We're from the government and we're here to help...

A long, but a true story:

It should be no surprise to anyone that the great majority of the world's battery manufacturing capacity resides in the Far East; upwards of 90% of the world's batteries come out of China, Japan, and South Korea.  Elon Musk's adventure in northern Nevada may change those numbers some, but time will tell.

In 2009, the Department of Energy was fired with the fevered visions of new Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu.  Dr. Chu and Mr. Obama had dreams of a future without fossil fuels and an economy driven by windmills, solar panels, and electric cars...lots and lots of electric cars.  I sat in meetings where DOE bureaucrats predicted, with the dead-serious, stone-faced certainty that only people living in the fantasy world inside the Washington Beltway are capable of, that there would be 15 million electric cars on the road by 2015.  But someone had to make the batteries for all those cars.

Enter Congress, who at the behest of Mr. Obama, passed the ARRA bill (more commonly known as the "stimulus package"), which, among other things, funneled huge amounts of money into the DOE.  The DOE decided they would use some of that money - $2.4 billion dollars worth...that's "billion" with a "b" - to stimulate the moribund and virtually non-existent US battery and electric vehicle industries and the Advanced Battery Manufacturing Initiative came into being.  Under the ABMI, the DOE would pay companies to build battery factories in the United States.  Note that these were not the loan guarantees since made famous by other DOE boondoggles, like Solyndra, these were grants...cash, given to a company without expectation of repayment.  The only constraint on the grant was that the awardee had to match the amount of the grant with private funds.  In effect, the DOE would permit awardees to build a manufacturing plant for half-price.

The ABMI announcement, as might be expected, set off a frenzy of activity.  Joint ventures were formed, start-up companies were started, large corporations began including batteries or battery materials in their strategic development plans, and every battery company ( and a lot of wannabees) in America started writing a proposal.

The selection of awardees was Kabuki theater.  The Federal government cannot dole out $2 billion without the process becoming political.  If you did not propose building your factory in Michigan, you essentially took yourself out of the competition.  A joint venture between Johnson Controls and Saft (a French company) received $229 million to build a plant in Michigan.  LG Chem, a Korean company, received $151 million to build a plant in Michigan.  A123 Systems was the big winner with a $249 million award to build a plant in Livonia, MI.  There were other recipients of all this government largesse, of course, and if you're interested, you can find out more here.

The announcement left most people in the industry scratching their heads.  Money intended to stimulate the US battery industry had been awarded to foreign companies.  However, the award to A123 Systems surprised no one; they had been a DOE pet project for a number of years.  I met with a DOE program manager prior to the ABMI announcement who smiled at me and said, "You know, it was my SBIR grant that got A123 started."  Knowing the founders of A123, I knew this was not entirely true, but it did make clear to me that my company, a competitor, had essentially zero chance of getting funding from a program manager who was obviously bolstering his career by having given "A123 its start".

Upon announcing their awards, the DOE insisted that they were "not picking winners and losers", but in point of fact, that was exactly what they were doing.  The ABMI awards essentially killed any private investment in companies that had not received a grant.  After all, if your technology and talent couldn't pass muster with the DOE, why would anyone want to invest in you...and even if you knew what you were doing, how were you going to compete with companies that just received 9-figure grants from the U.S. government.

With the exception of the few anointed companies, the years that followed the AMBI grants were not kind to the U.S. battery industry.  Bankruptcies among both established and start-up companies were the rule, not the exception.  The founders of my own company were, on several occasions, reduced to loaning the company money to make payroll.  No one was feeling particularly "stimulated" by the DOE's program.

Fast forward to 2016:  The Johnson Controls/Saft JV dissolved with extreme prejudice before they even broke ground on their factory.  LG Chem built their factory, but it's use has been limited to importing cells from South Korea and assembling battery packs.  A123 seemed to be the sole success story; building a plant in Livonia and having a very successful IPO that raised $380 million.  But there was always a no-visible-means-of-support aspect to the company's apparent success and, after building $50 million worth of bad product in their new plant - how do you even do that? - that resulted in a number of fires, primarily in the Fisker Karma electric vehicles they were making batteries for, A123 went into a death spiral.  The company went spectacularly bankrupt and the assets were bought by the Chinese.

The country is still without a commercial battery manufacturing plant and, while Tesla's facility in northern Nevada may change that shortly, it is certainly no thanks to the technocrats at the Department of Energy.

Abandon Hope and Change Course

I am a firm believer of mutual self construction.
By which I mean individuals
united in their seclusion.
Conjoined disjointed orphans
Erecting a Solace of Fortitude,
Asylums of Family Disunity
A harmonious cacophony of orchestrated solos
Instrumental temperamental
monumental chorus vocalizing
localizing
Individual vision

Alas
Feral sheep shepherded astray
by a Piper's dulcet atonement
Promissory sour notes called
due
Bald faced ideological ribaldry
Preselected elected offal, officious
Inhumane scentipede
Mentally ill dressed succession
of public servants self servicing

Disarmed armada of the disillusioned
flotilla of fools on the Hill
Come sale away with me, indeed
Flotsam jet setters presiding
Deciding
Die-er consequences
Pirated copies of declarations
of interdependence.
Anchors a weigh

My country-
 tis for me
Sweet land where things are free
Of me Im singing
Land where our fathers sighed
Land where their dreams have died
State of Ship of State, Sinking

Samson, Shaving His Own Head, For the Sake of the Children

"....How can anyone enter a strong man's house and steal his possessions, unless he first ties up the strong man?"

- Matthew 12:29


That verse was tweeted into my timeline yesterday. Now, I didn't check the context in which the tweeter tweeted the tweet, but I was immediately struck by its message. Perhaps the timing had something to do with it, being as it was after the President's weepy announcement of extra constitutional gun executive orders.

One has to be blind to not see that our President is actively arming the rest of the world while at home he is demanding citizens be disarmed for the sake of the children. Painting anyone who disagrees with restricting gun rights without due process as cold hearted child killers ( not Planned Parenthood).

"Why do you hate children Mr.Shooty Mc Bangbang?"  "Children have a right to be safe from any and all harm, and your simple ownership of a firearm potentially violates that."  Potentially. Mark that. Potential harm is now actual harm, as are words and thoughts. Arbitrary ideas kill and you will be punished. An inanimate object sitting locked in your gun safe could potentially be used for a bad thing. Why do you want children to suffer, potentially?

Are your hands tied yet?


Lack of gun control equals abundance of freedom, and therein lies the problem. Lack of control is the issue. Nothing must be left to chance. Time and chance happens to us all,except, of course, in the new Utopia. Can I get an Amen? Nothing left to chance violates free will, and the left are eager to sign it all away.


"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."  Daniel Webster

They mean to be benevolent shepherds to a herd of passive, grateful domesticated sheep. If that wasn't bad enough, our shepherds want to invite wolves into the fold.

Europe, the glorious example of domesticated citizenry disarmed for their own good, fully is a strong man tied up with the thief as his honored invited guest. American progressives want nothing more than the United States to emulate the European model of gun prohibition and immigration permissiveness. Look to Germany to see how that is working out for them. Progressives love to call even unwanted eye contact from a male, rape, yet are strangely absent from the discussion of how to handle the rape of 60 women in a public setting by over 1000 immigrant men ( referred to as Arab and African by witnesses/victims).

 At the moment, a violation on that grand of scale could not happen here. Most, American men would not stand idly by and allow it (yes I have seen men say they would not use violence to stop violence, even rape. They have shaved their own heads bald.) But in Germany, the strong men are tied up. Rotherham, England occurred unimpeded due to the desire of Europeans to not give offense to their guests, and the children suffered, ( Oh,won't someone think of the children!). Rape is preferable to giving offence in progressive society.

Delilah worked hard for her Philistines, to disarm Samson. Her nagging and pestering failed, only after tiring of her tears, he willingly gave away his secret, and was betrayed for that trust. America's strength is her freedom. It is her individual citizens willing and able to stand and defend themselves against threat. Crocodile tears should never be enough to persuade us to give up that freedom.

What They Really Really Want…

Palmer Pops Off

 “If you don’t do this thing, you are doing what ISIS wants you to do.”

 What kind of twisted mind uses that line as a political goad? The desperate fevered minds of the left, who see the ground they gained over the last part of last century crumble away to dust. People are taking a look behind the curtain and they do not like what they are seeing.

 What ISIS wants is for us to base all our actions or non actions based on what they want. If we walk about making life choices on what reaction a terrorist organisation wants, the terrorist in fact have won.

 "I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for ISIL than some of the rhetoric coming out of here in the course of this debate," is Obama signaling to the left to continue with the nonsensical talking point they were running with for the past few days. Anything that anyone says or does that they ( the left) do not agree with causes ISIS to gain converts. If you think refugees should be properly vetted, the terrorist win, if you vote Republican, the terrorists win, and so on.

In reality, if you are altering your thinking process based on the opinion of terrorists, the terrorist indeed have won. If your every thought and deed is preceded by What would ISIS want you to do in this situation, ( whether or not you actually do the opposite) they still have controlled you.

 Not only will they have won, they will have won a bloodless coup, solely based on potential casualties.

 This is of course, not to say ISIS does not harm the people that disobey them. They do. We all know they do. But who are they, that they should be obeyed?  

 What does ISIS want? They want us to submit. Approving or disapproving actions according to the wishes of ISIS is submission. Any time you ask yourself “What would ISIS do?” or point to person you do not agree with and accuse them of doing what ISIS wants them to do, you have submitted your thoughts and minds to ISIS.

 Is ISIS going to be the new liberal bogeyman to be used scare unprogressive children into better, more progressive thoughts? It certainly appears that way. ISIL Claus is watching you, sleeping or awake. A new Krampus that, instead of sticks and coal, leaves bombs and bodies. If only you had behaved the way ISIS wanted, ISIS wouldn't had to have punish you.

 The left is losing its tenuous hold on society. The dog whistles are working no longer. The bonds of political correctness are stretching to the point of bursting. Now fear is the weapon of choice to keep the unruly in line.

I will live my life, as should you. Our government should govern, as it should, in our best interests. If our country is threatened, our country should respond to that threat accordingly, without regard to whether or not someone would or would not want us to do that