Month: November 2013
Alternative Energy Boondoggle, [California] Tax-Payers Being Ripped Off!
Medieval Scam Alert
According to the EIA, new on-shore wind power is about 37 percent more expensive than new advanced-coal technologies. And solar power makes wind power look like a bargain — new solar photovoltaic power is close to 300 percent more expensive than new advanced-coal technologies. Americans already massively subsidize these costly forms of energy. Wind receives federal subsidies equal to $23.37 per megawatt hour, and solar receives $24.34 per megawatt hour. (Coal receives 44 cents per megawatt hour.) ~ National Review
I have people close to me that will never vote for a bond measure because they do not want their property taxes to increase, but they will increase everyone’s taxes to fund failing business plans and technology. The disconnect is astounding. Here is a positive look at this ponzi scheme that has transferred millions of tax-payer monies to fund the company, to fund people buying the product, and to fund the buying back of the energy — all at the cost of the tax-payer because profit in this industry is impossible:
…Additionally, renewable energy qualifies for accelerated depreciation, which has the effect of reducing OFM’s taxable income and will lower the company’s tax obligation by about $170,000 over two years, Zalcberg said.
Then there’s the business of selling power to the power company. OFM is selling electricity from its solar farm to Progress for 18 cents a kilowatt hour, a premium price approved by state regulators to promote solar energy. At the same time, OFM is paying only one-third of that price for the power it buys from Progress.
The effect is that instead of paying a utility bill, OFM will receive $60,000 yearly from Progress over its 20-year contract with the utility….
Now, here is the John Locke Foundation looking at the same topic:
Getting taxpayers and electricity ratepayers to pay your electric bill
This September 2010 N&O report about the Holly Springs furniture company OFM shows why solar is so popular with private businesses and why it is such a bad deal for taxpayers and ratepayers.
According to the numbers in the story, we can make a rough calculation of who pays and who benefits. First, OFM gets the taxpayers to pay for half of the cost of the solar equipment (i.e., half of $1.4 million, or $700,000). Then OFM receives taxpayer-paid tax breaks worth $170,000. Then Progress Energy ratepayers pay OFM 18 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity produced by the solar panels, while OFM buys power from Progress Energy for 6 cents per kilowatt-hour to run its facility — a net profit of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour. Over 20 years, that would amount to a $1.2 million “profit” from Progress Energy inflicted on ratepayers by the legislature when it passed SB 3.
We must remember that OFM must pay for one-half of the cost of the solar panels, but subtracting the $700,000 cost from the total subsidies above ($2.070 million), OFM gets a cool “profit” after that expense of $1,370,000 to its bottom line courtesy of North Carolina taxpayers and Progress Energy ratepayers.
And that is not all. OFM and other businesses that participate in this fleecing of taxpayers and ratepayers get glowing media reports like this one.
OFM Celebrates One-Year Anniversary of Solar Farm With Plans to Expand
Holly Springs, N.C. — This month office and school furniture manufacturer, distributor and wholesaler OFM is celebrating the one-year anniversary of the 250-kilowatt solar farm it installed on the rooftop of its headquarters in Holly Springs, N.C. last August. The company has since been producing more energy than it uses…
Why not expand when you can force taxpayers and ratepayers to pay your electricity bills? Businesses that feed at the public trough are nothing new. This example illustrates that the environmental movement is the new home of crony capitalism, with taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies for solar, wind, electric car batteries, new LED lighting, the list goes on and on. Businesses get billions, politicians get good press, and taxpayers and ratepayers get fleeced. For more details, see John Stossel’s report on crony capitalism….
Hurting the poor the most
The Institute for Energy Research found
that electricity prices are almost 40%
higher in states with mandates for their use.
(source)
How bout’ California? We can see the same boondoggle going on here as well… and its getting worse under government MoonBeam! (Waaay worse.) Here is some info from Hockey Stick, via the WSJ:
…California, for example, has allocated $3.3 billion in rebates for solar installations through 2016 and compensates residents between $0.20 and $0.35 cents per watt of expected performance (about 5% to 10% of the total cost of installation). San Francisco, which has a 100% renewable goal, provides additional rebates ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 per residential installation.
Meantime, school districts in California have received a total of $400 million this year for energy-efficiency projects, including window-glazing and solar-panel installations. SolarCity has contracted with school districts in Barstow, Simi Valley, Los Angeles and other cities.
SolarCity also benefits from “net metering” policies that 43 states, including California, have adopted. Utilities pay solar-panel customers the retail power rate for the solar power they generate but don’t use and then export to the grid. Retail rates can be two to three times as high as the wholesale price of electricity because transmission and delivery costs, along with taxes and other surcharges that fund state renewable programs, are baked in.
So in California, solar ratepayers on average are credited about 16 cents per kilowatt hour on their electric bills for the excess energy they generate—even though utilities could buy that power at less than half the cost from other types of power generators…
Not to mention green jobs and money going to waste or keeping money laundering back into the political parties (mainly Democratic):
Cal Watchdog asks a simple question, gives three short responses, and then you can read the rest:
Now that the $2.167 billion California Solar Initiative is winding down, electricity ratepayers might ask: What was it and what did it accomplish? Was it:
1.) A cutting edge solar energy project to bring about a “self-sustaining” solar power industry, as touted by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and state legislators?
The answer is mostly no based on post-project evaluations done by academic experts.
2.) A program to replace very expensive conventional peak time power plants with equally expensive but clean rooftop solar electricity that is generated at the time of day when it is hottest?
The answer is no. Contending that rooftop solar power replaces conventional peak time power is bogus. This is because electricity rates are tiered depending on usage and climate zone and the fact that ultra peak power rates during heat waves and cold snaps only last maybe as much as four weeks out of 52 weeks in a year.
3.) An expensive, artificial green energy and jobs program that is now being wound down, as there is a recovery in the jobs market?
The answer is yes. Since California’s Solar Initiative did not produce a self-sustaining rooftop solar power market (Question No. 1) and cannot be justified as a replacement for expensive peak time electricity, this leaves us with one conclusion: It was mainly a jobs stimulus program that ended up adding about a $200 tax to 10.8 million utility customers’ electric bills.
[….]
Millions of utility customers subsidize solar installations
Of course, the CPUC omitted disclosing that the $6.16 per kilowatt cost of installing rooftop solar power came by adding $2.167 billion to the electricity bills of other California electricity ratepayers. To provide subsidies to the 118,303 recipients of residential, commercial and governmental rooftop solar power installations the electricity bills had to be raised for 10.8 million customers of Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) through its subsidiary the California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE).
In other words, the Solar Initiative mandated on average about 91 other electricity customers to subsidize the rooftop solar installations of each rooftop solar power installation. Spread over 10.8 million customers, that equates to about a $200 tax per California electricity customer. The California Solar Initiative is another socialized system like Social Security that is based on a larger base of utility ratepayers paying for a smaller number of recipients. It is a program based on privatizing profits and socializing losses.
Thus, the $6.16 per kilowatt cost installed and 43,000 solar-energy-related jobs created by the California Solar Initiative are artificial and not market-based. The program could never have become self-sustaining in the first place.
When government picks winners and losers, we all lose:
The California Air Resources Board is reportedly considering a new plan to help transportation for low earners: buying them cars. The agency would like to give those of low income a voucher to buy energy-efficient vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, which has a sticker price of $21,000. The board currently gives drivers $1,000 to $1,500 to get rid of their older vehicles in an attempt to curb carbon emissions; there is a second program that gives up to $4,000 depending on the vehicles involved.
….The CARB has even implied that it could sponsor the full purchase of an $18,000 for families of three looking to pick up a hybrid. Stanley Young, spokesman for the Air Resources Board, said that California should “make sure low-income people can also get into these clean vehicles.”
The federal cash for clunkers program was an immense failure, frontloading car purchases but doing nothing to truly spur demand for new vehicles. This program would have the ostensible goal of moving America’s auto industry toward more fuel efficiency; instead, it would redistribute income by subsidizing big business.
“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge” ~ George Gilder
Central planning ALWAYS fails. Competition is a “discovery procedure,” Nobel-prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek taught. Through the competitive market process, we producers and consumers constantly learn things that force us to adjust our behavior if we are to succeed. Central planners fail for two reasons:
First, knowledge about supply, demand, individual preferences and resource availability is scattered — much of it never articulated — throughout society. It is not concentrated in a database where a group of planners can access it.
Second, this “data” is dynamic: It changes without notice. No matter how honorable the central planners’ intentions, they will fail because they cannot know the needs and wishes of 300 million different people. And if they somehow did know their needs, they wouldn’t know them tomorrow.
Faith Like a Child ~ Possibilities
From Hieropraxis
….I picked up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: this time, not to analyze it for my dissertation, but to enter Narnia like a little girl again.
And I encountered Aslan.
First just as a name, a glimpse of hope – “Aslan is on the move” – and then as a hope fulfilled, the great Lion really present in Narnia, bringing an end to a hundred years of winter. Aslan was a force to be reckoned with: he led the Narnians into battle, and killed the White Witch himself; when he roared, “they saw all the trees in front of him bend before the blast of his roaring as grass bends in a meadow before the wind.” No tame lion, indeed.
And yet he was touchable, playful, personal. If I could have stepped through the wardrobe door and seen this character for myself, I don’t know if I’d have first run up and buried my hands and face in his shaggy mane, or fallen down before his great velveted paws with their terrible claws, afraid to look at him, but love and awe would have been mingled in both.
In Narnia, I found that the Incarnation was not a bizarre idea, out of place in the world. It infused the very atmosphere; I breathed it in and was strengthened by it. That God would join His creatures by becoming part of creation Himself seemed, here in Narnia, as fitting as the fact that winter’s end brought crocuses peeking brightly through half-melted snow; as right as the fact that sunlight warms chilled limbs and water quenches thirst.
In Narnia… but here, in real life? It might not be true that God was involved with His world; it might not be likely that Jesus was God incarnate… but it was no longer unimaginable.
From The Sword and the Cross – forthcoming, Ignatius Press, 2014
If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.CS LEWIS
Burqa Donning Child-Care Workers (Plus Robert Spencer’s Papal Comments)
(Via VLAD) Above is the Global video with some of my observations built in. Frankly it still amazes me how nearly everyone in the media misses the point. The uniform is a declaration of an ideology that is fully unacceptable to the vast majority of Canadians if they were honest with themselves as to the nature of that ideology.
Canadians, American, and Europeans are cowed into a false narrative that to speak one’s mind about Islam and it’s fascist mentality is somehow wrong. As wrong as it is to speak out against Communism and Nazism.
Are You My Mommy?
Burqa Barbie ~ Mouse Over
(Jihad Watch) …Children need eye contact and to be able to study the mother’s facial expressions for many reasons. Among them are:
1) The child learns to read and understand the emotions of others (empathy).
2) He or she learns about non-verbal communication (which is necessary for developing social skills).
3) They can see on their mother’s face if they are loved and safe, and if a situation is dangerous or not (which is necessary for the child’s basic feeling of security).
[….]
…Imagine how your baby would react if you put a mask or a piece of cloth on your face every time you went outside the house. Among the most important consequences are:
a) The child has less time during the day where he or she is stimulated with eye and face contact.
b) The child is not able to see the mother’s non-verbal communication with people outside the family.
c) Not being able to get a loving smile or comforting eye contact, it is very much up to the child itself to estimate whether he or she is loved and safe — and as especially small children are unable to do this, they are deprived of this source of basic security in a lot of situations.
From Vlade Tepes’ “about me” page:
Islam is a religious political and cultural system. Its no more deserving of protection than that of Nazism or Communism with which, by the way, it shares a great deal. Islam is not a race and therefore criticism of it is not racist.
`Criminal, Period` (My Recent FaceBook Post) ~ Updated
Are there Democrats I know on FaceBook that think similar things happened in the Bush administration? Please, tell me them. That is, using the might of the Federal government to silence opposition or opponents.
So, Dr. Carson spoke out against Obama at the Prayer Breakfast, and Dr. Carson was audited (http://tinyurl.com/konujbp). Bill Elliot, a cancer patient who had his insurance dropped due to Obamacare, went on Fox News a month ago to speak out against Obamacare… he’s being audited by the IRS (http://tinyurl.com/k66m78f). And if you can think back a couple of weeks, 13-Billion was coughed up by JP Morgan-Chase… there are rumors that the legal action started AFTER they criticized the Obama admin. (http://tinyurl.com/l3yedhf).
And there are more cases: http://tinyurl.com/kpnvk3u
A word comes to mind… mmmm… CRIMINAL!
Which brings me to another point, and this is very important… and while it deals with a comparison of George Soros and the Koch Brothers we hear demonized all the time, it deals — really with the chasm between left and right. And why the Left always uses government power to minimize the freedoms of the person by growing the influence of the government, whereas, a conservative (read here “right”) wants to increase the persons size/freedom by shrinking government. Enjoy:
And any person should acknowledge why someone should “fear” government more than business. In fact, I made this point on my FB outgrowth of this blog in talking to my liberal friend:
…the was to show how the Obama admin is stacking the books with GM. You see, when the government chooses winners-and-losers instead of getting contracts with private companies (like Ford, GM, etc. ~ http://youtu.be/AOvar8AR1IQ), they are invested to [i.e., forced to] only choose a government run business and stock their fish (so-to-speak) with GM fleets… leaving the non-government company to flounder.
This next audio deals with the differences of the Koch brothers, in comparison to the Left’s version of them, Soros. There are many areas that one can discuss about the two… but let us focus in on the main/foundational difference. One wants a large government that is able to legislate more than just what kind of light-bulbs one can use in the privacy of their own home. Soros wants large government able to control a large portion of the economy (see link to chart below), and he has been very vocal on this goal. The other party always mentioned are the Koch brothers. These rich conservatives want a weak government. A government that cannot effect our daily lives nearly as much (personal, business, etc) as the Soros enterprise wants. And really, if you think about it, what business can really “harm” you, when people come to my door with pistols on their hip… are they a) more likely to be from GM, or, b) from the IRS?
The possibility of them being from the IRS is even more possible with the passing of Obama-Care [i.e., larger government]. So the “fear” (audio in next comment: https://vimeo.com/16928408) I think the Left has of “Big-Business” is unfounded, and the problem comes when big-business gets in bed with big-government. Here I am thinking of (like with the penalties that were found to be Constitutional in the recent SCOTUS decision) a government that can penalize you if you do not buy a Chevy Volt, or some other green car in order to save the planet. When this happens, guys coming to my door because of unpaid (hypothetical… but historical examples abound of the tax history of our nation) “fines” are likely to be IRS agents because of a personal choice made in the “free-market.”
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/mh757k6
The idea of smaller/larger government was really brought home to me via Prager:
One last point, the most important. Unlike big business when it makes mistakes, big government cannot go out of business. Unlike corrupt government, corrupt business cannot print money and thereby devalue a nation’s currency. Businesses cannot coerce you by force (tax liens, garnishing of wages, or armed IRS officials, etc) into an action. So the “greed” of the corporation pales in comparison to the greed of government [Dennis Prager, Still the Best Hope (New York, NY: Broadside Books, 2012), 35-36]. Which is why our Founders stated that, “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government” (Patrick Henry); “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master” (George Washington).
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/92l55cf
How the English Speaking, Western Culture, Spread Freedom and Liberty
Daniel Hannan is the author of ‘How we Invented Freedom‘ (published in the US and Canada as ‘Inventing Freedom: how the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World‘). He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes the EU is making its peoples poorer, less democratic and less free.
In “Inventing Freedom”, Daniel Hannan reflects on the historical origin and spread of the principles that have made America great, and their role in creating a sphere of economic and political liberty that is as crucial as it is imperiled. Hannan argues that the ideas and institutions we consider essential to maintaining and preserving our freedoms — individual rights, private property, the rule of law, and the institutions of representative government — are the legacy of a very specific tradition that was born in England and that we Americans, along with other former British colonies, inherited.
(WIKI) Daniel John Hannan (born 1 September 1971) is a British journalist, author and politician who is a Member of the European Parliament, representing South East England for the Conservative Party. He is also the Secretary-General of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR). An advocate of localism and a Eurosceptic, Hannan earned worldwide fame for making a speech in the European Parliament criticising Gordon Brown.
F-22 Sunrise Fill-Up
The Left Attacks Again ~ Revolutionary Labourers` Association
Two explosions went off near the US Yokota Base in western Tokyo last night. Police believe the attacks may have been extreme leftist groups. The Japan Times reported:
…There have been no claims of responsibility, but police believe it may have been a guerrilla attack by extreme leftists, Jiji Press and other media said.
Broadcaster NTV reported police were concentrating their investigations on the Revolutionary Labourers’ Association Anti-Majority Faction because the incident came just hours after they arrested a top-ranking member on Thursday.
Via the Air Force Times:
“We can confirm there was an improvised mortar launch outside Yokota over the evening,” Pacific Air Forces spokeswoman Maj. Jillian Torango said in en email Thursday to Air Force Times. “There were no injuries and thus far we have found no damage or impact points here on base.”
The Air Force is assisting the Japanese National Police, who are looking into the matter, Torango said.
The incident comes after a suspected mortar attack on Yokota Air Base in March when police found two launching tubes about 328 yards west of the base, Stars and Stripes reported on March 15.
The launchers were similar to one used to launch a projectile against Camp Zama in November 2012.
Northern Nigeria and Sharia Law
Not only are there groups of police hunting down lesbians, gay men, and prostitutes. But they also are banning beer. A travesty to liberty as well. This comes via Libertarian Republican and Weasel Zippers:
Police enforcing Islamic law in Nigeria’s city of Kano publicly destroyed some 240,000 bottles of beer on Wednesday, the latest move in a wider crackdown on behaviour deemed “immoral” in the area.
The banned booze had been confiscated from trucks coming into the city in recent weeks, said officials from the Hisbah, the patrol tasked with enforcing the strict Islamic law, known as sharia.
Kano’s Hisbah chief Aminu Daurawa said at the bottle-breaking ceremony he had “the ardent hope this will bring an end to the consumption of such prohibited substances”.
A large bulldozer smashed the bottles to shouts of “Allahu Ahkbar” (God is Great) from supporters outside the Hisbah headquarters in Kano, the largest city in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north….
China On High Alert (U.S., Japan, and South Korea Flex)
Rush on Pope Francis` Attack on the Free-Market
No where in the world is there unfettered capitalism. No where.
Stop Quoting Me (Not So Funny Anymore!)
While I originally found this poster funny, I — due to a post on the FaceBook where I found the original pic — was informed about some of Marilyn’s biographical history. Firstly, her mother was mentally ill, so we know that there was an unstable home from the get-go for Marilyn. And any child in other than the ideal mother/father home are statistically known to increase in bad-choices and bad-behavior. Not only that, as a foster child, Marilyn was sexually abused.
Yvonne, the woman who called this to my attention, makes a great point:
✤ “She tried her best with the cards life gave her.”…. “Marilyn suffered her entire life… The daughter of her acting coach told Marilyn ‘I want to be just like you,’ Marilyn replied ‘honey, you don’t want to be me, people will just use you.'”
So, I want to leave the poster up with my verbal retraction of it as a lesson learned a) by me, and b) a lesson for others. What we see in society “acted out” may often times be something else (see #’s 4 & 6 for example) that deserves compassion ~ especially Christian compassion… we invented it: humanism [something other world views lack, inherently] ~ rather than humor or derision. Marilyn was lost and needed Christ just like any of us did — do.
We Are All Harlots In the Lord's Eye (Hosea)
Mary Magdalene
What I am basically saying is that it is all fun and games till someone gets hurt, and this girl was thrust into the underbelly of Hollywood and the world stage by people who replaced father-figures and family, it should be a cautionary tale. One that should shake us awake and pray, not for Marilyn, obviously. But to pray for the many girls and boys in the world that are dealt bad cards. And to effectively counter culture’s acceptance of behavior based off of bad cards by its [culture’s] tendency to rubber stamp all behavior as equal, acceptable, or beneficial. (After reading #’s 4 & 6 you will note I am speaking about same-sex marriage as one example.)
Nor should we encourage girls or boys to mimic behavior wrought by these “bad cards” that are displayed in the narcissism of pop-culture.
And, as an aside, who would Jesus invite into your inner-circle of friends that would surprise you like Mary Magdalene surprised the religious leaders of Israel?