McCheney's America: You Need Money to Make Money

This ($300 million prize for better car battery) sounds good, until you think about it, but once you do you realize it's the government guaranteeing commercial success to those who have the funds to invest in the research. This is the most completely bass-ackwards approach to "an Apollo-scale program" to find alternatives to burning oil that's conceivable.

I'll explain below the fold.

McCain plan: $300 million prize for better car battery

(CNN) -- Sen. John McCain is expected Monday to call for a $300 million prize for innovation that would help the U.S. decrease its reliance on oil, a day after his rival for the presidency called for greater oversight for energy traders. Oil and energy are expected to be on the agenda as McCain campaigns in California and Sen. Barack Obama speaks in New Mexico on Monday.

McCain, during a town hall-style meeting at Fresno State University, is expected to propose a $300 million prize for whoever can develop an automobile battery that "has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars." The Arizona Republican will say such a battery "should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs," according to prepared remarks released ahead of the event.

"In the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure," the prepared remarks read. "From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success."

So let me see if I have this straight.

"(O)ur government has thrown around enough money", so the answer is to reward a company that would undoubtedly be successful just by selling their product with...

you guessed it. Government money.

And what factor decides who's in the running for this guaranteed government profit?

You probably guessed it, again. The companies that have the most money already can compete for the "prize", guranteed commercial success in the form of our tax dollars.

(The idea that we need better batteries for electric cars is a good one, though)