Trump can't afford to be too choosy. He still has thousands of appointments to make. With his lobbying rules, and the smell of impending death hanging on his administration, it's hard to get people to agree to take a position.
With thousands of appointments comes thousands of loyalty oaths. On a completely unrelated note, Trump Brand Paper™ is having its best year and may turn a profit before declaring bankruptcy.
Noting the tweets came before he was appointed, but you would think his social media past would have been reviewed... ‘How else can a Kenyan creampuff get ahead?’ is just one of the disturbing tweets sent by this Trump Energy Department agency head https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...epartment-agency-head/?utm_term=.209326afed2d
The slowness of key hires and frustration is not news in the State Dept, but the complaint about the WH leaking information is...who wouldathunk the leaking problem in the WH was the WH itself? Tillerson blows up at top White House aide http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/28/tillerson-blows-up-at-white-house-aide-240075
Seems that $1M contribution to Trump's innauguration has paid off... Scott Pruitt, Trump's EPA chief met with Dow Chemical exec before rolling back a ban on pesticides http://www.businessinsider.com/scot...efore-rolling-back-a-ban-on-pesticides-2017-6
The best is that he hasn't pushed back against the story at all. And answered today that he wished the filling of in personnel would go quicker.
Donald Trump's most senior climate change official says humans are not primary cause of global warming http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...tm_source=twitter#1322766684-tw#1489541593445
Corrupt from top to bottom. Same old ****. I'll always laugh at people who fell for the 'draining the swamp' con or say he's not just another politician that 'tells it like it is'.
Agree that the whole "draining the swamp" narrative was yet another outright lie from Mr. trump. What he should have said is, "WE'RE GONNA FILL THE SWAMP TO OVERFLOWING!"
The dude has a political science and communications degree. What the **** makes him a valid arbiter in scientific data and mathmatical models?
Wha... Trump seems to go through FBI directors like the Brooklyn Nets and Memphis Griz go through coaches... Acting FBI boss Andrew McCabe faces pressure, probes, uncertain future http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...e-faces-pressure-probes-uncertain-future.html
Rick Perry flubs a fundamental lesson of modern economics http://www.businessinsider.com/rick-perry-supply-and-demand-2017-7
What's the point of this? Of course he'll be fired once the new FBI director is installed. Was there ever any doubt? Coal plants can't really just put a supply out there. They can generate when the grid operator deploys them. The grid operator will deploy them when they are the lowest cost generator available. Idk what Perry was getting at. But, all I see is that one quote taken out of context so liberals can score some weak political points about Perry's grasp on economics.
Sure... but he was considered a candidate for the permanent role, no? But I believe the point of the Fox News article wasn't whether or not ge got the job, but rather the conservative-led attacks on McCabe, apparently led by Charles Grassley... http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gra...orts-suggest-mccabe-needs-recuse-russia-probe I think it is fair to expect more from the Secretary of Energy...
I'm being curmudgeonly because it's actually related to my work and I think the rabbit trail journalists decided to go down with Say on this story is a distraction from the real debate here, which is important. For the economics lesson, I feel pretty comfortable that Perry was not trying to revive a 19th century economic philosophy; he was probably alluding to a more modern idea that consumers don't even know they want a thing until they see it offered -- like no one wanted an iPhone until Jobs made it and everyone saw it was awesome. Perry was at a clean coal plant. I still don't know the context of the remark, but I'm guessing he was trying to say that you need to show Americans that it is possible to offer resilient, clean, cheap coal-fired electricity and once it is plain that it works, Americans won't hate on coal so much. But the debate here is about how we produce our electricity. Natural gas has been (and will be) cheap for so long that coal and nuclear plants can't make money. Now those generators are complaining the market doesn't recognize all their "attributes" and are asking for handouts. FirstEnergy got some money from Ohio because Ohio is so afraid that FE will be acquired and they'll lose the HQ. Illinois and New York promised billions each to Exelon to make sure their nuclear plants don't close. Now, nuclear plants will be asking other states for more free money. The problem with this is that we have a wholesale market that does a very good job of finding the lowest cost, but when you pay subsidies you end up running uneconomic plants and then leaving good, economic (gas-fired) plants out of the market. Aside from the jobs and taxbase lever these companies have over states, there is this concern, that allowing the landscape to be overtaken by gas-fired generation will leave electricity prices too exposed to gas prices and constraints in the pipeline system, and that pipelines can become too congested or fail you in moments of high stress (like in the 2014 polar vortex). It is nice to have power plants that have fuel on site, like coal and nuclear plants (though in the polar vortex, some of FE's coal plants went down because they didn't winterize the plants well enough). So Perry's efforts with his delayed 60 day study of baseload and his speeches are his effort to wade in to this fight between the wholesale markets trying to deliver the best price and the states who are trying to assure themselves of grid resilience, jobs, and taxbase (and the third interest, of course, the coal companies whose fortunes rely on the outcome). Perry looks to be coming down on the side of the states and the coal companies. The question will be if they'll damage the wholesale markets in the process and trigger a massive wealth transfer from utility ratepayers to the shareholders of coal companies. This is what the newspapers should be talking about, not about how dumb Perry is for being a fan of Jean-Baptiste Say.
A very interesting analysis, and as someone not that knowledgeable I appreciate the time and insights you shared. It would be great if more deeper analyses and discussions were published... I suspect that the majority of people could be educated as well, but I also suspect that the information and analysis is probably deeper than what usually can be published in a newspaper (probably more likely something you'd seen in a magazine/journal or newsletter). But not giving Perry a free pass on this either... why is he expressing what is by your post a shallow and incorrect message (apologies and correct me if I am misrepresenting your point). Again, he is the government lead on energy. Should he be "siding" with coal companies or should he be expressing a more complete vision that benefits all Americans?
I'm not saying Perry should get a free pass at all. I'll try my best to be fair to his pov and not strawman him. I do think, however, that all this '"resilience" we talk about in the industry nowadays is a smokescreen for enriching coal-dependent corporations (probably the mandate Perry has from Trump). Resilience is not an empty idea. We are very exposed as a country in a cyberwar because we modernize our infrastructure but cybersecurity lags. We don't want Putin crashing our electrical and natural gas distribution systems or we're pretty screwed. I don't agree with Perry's approach though. If we want real resiliency, we'd have distributed generation everywhere -- rooftop solar, CHP, microgrids, backup gen, etc. With everything autonomous, you can't hack the country in a cyberattack, you can't do a missile strike on a key asset. That's the resiliency I'd like to see. There is something to be said for Perry's position that onsite fuel generation with real baseload attributes contributes to resilience, but it seems very limited to me (you can't stop a plant from digging into the giant pile of coal in the yard, but you can attack the transmission line that feeds its generation to the grid). And Perry is attacking real resilience -- renewables -- to achieve it. Target number one seems like it will be the government incentives being paid to get more renewables penetration.
Contrary to popular opinion, Rick Perry did *not* fail Principles of Economics at A&M. He got a D. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/05/rick-perry-college-transcript_n_919357.html
