Great - Look who is on our side Congress. They have three levers - Raise taxes, pass a law and spend money now. The hubris that we can tax China into making us competitive is amazing.

Unfortunately, our competitiveness is going to require us becoming better workers whether that means skills (ie better schools) or infrastructure (Korea has very high speed internet access cheap). Punishing China s going to get us as far as subsidizing horseshoers when they invented the automobile.

In addition, spending money on subsidies (that'll be become big bonuses for guys like SoloPower) means that much less for education and infrastructure.

Isn't the local kool-aid turning bitter, yet?

Put this bird on it --
http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/science-questions/question608.htm

10 Things Still Made in America
By Joe Mont
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11279838/1/10-things-still-made-in-america.html

baseball bats, guitars, crayons....

Will this mean our water rates will go up again in order to cover the company's losses?

We need solar energy because...?

Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The Rust Belt Comes Back to Life: Shale Gas Revolution Could Bring 200,000 Jobs to Ohio
Steubenville, Ohio = "Little Saudi Arabia"

http://abcnews.go.com/US/boom-town-ohio-town-sees-thousands-jobs/story?id=14761821

ABC NEWS -- "Steubenville, Ohio, may not look like a city sitting on a multi-billion dollar industry. Unemployment here reached 15 percent in 2010, and a now-shuttered steel mill -- which was once the lifeline of the Steubenville economy -- is now just a painful reminder of what used to be. While the old way is gone for good -- a new way has already changed lives.

Two huge shale formations -- the Marcellus and Utica -- lay underneath a five-state region. Steubenville sits right on the epicenter of the Marcellus formation, ready to absorb all the new positions needed to open new and repurposed old wells. In a matter of months, rigs will begin to dot the landscape, and current and former residents hope the money will line their pockets.

More than 300 new jobs have already come to the Steubenville area. And as many as 10,000 more are expected in the next three years. If jobs keep growing at this pace, every adult in Steubenville could be working by April.

No one in Steubenville can remember the last time anyone heard of a job that paid as much as $77,000 a year coming to town, but those jobs are coming. There could be more than 200,000 of them in Ohio in the next few years."

In additions to more jobs, another benefit of increased natural gas production is that it would help lower energy costs for American manufacturers, increasing their competitiveness. The National Association of Manufacturers explains:

"Manufacturers, users of approximately one-third of the energy consumed in the United States, strongly support the use of hydraulic fracturing to access our nation’s abundant supply of natural gas. We use natural gas not only as a source of electricity, but as a feedstock for products such as plastics, fertilizer and pharmaceuticals. Affordable natural gas provides manufacturers with the ability to expand their facilities, increase production and create even more jobs. It is critically important that the states and the federal government not stand in the way of our access to these valuable resources."

Will the natural gas industry or government start advocating for more natural gas vehicles and gas heating/cooling/manufacturing? It is cheaper to produce than solar/wind electricity, easier to distribute than solar/wind electricity since much of the infrastructure is in place. And it isn't subsidized by taxpayers as much as solar or wind.

But, at least, we should have a more balanced approach in our energy components.