Category Archives: Technology

Fracking Is Boosting Reshoring of American Jobs

Friday, 10 July 2015 04:57

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, July 9, 2015:

In its latest report on American competitiveness, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimates that the average cost to make goods in the United States is now only five-percent higher than in China, and between 10 and 20 percent lower when compared to the major European economies such as Germany and France. In less than three years, BCG projects China’s advantage to disappear altogether.

While part of the reason is rising wages in China and in the Eurozone and American companies improving their productivity faster than their competitors abroad, the primary reason, says BCG, is fracking — the technology that has driven energy costs to a fraction of what they were just a few years ago.

Back in August 2013, Harold Sirkin, a senior partner at BCG, predicted the U-turn that would result in “reshoring” of millions of jobs, starting in 2015:

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Neo-Luddites in Paris are Losing to Uber

Wednesday, 01 July 2015 05:26

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, June 29, 2015:

View image | gettyimages.com

Although the definition of “neo-Luddism” is a “movement of passive resistance to the … frightening technologies of the computer age,” in Paris the resistance is hardly passive. Last week taxi-drivers shut down entrances to and exits from the Charles De Gaulle International Airport, attacked cars driven by Uber drivers (including their passengers), overturned some of them, and set tires on fire. All this to express their frustration over how Uber is slowly, inexorably, putting them out of business. Since they were on strike, even when customers wanted a ride, the cartel members turned them down. After all, they were on strike! (Shown above are passengers toting their own luggage away from De Gaulle airport.)

As the head of taxi company G7 said on French television,

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FCC Fines AT&T $100 Million

Friday, 19 June 2015 02:58

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, June 18, 2015:

View image | gettyimages.com

In its ruling adopted on June 3 and released for public viewing on June 17, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), chaired by Tom Wheeler (pictured), announced that it was not only fining AT&T $100 million for violating its so-called “transparency rule” but also was going to mandate that AT&T install numerous “requirements to bring AT&T into compliance” with that rule.

At issue was AT&T’s repeatedly stated policy that at certain times and under certain specifically stated circumstances, subscribers to its “unlimited” data services would experience a slowdown (called either “congestion” by its supporters or “throttling” by its enemies such as Consumers Union) in connectivity. AT&T bent over backwards to make sure that every one of its customers was aware of the possibility, including

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SAVs are Raising Existential Questions for Car Companies

Saturday, 23 May 2015 05:15

This article was first published at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, May 22, 2015:

View image | gettyimages.com

SAVs are “shared autonomous vehicles” – driverless, robotic automobiles – and they are already raising serious questions that GM and Ford are just starting to address. Questions like: what business are we in today? What business will we be in tomorrow? Twenty-five years from now? Will we be in the car business or the transportation business? What does that mean? What do we do now so we’re still around and profitable then?

GM spokesman Jim Cain put the SAV revolution in the best possible light:

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EMP Threats Force NORAD Back Into Cheyenne Mountain

Thursday, 07 May 2015 03:58

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, May 6, 2015:

News that NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) was moving back into its previous Cheyenne Mountain underground bunker in Colorado Springs first surfaced during a news conference by NORAD Commander Admiral William Cortney on April 7.

It’s moving, said Cortney, “because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain is built. It’s EMP-hardened.” EMP, short for an electromagnetic pulse, is a burst of electromagnetic energy produced by a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, considered capable of widespread damage.

NORAD is also moving because of real world threats by enemies of the United States who now possess the capabilities to launch a nuclear weapon from the south where NORAD is blind.

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Energy Department Approves Six LNG Export Plants; More Coming

Tuesday, 28 April 2015 14:51

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 28, 2015:

View image | gettyimages.com

On April 14, the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission published a remarkable summary of its recent approvals for private energy companies to build LNG (liquid natural gas) export plants along the East and Gulf Coasts.

What’s remarkable is that for decades the DOE has bought the argument that exporting LNG to customers around the world might jeopardize its supply here in the United States. It also bought the argument that allowing private producers to ship their product overseas would only encourage more fracking here with its claimed attendant but unproven dangers to the environment.

That the DOE is giving approval to LNG export facilities is proof that reality has finally replaced ideology at the agency, at least for the moment. As expected,

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Hybrid Owners Trading Them in for SUVs

Saturday, 25 April 2015 04:30

This article was first published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, April 24, 2015:

English: A Tesla Roadster, Reva i and Ford Th!...

A Tesla Roadster, Reva i and Ford Th!nk electric

Back before his credibility had been so greatly tarnished along with his confidence in government as a solution to every problem, President Obama made a promise in his 2011 State of the Union speech that realists knew he couldn’t keep: he was going to put one million electric and hybrid vehicles (EVs) on the road by 2015:

With more [government funded] research and [tax credit] incentives, we can break our dependence upon oil … and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

The Department of Energy (DOE) called his proclamation a “key milestone toward dramatically reducing dependence on oil and ensuring that America leads in the growing electric vehicle manufacturing industry.” The agency boasted that already those manufacturers were ramping up to produce more than 1.2 million EVs by 2015, thanks to government subsidies, consumer tax credits, federally funded programs to help cities prepare for the growing demand for EV charging stations, as well as continued and increasing “support” [read: grants and loans] for R and D.

It’s 2015. The manifesto proclaimed from on high in January 2011 has fallen a little short:

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Little Old Lady About to Make History in the Oil Patch

Friday, 03 April 2015 05:16

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Thursday, April 2, 2015:

Historians like people who make history. People like Rosa Parks (the “first lady of civil rights”), and Suzette Kelo (see Kelo v. City of New London). So much so that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich made herself known by writing “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History,” in which she said:

Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental. People make history when they scale a mountain, ignite a bomb, or refuse to move to the back of the bus.

It may be that historians will someday add Sandra Ladra to that list.

Sandra Ladra was sitting in her recliner in her home in Prague, Oklahoma, on the evening of November 5, 2011, when

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Oklahoma Earthquakes Rattling the Fracking Industry

Wednesday, 01 April 2015 05:37

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, March 31, 2015:

View image | gettyimages.com

Sandra Ladra was sitting in her recliner in her home in Prague, Oklahoma, on the evening of November 5, 2011, when the largest earthquake in the state’s history shook her house so violently that her chimney collapsed, sending stones through the roof and hitting her legs. Said Ladra: “I nearly went into shock. You just really don’t think you’re going to live through it.” She added, “It was just like an explosion or something. The rocks and the cement from the fireplace were hitting the fireplace so hard it was like a white fog in here [with] everything falling off the walls.”

The earthquake was rated at 5.6 on the Richter scale which, according to the U. S. Geologic Survey,

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Wiki Lawsuit Highlights NSA’s All-Inclusive, Unconstitutional Spying

Thursday, 12 March 2015 04:50

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 11, 2015:

Official portrait of NSA director Keith B. Ale...

Official portrait of NSA director Keith B. Alexander

As reported by The New American on Tuesday, Wikipedia has joined forces with the ACLU in representing itself and other groups violated by the NSA’s unrestrained data collection by suing the agency.

The lawsuit holds that the NSA has — by its relentless, warrantless, and suspicionless secret acquisition of Wikipedia’s private customer information — not only infringed on the precious freedoms of those customers guaranteed in the First and Fourth Amendments, but also exceeded authority granted to it by Congress under the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act.

Early in President George W. Bush’s first term, the NSA was given essentially carte blanche to

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China’s Internet Censorship Efforts Continue to Fail

Saturday, 28 February 2015 16:27

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, February 27, 2015:

The Courtship of Princess Leia

Princess Leia

At that moment in Star Wars when Princess Leia is threatened by Governor Tarkin, the following dialogue takes place:

Princess Leia: Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.

Governor Tarkin: Charming to the last. You don’t know how hard I found it, signing the order to terminate your life.

Princess Leia: I’m surprised that you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself.

Governor Tarkin: Princess Leia, before your execution, I’d like you to join me for a ceremony that will make this battle station operational. No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now.

Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his little tyrant, Lu Wei, really ought to get out more. Instead, they are issuing threats of censorship in a war they cannot win. Xi holds that the internet is a battleground. He starts off in a tone mild and gentle:

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China’s Failing Attempts to Censor the Internet

Friday, 27 February 2015 06:21

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, February 26, 2015:

View image | gettyimages.com

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Internet censorship czar, Lu Wei, are learning that Princess Leia was right when she said in the movie Star Wars about extending increasing totalitarian political control, “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

When Wei visited Silicon Valley heavyweights last December, he noted that Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had an anthology of President Xi’s speeches on his desk. Included in that book was a speech in which Xi laid out his vision of the Chinese Internet:

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Internet Freedom to Disappear on Thursday

Thursday, 26 February 2015 05:44

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Thursday, February 26, 2015:

Ronald Reagan was right:

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: if it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Tom Wheeler, the current FCC Chairman, doesn’t think that’s funny. He thinks they are his marching orders. Encouraged by his boss, Wheeler is reaching for the biggest hammer in his toolbox to bludgeon the internet into submission and turn it into a utility. On Thursday Wheeler will

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FCC to Vote on Net Neutrality Rules on Thursday

Wednesday, 25 February 2015 06:44

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, February 24, 2015:

On Thursday consumers will finally be able to see and read the FCC’s (Federal Communications Commission) planned new rules to regulate the Internet. Deliberately hidden from public view, the 332-page document is expected to be passed by the FTC, as demanded by President Obama last November when he told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to adopt the “strongest possible rules” in regulating the Internet.

Leaks from the document were inevitable, and critics have slowly pieced together the latest attack on Internet freedom.

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Will this be OPEC’s Final Failed Gamble?

Wednesday, 18 February 2015 15:50

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, February 18, 2015:

Six years ago historian Daniel Yergin wrote in The Prize about OPEC’s failed gamble in 1986. The cartel tried to secure its preeminent place among the world’s oil producers by forcing crude oil prices down:

Was the price now poised for a great fall? Most of the exporters [primarily OPEC] thought so, but they expected no more than a drop [from more than $30 a barrel] to $18 or $20 a barrel, below which, they thought, production … would not be economical….

Actually, operating costs – the cash costs to extract oil – were only $6 per barrel [at the time], so there would be no reason to shut down production at any price above that.

The cartel was hoping to squeeze out marginal producers, which would result in cuts in supply, allowing it to raise prices at will. It didn’t work then, and it isn’t working now. The Saudis apparently suffer from an appalling lack of understanding about how the free market works.

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Re-fracking Old Wells Is Extending the Fracking Revolution

Wednesday, 18 February 2015 05:49

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, February 17, 2015:

English: A natural gas well (produces gas only...

A natural gas well

News that the oil industry is importing many of the new technologies developed by natural-gas producers, which led to steadily declining natural-gas prices, was greeted with great disappointment by at least one green group. Upon learning that fracking was not only a long way from disappearing in the face of declining oil prices but was actually on the verge of a resurgence, Sharon Wilson, a Texas organizer for Earthworks, told Bloomberg, “It’s terribly disappointing.”

It might be disappointing to Wilson, but

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FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules are ObamaCare for the Internet

Saturday, 07 February 2015 06:46

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, February 6, 2015:

View image | gettyimages.com

If the real intentions behind the benign phrase “net neutrality” were truly exposed, the conversation would be very short. As Will Durant noted in his The Story of Philosophy:

“If you wish to converse with me,” said Voltaire, “define your terms.” How many debates would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to the strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task.

Opponents in the freedom fight have for years used obfuscation and false front words to advance their cause, but none more effectively than its term “net neutrality.” How could anyone object to that?

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Internet Freedom Shrinking, Says the Freedom House

Monday, 05 January 2015 10:48

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, January 5, 2015:

Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Excitement over the positive impact the Gutenberg Press had on freedom led Mark Twain to exclaim:

What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg. Everything can be traced to this source, but we are bound to bring him homage … for the bad that this colossal invention has brought about is overshadowed a thousand times by the good with which mankind has been favored.

More than two hundred years later, Andrew Wile, blogging at The Daily Bell, was equally ebullient, this time about the Internet – Gutenberg 2.0 – saying:

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Putin Demands All Data About His Citizens Be Stored Inside Russia

Monday, 05 January 2015 10:38

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 5, 2015:

View image | gettyimages.com

On December 31, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the latest version of his country’s “personal data law” that, starting September 1, 2015, will require all companies to store data about Russian users only on computer servers inside the country. That way, according to the New York Times, “it will be easier for the government to get access to it.”

Whether those companies — Facebook, Twitter, and Google, among others — will comply is an open question. When Putin’s Internet “regulator” Roskomnadzor demanded that Facebook take down a page promoting a rally in support of political activist Alexei Navalny (whom the Wall Street Journal called “the man Vladimir Putin fears most”), Facebook complied. But within hours dozens of copycat pages popped up elsewhere, creating even more publicity for the January 15 event.

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Chris Hughes – Just the Man to Resuscitate The New Republic

Sunday, 14 December 2014 06:17

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, December 12, 2014:

Chris Hughes at Hacking Education event

Chris Hughes

Chris Hughes is so smart that he once was caught reading the French author Honoré de Balzac, in the original French. He led a pampered life, first attending and graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and then moving on to get a BA degree at Harvard University.

His roommates at Harvard were Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg was fooling around with a computer program that would link Harvard students together online when Hughes suggested that the program be extended to other schools.

When Facebook was officially launched, Hughes became Zuckerberg’s spokesman, making himself wealthy in the process. In 2008, he helped a virtually unknown senator from Illinois get elected president by running a social network website for him called

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