

Vrrrrroooom To All That

May 29, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Energy, Environmental issues, Lifestyle, Music, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Daniel Henninger’s “Wonderland” column today —”Obama vs. The Beach Boys – Daddy’s taking the muscle car culture away” — casts a gimlet eye on President Obama’s plans for America’s automobiles. And he doesn’t like what he sees. Not one bit.

When Barack Obama announced that the government will use its fist to wave onto the highways of America cars that get 39 miles to a gallon of liquefied switch grass or something, he said, “Everybody wins.”

Everybody? What country has he been living in? This marks the end of the internal combustion engine as we knew it, and it is the way Americans have defined, designed and literally driven much of the nation’s culture for as long as anyone can remember. Car culture is America’s culture.

Mr. Henninger notes that the President likes to give iPods as gifts.  So he proposes a playlist that might bring him back to his senses.

The first track would be the Beach Boys’ 1964 “Shut Down.”

The second would be their 1963 anthem “Little Deuce Coupe.”

“She’s got a competition clutch with a four on the floor, and she purrs like a kitten til the lake pipes roar.”

It’s 2016. Imagine a Brian Wilson ever thinking to write: “And she’ll have fun, fun, fun til her daddy takes her Prius away.”

At Mr. Obama’s “Everybody wins” announcement ceremony in the Rose Garden, no one knew better how much has been lost than the cowed auto chiefs arrayed behind him. CAFE, the fuel-mileage standards Congress mandated 34 years ago, gradually squeezed the size and life out of America’s cars. But something’s getting phased out here other than gas-fueled cars.

Some of the most famous celebrity converts to the politics behind this new, shrinking world of plug-ins once wrote and sang paeans to muscle cars and a more muscular culture.

The third track would be Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 hit “Born to Run.”

 ”Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard.”

Time was Bruce Springsteen knew that “Jersey boys” mainly meant steel, chrome, rubber and auto tech. Check out the lyrics to “Pink Cadillac” (“but my love is bigger than a Honda”) or the car-crazy “Racing in the Street,” invoking Chevys with 396 Fuelie heads, Hurst speed-shifters and Camaros running “from the fire roads to the interstate.”

The fourth track would be Ronnie and the Daytonas’ 1965 hit “G.T.O.”

“Turn it on, wind it up, blow it out — GTOoooo.”

We are being offered a different world now. One designed, defined and driven by a new set of un-fun obsessions — carbon footprints, greenhouse gas and alternative energy. This large transition passes before us, barely seen, as the gray water of public policy. Hardly anyone notices how much is being changed.

To put a stop to the new sin of spending too much time out on Highway 9, we are getting the mark-up hearings this week in Washington for the Waxman-Markey climate bill. It’s 900 pages long, dripping with thousands of Mickey-Mouse rules to reorder how we live. A Senate Finance Committee document last week on the Obama health-care plan proposes “lifestyle related revenue raisers.” Lifestyles like drinking beer. This is the “taxing bad behavior” movement. They get to define what’s bad.

The fifth track would be Commander Cody’s 1972 cover of the 1955 “Hot Rod Lincoln.”

Mr. Henninger isn’t hesitate to pin his colors to the antennas of the glorious gas guzzlers that appear to be driving down the road to oblivion:

This tension over how we live arrived before the world began standing on its head over global warming. The guys in the hemi-powered drones used to mock the granola and Birkenstock crowd. Look who’s on top now.

“Everybody wins?” Not quite. What’s winning is a worldview that goes deeper than the data beneath global warming. The gasoline cars they want to turn into scrap were about a lot more than the thrill of roaring on.

The cars and their culture were a manifestation of what made the U.S. really different. The cars, like the country, were big, fast and unfettered. Their drivers were delirious with the possibility of finding something new in life. “It’s a town full of losers, and I’m pullin’ out of here to win!”

When Americans grew up, that’s just what a lot of them did — win. Now, it looks like we’re being asked to throttle down to government-approved survival. They’re even running the car companies, telling them what to build, and then they’ll pay people to buy the product. Save the planet and lose the nation’s heart.

 
Here is Mr. Henninger discussed his thoughts on the Wall Street Journal’s Digital Network.

Low Voltage

April 9, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Energy, Environmental issues, Obama administration, Technology | Leave a Comment 

In a classic case of ostrich-think (who are you gonna believe, the auto task force report or your lying eyes?), GM blithely dismisses the news that the much-vaunted Volt is a taxpayer-subsidized dud-in-the-making.  

In addition to being too far behind Toyota to catch up, the finished product will sell for $40K when —and if— it arrives on time, and still behind the times, in 2010.  Renee Schoff reported for McClatchy newspapers:

The White House may have sounded a bit bleak on the Chevrolet Volt last week, but both the company and the Obama administration say don’t read that as early news of the much-advertised electric car’s demise.

President Barack Obama’s auto task force last week said in an assessment of General Motors’ viability that it was a full generation behind Toyota in “green powertrain development” and that “while the Volt holds promise, it is currently projected to be much more expensive than its gasoline-fueled peers and will likely need substantial reductions in manufacturing cost in order to become commercially viable.”

A White House official who worked on the assessment said on Wednesday, however, that the statements had been simply another way of saying what GM has said all along — it will be a challenge to bring the new technology up to scale and make it cost competitive.

GM will have to make its own decisions about the pace of its advanced technology, said the official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

“You should not expect the task force will say GM should discontinue the Volt,” he said.

GM spokesman Dave Darovitz said there was nothing new in the government statement on high costs. New technology is always expensive, he said.

The company has added money to building the Volt, and it’s still the “No. 1 product development program here at GM,” he said.

“We will make it happen,” Darovitz said. “There is no deviation in our focus and intent to bring the car to market in late 2010.”

Darovitz said the government report made an unfair comparison with Toyota because it was dealing with two different technologies — the Prius gas-electric hybrid and the battery-powered plug-in electric Volt.

Obama last week rejected GM’s restructuring plan and gave the automaker until June 1 to explain how it would reshape itself as a healthy company. GM seeks more than $16 billion in additional taxpayer funds.

GM reported in its five-year restructuring plan that it’s investing in hybrid and plug-in cars and trucks, including the Volt and two other models that will use its technology.

“With a majority of Americans driving their vehicles less than 40 miles per day, the Chevrolet Volt — providing up to 40 miles on a single electrical charge — should be attractive to those seeking to use little if any gasoline,” the GM plan said. “The development costs of high-technology vehicles like the Volt are significant, but so are the long-term benefits that come from increased energy efficiency and independence.”

Darovitz said the company expects state and federal incentives will help boost demand for the Volt, particularly a $7,500 federal tax credit. The Volt is expected to sell for around $40,000 because of the high cost of its batteries. The Energy Department has been helping with battery research to bring costs down.

Neil Young, Motorhead Messiah

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Energy, Environmental issues, Music | Leave a Comment 

What with Detroit suddenly all over the news, Neil Young’s new album  Fork in the Road —awaiting release on 7 April— couldn’t be more timely.  

Word has it that the CD has a real ripped-from-today’s-headline vibe that reflects its hasty recording just before Christmas.

Having dealt with foreign policy in Living with War, this time the subject matter focuses on economic catastrophe — particularly as viewed from an automotive perspective.  The fork in this road will be open to many interpretations.  

The first single is “Johnny Magic,” a song dedicated to Young’s Wichita auto mechanic buddy Jonathan Goodwin.

The single was debuted in two stages on the internet.  The first, and by far the coolest, was a shot entirely in Young’s LincVolt while he sang to a track played on his laptop while driving around the streets of Wichita.

Johnny Magic had a way with metal
Had a way with machines
One day in a garage far away he met his destiny
In the form of a heavy metal Continental

She as born to run on a proud highway
Then the whole world starting running out of money
People losing their jobs
Right here in Wichita

Wichita the home of the heavy metal Continental
Where the Motorhead Messiah was tuning the system in
Johnny Magic, Johnny Magic

She burst from the garage in a blaze of silence
Disappearing down Douglas at lightning speed
Befre the big metal door cam e crashing down in Wichita

She was born to run on a proud highway
Now she goes long range on domestic green fuel
100 miles per gallon is the Continental Rule
Out on the Kansas two-lane flats near Wichita

The Motorhead Messiah went to Washington
To show them what he’d done
The senators and congressman came down in Washington
And they rode in the heavy metal Continental

She was born to run on a proud highway
Johnny Magic the Motorhead Messiah was tuning the system in

The other video, released a few days later, carried on the same DWS —driving while singing— motif, this time with a passenger and some more lively visuals.  You can see it here.

Neil Young has a longstanding interest in cars.   He is competing for the $10 million Automotive X Prize for developing a vehicle that gets 100 miles or more to the gallon.  Along with uber-mechanic Goodwin, he has been transforming his 1959 Lincoln Continental into a 2009 green fantasy of sustainable technology.

Several months ago he weighed in with an op-ed for HufPo: “How To Save A Major Auto Company.”

Find a new ownership group. The culture must change. It is time to turn the page. In the high technology sector there are several candidates for ownership of a major car and truck manufacturer. We need forward looking people who are not restricted by the existing culture in Detroit. We need visionary people now with business sense to create automobiles that do not contribute to global warming.

It is time to change and our problems can facilitate our solutions. We can no longer afford to continue down Detroit’s old road. The people have spoken. They do not want gas guzzlers (although they still like big cars and trucks). It is possible to build large long-range vehicles that are very efficient. People will buy those vehicles because they represent real change and a solution that we can live with.

The government must take advantage of the powerful position that exists today. The Big 3 are looking for a bailout. They should only get it if they agree to stop building autos that contribute to global warming now. The stress on the auto manufacturers today is gigantic. In order to keep people working in their jobs and keep factories open, this plan is suggested:

The big three must reduce models to basics. a truck, an SUV, a large family sedan, an economy sedan, and a sports car. Use existing tooling.

Keep building these models to keep the workforce employed but build them without engines and transmissions. These new vehicles, called Transition Rollers, are ready for a re-power. No new tooling is required at this stage. The adapters are part of the kits described next.

If reading the above gets your engine racing, you can find the next-described kits —and a great deal more— here.

How Things Work in Washington

March 6, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Energy, Environmental issues, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Instead of all those costly boring textbooks written by the professor and/or his friends, the kids can learn how Washington really works by simply studying Kimberly Kindy’s lively savvy piece about FutureGen in today’s WaPo.

Deep inside the economic stimulus package is a $1 billion prize that, in five short words, shows the benefits of being in power in Washington.

The funding, for “fossil energy research and development,” is likely to go to a power plant in a small Illinois town, a project whose longtime backers include a group of powerful lawmakers from the state, among them President Obama.

Taking the Heat

January 29, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Barack Obama, Energy, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

During the 1973 energy crisis, RN took criticism for his habit of running the fireplace and the air conditioning at the same time.    And so it is worth noting this item from today’s New York Times:

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat. “He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

The president’s practices are  particularly awkward in light of his campaign rhetoric on energy independence:

 I won’t pretend this change will be easy or that it will come without significant cost or some measure of sacrifice from the American people. Achieving energy independence is one of the greatest challenges we’ve ever faced, and it will be the great project of our generation.

Apparently, sacrifice does not start in the Obama Oval Office.

Senator Biden’s Coal Sore

September 25, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008, Energy, Environmental issues | 1 Comment 

Who knew that Senator Biden’s  mini-megalomaniacal monologue captured on a videocam during a routine walkabout in Ohio last week would turn out to be the gaffe that keeps on giving?

An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal —nicely titled “Biden’s Coal Slaw”— keeps the coal fire burning:

The classic definition of a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth, and specialists like Joe Biden can work wonders with the form. On Tuesday Barack Obama’s running mate blew an easy question about coal, revealing volumes about liberal energy politics.
[Joseph Biden]

Working the rope line in Maumee, Ohio, the Senator was asked by an environmentalist why he and Mr. Obama support “clean coal.” “We’re not supporting clean coal,” Mr. Biden responded. Then, riffing on China’s breakneck construction of new coal plants, he continued, “No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they’re going to build them, over there.”

Coal happens to be the indispensable workhorse of the U.S. power system, providing about 50% of the country’s electricity. Many Democrats nonetheless despise coal — because of pollution before the era of scrubbers, but especially now because of carbon emissions. Al Gore favors an outright moratorium on coal-fired power in the name of climate change. Meanwhile, any scheme to tax and regulate carbon — like the cap-and-trade program backed by Mr. Obama and John McCain — would hit coal first and hardest, effectively banishing it from the U.S. energy mix.

Mr. Biden, then, only stated an obvious if politically unutterable truth. The real costs of green ambitions won’t be paid by well-heeled coastal liberals, but will fall disproportionately on the Southern and Midwestern states that depend on coal for jobs and power. The blue-collar voters of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and so forth will get hurt most — notwithstanding Mr. Biden’s campaign reinvention as the scrapper from Scranton.

As for “clean coal,” the Obama campaign actually supports it. But this too is a political bait-and-switch, perhaps explaining Mr. Biden’s confusion. In theory, clean coal would require capturing greenhouse gas emissions, compressing them into liquid and then pumping it underneath the earth. Even if the technology were ready for commercial deployment tomorrow, to sequester just 25% of yearly U.S. CO2 emissions would mean moving volumes more than twice as large as the world’s current oil pipeline system can handle. That will require an enormous amount of money, and generations to build.

That an eminence like Mr. Biden is clueless about coal suggests how little official Washington has thought through the consequences of its anticarbon agenda. His blunder is also notable because it exposed the realities that politicians prefer not to voice amid an election campaign. Coal-state voters should be watching what their politicians really have planned for them come January.

Solar Joe

September 24, 2008 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Election 2008, Energy, Nixon Administration, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Joe Biden’s gaffes about coal and FDR have received a great deal of attention.  The press has yet to focus on an equally ridiculous statement:  “The first guy to support solar energy was me 26 years ago.”  No, American political leaders were talking about solar energy long before 1982.  Take Richard Nixon for example:

• 1971: “The sun offers an almost unlimited supply of energy if we can learn to use it economically. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation are currently re-examining their efforts in this area and we expect to give greater attention to solar energy in the future.”
• 1972: “In addition to carrying forward the priority efforts I have already announced the liquid metal fast breeder reactor, pipeline quality gas from coal, and sulfur oxide control technology–the budget provides funds for new or increased efforts on fusion power, solar energy, magneto-hydrodynamics, industrial gas from coal, dry cooling towers for power plant waste heat, large energy storage batteries and advanced underground electric transmission lines.”
• 1973: “Solar energy holds great promise as a potentially limitless source of clean energy. My new budget triples our solar energy research and development effort to a level of $12 million. A major portion of these funds would be devoted to accelerating the development of commercial systems for heating and cooling buildings.”
• 1974: “And that is why we are going forward in terms of our huge Government programs in research and development for the purpose of seeing that our coal resources can be developed into a clean fuel. That is why we are going forward in our programs for the development of solar energy and nuclear power which, of course, would be clean fuel.”

Biden’s statement is much sillier than Al Gore’s claims about his role in developing the Internet, which actually had some foundation.  In this case, the inventor of solar energy was not Joe Biden.  It was … uh, God.

 

 

Is Detroit Finally Doomed?

August 1, 2008 by Paul Saunders | Filed Under China, Economic issues, Energy, Environmental issues, International Affairs, Nixon Center, Russia | Leave a Comment 

Reuters and others are reporting that General Motors is seeking buyers for the Hummer brand and other assets to raise up $4 billion to keep the company afloat. The problem is that GM’s market capitalization is only $6.5 billion — which leads one to wonder how company executives think they can get $4 billion and still have much left after losses of over $50 billion in the last three years. One must also ask whether the stubborn refusal to develop and sell more fuel-efficient vehicles in recent decades may have already doomed GM and the rest of the former Big Three American car manufacturers and we just don’t know it yet because their bodies are still moving. (Note to Congressional Republicans: sometimes greater regulation can actually be in companies’ long-term interest, whether they know it or not.)

Equally striking are two more facts. First, GM’s total worth is just one-fifteenth that of Toyota, and roughly on par with India’s Tata Motors and Russia’s Avtovaz — companies unknown to the vast majority of Americans. This is another illustration of how the once-mighty company has fallen. Second, reports on GM’s talks with possible buyers identify Indian, Russian, and Chinese firms — not the Japanese or the Europeans — as potential suitors. Expect more of the same as the balance of power in the global economy shifts increasingly in favor of these rapidly growing economies. The Russian and Indian economies are still small compared to America’s, and Russia’s in particular will probably stay that way for some time, but they are also clearly new players — and new players with high growth rates and ambitious goals. This is also cause for reflection.

Gore’s Progress

July 18, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Energy | Leave a Comment 

According to one analysis, Al Gore’s apocalyptic vision — the end of America unless we figure out how to generate 100% of our electricity from renewal sources within the next ten years — would cost $5 trillion, which was World War II’s pricetag. Maybe the VP’s right. I also think he’s still working through his ‘00 issues. So the question for discerning Americans (and this is always the case with wild-eyed zealots who may also be speaking truth — think Isaiah and John the Baptist) is how much of Gore’s anxiety is legitimately our problem and how much is exclusively his.