Obama Backed Solar Plant Leaves Behind Heavy Pollution, Wasted Taxpayer Money

By William Teach November 29, 2018 – 10:30 am

Yet another example of what dumping enormous amounts of taxpayer money into an industry not ready for prime time brings

FAILED OREGON SOLAR EQUIPMENT PLANT LEAVES BEHIND MILLIONS IN TAXPAYER LOSSES

A multi-year effort by federal, state, and local agencies to prop up an Oregon solar-panel manufacturer has ended in a shuttered factory, millions of taxpayer dollars down the drain, and a heavily polluted manufacturing site.

In 2010 SoloPower Systems (SoloPower) claimed it could manufacture “flexible” solar PV cells and modules that were light and thin enough to be installed on buildings that couldn’t support regular solar panels. Promising to employ hundreds of people at its 225,000-square-foot manufacturing plant, SoloPower attracted millions of dollars in loans and tax credits from government agencies.

In 2010 the U.S. Department of Energy loaned SoloPower $10 million. Business Oregon, a state agency, granted SoloPower $20 million in tax credits. The City of Portland agreed to cover half of SoloPower’s debt to the state, provided the solar-panel factory was located within the city’s limits, while Multnomah County, where Portland is located, declared the company’s factory site was in an enterprise zone, freeing the company from paying property taxes as long as it met certain job creation requirements.

By August 2011, the Obama administration increased is commitment to the project, furnishing $197 million in DOE loan guarantees to the company, and the California Energy Commission loaned the company nearly $5 million.

And what happened?

In April 2013, the company shut down its factory and laid off most of its workforce. By July 2013 it stopped making payments on its state loans and shortly thereafter, California sued the company for failing to make payments on its loan.

Subsequently, the U.S. Energy Department withdrew its $197 million in loan guarantees, and in the fall of 2017, the Trump Energy Department declared SoloPower in default of its original $10 million loan.

And the local, state, and federal taxpayers will not see the money for the loans returned. Even better, the taxpayers are on the hook for more

In an audit of the company Oregon’s Secretary of State pointed out although “Multnomah County had the legal right to seize the borrower’s equipment for delinquent taxes,” it was unlikely to do so because the plant was heavily polluted with cadmium and hydrochloric acid.

Seizing the equipment may not be an option given the level of pollution at the plant.

This stuff is very caustic,” Michael Vaughn, Multnomah County accessor told Oregon Live. “And there’s lots of it. It’s one big mess.”

Cleaning up the plant is estimated to cost more than $500,000.

It would have been better had Obama dumped tons of federal money into research and development, rather than just into businesses that said that they could make this work. Most of the recipients seem to have failed. But, hey, Obama had lots of campaign donors to hook up.

Read: Obama Backed Solar Plant Leaves Behind Heavy Pollution, Wasted Taxpayer Money »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Energy, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Trump To Soon Announce Ban On Bump Stocks, Which Is Now Considered “Meaningless”

By William Teach November 29, 2018 – 7:35 am

Remember when the nutjob shot up a music crowd in Las Vegas while using a bump stock, and ever gun grabber out there immediately called for their abolition? Well, here’s this

Trump to Announce Bump Stock Ban, A Largely Meaningless Gesture

The Trump administration will soon ban bump stocks, the aftermarket devices allowing semi-automatic weapons to fire multiple shots in rapid succession, CNN reported Wednesday.

The move will come nearly 14 months after Stephen Paddock used bump stocks to help him kill 58 people at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas. Days after the shooting, President Trump said he would look into banning bump stocks. And for a moment, it looked as if he might have had the National Rifle Association on his side. The group said at the time that “devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.” (snip)

Trump, however, forged ahead. On March 23, weeks after the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, and one day before the March for Our Lives, he announced a new regulation to ban bump stocks. At the time, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the move a “critical step in our effort to reduce the threat of gun violence.”

That’s nonsense. The bump stock ban is, and has always been a smokescreen. Making these devices illegal will do nothing to reduce gun violence in the U.S. That’s why they’ve become an easy target for the Trump administration. Banning bump stocks won’t make people safer, but it’s a simple way to pretend to.

Bump stocks are a novelty. Few people knew what they were before the Las Vegas shooting, and those who did largely considered them unreliable and impractical. There are also other devices that have the same effect on semi-automatic weapons. Making bump stocks the boogeyman made perfect sense for gun rights advocates. Focusing on them takes attention off of the weapons themselves, and banning them would take away only one method of bump firing a semi-automatic rifle.

Now, just imagine that it was Barack Obama who was banning bump stocks: do you think this article would be dismissive of banning them, or would Obama be lauded? Trump is implementing a regulation on bump stocks exactly as the gun grabbers asked for, but, now, it’s not enough. Had it been Obama this would have been seen as an small, but important, step forward.

Read: Trump To Soon Announce Ban On Bump Stocks, Which Is Now Considered “Meaningless” »

Posted in 2nd Amendment, Barking Moonbats | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

Surprise: MS-13 Member Found Among Caravan, Planned On Filing For Asylum

By William Teach November 29, 2018 – 7:22 am

Say, I wonder if all the Democrats who support this nonsense, along with some unhinged #NeverTrumpers, think he should get an asylum hearing

U.S. BORDER AGENTS ARREST MS-13 GANG MEMBER ‘INTENDING ON FILING FOR ASYLUM IN THE UNITED STATES’

U.S. border patrol agents arrested an MS-13 gang member at the Calexico Port of Entry on Saturday the Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday.

Jose Villalobos-Jobel, 29, a Honduran citizen, was arrested by Border Patrol agents assigned to El Centro Sector around 6:00 pm that day, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection press release.

It read, “After a short interview, the man told agents he is a Honduran citizen and active gang member with the notorious Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) international crime organization.  The man also told agents he traveled to the United States border with a large group of people from Central America intending on filing for asylum in the United States.”

The statement also said that Villalobos-Jobel will be sent back to Honduras. It’s unclear if Villalobos-Jobel was the only gang member arrested at the border.

Nope, not getting an asylum hearing. Nancy Pelosi won’t get a chance to see if he has a “spark of divinity.” We also find

“As President Trump and Secretary Nielsen warned, over the last few weeks we have identified over 600 known criminals and gang members in the caravan,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement provided to Fox News. “We are now predictably seeing members of the caravan – which includes criminals – show up at the border and claim asylum. These threats are only going to increase in light of illegitimate judicial injunctions and loopholes created by Congress.”

Meanwhile, the caravaners were bringing all sorts of health issues

Migrants who came with the caravan are suffering from respiratory infections, tuberculosis, chickenpox and other serious health issues, Tijuana’s Health Department warned on Thursday morning.

The spokesman told Fox News that out of 6,000 migrants currently residing in the city, over a third of them (2,267) are being treated for health-related issues.

There are three confirmed cases of tuberculosis, four cases of HIV/AIDS and four separate cases of chickenpox, the spokesman said.

At least 101 migrants have lice and multiple instances of skin infections, the department’s data shows.

We’re still waiting for the Democrat supporters of this to offer to take the migrants in while they await an asylum court date.

Read: Surprise: MS-13 Member Found Among Caravan, Planned On Filing For Asylum »

Posted in Illegal Immigration | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Study: White Liberals Dumb Themselves Down When Talking To Blacks

By William Teach November 28, 2018 – 2:48 pm

We’ve seen it again and again that white liberals think that African Americans belong to the Democratic Party, and pander to them and treat them as chattel. They like to keep them down on the urban plantations, living in poverty and crime, throwing them so bones, all so they can get their votes. And now this

https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1067444215582531587

Yup

White Liberals Present Themselves as Less Competent in Interactions with African-Americans

Racial bias can put people of color at a disadvantage when interviewing for a job, buying a house, or interacting with the police. New research suggests that bias may also shape daily interactions between racial minorities and white people, even those whites who tend to be less biased.

According to new research by Cydney Dupree, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Yale SOM, white liberals tend to downplay their own verbal competence in exchanges with racial minorities, compared to how other white Americans act in such exchanges. The study is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  (snip)

Dupree and her co-author, Susan Fiske of Princeton University, began by analyzing the words used in campaign speeches delivered by Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to different audiences over the years. They scanned 74 speeches delivered by white candidates over a 25-year period. Approximately half were addressed to mostly-minority audiences—at a Hispanic small business roundtable discussion or a black church, for example. They then paired each speech delivered to a mostly-minority audience with a comparable speech delivered at a mostly-white audience—at a mostly-white church or university, for example. The researchers analyzed the text of these speeches for two measures: words related to competence (that is, words about ability or status, such as “assertive” or “competitive”) and words related to warmth (that is, words about friendliness, such as “supportive” and “compassionate”).

The team found that Democratic candidates used fewer competence-related words in speeches delivered to mostly minority audiences than they did in speeches delivered to mostly white audiences. The difference wasn’t statistically significant in speeches by Republican candidates, though “it was harder to find speeches from Republicans delivered to minority audiences,” Dupree notes. There was no difference in Democrats’ or Republicans’ usage of words related to warmth. “It was really surprising to see that for nearly three decades, Democratic presidential candidates have been engaging in this predicted behavior.”

The study goes on to find that white Democrats tend to do this to blacks as well.

Read: Study: White Liberals Dumb Themselves Down When Talking To Blacks »

Posted in Democrats | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach November 28, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is the skull and crossbones symbol of carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Weasel Zippers, with a post on a poll on how Mexicans feel about the migrant caravan.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Bummer: Most European Union Nations Are Not Meeting Their Paris Climate Agreement Commitments

By William Teach November 28, 2018 – 10:30 am

The U.S. under Donald Trump is actually seeing a reduction in the carbon footprint per citizen, much of it due to the expansion of the use of natural gas. It wasn’t intentional, just a byproduct. And Trump has pulled the U.S. essentially out of the Paris Climate Agreement. How about the nations that are super enthused about the PCA?

The U.S. Isn’t the Only Major Country Not Meeting Its Climate Goals

Three years ago, world leaders from nearly every country around the world laid out specific plans to fight climate change that included strategies to slash their greenhouse gas emissions. Those commitments generated optimism that the world might finally address global warming and helped seal the deal on the Paris Agreement.

Now, the majority of G20 countries aren’t following through on their promises, according to a new report from the United Nation Environment Programme. And, even if countries followed through, the world would fall short of limiting temperature rise to safe levels.

“Countries are not doing enough,” says UNEP official Phillip Drost, who coordinated the report. “We need to mitigate more emissions.” (snip)

The report looks specifically at G20 countries and shows that the vast majority, including the United States, the world’s second largest emitter, are not on track to reduce their emissions in line with their 2015 commitments. And some of the countries that are — such as Russia and Turkey — have been criticized for setting unambitious targets. China is one notable exception to the trend: the country’s greenhouse gas emissions will likely begin to decline before 2030 as it promised even as it continues its breakneck economic growth.

It’s easy to sign a document, a Historic Document!!!!!, proclaiming that they will Do Something. It’s a lot harder to force citizens to pay through the nose, see their cost of living rise, and also see that money go to people in other countries. Not too mention giving up lots of freedom and choice. All while these same elites never give up their own money or big carbon footprints.

Read: Bummer: Most European Union Nations Are Not Meeting Their Paris Climate Agreement Commitments »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

United Nations Wants “Unprecedented And Urgent Action” On ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach November 28, 2018 – 8:11 am

We’re only a few days away from the start of COP24 in Katowice, Poland, as over ten thousand True Believers get set to take long fossil fueled trips from all over the world to discuss how they can make Other People change their lives to accord with the Cult of Climastrology beliefs. How they can implement more dominant government, tax the hell out of people, redistribute the fruits of Other People’s labor, and just be general nags. So, of course, they’re going down the doomsaying route

U.N. Urges ‘Unprecedented and Urgent Action’ to Stop Climate Change

In its “Emissions Gap Report 2018,” the United Nations (U.N.) declared Tuesday that total annual greenhouse gases emissions reached a record high in 2017 and that “more ambitious” measures are needed by 2020 to keep global warming below established goals.

Current national commitments “are inadequate to bridge the emissions gap in 2030,” the U.N. warned in its report. “Technically, it is still possible to bridge the gap to ensure global warming stays well below 2°C and 1.5°C,” but if global ambitions are not increased before 2030, exceeding the 1.5º C goal “can no longer be avoided.”

“Now more than ever, unprecedented and urgent action is required by all nations,” the report declared. “The assessment of actions by the G20 countries indicates that this is yet to happen; in fact, global CO2  emissions increased in 2017 after three years of stagnation.”

In its report, the United Nations suggested that the world is on the path to climate disaster if drastic measures are not implemented in the near future.

They want action action action from government. Perhaps they should be paying attention to the riots in France before they pimp their Usual Solution

As usual, the U.N. warnings come down to an appeal for dramatic action at the national level.

Countries need to “increase effectiveness of domestic policy to achieve the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement,” the report states. “To bridge the 2030 emissions gap and ensure long-term decarbonization consistent with the Paris Agreement goals, countries must enhance their mitigation ambition.”

In the end, the United Nations Organization is looking for funding, and they appeal to nations to establish substantial taxation to penalize citizens for the use of inexpensive fossil fuels.

“Fiscal policy reform can play a key role in creating strong incentives for low-carbon investments and reducing GHG emissions,” the reports states. “Revenues from carbon pricing can be used for reducing other taxes, increase spending on social issues and/or compensating low-income households.”

Surprise? But, hey, how’s that working in France? The protesting, which does include some violence and especially burning things, which always seems to be popular in France (but usually starts from illegal aliens from the Middle East and northern Africa) continues, and it may be spreading soon to Germany, as citizens are tired of the high cost of fuels, which raises their cost of living, and continues to go up up up.

It’d be interesting if just one a major left leaning outlet would note the utter hypocrisy of people taking fossil fueled trips to complain about fossil fuels and demand more and more taxation on them.

Read: United Nations Wants “Unprecedented And Urgent Action” On ‘Climate Change’ »

Posted in Global Warming, UN | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Vox: You Know The Violence At The Border Is Trump’s Fault, Right?

By William Teach November 28, 2018 – 7:58 am

See, if Trump hadn’t blocked all these mostly male age 45 and under looking for work and not seeking asylum women and children from being allowed entry into the U.S. there wouldn’t be any violence at the border, per Voxsplainer Dara Lind

The US has made migrants at the border wait months to apply for asylum. Now the dam is breaking.
By limiting the number of asylum-seekers allowed to come legally, Trump made his own immigration crisis.

The center of the American asylum crisis is the El Chaparral plaza in Tijuana, which sits at the foot of the western pedestrian bridge to enter the US at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in California.

On Sunday, members of the migrant “caravan,” after a week of waiting in makeshift Tijuana shelters under poor conditions, marched up to the US side of the border to demand that the US admit them to seek asylum.

At the plaza at El Chaparral, Mexican federal police in riot formation blocked the marchers from going any farther toward the bridge. Then the march descended into chaos. Hundreds of marchers evaded and scuffled with Mexican police in an attempt to cross the border en masse. Some of the marchers threw rocks at Border Patrol agents. Agents fired off volleys of tear gas at the crowd, which included families and children.

It was nearly inevitable that tensions at the border would boil over, and that they would do so at El Chaparral. For months, it has been the unofficial “waiting room” of the United States.

At San Ysidro and many of the other official crossings that line the US-Mexico border, families who have traveled thousands of miles, fleeing poverty and violence to seek asylum in the United States, have been stopped outside ports of entry before they can set foot on US soil and trigger their legal asylum rights.

Before 2016, and in some cases as recently as six months ago, they would have had no problem and no delay. But for the last several months, the Trump administration has made a practice of limiting the number of asylum seekers allowed to enter the US each day — a policy it calls “metering.” It’s the counterpart of the Trump administration’s months-long crackdown on asylum seekers entering the US illegally — telling those who do try to come legally that there’s no room for them, and ordering them to wait.

See? It is All Trump’s Fault. If only he had spent the primaries and general election saying he would be tough on illegal immigration. If only he had spent all that time saying he wanted a full physical barrier across the US-Mexico border. If only he had said the same after he was elected. If only he had cracked down on those unlawfully present in the U.S. If only he had said months and months ago and repeated it ad nauseum for the migrant caravans to not come.

None of these migrants were invited. Most are men. Mexico offered them asylum…and shelter, medical attention, schooling, and jobs. We have no idea how many are criminals. If they want asylum, they can make the claim at a port of entry, and, if approved, they’ll be allowed to enter. But most do not want asylum. But, you know that in Liberal World everything is Trump’s Fault.

Oh, and

Read: Vox: You Know The Violence At The Border Is Trump’s Fault, Right? »

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Young Canadians Launch ‘Climate Change’ Suit To Force Government To Do Something

By William Teach November 27, 2018 – 4:01 pm

Do they have any idea that the money will be coming out of their own pockets?

Quebec environmentalists launch climate change lawsuit against Ottawa

A group of young Quebecers is going to court claiming their fundamental rights have been violated as a result of federal government inaction on climate change.

The group Environnement Jeunesse announced today it is seeking authorization of a class action lawsuit against Ottawa on behalf of all Quebecers aged 35 and under.

The people behind the action say their generation will suffer the worst effects of climate change, depriving them of their right to a healthy environment.

A lawyer for the group says the Canadian government’s behaviour infringes on rights protected by the provincial and federal charters of rights.

They will seek $100 per person and ask that instead of individual cheques, the total go towards funding measures to slow down climate change.

It might be easier to simply ask all Canadians under the age of 36 to pony up $100 each and see who wants to put their money where their mouths are. Because, if they win the suit, the money is coming straight out of their own pockets. Do they think the government magically makes money?

Interestingly, these same youths will be attending the upcoming COP24 in Poland. Will they be walking to the ocean, taking a sailing boat, then walking or biking to the conference? Or taking a long fossil fueled flight?

This is no grassroots organization. It is a big, well organized and well funded group that’s been around since 1979.

Read: Young Canadians Launch ‘Climate Change’ Suit To Force Government To Do Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach November 27, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a world drying out from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Vlad Tepes, with a post wondering if the yellow vest protesters are moving to Germany.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 12 Comments | Trackback URL
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