Way to go John! You got this one right. Sarah Palin is truly an American girl. What a refreshing down to earth women. Alaska's loss will clearly be America's gain. Not being from Alaska, I have only recently heard of Sarah but what a first impression. The Dems can speak of change all they want they will never come close to the change Sarah can bring to Washington. This dynamic woman is a super mom that changes far more than diapers and bed sheets. She has brought tremendous change to every level of government she has touched in the last few years. The self professed hockey mom applies grocery store values to government spending. As her clear sense of right and wrong attack corruption, abuse and mismanagement on all government levels.   

 

Once again Congress is drilling big oil on the hill instead of drilling ANWR for oil.  Congress blames big oil, big oil blames OPEC, OPEC blames the futures market, traders blame instabilities around the world and the average guy blames all of them.  Too bad we can't run our cars on blame since we have so much.  Lucky for us we have an energy plan.  And what a great plan it is.  No drilling, no refining, no nukes, no coal to oil, no energy, no DUH!  The plan does include taxing the oil companies and begging our enemies to do all the things we won't do ourselves.  That ought to help, NOT.  The new plan includes suing OPEC.  Once they pick themselves up off the floor from laughing, they will simply sell their product to the rapidly growing markets in China and India and leave us pushing our cars.

So I'm pleased to announce the winner of the blame game.  The winner is everybody!  High oil, gas and electric charges are the result of our collective failure act reasonably and responsibly.  You can never fix a problem until you address the root cause.  In our struggle to balance a thriving growing economy and a prosperous society with environmental concerns we have totally screwed up both.  We still pollute but at a much higher cost.  We can fix this.  We can care for the environment and have the energy we need to maintain the highest standard of living on earth. 

This problem will not be fixed in congress.  Congress doesn't build cars, they don't drill oil, they simply provide an avenue of endless debate that results in nothing effective getting done.  Congress can help the most by getting out of the way.  I was part of the team that brought Black Berry to market.  While it is now widely accepted the wireless data market was not always so broad.  But we had a saying that helps us push on.  "Put the food in the bowl and the dogs will come".  What this means is if we develop the environmental friendly products and services we need to affordably meet our energy needs people will buy them and we will move towards energy independence and a cleaner environment.

Take for example the vehicle emissions and fuel efficiency.  We have spent more than 30 years in congress trying to clean emissions by a few parts per million and gain a couple miles per gallon.  This approach did nothing more than kick open the doors to congress and fill the congressional halls with lobbyist for and against.  All in an effort to get GM and Ford to make clean, green high mileage cars.  What would have happened if we bypassed congress, bypass car companies that won't build cars to the pollution and mileage standards sought and the people who wanted those cars 30 years ago just built them themselves?  When you try to get someone else to do what you want it will not get done.  Do it yourself.

People will say they don't know how to build a car.  Individually that is true.  But collectively we can do anything if we just do it.  How many people are in the environmental movement?  How many people don't want to fight mid-east wars for oil?  How many people are just angry at the price of gas?  How many people want energy independence? The answer is millions of people.  So do any of these millions of people have engineering and scientific skills?  Do any of them know how to prototype?  Do any of them know how to run a factory?  Do any of them have deep pockets to finance a new car company?  Instead of beating our heads against the brick wall of congress we need for individuals to bring their piece of the solution puzzle to the table so we can connect them to the other pieces.  And you will have the cars you seek in a few years not decades.  

Cars are not the only new products that can change our fuel use and pollution rates so don't write yourself out of the picture if you don't have skills in that area.  There is plenty you can do no matter who you are.  Just as an example look at Map Quest and GPS navigation.  If 1 million people avoid just 1 extra mile of driving per year due to these technologies keeping them from making a wrong turn we save 1 million miles of driving.  At 20 miles per gallon that works out to 50,000 gallons of gas or 6 tanker trucks.  Now we are not going to GPS ourselves out of this problem but it is a piece of the puzzle brought to the table by people who probably don't know much about building cars.

While I don't support congress mandating fuel standards or light bulbs I certainly welcome new technologies to the market place. Why is the government forcing the new compact fluorescent light bulbs yet we don't see any commercials from the manufactures of these bulbs promoting them?  We need to go back to the most powerful force on earth to fix our energy and environmental problems, the free enterprise system.  I can't count the times I have heard people say they wish they could invent something.  They say that all the good inventions are done.  Well the next Bill Gates will be the people who invent our way out of this situation.  

Here is the part the environmentalist won't want to hear.  We can't sit idle while we wait for you to bring new technologies to the market place. We cannot shut the country down waiting for solutions.  Our homes need heating and we need to get to work.  Until we build a better "mouse trap" we need to ensure we have the energy needed to move forward.  So for now, we need to allow each of the oil companies to build a new refinery. We need to fast track 50 nuclear power plants.  We need to drill ANWR and the continental shelf.  We need to start coal to liquid fuels.  

We went through this once in the 70s and the technologies started to come to market. They were crude and not all that effective but we started to make the changes to clean cheap energy and the ability to maintain our lifestyle.  The reason we stopped was the price of oil dropped like a rock.  We quickly went back to old ways and old habits.  If we take the actions mentioned above the price of oil will drop and it will be real easy to go back to old ways.  But for the people who really care about energy independence and a clean environment you have the power to effect change and must stay on the new track regardless the price of oil.  "Put the food in the bowl and the dogs will come".   

   

The United States has been sending Billions of dollars a year into space since the 1960s.  Many people would rather spend the money here on earth.  Aside from TANG and a lot of pride the day the Eagle landed, have we gotten our monies worth?  Could we have gotten more for our money if we spent it on other things?  What did we really get for our space dollars?

For one thing we got greatly improved communications.  Satellite communications, a definite child of the space program, has given us the ability to make phone calls around the world especially to remote places.  As well as live video of events the world over from international disasters to the Olympic Games.  Got cable or satellite TV?  Thank NASA.  Yes even the cable companies receive their feeds via satellite before sending it down the cable to your house.     

As they say on TV, wait there is more.  How about Global Positioning Satellite?  GPS is spreading like wild fire in the military, commerce and our private lives.  GPS is more than a cool toy.  This navigational aid saves tons of money in fuel savings alone.  Think about it for a minute.  If only 1 million drivers avoid driving 1 extra mile a year because GPS navigation kept them on track we would save 1 million miles of driving.  At 20 miles per gallon that is 50,000 gallons of gas or 6 tanker trucks.  Far more than 1 million drivers have GPS and they save way more than 1 mile a year.  It adds up pretty quick.

GPS does more than just get us where we are going.  Even if you totally oppose the Iraq war or war in general, GPS saves lives on both sides.  GPS gives us the ability to carry out surgical strikes against enemy targets.  In World War 2 Allied bombers dropped hundreds of bombs over large areas in hopes of hitting their targets.  Those bombs were lucky to hit within a couple hundred yards of the target.  Today's GPS guided munitions strike within 6 inches of their targets thus reducing the number of bombs dropped the number of bombing raids launched and the number unintended causalities.  War will always be ugly but GPS technology has enabled the United States greatly shrink the battle field.

Our space program saves lives in other ways too.  Most people think Hurricane Katrina was a deadly storm and it was.  Nearly 1500 people died.  But look at the recent cyclone in Myanmar.  The death toll from that event is an estimated 130,000.  As bad as Katrina was most people lived to talk about it because of the early warning to evacuate.  Some didn't heed the warnings but our space based weather satellites tracked Katrina as well as all of our major storms from the time they are low pressure systems until they hit. Just think how bad Katrina would have been if nobody knew it was coming.

Environmentalist should love the space program.  About half of today's space missions are dedicated to study of the earth’s environment.  From the hole in the ozone to global climate change to ice pack mapping, the space program leads the way in many earth science studies.  Environmentalist are looking to get rid of the gasoline engine and coal burning power plants.  NASA is leading the way.  NASA has been a leading user and developer of hydrogen fuel cells and solar panels.    

This does not even scratch the surface of what we get from our space program.  And if you are impressed with that list, think about this.  Today's first graders have access to better computers than the engineers that launched our first space endeavors.  Space forces scientists and engineers of all disciplines to work together and solve a wide variety of problems.  The solutions to these problems will surely bring new benefits to those of us who remain earthbound.

How can the local, state and federal governments spend trillions of dollars year after year, decade after decade and never solve a problem?  They are not even on the way to solving any problems.  Our problems will never go away until politics as usual ends.  My introductory blog is the first step to getting the "D" and "R" out of politics and out of the way.

 

Even though my troubleshooting training and experience is in electronics, the basic troubleshooting skills can be and needs to be applied to any problem you wish to solve.  Our current governement does not apply any of the basic rules of troubleshooting.  All our current governement does is throw big piles of money recklessly at our problems with no clear plan of attack.  Solid troubleshooting skills must be adopted by both parties before any problem will be solved. 

 

The absolute first thing that must be done in successful troubleshooting is identify the cause of the problem.  The reason our money is wasted and nothing is solved is largely due to our feable attack on the symptoms of problems and total disregard for the true cause of these problems.  Secondly, one needs to understand that there are no single issues.  All the issues are connected.  If you touch one you touch them all.  We always need to remember an action will cause an equal and opposite reaction somewhere else.  When working on solutions to one problem the successful problem solver will take into account the impact their plan will have on other issues.  Next is use the right tool for the right job.  For the people in elected office the tool for any of our problems is information.  They have a great advantage of living in the information age.  However we live in the bad information age.  Good information is the right tool for this job.  Sloppy media, self serving special interest and politicians that are more likely to follow the herd instead of lead the pack constantly place road blocks between solutions and problems.

 

The last requirement is not really general troubleshooting but applies to solutions to our collective problems.  Any real solution is going to be a partnership between the three main segments of our society.  The people, the government and the business community.  Each of the three will have a role in every problem.  Our roles will not be evenly split in equal thirds, each issue will require a different specific formula for true success.

 

No plan will work until we adopt solid troubleshooting techniques.  Ideas good and bad will continue to fail until we change the way we evaluate and execute these ideas.  Common sense will do far more than any Senator.  

 

I intend to use this blog to put forth ideas geared to solving our problems.  I'm not conceeded enough to think these are the only ways to fix problems they are just a common sense approach our problems.  Hopefully these ideas will spark others to add constructive input and we can build real effective solutions by using all of our collective skills, experience and education.     

Most people want to be right all the time.  I want to be right all the time.  But there is a big difference between being right and just thinking you are.  Sometimes we lie to others, sometimes we just lie to ourselves and sometimes we just don't know the truth to begin with.We have 2 houses of congress full of people who think they are right making decsions for us and guess what, somebody is wrong.  Somebody is either knowingly or unkonwingly making some bad decsions because they are wrong.

 

Some policies are based on opinion.  Things like the Iraq war.  Anyone can throw up a humdred and one "what if" scenerios which makes it hard for people to nail down who's right and who's wrong.  But for many issues there is a clear right or wrong.  Take ethanol for example.  I was for all for it, now not so much.  I don't care which party is for it or against it.  I don't care if I have to admit I'm wrong.  Determining the truth about ethanol is an 8th grade science fair project.  Congress needs to watch Myth Busters.

 

I want to do what is right and best for our country.  I want congress to cut through the crap and fully support or fully reject ethanol based on the truth.  I will have more respect and support for a congressman or senator who tells me the truth regardless of which party they are in even if it conflicts with my current beliefs.  You want my vote, earn it by telling the truth.

 

Are you for or against ethanol?  Does ethanol polute less than gas?  Does ethanol yeild more fuel per unit of oil than gas?  Does ethanol take food off our tables and lead to higher food prices?  Does milage go down when you run ethanol?  The answer to these questions are not opinon.  They are easily provable facts.  So before we potentially go any further down the wrong road, lets have a science fair.  The funny thing about math and science is if you enter that world without bias you will always find the truth.

 

Why can't we take some flex fuel vehicles down to the Daytona race track and run some laps?  Simple science, put and measured amount of gas in a vehicle take it up to 55, lock on the cruise and run it dry see how far you get.  Repeat with ethanol.  Do this three times average your results and tell me the truth.  Measure the emissions and use a little fifth grade math and find out which fuel polutes more.  They say all the corn that goes to ethanol still gets into the feed system for livestock and we actually get more out of the same amount of grain.  Really, how hard is that to prove.  Back to fifth grade math.  If farmer Brown sells 20 tons of corn to the local ethanol plant to make fuel, how much corn does the ethanol plant need to sell to cattlemen for feed to equal 100%? Show me the receipts! We know it we get 19 gallons of gas out of a barrel of oil.  How come we don't know how much ethanol we get out of a barrel of oil?  I would love it if ethanol turns out to be the wonder fuel that breaks our oil dependency.  But quit jerking me around and tell me the truth. 

 

Any high school science teachers looking for a class project? 

Jamie, Adam calling all Myth Busters!