Blowing wind up your skirt

Posted By Alan Caruba On March 7, 2010 (2:34 pm) In Top Page News

One of the keystones of the Obama administration’s energy policies has been a very expensive emphasis on “clean energy”, sometimes called “renewable energy”, allocating billions to the wind and solar energy producers. Like much of the “stimulus” bill that money is a waste.

The wind power trade group, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has been pouring big bucks into a public relations effort to convince Americans that wind is the energy source of the future and that acres of wind turbines should be installed to replace the proven sources, primarily coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear plants currently providing more than 80% of the nation’s electricity needs.

Thanks to Freedom of Information requests, the Chicago Tribune revealed significant collusion among Department of Energy officials and AWEA, as well as other third-party special interest groups such as the Center for American Progress, a think tank that pushes Green and other liberal agendas.

The Tribune reported that an Assistant Secretary of Energy, Cathy Zoi, who formerly held top positions at Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, was charged with crafting renewable energy policy for the Obama administration and emails obtained revealed that she was working closely with AWEA to rebut and discredit a ground-breaking study by Dr. Gabriel Calzada of Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University.

Dr. Calzada’s research concluded that, for every “green job” the Spanish government created, 2.2 jobs were destroyed and that nine out of ten government-created “green jobs” were temporary at a time when Spain’s unemployment rate is at an all-time high, not unlike the situation in the U.S.

At the time that Dr. Calzada’s study was reported, the Obama administration was pushing “Cap-and-Trade” legislation through the House. This legislation would set up a system for the sale, auction, and trade of “carbon credits” based on the totally discredited assertion that “greenhouse gases”, primarily carbon dioxide, were “causing” global warming. The bill remains in the Senate awaiting a vote.

Back in January AWEA was ecstatic over an Obama administration award of $2.3 billion in “clean energy manufacturing tax credits and the President’s call for an additional $5 billion.” There is no economic or scientific justification for the waste of taxpayer dollars in this fashion.

Also in January, a Boston Herald article by Jay Fitzgerald revealed that “National Grid customers will experience sticker shock after the giant utility negotiates a long-term electric contract with Cape Wind developers, energy experts warn.”

“The Rhode Island deal calls for National Grid to pay an eye-popping 24 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity from Deepwater Wind’s proposed wind farm off Block Island for 20 years. That’s three times higher than the current price of natural-gas generated electricity—and the Rhode Island deal includes a 3.5 percent annual increase over the life of the contract.”

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, in February eleven wind turbines froze because their hydraulic fluid had turned to gel and oil lubricants were rendered sluggish. These kinds of problems do not occur in other sources of electricity. In Oregon, General Electric had announced a big wind project involving 338 wind turbines that it claimed would power 235,000 homes. Naturally, it was applying for federal subsidies.

In Great Britain, in January, its wind turbines representing six percent of total generating capacity and billions invested, supplied virtually no power most days because, as Dennis T. Avery, a former senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department noted “The wind tends not to blow when and where it’s already cold.”

Avery pointed out that neither Denmark, nor Germany, leaders in wind energy projects, has decommissioned any fossil fuel plants. “The fossil generators are kept in ‘spinning reserve’ to keep the lights on in the schools, factories, and hospitals when the wind dies.”

The wind and solar energy industries, as well as the biofuels industry, continue to depend on government subsidies to exist, as opposed to private enterprises that have a long track record of providing affordable electricity.

First the government gives the wind energy producers your money and then you end up paying higher energy bills as a result. Both wind and solar energy depend on government mandates for their use.

These are facts you need to keep in mind every time President Obama speaks of “clean energy” and “green jobs.” Like so much else one hears from the TelePrompter-in-Chief, it has no relation to the truth.

Editor’s Note: For more information about wind power, visit http://windpowerfacts.info.

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Article taken from SmallGovTimes.com – http://www.smallgovtimes.com
URL to article: http://www.smallgovtimes.com/2010/03/blowing-wind-up-your-skirt/

 

Cap-and-Trade treason

Posted By Alan Caruba On April 27, 2010 (6:30 am) In Voices and Choices

If you thought that the way the Obama administration and its cohort of Democrats in Congress rammed through the takeover of the nation’s healthcare system was appalling, prepare to watch the same process applied to Cap-and-Trade. Your government no longer represents you, the voter, the citizen.
 
Cap-and-Trade (H.R. 2454) allegedly is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is no scientific justification for this because there is no “global warming” that requires it, nor is manmade, anthropogenic, generation of carbon dioxide (CO2) a threat to the planet. Just the opposite, everything dies without it; all vegetation and all animal life. Life on Earth would thrive if there was even more CO2.
 
To what end would Congress impose such emission limits when they do not exist throughout China, India, third world “developing” nations, and are being abandoned by European Union nations where the Kyoto Protocol limits have harmed their economies?
 
Global warming has been exposed as a massive hoax and fraud. Why would the United States Senate proceed to enact a bill based on it? In essence, it will make some corporations, utilities, and people very rich and impoverish the rest of us.
 
Having passed the House, the Senate will be handed a huge bill that, like healthcare, few will have read before they vote. It will impose the largest tax the nation has ever seen.
 
The act will bless the various “exchanges” created for the sale and trade of “carbon credits” that have no value whatever. It creates a bubble comparable to the sub-prime mortgage debacle that triggered the 2008 financial crisis and resulting recession.
 
The amount of CO2 will not be reduced because the Earth produces 97% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere. Even then, that amount is the smallest part of the atmosphere that consists of more than 95 percent water vapor!
 
Cap-and-Trade is an act of betrayal because it will destroy the U.S. economy, destroy jobs, and further impoverish Americans in a variety of ways. 
 
The Cap-and-Trade Act that has already passed the House will be put in play by Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joseph Lieberman. It was created in the House by Rep. Henry Waxman and Rep. Edward Markey. They know the bill will set in motion the destruction of the nation whose life’s blood is affordable and abundant energy use.
 
Just as the Obama administration moved swiftly to acquire ownership of General Motors and Chrysler, to take over insurance giant AIG, control one sixth of the nation’s economy through the healthcare act, and is now seeking to expand the regulation of Wall Street, Cap-and-Trade will ensure the destruction of the nation as manufacturing flees to other parts of the world.
 
Beginning one year after enactment, homeowners will not be able to sell their homes without complying with onerous and unnecessary energy and water “efficiency” standards. These standards, moreover, will increase annually. Within five years, 90 percent of the residential market will be controlled by the government.
 
On April 19, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new guidelines for “Energy Star” homes requiring them to increase “efficiency” by 20 percent more than those built to the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code. Home ownership, already the largest expense for Americans, will be further increased by required upgrades.
 
According to the Congressional Budget Office, in a few years the average cost of energy use to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one will be exempt from energy taxes and you can expect the cost of a gallon of gasoline to rise beyond $4 to European levels.
 
In Europe, industrial carbon quotas have enriched the continent’s biggest energy users such as steel and cement makers. Their surplus carbon permits, often provided for free, are estimated to be worth more than $4 billion at current market rates by 2012. There is no scientific justification for them.
 
It will be the U.S. government that will determine who receives the initial free “carbon credits”, thus giving corporations that have supported Cap-and-Trade a huge advantage over those who do not. Not only will the government rake in billions from the taxes to be imposed, but utilities will raise their prices and pass it along to consumers. 
 
There is no need whatever to reduce use of so-called “fossil fuels.” There is no need for the “efficiency” and “conservation” measures that will be imposed. If the government would permit access to the nation’s vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, none of this would be needed, but it will not.
 
The nation is under attack from within by a consortium of fanatical environmentalists and rent-seeking corporations and utilities seeking to profit from these government mandates and limits.
 
It is the perfect storm. It is treason.
 
Editor’s Note:  Politico.com: (4/24/10) The planned Monday unveiling of a bipartisan climate bill was postponed after one of its three authors, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said that he couldn’t support the legislation if Democrats moved it to the backburner to focus first on immigration reform. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) announced the postponement Saturday evening, saying that “external issues have arisen that force us to postpone only temporarily.”

 

The new Barack Obama poverty scam

Posted By Neal Boortz On March 9, 2010 (8:25 am) In Voices and Choices

The Obama administration has decided that it wants to create a new way to measure poverty. The new Obama system would essentially be the same in that a family would be considered “poor” if its income drops below a certain threshold. But the difference in Obama’s new system would be the addition of a “built-in escalator clause.” This is described as measuring poverty income threshold in direct proportion to any rise in living standards for average Americans.

As Robert Rector points out, this means that under Obama’s new measurement … “poverty can be reduced only if the incomes of the ‘poor’ are rising faster than the incomes of everyone else.” Here’s another interesting result of Obama’s new poverty measurement. Countries like Bangladesh and Albania will actually have lower poverty rates than the United States. Haiti will probably have the lowest poverty rate!

Here’s something I’ve been saying for decades on the air … something nobody has ever been able to refute, though many have tried. Listen up:

You could have:

1. $15,000,000 in a checking account
2. A paid-for $5,000,000 home
3. Eight exotic automobiles valued at $250,000 each
4. A 32-oz Aquafina bottle full to the top of diamonds
5. A different $500,000 watch for every day of the year
6. $16,000,000 in cash stashed in a colostomy bag hanging on your belt
7. A Gulfstream G-650 fueled and ready at KATL to take you anywhere in the world you might want to go to get away from Barack Obama
8. A bag of chips

You could have all that … and the Imperial Federal Government could KNOW that you have all that … and you could STILL be classified by the Feds as “living in poverty.”

 

Taxing people won’t make bank bailouts right

Read the Small Government Times article by Jeffrey A. Miron here.

 

Lawmakers Move To Reform California Education

Read the CBS article here.