webfarmer | Oct. 13th, 2008

Oct. 13th, 2008

Weird datapoints.

One Constant in County Board Sizes: Variety - Grand Island Independent - 11 Oct 08

"All it takes is a drive from tiny Sarpy County (241 square miles) across Nebraska to Cherry County (5,961 square miles, slightly larger than Connecticut) to see there's no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to Nebraska's counties."

As some of you know, various right-wing groups are trying to pin this economic disaster on a group that has helped to organize the poor. It's called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). Here's their response:

ACORN Response to Senator McCain's Smear Ad - Acorn.org

"ACORN President Maude Hurd released the following statement today in response to the McCain campaign's new ad claiming that, among other things, ACORN is responsible for the mortgage crisis:

'For almost a decade, ACORN, a community organization of 400,000 families in neighborhoods across the country, has been fighting against the predatory lending practices that have robbed our members of their homes, destabilized neighborhoods, and roiled the global economy.

'In his newest ad, John McCain's campaign bizarrely claims, 'ACORN forced banks to issue risky home loans, the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today.' Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, ACORN has worked successfully to help working class families get good home loans on fair terms from legitimate banks and has fought vigorously against predatory lenders who have ripped off families in our communities. These predatory loans caused the crisis.

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Columnist Clarence Page took on this ACORN myth as well:

A Lame Rap Aimed at Poor Folks by Clarence Page - Chicago Tribune - 08 Oct 08

"In a desperate attempt to deflect blame from deregulation and other policy ideas they favor, conservatives are pointing their guns at a 1977 law that hardly anyone outside housing and banking circles cared about.

It's called the Community Reinvestment Act. It requires banks that receive federal insurance to lend within their geographic communities.

Before laws such as the CRA came along, banks "redlined" entire neighborhoods, denying prospective home buyers, most of them minorities, conventional home loans. Thanks to the CRA, thousands of renters have become homeowners. Neighborhoods have been saved. Tax revenue has increased. Urban life has improved."

"Nice try, but the CRA's (Community Reinvestment Act's) villainy has been wildly exaggerated.

First, the CRA applies only to banks and thrifts that get federal insurance. It does not even apply to three-fourths of the institutions that made subprime loans, the high-interest loans at the heart of Wall Street's credit collapse.

Also, nothing in the CRA requires banks to offer subprime loans, interest-only loans, no-money-down loans or any of the other gimmicks that inflated the now-fizzling housing bubble. Quite the opposite, the law calls on lenders to meet the credit needs of the communities in which they are chartered, "consistent with the safe and sound operation" of those lenders.

Contrary to the myths, studies show that most CRA borrowers pay their bills on time and become successful homeowners. That's why the law has worked well for three decades, long before the recent Wall Street mess."

Nice to have some options to compressed air and pumped hydro. Flow batteries are different from traditional batteries. With your car battery, the discharge reaction goes on until all the liquid acidic electrolyte is spent. Then you need to charge it back up again. There is a limit to how much energy can be stored.

With flow batteries, they have two tanks of electrolyte, one in a charged state and one in a discharged state. The charged state electrolyte is pumped into the battery as it is discharging and converting that electrolyte into spent material. When the battery is charging, the flow reverses and the spent electrolyte is zapped into charged up electrolyte.

Like a conventional battery, the amount of peak power available from such a battery is determined by the size of the battery. Unlike with a conventional battery, the energy capacity of the battery depends on how big of tanks of electrolyte you hang off it.

Alternative Energy Storage and Blood in the Streets - Seeking Alpha - 13 Oct 08

"ZBB is a transition stage manufacturer of zinc bromine flow batteries and the clear leader in the 'hours of discharge time' product class. Their pre-production prototypes are priced in the $600 per kWh range and will compete primarily with pumped hydro and compressed air storage.

There is no question that pumped hydro and compressed air will be the technologies of choice for utility-scale diurnal [aka daily] storage installations. But when it comes to small-scale storage for homes, businesses and remote villages, flow batteries like ZBB’s are likely to be the best choice."

Just maybe . . .

Military Vote in Utah Not a Sure Thing for McCain - Salt Lake Tribune - 13 Oct 08

"April Durrant is a proud military wife. Her husband did a tour of duty in Iraq in 2003. Now he is in Afghanistan.

'We've been in it for 20 years,' Durrant says. 'It's absolutely not for everyone. It's tough on people, tough on families to have a long career in the military.'

As a career military couple, Durrant and her husband fall into a category of voters that conventional wisdom suggests is in the can for Sen. John McCain, a Navy veteran and branded war hero. But come Nov. 4, the Sandy couple will be tapping the touch screen for Sen. Barack Obama - and they're not alone."

Troops Deployed Abroad Give 6:1 to Obama - OpenSecrets.org - 14 Aug 08

"According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul.

Despite McCain's status as a decorated veteran and a historically Republican bent among the military, members of the armed services overall -- whether stationed overseas or at home -- are also favoring Obama with their campaign contributions in 2008, by a $55,000 margin. Although 59 percent of federal contributions by military personnel has gone to Republicans this cycle, of money from the military to the presumed presidential nominees, 57 percent has gone to Obama."

McCain Campaign Drops Va. GOP Official After He Mocked Obama in a Newspaper Column - Newsday - 11 Oct 08

A McCain spokeswoman said Bobby May was dropped this week from his job as McCain's Buchanan County campaign chairman.

May wrote in his column, 'The (clarified) platform of Barack Hussein Obama,' that if the Democratic senator were elected he would hire rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black and change the national anthem to the 'Black National Anthem.'"