…according to netrightdaily. And what America wants to see tipped into the cut bucket (if by America, we allow The Conservative Action Project, which includes Americans for Limited Government, to stand in as the proxy in this formulation) is largely the spending:
Listed below are 10 specific spending cuts that Congress can get to work on when it returns. Many, many more spending cuts have been recommended by a variety of budget experts — but here is a start:
1. Repeal ObamaCare
Save taxpayers over $1 trillion dollars.
Only six months after implementation, the new health care law has proven to be a bureaucratic nightmare that has already raised insurance premiums and forced some insurers to cancel coverage plans. A clear majority of the American people have made it clear that they oppose this unconstitutional law that diminishes the quality of health care while increasing its cost.
2. Completely End TARP
Save taxpayers roughly $16 billion. [ii]
All banks should face the consequences of their actions. Taxpayers should not be forced to bailout banks that engaged in risky behavior. By canceling TARP once and for all, taxpayers will be saved billions of dollars.
3. Reduce Government Employment to 2008 Levels
Save taxpayers $35 billion over the next 10 years.
Since 2008, federal government employment has grown by 188,000 (excluding temporary Census workers.) Meanwhile, the private sector has lost over 7.9 million jobs. [iii] Taxpayers in the private sector cannot afford to pay for the excessive number of government employees that do not perform necessary functions of government. The federal government should institute policies to reduce the workforce to 2008 levels.
4. Freeze Federal Pay
A pay freeze would save taxpayers $5 billion annually.
With benefits included, the average federal government employee is paid $123,049–while the average private sector employee receives only $61,051 annually. After adjusting for inflation, federal employee wages increased 36.9 percent while private sector wages rose only 8.8 percent since 2000.= In order to restore fiscal sanity, the number of federal government employees should be frozen until the budget is balanced.
5. Sell Excess Federal Property
Save taxpayers up to $15 billion.
According to the Office of Management and Budget, the federal government is holding on to $18 billion in property that it does not need. Requiring the federal government to sell excessive property could potentially save taxpayers billions of dollars. [vi]
6. End Tax-Payer Funding and Subsidizing for Abortions Domestically & Overseas
Save Taxpayers $739 million
President Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, allowing tax dollars to flow to groups that promote abortion under the category of International Family Planning. In FY 2010 $648.5 million was appropriated for this effort. Additionally, in FY 2009 federal funds were awarded to well known abortion advocacy organizations such as the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, SEICUS, and the Population Council.
7. Privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Reforming Fannie and Freddie Mac could save taxpayers at least $30 billion.
So far, taxpayers have been forced to spend $145 billion to bailout the irresponsible actions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Action must be taken immediately to privatize the current government sponsored mortgage-backing companies. If Congress delays reforming Fannie and Freddie Mac, taxpayers will likely be on the hook for billions more dollars.
8. Eliminate Subsidies for Amtrak
Save taxpayers $202 million a year.
Despite the fact that the majority of trains remain fairly empty, government-run Amtrak runs an abundance of trains daily. In fact, Amtrak actually loses money on most of its train routes. Taxpayers are forced to pay $32 per Amtrak passenger to make up for these losses. Yet riders still complain regularly about spotty Amtrak service and frequent delays. The private sector could likely provide a better quality train service at a lower cost.
9. End Energy Subsidies
Save taxpayers $20 billion a year.
Over the last 30 years, energy subsidies have failed to produce any promising results. The private sector is fully capable of investing in energy technology. Unfortunately, government subsidies have crowded out private investment in energy. While it may take some time, the private sector has already begun to produce more efficient energy sources.
10. Reduce Federal Farm Subsidies
Completely ending the peanut & sugar subsidies would save taxpayers $1.3 billion annually.
Federal farm subsidies are America’s largest corporate welfare program costing taxpayers more than $245.2 billion since 1995. Despite the claims that farm subsidies go to struggling family farmers, two-thirds of farm subsidy checks go to the wealthiest 10 percent of farmers. It is hard to justify that taxpayers should be forced to pay for the hobby farms of rich celebrities such as David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, or Scottie Pippen.
Thoughts?
Can we add “abolish the minimum wage?”
Those look like a start. I’m good with having my military pay frozen for at least a year – maybe two. I’d prefer the enlisted and junior officers not have this happen to them, however. We could make up for it by firing some DoD GSA folks and General Officers (heh).
Why stop with just sugar and peanut subsidies – ashcan the lot of them, please.
I am unsure about being able to privatize Fanie and Freddie – who would buy a piece of those God awful lumps?
Eliminate NPR, PBS, other associated State funded media.
Sell the rights to all the kids shows (Sesame ????? Street, Electric Company, etc.) to Nick Jr or Disney or whomever. Sell the rights to This Old House and Victory Garden to DIY Network or whomever. Sell the rights to Prairie Home Companion to Ambien. And so on.
Eliminate the US Dept. of Education: redundant, at best. At worst, a clear and present danger.
Eliminate government employee unions (yes, SEIU, I’m lookin’ at you. And you, AFSCME…) and roll back the outrageous retirement benefits.
Death to Big Bird.
No, not enough.
Take Barney with him. And abuse the corpses.
I think also they should eliminate capital gains taxes and corporate income taxes.
Big Bird looks like he needs a bath god knows what vermin is festering in his unkempt plumage.
He’s not correct on where farm subsidies go. The vast majority go to corporate-owned farms, which really don’t need the money as their operations are usually spread out over many states, so the impact of a bad season in one place isn’t as significant overall.
I have family that farmed, and some that still do, and they never see that money. It really needs to stop.
Eliminate many business tax loopholes and write offs while simultaneously lowering the rate dramatically. I could be more detailed, but it would be worse than my usual tl:dr comments :)
It would seem askew for a time, that higher bracket individual taxpayers would be paying more than corprorate entities, but one bridge at a time.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, y’all know I’m way onboard with Ryan’s tax plan from his Roadmap proposals.
Prarie Home Companion is such a revenue generator for Minnesota Public Radio that a guy I knew who works for them said to not ever give them any money.
Oh and one bit of good that emerged during the Obamacare hair-pulling is the acceptance as CW that there is 60 to 100 billion per year in medicare fraud and waste.
So have the HHS and FBI get on it! ‘Cuz it sounds like a profitable endeavor…
By the way, I would say to end farm subsidies even if my family did get money from it. I believe GW Bush brought them back after Clinton eliminated a lot of them. Yet one more reason Bush annoyed me on the domestic front.
Where’s “Reform/simplify the tax code”? =/
All good stuff. The real big money is in entitlement reform. 55 & over get what they’ve been promised; thanks for you help, enjoy your retirement, now stay out of our business. 55 & under, we have to take a new new deal.
Or we could just fuck over the grandkids.
Reduce Government Employment to 2008 Levels
Crank that back to October 16, 1979, the day before Jimmeh created the DoE, and I’m a much happier girl.
Matt-see #8 it’s there.
motionview-I agree. Also part of the Roadmap.
the acceptance as CW that there is 60 to 100 billion per year in medicare fraud and waste
Some of it the result of the compensation being too damned low.
Which, that’s not a justification for committing fraud. Like the bribery problem in Mexico: if you’re in a position to ask for a bribe, you’re not poor enough to need it.
Instead, it indicates a crummy system that should be phased out cuanto antes.
I’m with that dicentra.
Someday someone is going to have to have some spine and address Social Security, MediCare, MedicAid, and then ObarckyCare.
I am unsure about being able to privatize Fannie and Freddie – who would buy a piece of those God awful lumps?
Sell off their assets and holdings to the highest U.S.-based bidder, say I. They’ve effed up the housing market four times since their inception and are well on their way to doing it again.
The left has thoughts. Deep, complex, civilized, nuanced, and utterly devoid of pertinence. Remember, appearances matter!
Someday someone is going to have to have some spine and address Social Security, MediCare, MedicAid, and then ObarckyCare.
They won’t need to. We’ll be flat broke, the dollar won’t be worth jack squat, and the problem will have taken care of itself.
Hasten the day, right?
Here’s some more ideas:
1. Replace the income tax, capital gains tax, etc. tax, with a flat tax with a rate of %18-20. Set the income tax threshold at minimum $15k + $4k per dependent deduction. Maintain a child-care deduction and mortgage deduction.
This will spur business and eliminate at least 2/3 of the IRS. It’s also an overall reduction in in capital gains, which will re-ignite investment and business growth. It simplifies taxes, and allows for more small businesses to thrive without worrying what they owe Uncle Sam.
Unfortunately, it will put a lot of tax-lawyers and accountants (working for the IRS) out of business.
2. Take the IRS workers who were just laid off and hire 1/3 of them to be independent government auditors flagging waste and inefficiency. Their primary job is to audit government agencies and programs to ensure there’s less waste than what we saw with Porkulus.
3. Pull the granting agency out of the D.o.Ed and split it between the NIH and NSF. Then close the D.o.Ed. Considering we’re spending >$400 billion this year on the D.o.Ed budget, and education in the country is getting worse, I’d say it’s time for that money pit to be sealed over.
4. Push for privatization of public schools and a decertification of the NEA union. The union is the big problem, and it needs to be removed. Let the schools police themselves, and let them apply for state funding to supplement tuition rather than tax the local area for funds. The poor can be subsidized through local and state-wide contributions, but the time for ending property taxes for education is here. And the only way to get that to work is to take out the teachers unions.
5. End unionization for all public employees. Unions were designed to fight private corruption, not the size of state and federal largess.
6. Make Congress follow the dictates of the Constitution (not Commerce Clause) when assigning funds. Ensure that the Federal government has a delineated power associated with the spending, so Federal money doesn’t go to help build ski resorts.
7. Term Limits. Prevent institutionalization of corruption. 12 years for President, Representative and Senator, max.
That’s my platform. I’m ready to run for Prez in 2012. Who’s with me?
Sadly, dicentra, that seems to be the strategy, from both sides.
#19 – why limit this to US based? Someone from another land wants to blow their money on that rubbish is more than welcome!
Our little little President man is going to be interviewed live, on the air, with Ryan Seacrest tomorrow.
I happened to be in Malibu yesterday and saw some new bumper stickers: “Believer in Barack”. A huge MSM/Hollywood counter-attack is coming, I hope the new kids are prepared.
Certainly wouldn’t argue with doing any of those items, but as others have noted this is but a small fraction of the problem. The debt created annually by the entitlement Ponzi schemes the American public are burdened with are many times bigger than all of these savings.
Just in case it slipped by, President Obumblefuck is going to be interviewed by Ryan fucking Seacrest.
Good luck with that list. The bank and finance stuff isn’t so cut and dry. Just because we’ve sunk that money into it doesnt mean we’ll get that out, nor does it mean that there won’t be real costs for not having it.
Cutting spending, not just the rate of increase, is going to be something else to watch. My guess is that no more than 30% have the guts to actually chop real programs, not just outliers.
I should say that the entitlements, SS and Medicare, along with the Defense budget, should trigger something to behold dialogue-wise if someone gets a knife near them.
Ban all government unions. Send AFSCME to the dustbin of history. If they protest, fire them like the air traffic controllers.
I wonder if Seacrest will open up another can of “Dude” on His Royal Obamaness.
If they protest, fire them like the air traffic controllers.
When asked how I’d cut spending in government, my solution was to shut the whole thing down, and then turn certain bits back on as proven needs surfaced. A general strike by the government unions seems just as useful as an Executive shutdown.
Why the fuck do government workers need a goddamn union? They’re a fuckin’ political movement, for chrissake’s.
I know, I know…it appears I have a problem with unions inside the government.
I am not opposed to most of these measures. It is a good start.
I am not sure I would sell federal land, though. Most of it is probably national forest and BLM land. Rather than having a federal garage sale, it might make sense to turn a lot of that land over to the individual states and let them deal with its disposition. That is more democratic and those law makers would be more responsible to the local voters.
Obama is stupid. The Jon Stewart interview probably hurt him more than it helped him. Stewart is a friggin brain surgeon compared to Ryan Seacrest.
So? Why should I be concerned about Seacrest’s poor career choices?
i say we just default on the whole she-bang
and start over/printing money again from square one
whattya gonna do, call the cops?- we are the cops!
we’re too big to fail
dicentra,
Do you get the feeling that’s a feature, not a bug?
Besides, I seriously doubt the Democrats will tolerate the busting up of their government-sponsored piggy banks…
More like 1908 levels.
Repeal, Freeze, End etc… but then farm subsidies are only ‘reduced’? And why only peanut and sugar?
Take Barney with him. And abuse the corpses.
You’re not watching enough Criminal Minds. The payoff is always bigger when you dose them up with ketamine, put them in your private trailer o’horrors, and let them watch in the mirror on the ceiling as you dismember them alive.
Just ask Keith Carradine, who was wonderfully creepy.
Why the fuck do government workers need a goddamn union?
THEY DON’T. Even FDR rejected the idea (thanks Glenn!), because with whom do the unions do their bargaining? With someone who’s responsible for keeping a company financially solvent or with politicians who pay no price at all for saying yes?
We can thank JFK for legalizing gubmint unions. At least he did it stylishly.
Stewart is a friggin brain surgeon compared to Ryan Seacrest.
I was going to sarcastically ask, “Who’s next? [Insignificant d-list entertainer]?” but the effort is wasted when they’ve gone this far beyond parody.
For each veto cut 10%, except for Secret Service if that is included in there, from the White House budget till it gets to say 1925 level adjusting for inflation is optional.
Department of Education, Department of Energy – Gone. Department of Commerce, Department of Housing & Urban Development – Downsize by 50%.
No unions for governmental workers at any level.
Privatize NASA. Stat! Fuck’n Branson is showing up the Space Shuttle Program and all its government style bloated waste.
Onr thing I am going to do is when my Republican Congressional challenger wins tomorrow I will send him a present. One nice new copy of the Stanley Kurtz book with a letter saying that he should read it so he will be able to see where the political enemies of freedom have gathered and where government funding cuts need to start. We taxpayers are supplying much of the money used to destroy our own freedom.
Charge The Koreans, Japanese, Iraqis, Bahrainis, Omanis, Germans, Kenyans (and wherever we have a significant military presence as a detterent) by the soldier, by the HOUR.
Every dollar of aid dollar must be tied to a purchase contract with Boeing, Catepillar, the guys that built the chilean drill bit, etc.
I’m looking at you, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, most of subsaharan Africa.
Ban ethanol as a fuel additive. revoke the corn subsidy. Same for all biofuels. Those suckers better make it on their own.
yea and T. Boone can suck dick too.
Well, he hasn’t done “Robot Chicken” yet.
Ethanol subsidies have to go. Get rid of that racket.
Well, he hasn’t done “Robot Chicken” yet.
We’ll know the end is nigh when the plastic Olbermann doll fellates the plastic Obama doll on Robot Chicken. I’ll TiVo it for sure.
Tear down the WTC and other properties owned by the port authority.
The only good thing about ethanol is that as an additive it does what MTBE (an oxygenator) does (reduce emissions I guess) and isn’t even close to being as dangerous. However, I don’t know what percentage of ethanol it would take to do the job. Probably less than the current amount used, which is 10% here in MN.
So, barring that use, put me on the “no ethanol subsidies” train.
Stewart is a friggin brain surgeon compared to Ryan Seacrest.
And Seacrest is a nuclear rocket surgeon compared to Obama, so what does that tell you?
I am assuming, of course, that these oxygenators actually do something, so there’s that. Ethanol as a fuel additive is fine by me if it can be proven useful for other than lining ADM’s pockets, but it’s a crap fuel substitute because the production and transportation use up more energy than is stored in the result.
Fire every last one of our politicians. We are no longer a day’s ride to our local capitals and no longer 3 months mail to D.C.
Representation is no longer needed. An internet connection will allow us to represent ourselves. 10 page legislation max. in plain English. No riders, one bill, one action. Yay or nay from the unwashed middle of the country. You know, the same people who have enough sense to pour piss out of a boot without needing instructions written on the heel? (unlike Obama, who is an idiot).
Pelosi’s sit down with Olbergasm was … interesting. And by interesting, I mean barf inducing.
“So, barring that use, put me on the “no ethanol subsidies” train.”
End oil subsidies too. US out of the Middle East.
without a middle east presence America and her energy security needs are too-easily held hostage by an anti-oil drilling bumblefuck president at home
Hmmm.
Yeah, eldo is a troll. I was wondering where they were today.
That being said, I’m on board with tearing down the UN. They can move it all to Brussels or Belgium or some place like that.
Can you imagine the howls of protest from all the dignitaries who come from horribly oppressive countries and enjoy what the U.S. has to offer? It would be sweet.
Or we could compromise and charge around $500 billion a year in rent. We could call it the Pax Americana tax.
like her having a final cigarette before the firing squad took aim
The United Nations helps us make the foreclosures to where they’re not all bigoty.
lots of good weather tomorrow across the nation
Can you imagine the howls of protest from all the dignitaries who come from horribly oppressive countries and enjoy what the U.S. has to offer? It would be sweet.
As kids we used to fish at a reservoir that was popular with people from the Soviet consulate. They’d fish, chug big bottles of vodka and after a few hours they’d start acting like drunken farm animals. Yelling, hurling rocks and bottles, scowling at passersby. We were a little scared of them, but after repeated exposures to their vulgarity we did what any sensible 12-year-old American boys would do and launched a series of bottle rockets at their drunk asses from the woods. Wolverines!
the Stanley Kurtz book
Is this the new Liberal Fascism? By which I mean does it contain enough meat that its better to read it oneself than to assume that you already know what it’s going to say, as is the case with most conservative books?
Yeah, eldo is a troll. I was wondering where they were today.
They were repelled by the sight of An Actual Intelligent Debate on the pot legalization thread. They couldn’t find an opening.
Awesome.
Well, he hasn’t done “Robot Chicken” yet.
Or made a cameo on “Desperate Housewives”…
That comes about this time in 2012…
i honestly have no conception on how you would begin to shrink government.
Its like those lifers in prison who cant function on the outside…
Good to see Robot Chicken mentions, Surely the greatest TV show in recent years that isnt The Wire
I’m for fully funding the EPA in its fight against Climax Disruption.
Ethanol/MTBE: “gasoline” as it comes out of the refinery has an “octane rating” of 60-70. The refiner could make it higher, but that would reduce the amount produced and increase the price enormously. “Octane rating” is the ratio of the fuel’s response to ignition from increased pressure to that of the pure hydrocarbon octane. I put it in scare quotes because that number couldn’t go over 100 (naturally; 100% octane is all you get) but the ratio can get larger than that.
In order to get it up to the roughly 90 that’s necessary to make it work in a practical internal combustion engine, you need an additive. It used to be tetraethyl lead, and still is for “racing gas” and aviation gasoline — basically, anything that isn’t red or yellow. But as the name implies, it contains lead, and there are few things on the planet EPA has worse opinions of than lead.
MTBE, methyl tertiary butyl ether, was the additive of choice. It has an “octane rating” in excess of 500, so it doesn’t take much MTBE to get the gasoline up to par. Unfortunately it’s a methylated hydrocarbon “known by the State of California” to be correlated with cancers. This may or may not be a valid concern — methylation is a chemical process that’s an integral part of gene expression — but whether it is or not, the issue was seized upon by an alliance of “environmentalists” and farm interests to force it off the table.
Methanol also has a high octane rating. It was originally rejected by the oil companies as an additive, because it is chemically very different from hydrocarbons, and making gaskets, seals, o-rings, and other polymer parts that are compatible with both is expensive. MTBE doesn’t have that problem because it is a hydrocarbon. Adding 8-10% methanol to gasoline plus a small increment in refinery output gives a satisfactory fuel. Methanol has two problems, though: it is also methylated (the full name is “methyl alcohol”), and you can’t make it out of stuff that grows in Iowa.
Enter ethanol. Ethanol’s “octane rating” is lower than that of methanol — about twice as much ethanol is required to achieve the same octane rating in the fuel: 15% or so. It also has less energy per pound than methanol, which has less energy than gasoline. A 90 octane mixture of gasoline and ethanol has about 10% less energy than the same volume of gasoline.
So you need more ethanol than methanol (or MTBE) to achieve the same output. They had to find another selling point for ethanol, and that turned out to be “oxygenation”. The reason ethanol has less energy than gasoline is that some of the energy of the carbon and hydrogen has already been used up by oxidizing it (crude explanation but close enough; ethanol is CH2COOH). This they like to claim causes less unburned hydrocarbon emission, which is less of a problem in conditions that might form ozone or photochemical smog.
The deciding point, though, is that it means shoveling money into Iowa and neighboring States. Ethanol it is.
Regards,
Ric
That comment was full of things I didn’t know. Cheers.
propaganda whore Viv Schiller’s National Soros Radio’s election monkey says tipping point? I scoff at this point of tipping idea.
I find Raisin Bran to be extremely high octane, fyi, btw.
bh, check the numbers before using that elsewhere. I was doing it off the top of my head, and nitpickers will likely eat you alive.
alppuccino, another way of boosting octane rating is to add water. I suppose milk would do as well, but IC engines don’t need fruit or fiber.
Regards,
Ric
Capitalism?
I dodge the whole octane thing by driving a diesel. Yeah, there’s “cetane rating” for an equivalent, but I’m thrilled just to find diesel pumps sometimes, and have never seen a place with multiple grades of diesel.
Passed a hybrid the other day that had a bumper sticker proudly declaring their 42mpg. My trip computer was reading 44.5mpg.
Yes, and I’m only to page 174 out of 390 and then there are 74 pages of footnotes.
http://www.intrade.com/
Interesting numbers at Intrade. When the election day get close it starts to matter and become useful as a tool. Suggests a signficiant GOP victory, but nothing out recent predictions. House to GOP. Angle takes Reid. Boxer probably pulls it out, O’Donnell falls to the Bearded Marxist, etc., etc.
I did not look to see if it had a line on California’s dope proposition.
LTC John @#2: Include E-6 and up in that freeze.
Bh @ 74 and I saw the same thing. That is a most excellent story.
#86 – OK, you are in too… I just think the E-1 thru E-5 and O-1 thru O-3 (and W-1, W2) need to be let alone, at least a bit.
A couple of corrections to Ric’s post..
MTBE is not a hydrocarbon. It’s an ether. Ethers have more hydrocarbon character than ethanol, as ethanol (CH3CH2OH) is miscible with water, and it corrodes gaskets faster than MTBE or “lead” additives. Pure ethanol needs an engine that’s redesigned to accommodate ethanol, and the engines (as Ric correctly states) is less energetic than gasoline. When ethanol burns, it doesn’t generate as much gas as gasoline, so it does less work than pure gasoline, so it’s less energetic.
MTBE’s major concern was that it was found in ground water supplies, which started freaking people out. The MSDS is here (http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/B7222.htm), and it explicitly states it is NOT a carcinogen. The concern with MTBE is greater exposure would cause neurological effects, although the concentrations in ground water were small. They correctly anticipated that the MTBE concentration in ground water would gradually increase, which would increase possible toxic dangers, especially to the young.
Me too, Rob. Only my average is more like 16.5. Not bad for a big ole 3/4 ton 4×4 truck, though.
Agreed.
Reduce farming subsidies? No. Eliminate farming subsidies.
Interesting that the one time the debt was paid (2 points to the first to identify whihc presidential administration accomplished it) was done by selling Federal land.
#71–OUTSTANDing!
#89 Thanks, SS. Always appreciate correct info.
Regards,
Ric
Pure ethanol has a lower energy density than gasoline, on the order of 2/3 the Btu/lb. Also, at the compression ratios typical IC engines run at (between 8:1 and 10:1) E100 engines only realize around 50% of the mpgs that the equivalent gasoline engine does.
In order to achieve even 70% of the mpg that a comparable gasoline engine would the compression ratio must be at least doubled. In addition, as mentioned, ethanol is much more corrosive than gasoline. Which are all reasons why pure ethanol engines must be substantially different than gasoline or blend engines.
AS Ric noted, Octane is a rating of a fuels tendency to detonate simply by compressing it. The higher the octane rating, the more that the fuel mixture can be safely compressed. The benefit of this property is that an engine can use higher compression ratios, which in turn result in more power output owing to their greater thermodynamic efficiency. So high compression ratios results in higher power output, but engine built thusly can’t suffer the unpredictable detonation likely with low octane fuels, because in the long term this ruins the engine and in the short term performance is highly degraded.
Older members of the commentariat will recall that cars built before spark control computers, and electronic igition, became widerspread and commonplace might occasionally “knock” or “ping” under full throttle operation if you were running cheap gas or the engine was out of tune.
MTBE: essentially methanol mixed with isobutane. And as Ric and S.S. noted was outlawed due to the efforts of California environmentalists. This has largely been replaced with ethanol, which is very high octane in and of itself, but not so high as MTBE.
And as Ric said, the octane rating is the fuels stability under compression when compared to a test mixture of 2 hydrocarbon components, iso-octane and heptane. A 90 octane gasoline has comparable properties to a mixture of the two that yields a 90 on the octane ratine scale. Pure iso-octane yields 100 on the rating scale and pure heptane yields 0; which is not to say they don’t burn. Pure ethanol has an octane on the order of 115.
What’s the upshot of this TL:DR geekfest? Automobiles should use flat-rated gas turbine engines like Helicopters do, and simply drive generators which in turn power electric motors; like hybrid autos.
Why? Because gas turbines can eat just about any fuel simply by adjust the flow rate, without all of the aformentioned issues…
/geekfest
“/geekfest”
It always happens when Jeff talks government spending. The engineers have to jump in and claim to have the biggest slide rule;)
I could smell the JP-5 Danger, and was lookin’ for the Grapes! Too much hooka smoke comin’ from the other thread :)
The problem with gas turbines is thermodynamic efficiency, which for engines all operating in the same environment can be closely approximated by how hot the fire is.
Internal combustion engines have a very hot fire, but they don’t melt because it doesn’t last very long. The average temperature is well within the tolerances of fairly cheap materials, while the peak temperature, which governs thermodynamic efficiency, can be quite high.
In a turbine engine the fire is “on” all the time. You don’t get the averaging effect, so the part that converts the energy to mechanical motion, the turbine itself, has to be made of exotic (for which read, expen$ive) stuff, or the temperature has to be kept down. Actually, even the expensive stuff can’t stand the peak temperatures of an IC engine, so the turbine has to be run at a lower temperature and thus at less efficiency.
Less efficient = lower gas mileage.
Turbines are great for airplanes and helicopters because they’re very small and light for their power output — this, again, is because they’re on all the time, rather than running in pulses. But the materials problem means that they’re less efficient. Back in the Sixties all the car companies tried all kinds of exotic methods to get more-efficient turbines; Chrysler even built a hundred (I think) turbine cars and let people drive them on the roads to get experience. The people who drove them loved them, right up to the moment the fuel pump stopped. Turbine-electrics would be less bad, because what killed the Chrysler car’s efficiency was having to run the turbine at different speeds. A turbine running a generator could run at constant speed, thus have better gas mileage — but you can do better yet by running a Diesel IC engine at constant speed. The extra weight of the Diesel cuts mileage, but not as much as you lose using a turbine.
If it were possible to make the turbine wheel out of ceramic, it might be possible to get the fire temperature up enough to get IC-equivalent efficiency, and then IC engines would vanish overnight. So far, though, nobody’s been able to make ceramics that don’t have cracks, and even the teeniest crack, too small to see with an optical microscope, means the turbine blade breaks. Since it’s turning at a ferocious rate, this is extremely hazardous to bystanders — you’re better off standing next to a mortar shell when it goes off. The “dishware turbine” is likely to be the Holy Grail for quite some years yet.
Regards,
Ric
Cool thread.
Term limits absolutely. Drop the moratorium on offshore oil drilling, and create energy independence. Withdraw troops from Western Europe and let them fight Vladimir on their own dime. Dissolve government employee unions. Halve the Dept of Education, the Dept of Agriculture and the EPA. Repeal the so-called healthcare bill and have a real discussion about the matter with input from all sides. Open it for public discussion. Outlaw gerrymandering. You must be a citizen in order to vote. Secure the Mexican border and restore peace to citizens in the Southwest.
Engineering types have an uncanny ability to make me feel like I’d be the Gilligan on a desert island. I’ll just grab a grass skirt and put half coconuts on my chest while you laddies build the radio tower.
Damn it. You called Gilligan. I’m going with Thurston Howell then.
Heh. That leaves the Skipper for the next fastest.
I’d be the Professor. ;)
Well Ric,
You’re correct about the technical challenges, but might be surprised to hear that the temperatures are similar in both the IC engine cylinder at the moment of combustion and the combustor discharge side of a turbo-jet; both are around 1800 degrees F.
Turbines bleed some of the compressed air through the turbine, blades and hubs, and into the flow as part of an active cooling technique. And as you mentioned, they are made of exotic metal alloys that can handle the stresses and temperatures and typically employ generous amounts of titanium or exotic nickel monocrystals; verrrry expensive indeed.
The challenge is to develop a ceramic or composite that could replace these exotic meterials. But as you also mentioned, it may just be as practical to use diesel engines, especially when you factor in the armor plating needed as guards around the areas where there are rotating assemblies. I’ve seen the results of compressor blade failures in jet aircraft, and it’s not pretty.
What someone needs to do is figure out a way to stamp out simple stage discs, like in the ol’ electrolux vacuum cleaner, or dishwasher, as you say, for both compressors and turbines. They’d make a fortune.
Yeah, sorry to jack the thread, but this kind of talk is like catnip to us aerospace types.
OK, so now we’ve got the guys on this island figured out. What I want to know is, where’s Ginger and Mary Ann?
There is only one way to fix the US Government.
We need either a major Court case or a Constitutional amendment that has the effect of reversing Wickard v. Filburn. Anything and everything less than that is a matter of sticking rags in the holes to patch the boat and/or frantically working the bilge pump.
The people might get relief if somebody invents a really cheap way of getting into space and off to somewhere they can live, the high-tech equivalent of Mayflower. That doesn’t look particularly likely at the moment.
Regards,
Ric
Dicentra and SarahW?
I watched a ceramic automobile engine operating in a test lab at Purdue. It was more efficient than standard engines at the time, but not so much as to encourage companies to re-tool their factories.
As to Unions – all government employees should be in unions. Of course, since they work for the people, we will vote on how much they make every two years. Unions love democracy.
#103 Yup. The combustion gases do work on the cool gases, which is then transferred to the power turbine as increased flow. Thermodynamic efficiency is improved, but not to where it would be if you could just expand from combustion temperature to atmospheric through the power turbine. You can cheat a little, but Msr. Carnót will cut you off at the knees if you try to go too far. Trust a Frog to ruin the party.
What the folks at Ford almost achieved, many years ago, was better than stamping — the whole turbine wheel was molded as a single piece and fired. Run bleed air down the axis to keep the shaft cool and form hydrodynamic bearings, and there you go. If I remember correctly, they kept one of those together for almost five minutes.
Regards,
Ric
I remember when I was in junior high school, reading those car books on how we’d all be driving turbine powered cars by the 70s. That didn’t work out too well.
106, now that is good. Although Carin comes to mind too.
Yes, with her gardening skills, she too would be a valuable addition…
I’m Lovey.
#8: Amtrak. Agree on ending subsidies. But private carriers won’t pick up the service, because it just isn’t profitable. Maybe shrink Amtrak to just the Northeast Corridor?
#108
It was an investment casting.
Interestingly enough the fan blades on a commercial jet engine are investment cast titanium while the rotor body is forged. the connection is a mechanical one so that the rotor sheds blades rather than violently destruct under centrifigal loads. Ford also investment cast milling cutters.
With modern CNC multiaxis machines I have no doubt that smaller cheaper turbines can be manufactured, but they won’t be any more fuel efficient than the larger ones. As with IC engines for cars and trucks they won’t be a significant change unless new materials or fuels are discovered.
Meanwhile, in the realm of reality, european car makers are making smaller turbo charged engines for their cars that are approaching the performance of gasoline powered engines.
France has a challenge. A 250Kg vehucle that can go 100Km on one liter of fuel.
turbo charged diesel engines
Raise the Social Security retirement age to 68.
Let workers under 40 start designating a percent of payroll taxes to IRA’s.
Remove our military from Germany, Italy, and Japan and put them on the borders.
Cut defense spending as is appropriate to complete Afghan and Iraq wars and reposition forces to the US.
Use the same anti-fraud methods that Credit Card companies use to reduce medicaid and Medicare abuse.
Yes, with her gardening skills, she too would be a valuable addition…
Not to toot my own horn, but I also have remarkable runaway-chicken retrieving skillz.
I recall a story in the late ’80s about Toyota designing a turbine engine that could consume any hydrocarbon you could pour into the tank, including cooking oil.
#120
Whatever you feed it, it will still devour a prodigious amount of it.
I’m still waiting for some to develop a true flash point boiler. Steam. That’s the future!
Thanks for the explanation on what MTBE is for, Ric. I knew about tetraethyl lead from my younger days of constantly devouring car magazines (mmm, tasty supercharger…), and did not realize MTBE was a replacement for it. If I had, I may have argued differently.
My take right now is I know that ethanol in ground water won’t hurt a damn thing. What I don’t know is how dangerous MTBE is, or might be, when it gets into ground water. This might make me an evil person, but then again, if ethanol is necessary for boosting octane rating (due to the fact that MTBE is not legal for that purpose), then ethanol is being subsidized in that legislation is requiring its use. I could live with that because there would still be pressure to make it cheaper.
I am not in favor of the E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) project because that’s clearly just a boondoggle. I don’t see ethanol as a fuel (as opposed to a fuel additive) being viable.
It’s a tough thing to figure out, because I know ethanol production has a net energy loss, and that bothers the engineer in me. Perhaps what we really need is a new alternative to boosting the octane of gasoline. In that scenario, ethanol would return to being a low-output commodity, no longer enriching ADM.
cranky-d: Like I said, I was doing that off the top of my head. #89 Soiled Sockpuppet put me straight, and I did a little looking around.
Nobody really knows if MTBE in groundwater is a health hazard. We do know that many substances with methyl groups in are bioreactive, and that at least some ethers are hazardous, so it makes sense to be cautious, especially given the volumes of the stuff that will get away into the environment if it’s used as a fuel additive.
You should certainly be aware that oil companies are spending a lot to find suitable additives. Having to spend money “outside the family” (as it were) to buy ethanol as an additive grates. It looks like the only realistic alternative would be to develop changes to the refining process that would make additives un- or less necessary, but doing that while keeping yields up (and therefore prices down) looks like a really tough job in chemical engineering. Add that to the political problems, and E15 is the way to go.
E85 isn’t a “boondoggle”. It’s malevolent stupidity.
Regards,
Ric
the amtrak number seemed really low to me – here’s what wikipedia says
maybe CAP has some sort of different definition of what counts as a subsidy
Octane is a rating of a fuels tendency to detonate simply by compressing it. The higher the octane rating, the more that the fuel mixture can be safely compressed. The benefit of this property is that an engine can use higher compression ratios, which in turn result in more power output owing to their greater thermodynamic efficiency. So high compression ratios results in higher power output, but engine built thusly can’t suffer the unpredictable detonation likely with low octane fuels, because in the long term this ruins the engine and in the short term performance is highly degraded.
I have friends who build high performance engines designed to operate on 110 octane. You would be surprised at the number of customers they get who don’t understand this, ignore all the warnings and instructions, and try to use low octane pump gas to save a little money while they are “breaking it in”. What would be minor detonation in a normal engine turns a high strung race engine into a grenade. Not good.