Cause... Effect?

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An Associated Press investigation that was reported out on earlier this week absolutely hammers the practice of corn-based ethanol (aka the worst alternative energy idea ever) as fuel for being environmentally counterproductive and not the return on investment financially the those in Big Corn say it is.


How bad is it for Big Corn? Here’s the lese from the AP’s expose’:

The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.

Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore their names are Death, Destruction, Pestilence, and Famine.

Naaah. We made up that last part but couldn’t resist the similar apocalyptic yet myth-making prose of Grantland Rice.



So, consider our surprise then when the administration that is absolutely addicted to horrible alternative energy implementation ideas said that via the EPA, they were scaling back ethanol production mandates.


Also from the AP:

The Obama administration on Friday proposed to reduce the amount of ethanol in the nation's fuel supply for the first time, acknowledging that the biofuel law championed by both parties in 2007 is not working as well as expected.

While the proposal highlights the government's struggle to ramp up production of homegrown biofuel s that are cleaner-burning than gasoline, it is unlikely to mean much for consumers at the pump.

The change would reduce by almost 3 billion gallons the amounts of ethanol and other biofuels blended into gasoline in 2014 than the law requires.

The 2007 law tried to address global warming, reduce dependence on foreign oil and prop up the rural economy by requiring oil companies to blend billions of gallons of biofuels into their gasoline each year. But politicians who wrote the law didn't anticipate fuel economy to improve as much as it has in recent years, which reduced demand for gasoline.

How bad is it for Big Corn that this administration may be finally acknowledging reality? That reality being even without ethanol we have become increasingly less dependent upon foreign oil. (We need to find the link but a widely reported study has this country being energy independent by 2025. In case you were wondering, this is a good thing.)

Reality being that many oil and natural gas reserves we are now tapping into in the Dakotas, western Pennsylvania and upstate New York are in the very rural areas ethanol purports to help. Reality being that, prima facie, burning food to run your Prius makes absolutely zero sense.


We applaud the administration for acknowledging these realities that we have been hammering away on for years.

Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.






More news from the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin debacle down in Florida:

On Friday George Zimmerman Sues NBC Over Edited 911 Tape Report was a top story. Here is the recap: (TMZ) Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman has filed a lawsuit against NBC over the way it edited his 911 call -- placed moments before Martin was shot -- claiming the network falsely made Zimmerman look like a "hostile racist."
You'll recall, NBC launched an internal investigation over the tape after it aired the edited recording -- which made it sound like Zimmerman immediately told police that Martin was black, without being prompted.

In actuality, the full 911 tape reveals Zimmerman only referred to Martin as "black" when responding to a question from the dispatcher about Trayvon's race.

Zimmerman accuses NBC of creating a "false and defamatory misimpression using the oldest form of yellow journalism: manipulating Zimmerman's own words, splicing together disparate parts of the recording to create the illusion of statements that Zimmerman never actually made."

Two things: 1) We look forward to George Zimmerman sitting on a small mountain of NBC's cash when all is said and done and 2) this is just a gentle reminder of how corrupt and degenerate this country's media has become.







Ugh... We're forced to blog about this guy:

From the Washington Times:

The White House deleted a petition Friday on its web site demanding that President Obama rescind an invitation to “Gangnam style” rapper Psy to sing at a Christmas concert in Washington, due to the performer’s anti-American rants.

The petition was signed by about 500 people who object to the singer’s scheduled performance, which Mr. Obama is to attend. But the White House said it took down the petition because it violated the terms of participation on the administration’s “We the People” web site.

Psy, a 34-year-old South Korean performer whose “Gangnam style” video is the most-watched of all time, apologized Friday for making obscene comments about U.S. troops at a protest concert in 2004 in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He reportedly sang:

“Kill those f–ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives.”
“Kill those f–ing Yankees who ordered them to torture.”

“Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers.”

“Kill them all slowly and painfully.”

In his apology, the rap star said, “As a proud South Korean who was educated in the United States and lived there for a very significant part of my life, I understand the sacrifices American servicemen and women have made to protect freedom and democracy in my country and around the world.”

“The song in question — from eight years ago — was part of a deeply emotional reaction to the war in Iraq and the killing of two innocent Korean civilians that was part of the overall antiwar sentiment shared by others around the world at that time,” he said in a statement. “While I’m grateful for the freedom to express one’s self, I’ve learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I’m deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted. I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused anyone by those words.”

(italics, ours)


8 years ago... Remember? That was back when dissent was patriotic. Besides, we've moved way beyond all that torture stuff. We won't be holding our breath, however, for a PSY rap-rant on indefinite detentions and/or drone strike assassinations to be performed at this concert.







ObamaCare: improving the financial health of lobbyists one congressional staffer at a time.

Liz Fowler worked for Democratic Senator Max Baucus in the first half of last decade, and so it wasn’t surprising when she cashed out to run the lobbying shop at Wellpoint, the nation’s largest private insurer.

After all, that’s what Max Baucus staffers do. They become high-paid lobbyists for powerful companies dependent on government. Former Baucus chief of staff David Castagnetti is now a lobbyist partner at Mehlman, Vogel, Catagnetti. Successor Jeff Forbes is a partner at Cauthen, Forbes, and Williams. Baucus’s chief trade counsel Scott Parven doesn’t have a lobbying firm named after him, because he sold his firm to K Street giant Akin Gump. There are literally dozens of others.

It also wasn’t surprising when Baucus hired her back to help write Obamacare. After all, Baucus is famously close with K Street and industry lobbyists.

Given Baucus’s central role in drafting Obamacare, and lobbyists’ access to Baucus, it wasn’t surprising either when the bill won the backing of the biggest health-industry lobbies in the country — Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the American Medical Association, and the American Hospital Association.

The hand-in-hand public-private corporatism so derided during the Bush years has re-branded itself to become the single greatest feature of the Obama administration. Congratulations on this feat that was accomplished in no small part by the silence if not advocacy of the government/media/entertainment complex.






Not all calls for genocide are created or viewed equally:

Is promoting genocide a human-rights violation? You might think that's an easy question. But it isn't at Human Rights Watch, where a bitter debate is raging over how to describe Iran's calls for the destruction of Israel. The infighting reveals a peculiar standard regarding dictatorships and human rights and especially the Jewish state.

Human Rights Watch is the George Soros-funded operation that has outsize influence in governments, newsrooms and classrooms world-wide. Some at the nonprofit want to denounce Iran's regime for inciting genocide. "Sitting still while Iran claims a 'justification to kill all Jews and annihilate Israel is a position unworthy of our great organization," Sid Sheinberg, the group's vice chairman, wrote to colleagues in a recent email.

But Executive Director Kenneth Roth, who runs the nonprofit, strenuously disagrees.

Asked in 2010 about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Israel "must be wiped off the map," Mr. Roth suggested that the Iranian president has been misunderstood. "There was a real question as to whether he actually said that," Mr. Roth told The New Republic, because the Persian language lacks an idiom for wiping off the map. Then again, Mr. Ahmadinejad's own English-language website translated his words that way, and the main alternative translation—"eliminated from the pages of history"—is no more benign. Nor is Mr. Ahmadinejad an outlier in the regime. Iran's top military officer declared earlier this year that "the Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel."

A Clintonian torturing of the English language to be sure when we all know the official party line of Iran and about every other bad actor over there in that neck of the woods.





Turns out Mitt Romney was spot-on regarding Benghazi. So explain to us again why it is he is taking so much grief for saying Obama won the election because he promised free stuff.

The city of Detroit faces a major financial crisis and one member of city council thinks President Barack Obama should step in and help.

City Council member JoAnn Watson said Tuesday the citizens support of Obama in last month's election was enough reason for the president to bailout the struggling the city. (Click the video player to listen)

"Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo and you ought to exercise leadership on that," said Watson. "Of course, not just that, but why not?"

Nearly 75 percent of Wayne County voters pulled the lever for Obama in November.

"After the election of Jimmy Carter, the honorable Coleman Alexander Young, he went to Washington, D.C. He came home with some bacon," said Watson. "That's what you do."

Young served as Detroit's mayor for 20 years and served as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1977 to 1981.

We're sorry. Not free per se, rather quid pro quo meaning Detroit and Wayne County vote for Obama and the rest of us pay for another four years.

Related: Is there a correlation between the percentage of votes going to Obama in a particular city/county and that city/county's fiscal dysfunctionality?








And finally...

You may be shocked to learn that some coastal types that appear on MSNBC on a regular basis don't think you are paying enough at the pump and would like to see that price go higher to make alternative energy sources more competitive.

It's telling that they no longer speak of making wind and solar more competitive by improving the technology of wind and solar rather making wind and solar more competitive by taxing oil and natural gas, i.e. sticking it to the consumer, you, in order to fulfill their half-witted, agenda-driven energy fantasies.




OK, gang, that's it for today. We'll see you all tomorrow.

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Photo image of the day

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This was the scene last week on Harbor Dr. here in San Diego and it was a symbol of the efficacy of green/alternative energy in its current state.


(please click to enlarge... the camera-in-phone did not cooperate on the first take)

This is a wind turbine blade on Harbor Drive here in San Diego. Transported on a big ol' flat bed towed by a big ol' diesel and escorted by a couple of chase vehicles. They do have a tendency to tie-up things on Harbor as they are matriculating their way down the street. Problem is - it's heading the wrong way. Instead of heading out to the desert or east county where the bird-wacking turbine farms are, it's heading back towards the 10th St. terminal from whence it came. Whatever the problem is, it's a pretty costly mistake. Not that the wind and solar industries probably care - they're the chosen ones. Check out the subsidies granted to these two sectors as compared to other engergy sectors:

Not too shabby, huh? Maybe when the government decides to stop conferring 1% status on not-yet-market-ready technologies and stops depending upon places like China with their deplorable environmental policies for the lithium needed for wind and solar, perhaps we can avoid scenes like the above.


Time's short... we'll have an update later.

Unfortunately, for the rest of us, energy policy is not a take-home test

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Recall Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week, walking back his 2008 remarks concerning desiring to see gas prices at European levels (ostensibly to push people into electric cars) and recall also our skepticism as even the prospects of getting walloped in polling questions related to energy policy, Chu cannot betray his statist heart and worshipfulness at the altar of green energy.

It would appear we were right as in testimony before Congress on Tuesday, Chu gave himself quite high marks when it came to gas prices.

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Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House panel Tuesday that he’d give himself top marks when asked to grade his policies’ effects on energy prices. Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked President Obama’s top energy official if he’d grade himself with an “A minus” on “controlling the cost of gasoline at the pump.”

Chu responded by saying he’d give himself a better grade than that.

“The tools we have at our disposal are limited, but I would I say I would give myself a little higher in that since I became Secretary of Energy, I’ve been doing everything I can to get long-term solutions,” Chu said.

Chu would give himself the top grade on gas prices despite that fact that the average price for a gallon of gas just hit $3.87 – the highest ever recorded in the month of March, according to ABC News.

Long term solutions, huh? We will assume then that long-term solutions necessarily entail dumping billions of dollars of tax-payer money into the failing and flailing green energy schemes of your buddies

Gas prices stay where they are and Mr. Chu may not be around to do everything he can to promote an agenda get long-term solutions.

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Clean, articulate, good-looking African-American makes the case for the Keystone XL pipeline* (UPDATED)

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(please scroll down for update)

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A nice little shot across the bow that has been getting fairly heavy rotation on CBS during NCAA tournament games.




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Here's another clean, articulate, good-looking African-American back in 2008 making the case for why you should be paying for more at the pump:
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0:35 - "Nothing's for free." Except for condoms and the pill.

1:43 - Energy efficiency means... changing our light bulbs?

2:15 - Subsidizing an individual filling up their Suburban is indeed a bad idea. Just as bad of an idea as subsidizing student loans, other people's sex lives and most relevantly, tens of billions of dollars to subsidize the not-yet-ready-for-market green technology of your cronies.


We're paying higher prices at the pump, alright - making those sacrifices, however, is not bringing us any closer to true energy independence.





* For those of you that had forgot.

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(UPDATE #1): We felt B-Daddy's feedback was worth liberating from the comment section:

This is the most anti-science administration ever. They think that their secular religion trumps the technology of energy production, to whit, that they can declare that there are energy sources of greater power density than liquid hydrocarbons on a mass and volume basis. There are not, and no amount of declaring otherwise will make it so. If they were honest, they would encourage the production of natural gas, because its carbon footprint per btu and mass is less than other sources of energy. That they do not is further evidence of their hypocrisy.

He's exactly right. If you are talking total cradle-to-grave carbon footprint with respect to energy output, oil is the greenest thing going. To use the terminology of Obama's predecessor, we need to ween ourselves off our addiction to green technology... well, at least the political class needs to ween itself off its addiction to pouring billions and billions of tax-payer dollars into green energy schemes that can't pay for themselves. Time to take off the training wheels!

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Great moments in the history of crony capitalism

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Change

Sanjay Wagle was a venture capitalist and Barack Obama fundraiser in 2008, rallying support through a group he headed known as Clean Tech for Obama.

Shortly after Obama’s election, he left his California firm to join the Energy Department, just as the administration embarked on a massive program to stimulate the economy with federal investments in clean-technology firms.


Following an enduring Washington tradition, Wagle shifted from the private sector, where his firm hoped to profit from federal investments, to an insider’s seat in the administration’s $80 billion clean-energy investment program.

He was one of several players in venture capital, which was providing financial backing to start-up clean-tech companies, who moved into the Energy Department at a time when the agency was seeking outside expertise in the field. At the same time, their industry had a huge stake in decisions about which companies would receive government loans, grants and support.

During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

Picking winners and losers in any particular industry is not the business that a presidential administration should be in. But it's particularly galling when that administration keeps picking the losers... after they were told by third-party auditors and investigators that they were losers as in the case of Solyndra, the DOE's $535 million black hole.





Not coincidentally, Fred Upton (R-MI), who has been wishing to speak with White House officials knee-deep in the DOE's clean energy loan program, is running out of patience with the White House's recalcitrance.

Staffers who once worked for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel may have to answer questions about their involvement in a botched solar energy deal.

Congressional Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are putting together subpoenas for five White House aides who allegedly worked to pour more than $500 million in federal loans guarantees into Solyndra, a California solar power company that has since gone defunct. It filed for bankruptcy last year despite the loan support.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to meet on Friday to issue subpoenas for five executive branch employees that they say were involved in the Department of Energy loan given to Solyndra. This will be the third subpoena the committee has considered to obtain information or testimony regarding the Solyndra case.

The staffers being targeted include Kevin Carroll, Kelly Colyar and Fouad Saad of the Office of Management and Budget, Heather Zichal, a White House aide who worked on energy and Aditya Kumar, who worked for Rahm Emanuel in the West Wing and whose name appears in emails on the subject of Solyndra.

It has been one year since the committee started investigating the Solyndra meltdown and to date, the White House has yet to comply with the committee's desire for a sit down.

This must be more of that transparency we've been hearing so much about.

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Cartoon of the day

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Reminds us of that time some 15-20 years ago when a friend told us that any particular domestic drilling project would take 15-20 years to bring on line.

This cartoon is dedictated to him and similarly those who have desired to see us dependent on unfriendly oil.

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Thanks for your continued support of geo-political instability, state-sponsored terrorism and high energy prices.

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Headline of the day

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Nooooo.... Say it ain't so!


From the Washington Post:



Cheap natural gas jumbles energy markets, stirs fears it could inhibit renewables

For the past three years, promoters of shale gas and environmentalists opposed to coal-fired power plants have hailed the sudden abundance of U.S. natural gas as a bridge to a renewable-energy future.

But natural gas has become so cheap that many energy experts and environmentalists now wonder whether it will turn into a long, bumpy detour.

U.S. natural gas prices, which hit more than $13 per thousand cubic feet in 2008, have tumbled to about $2.50 per thousand cubic feet. Rapidly rising production of shale gas and a warm winter have created a glut and pushed supplies in storage to 21 percent above the average of the past five years.

That has been good news for consumers, whose gas and electric bills have declined slightly. And it is a hopeful sign for the chemical industry, which uses gas as a raw material, and the makers of electric vehicles. President Obama is promoting the use of natural gas in trucks. And since burning natural gas emits half the greenhouse gases of burning coal, it could cut the quantity of climate-changing emissions.

But cheap gas has also thrown energy markets into turmoil. It is impossible for almost any other source of electric power to compete, especially coal and nuclear. By trimming fuel bills, cheap gas has reduced incentives for energy conservation and efficiency. And it has left solar and wind, despite their own falling costs, heavily dependent on government mandates in California and roughly 30 other states, including Maryland.

This is the long-range encouraging good news that, no pun intended, is bubbling beneath the surface of our energy development sector: we keep finding more and more cheap*, dependable, "friendly" and in the case of natural gas, clean energy sources.

Fortunately, most of the recent natural gas finds in this country have been on private land out of the jurisdiction of the feds who would have the power to ban drilling otherwise.

And as the title of the article and the body of the text suggests, this has Big Green totally freaked out. You see, it's not about a cheap and reliable energy source that gets cleaner and cleaner as the technology employed to extract the energy from that source improves, it's about an agenda. An agenda that must rely upon tax-payer subsidization as it is not yet market-ready and is not nearly as clean as Big Green would have you believe.


Our fantasy is that we fully tap these resources that would help spur a resurgent economy generating the private capital for the research and development of truly clean renewable energy that does not rely on being propped up on the backs of U.S. tax payers. We don't see how terribly radical that is. Sounds like common sense.



* Cheap = green, by the way.

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OWS updates (UPDATED)

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(please scroll down for update)

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Via Sarah at Lipstick Underground:

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Due to family being in town, blogging has been light and may remain so for just a while. Hopefully, we'll be swinging for the fences by Monday morning.

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(UPDATE #1):

Radical Chic: The beautiful people lend a helpful hand.

“Whatever the reasons, we’re all in the same room, and that’s pretty powerful, right? We’re participating in a conscientious … participation.”

Penn Badgley, an actor on the hit series “Gossip Girl,” has a face too mathematically perfect to be truly interesting, but at this celebrity consciousness-raising gig for Occupy Wall Street, he looks genuinely excited. He bounds onto the stage, grabs the microphone and yells “mic check!” Invited guests from the Occupy movement wince at this earnest misunderstanding of the people’s mic and its reworking of the relationship between society and spectacle in an age where politics takes place mostly on television.

In the early days of Zuccotti Park, the people’s mic was developed as a solution to the police ban on electric amplification. The order ended up being a gift to the movement, as voices were carried by chanting a speaker’s words back to them — which kept remarks pithy and aware of the audience.

In the chic Bowery Hotel, the formula isn’t quite working.

These actors, models, artists, publicity flunkies and those young and well-dressed enough to make their way past the bouncers have spent most of their professional lives learning how to half-listen until it’s their turn to half-speak. “My boss just told me to show up,” says one of the P.R. girls. It’s as good a reason as any to learn about a new people’s movement.

Actual microphones. Bowery Hotel. Models. Invited guests. Getting more and more grass-rootsy by the day.

Yet another Dept. of Energy Agriculture loan FAIL

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Stacking up like cord wood (cellulose)

AgSouth Farm Credit, the bank that loaned Range Fuels $80 million to launch its Soperton ethanol plant, is foreclosing on the plant.

That leaves taxpayers on the hook for the $64 million portion of the loan that was guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

AgSouth advertised the foreclosure sale of the plant in Thursday’s Soperton News.

Repeated phone calls to Range Fuels over several days were not returned. The company’s website disappeared in October.

Justin DeJong, a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, said in a statement Thursday night: “We are disappointed that this company did not succeed, and we will be working on behalf of the American people to protect the federal government’s interest in the loan.”

In its statement, the Department of Agriculture said it had worked with AgSouth “on options to revive operations, but on October 27th notified the lender that it was moving forward with liquidation, because liquidation is seen as the best way to preserve U.S. assets and reclaim funding.” The department said it anticipates that there are “a number of companies” that could be interested in the site.

That $80 million is on top of $76 million given to the company back in 2007 which claimed it could produce millions of gallons of ethanol from wood chips.




From Robert Bryce:

There’s ample reason for outrage here. Range had claimed it could make ethanol at efficiencies far greater than those being achieved by corn-based ethanol producers. Tad Patzek, chair of the petroleum and geosystems engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin and a veteran critic of the biofuel craze, told me that Range’s failure “was easily predictable based on the thermodynamic inefficiencies of the refineries. But no one in the Department of Energy paid any attention.”

Allow us to translate: It took more energy to produce the ethanol than that same ethanol would yield.



More from Bryce:

Instead, federal bureaucrats were once again gulled by extravagant claims from people like Khosla and a cadre of high-profile national-security types, who continue to claim that ethanol and other biofuels will somehow save America from the evils of foreign oil. And the federal bureaucrats were convinced even though a small dose of sixth-grade math would have shown that large-scale development of wood-based biofuels was little more than a pipe dream.

We're pressed for time right now but we are going to revisit this issue later on as time permits and as related to some breaking news yesterday.

We know you are waiting for the other shoe to drop but we have yet to locate any Obama crony/donor/bundler in this particular case. Shocking, we know.

Suffice to say, however, yet another misguided plunge wasting tens of millions of tax-payer dollars into a not-yet-ready-for-prime-time alternative energy technology.

More great moments in the history of crony capitalism

We suppose the good news here is that potentially only $43 million will be lost as opposed to the over $500 million that was sunk into the doomed-to-failure Solyndra outfit here in California.

Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, just a year after the energy storage company received a $43 million loan guarantee from a controversial Department of Energy program.

The bankruptcy comes about two months after Solyndra -- a solar panel maker with a $535 million loan guarantee -- also filed for Chapter 11, creating a political embarrassment for the administration of President Barack Obama, which has championed the loans as a way to create "green energy" jobs.

Beacon Power drew down $39 million of its government-guaranteed loan to fund a portion of a $69 million, 20-megawatt flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York.

There are several key differences between the two loans, an Energy Department spokesman said on Sunday, noting the Beacon plant continues to operate, unlike Solyndra, which shut down shortly before filing for bankruptcy.

The Energy Department also had agreed to restructure Solyndra's debt in a last-ditch effort to keep the company alive, a deal which put taxpayers behind $75 million in private investment. But for the Beacon project, the government loan is the first debt the company must pay, the spokesman said.

(italics, ours)

It's comforting to know that in running this green jobs picking winners and losers program, the Dept. of Energy is becoming a little more PR-savvy in recognizing that it's important that the tax-payer recoup at least some of their "investment".


Oh, and about that crony capitalism thing, just how was it that Beacon Power secured that loan?

Beacon is using the money to develop a 20 MW regulation plant at a site in Stephenton, NY. The site will use several 1 MW flywheels to store energy as well as electrical and technological equipment.

Company spokesman Gene Hunt said Beacon didn’t have financial advisors per se, just its outside law firm of Edwards, Angell, Palmer & Dodge. “We also used our in-house expertise and we have good relationships with our congressional members.”

Per se!


For those of you scoring at home: the afore-linked Solyndra, SunPower, Fisker, Lightsquared and now Beacon Power.

Stacking up like cord wood.


H/T: Hot Air

Video clip of the day

If we're not going to drill for it, why not let the "nice" people of this planet do it. And who's nicer than Canadians?

Kudos to EthicalOil.org. In the space of 30 seconds, the non-profit group has managed to enrage an entire kingdom, put an army of lawyers to work, and make the front page of newspapers across Canada. All thanks to a television ad which does nothing but state a set of facts, and posit a choice between two products, one produced “ethically” and the other “unethically”.
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The answer is that the concept of ethical oil poses a huge dilemma for the left, because it exposes a truth they would prefer to ignore. The reality is that the oil they love to hate makes modern civilization possible. The world is not going to end its dependence on fossil fuels any time soon, indeed, until other forms of energy are price-competitive. This will only happen when oil becomes too expensive, either due to scarcity or the invention of a cheaper (read: non-subsidized) form of alternative energy.

Until that happens, the ethical thing to do is not to eschew all fossil fuels, but to make choices between their sources, just as we have done with other products. To wit: Conflict diamonds are no longer cool. Running shoes made with child labour have become verboten. An international boycott of South African products helped bring the apartheid regime to its knees. All of these goods were boycotted based on human rights concerns – just like oil from Saudi Arabia should be.

The Saudis have made it official to the government of Canada that they're not hip to being called out for their dismal human rights record. Given the huge economic stake our neighbors have in what's setting right beneath their feet vs. their somewhat squishy free speech rights protections, it will be interesting to see what happens.

But why this response from the Saudis? What do they have to worry about? Perhaps they see the handwriting on the wall. Maybe they see what an utter waste the West's massive subsidization of green energy has been before even we wake up to that realization and are making a pre-emptive strike.

Come 2012, we may see a change in leadership in this country that re-prioritizes the energy agenda to where we are going after known quantities (yes, drilling) that will in turn create jobs and wealth that will, in turn, privately subsidize the development of green energy to be used on a larger scale at a later date as its maturity will determine that its competitive in the free market.

Another great moment in the histroy of crony capitalism (An update)

While the Feds and Congressional committees will be asking the hard questions of just who it was in the administration that signed off on those loans to Solyndra, why don't we just go to the good people of Solyndra themselves as they appear confident as to who gave the go-ahead for that $535 million loan guarantee at below market interest rates.

From Solyndra's website:

Fremont, CA, March 20, 2009 – Solyndra, Inc. announced today that it is the first company to receive an offer for a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Solyndra, a Fremont, California-based manufacturer of innovative cylindrical photovoltaic systems, will use the proceeds of a $535 million loan from the U.S. Treasury’s Federal Financing Bank to expand its solar panel manufacturing capacity in California.

“The leadership and actions of President Barack Obama, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and the U.S. Congress were instrumental in concluding this offer for a loan guarantee,” said Solyndra CEO and founder, Dr. Chris Gronet. “The DOE Loan Guarantee Program funding will enable Solyndra to achieve the economies of scale needed to deliver solar electricity at prices that are competitive with utility rates. This expansion is really about creating new jobs while meaningfully impacting global warming.”

(italics, ours)

This was still on their website as of this A.M. (H/T: The Corner)



And when you lose Jon Stewart...

Great moments in the history of crony capitalism (an update)

A follow-up to the politically-connected solar firm, Solyndra, that received over $500 million in loan guarantees at near-zero interest rates (far below other similar projects that received tax-payer support) and which went bankrupt and which also had their offices raided by the FBI last week. We blogged about this initially, here.

From the Washington Times Washington Post:

The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

The August 2009 e-mails, released to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week),” one official wrote. That Aug. 31, 2009, message, written by a senior OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, concluded, “We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews.”

White House officials said Tuesday that no one in the administration tried to influence the OMB decision on the loan. They stressed that the e-mails show only that the administration had a “quite active interest” in the timing of OMB’s decision.

Solyndra was far from being a solid bet. From our original post:

But records show the advantageous terms came in spite of red flags about the risks of investing in Solyndra. In 2008, as the loan agreement was moving forward, an outside rating agency gave the deal with a B+ grade, a less than optimum score, according to records obtained by iWatch and ABC under the Freedom of Information Act. That same year, the records show, Dun & Bradstreet assigned the company's credit appraisal as "fair."

Analysts say there were warning signs about the deal from the start, when Obama's Department of Energy pitched its first energy loan guarantee as a symbol of the expanding green tech movement. Yet the administration repeatedly took steps that would seem to benefit Solyndra: the Department of Energy announced its loan commitment before all due diligence was completed -- later raising concerns from auditors; the president made a personal visit to tout the company's prospects; and the department agreed to grant Solyndra fast-track approval.

And this:

Questions have long persisted about why Obama chose Solyndra to be the first green energy company to benefit from the federal loans program. In May, iWatch and ABC reported that the Energy Department announced its commitment to back Solyndra without first receiving full marketing and legal reviews. That shortcut drew criticism from government auditors, who accused DOE of favoring some applicants, like Solyndra, over others.

And Obama's Office of Budget and Management viewed the deal as riskier to taxpayers than DOE had, iWatch found.

And as for that "active interest", that just might be George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire and 2008 Obama campaign bundler who owned 39% of Solyndra's parent company.

But apparently this isn't at all late-breaking news:

The House (Energy and Commerce) committee has been investigating Solyndra’s dealings with the Energy Department for six months. In July , subcommittee members subpoenaed White House documents related to the guarantee.

Questions about the selection process were first raised in a July 2010 audit by the Government Accountability Office. It concluded that the Energy Department “lacked appropriate tools for assessing the progress” of the loan program and that the department treated applicants inconsistently, “favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of that panel’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, said last week that the FBI raid confirmed their belief that the “darling” of Obama’s green-jobs program was a “bad bet” from the beginning.

“Solyndra was the hallmark of the President’s green jobs program and widely promoted by the administration as a stimulus success story, right up until its bankruptcy and FBI raid,” Upton and Stearns said in a statement on Tuesday. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) — Democrats on the committee who had once defended the choice of Solyndra — last week also questioned whether they had been misled. In a letter, they wrote that Solyndra chief executive Brian Harrison “did not convey to us the perilous condition of the company, and the Committee should know why. ”

Over a half-billion dollars of tax-payer money to an Obama donor only to prove that solar energy just isn't yet competitive on the open market is an expensive way to learn a lesson in the free market let alone that of political ethics.

Quickies

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our attention this past week or so.





A San Diego Chargers to Los Angeles update:

Forbes magazine figures the Chargers would be worth at least $200 million more upon moving to Los Angeles. If that’s all it is, though, it probably doesn’t happen.

Unless that number is comically conservative, there would not appear to be enough financial incentive for Dean Spanos to justify an exit fee, a relocation fee and a new partner/landlord with a significant stake in his football franchise.

Trouble is, that projected $200 million bump may well be comically conservative. There may be too much easy money to be made in the nation’s No. 2 market for Team Spanos to continue to seek stadium traction in San Diego after nearly a decade of inertia.

Also, would the Spanos family accept 60% vs. full ownership of the team selling 40% to AEG, the stadium developers? With family patriarch, Alex Spanos in old age and failing health, the factor that no one seems to be talking about is the Spanos' willingness to sell Alex's 36% share to avoid the death tax. As we originally reported, this deal remains too good to not happen.





Would SDG&E's Sunrise Powerlink, the massive transmission line under construction in East County, have prevented Thurday's county-wide blackout here in San Diego?

A resounding maybe.

So, the media covered the President's gaffe regarding Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party during his jobs speech last Thursday night? Oh, you better believe they covered it.

Also, the same media outlets that fact-checked a similar gaffe made by Mike Huckabee back in 2008 can't be bothered to do the same due diligence this time around.





Here's B-Daddy with some thoughts on the President's jobs speech:

•Where's the bill? The President, as usual, did no heavy lifting. He demanded that Congress take action, but where is the bill he proposes? Legislation usually requires, well, legislation, as in legal prose.

•Where's the money?

•Roads and bridges? Really? This worked so well in the first stimulus package. Good luck getting the projects past the increasingly zealous EPA.

•Congress gets the blame for the lack of jobs? Whose party decided that healthcare was more important for the first two years of the administration. Nice tone. Way to encourage Republicans to work with you. Bottom line this was a campaign speech. Now we know Obama's campaign game plan, blame the Republicans.

Read more at the link.

Do you know what we found lacking in the jobs speech? It's pretty basic stuff. We do it quite well as a matter of fact. And as opposed to the green jobs mirage, it actually does provide very well-paying jobs and the best part of it may be that we keep finding more and more of it.

Of course, we're talking about drilling for oil and natural gas. The stuff is there, so let's go get it!



San Diego mayoral candidate and tea party fave, Carl DeMaio hitching his candidacy to public employee pension benefit reform?

The petition to do just that is still about 30,000 signatures short of qualifying for the June 2012 ballot and the deadline is October 14.

The two other Republicans in the race, Nathan Fletcher and Bonnie Dumanis have come onbard favoring the ballot initiative (Democrat and union hack, Bob Filner is opposed) but belatedly so. This has been DeMaio's baby from the get go, so, yeah, his bid for the mayor's office largely depends upon getting this on the ballot and ultimately succeeding.



Shane Atwell on the Great San Diego Black-out:

Every time there's an outbreak of salmonella or even speculation of some minor crisis in an unregulated market, the statists come out of the woodwork to discuss 'market failure' and the need for more regulations. But when a heavily regulated industry fails--an industry who's regulations were supposed to make it cheaper, more efficient and safer--those statists are silent.

Our own thoughts and observations, here.


And finally...

...The Cardiff Kook, the much-derided and much made-over surfing statue up the coast from us a few miles gets its 9-11/FDNY make-over.

Great moments in the history of crony capitalism (UPDATED)

please scroll down for update...



Entrance observation: Over $500 million in loan gurantees at near-zero interest rates and they still couldn't make it work tells you pretty much all you need to know about the current competitiveness of green technology.

A politically connected solar company that pocketed a half billion dollar government loan, only to shut its doors, fire workers and file for bankruptcy, benefited from a series of breaks in securing the federal funds -- including an interest rate lower than other green energy projects, iWatch News and ABC News found.

The $535 million loan to Solyndra Inc., issued by the U.S. Department of Treasury's Federal Financing Bank, included a quarterly interest rate of 1.025 percent, the government bank reported in July. Of 18 Energy Department loans cited in the bank's report, Solyndra's rate was lowest. Eight other Energy Department projects, each also backed by the Federal Financing Bank, came with rates three or four times higher, the report shows.

That treatment is in keeping with the history of the loan to the California solar panel maker, an arrangement inked in September 2009 with great fanfare -- and touted, not long after, during a factory visit from the president. Monthly government bank reports filed since then reveal Solyndra's rate as the lowest for any energy-related project in nearly every report; in every case its rate was well below that of most energy projects, which ranged from cutting-edge electric car makers to wind and solar ventures.

The Department of Energy and Solyndra officials begged to differ saying the loan from the bank and its terms were based upon a formula and hard data such as when the loan was granted and the length of the repayment period. That would appear to be at odds, however, with evidence that Solyndra may not have been such a solid bet.

But records show the advantageous terms came in spite of red flags about the risks of investing in Solyndra. In 2008, as the loan agreement was moving forward, an outside rating agency gave the deal with a B+ grade, a less than optimum score, according to records obtained by iWatch and ABC under the Freedom of Information Act. That same year, the records show, Dun & Bradstreet assigned the company's credit appraisal as "fair."

Analysts say there were warning signs about the deal from the start, when Obama's Department of Energy pitched its first energy loan guarantee as a symbol of the expanding green tech movement. Yet the administration repeatedly took steps that would seem to benefit Solyndra: the Department of Energy announced its loan commitment before all due diligence was completed -- later raising concerns from auditors; the president made a personal visit to tout the company's prospects; and the department agreed to grant Solyndra fast-track approval.

And about that Federal Financing Bank?

The Federal Financing Bank, created by Congress in 1973 as a part of Treasury to reduce the cost of borrowing, referred questions about the Solyndra loan to Treasury. "We don't talk to journalists," a Bank employee told iWatch last week.

Transparency!

And now the money shot you've all been waiting for:

Solyndra's most prolific financial backer is George Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil billionaire who was a bundler of campaign donations for Obama's 2008 race. Kaiser's Argonaut Ventures and its affiliates have been the single largest shareholder of Solyndra, according to SEC filings and other records. The company holds 39 percent of Solyndra's parent company, bankruptcy records filed Tuesday show.

Under terms of the bankruptcy filing, investors including Argonaut -- which led a $75 million round of financing for Solyndra earlier this year -- will stand in line before the federal government and other creditors.

"federal government" = "your tax dollars"

And dig this:

Questions have long persisted about why Obama chose Solyndra to be the first green energy company to benefit from the federal loans program. In May, iWatch and ABC reported that the Energy Department announced its commitment to back Solyndra without first receiving full marketing and legal reviews. That shortcut drew criticism from government auditors, who accused DOE of favoring some applicants, like Solyndra, over others.

And Obama's Office of Budget and Management viewed the deal as riskier to taxpayers than DOE had, iWatch found.

(italics, ours)


As would be expected, Kaiser is staying mum on this whole deal.

So, if you're scoring at home, you have over a half billion in federal loan guarantees largely up in smoke, 1,000 jobs neither created nor saved and most likely, a congressional investigation into an apparent sweetheart deal for a heavyweight Presidential donor.

Because of the lack of competitiveness of green technology in its current state, it remains the greatest example of the federal government picking winners and losers, though, unfortunately, we have yet to see any winners even as designated so by the federal government.



(UPDATE #1): Thank god for bridges, roads and choo-choo trains because we don't think the President will be talking a whole lot about green jobs tonight in his jobs speech.

FBI agents armed with search warrants descended Thursday morning on bankrupt solar company Solynrda.

The investigation comes after a request by the Department of Energy's inspector general, FBI spokesman Peter Lee told NBC Bay Area News.

Agents arrived at Solyndra at 7a.m. and were examining the factory. Solynrda has a skeleton crew of 100 workers on the scene, who are closing the factory down.

"It's been an interesting [two weeks]" says Solyndra spokesperson Dave Miller, referring to both the bankruptcy and the FBI raid. "I don't know what they're looking for...but I haven't seen them take anything."

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last week, shocking both workers and the Obama administration, which had given the startup $535 million in low interest loans.

The announcement was a devastating blow to Mr. Obama who is set to deliver a speech on job creation Thursday evening.

Congress has demanded a hearing into the matter. Wednesday the company was reported to be for sale.

There are no reports of any arrests at this time.

Solyndra officials made numerous visits -- 20 -- to the White House, according to logs and reporting by The Daily Caller.

Solyndra officials in the logs included chairman and founder Christian Gronet and board members Thomas Baruch and David Prend, according to the Caller.

OK, here's the part where we are going to sound totally paranoid: Wow. That didn't take long. Mere days after filing for bankruptcy the FBI comes swooping in. Really? We're all for quick action and everything but considering who the FBI ultimately answers to, we can't help but think this is all a little too good to be true. Totally paranoid, right?

H/T: W.C. Varones

The green jobs boondoggle

How are all those green jobs working out?

Even after fudging numbers and ignoring the huge subsidies, a liberal think tank reports that growth in the alternative-energy sector lags the rest of the economy.

Green jobs were supposed to be our salvation, both for the earth and for the economy, according to the Obama administration. White House policy based on this flawed premise led to offshore and onshore drilling bans and the locking-up of energy-rich lands while huge alternative energy subsidies (aka "investments") found their way into the stimulus and other legislation.

As happens when government tries to pick winners and losers, the government lost — no, we all lost. As has happened in countries such as Spain, this misallocation of resources has succeeded only in stalling our economy as unemployment and debt grow.

In Spain's case, it was found that for every "green" job created, 2.2 jobs were lost in the rest of the economy.

Along comes the Brookings Institution with a report touting the fact that nearly 2.7 million people brought home paychecks in 2010 working in the "clean economy." That's a 3.4% increase in "green jobs" since 2003, and it sounds terrific until you realize the economy as a whole grew at a 4.2% rate over the same period.

As the folks at HotAir.com duly note, Brookings got to its conclusions by including, for example, all mass transit workers regardless of the actual energy source. They also lump in people such as organic farmers and nuclear energy workers, though the greenies have never touted nuclear energy as "clean" or nuclear jobs as "green."

And let's not forget to factor into these job numbers the massive amounts of subsidies (i.e., your tax dollars) that are pumped into the green economy to further prop up these job numbers.

The article cites an Energy Department report which stated that the average subsidy per megawatt-hour for all energy was $1.65. However, for wind and solar that number jumps to $24.

And knowing what we have known and are continuing to find out about ethanol, solar and wind, do those even qualify as green jobs, anymore?

Oil and natural gas everywhere but nary a drop to be retrieved

An energy policy that could only be created in Washington: obstruct American producers and import from foreign countries.

We lack the political will and resolve to go after energy setting below our very feet but we're fine with letting China with its miserable environmental record effectively corner the market on rare earths and we're dandy with giving Brazil a $50 billion loan guarantee to drill off their coast.

Yep, only in Washington.

California's own Great Leap Forward?

Beware renewable energy sprawl.

In order for California to meet its mandated goal of generating one-third of its electricity from renewable resources, predominately wind turbines and solar panels, quite a bit of land and natural resources are going to be required in order to achieve that.

California's peak usage is 52,000 megawatts, so one-third of that is 17,000 MW. Let's assume for the sake of simplicity that wind and solar will split production of that 17,000 MW 50/50.

On the solar side, producing 8,500 MW of electricity will require 129 square miles of solar farms, an area more than five times as large as Manhattan. Good thing we've got such a big state, huh? We can park these farms out in the middle of nowhere (which is another problem in of itself which we will address later). Unfortunately, nowhere, like the Ivanpah farm out in the Eastern Mojave had its construction shut down out of concern for the federally-protected desert tortoise.


Wind energy is even worse: in order to produce that 8,500 MW, you would need the equivalent of 70 Manhattans, again, out in the middle of nowhere with the incumbent transmission (loss) problems. Also, wind turbines require about 200 tons of steel each, the production of which has its own sizeable carbon footprint. Contrast that with a natural gas turbine which weighs about 9 tons and there is a 200-1 difference in the the MW generated per ton of steel between the gas turbine and the wind turbine.

And all this time, we thought the green mantra was: Small is beautiful.


Then again, this may all prove to be a moot point since China sits on most of the rare earths required for wind and solar technology and we're supposed to run out of lithium by 2050 anyway.





When thinking of our head-long rush into green energy, we are reminded of China's Great Leap Forward and their head-long rush to become an industrial power. Starting in 1958, 90 million rural peasants were submitted to "backyard steel mills" but with no iron ore or pig iron to throw into their crude smelts, they instead grabbed anything they could; shovels, hoes, picks, axes, pipes, crow bars, wagon hubs and even their own small tractors... any and all iron on the farm. After all, their were mandates and quotas to be met! Suffice to say, the steel produced was virtually useless. And besides worthless steel, what did the central planners of the Chinese communist party have to show for it? Depending upon who you are listening to, between 20 and 30 million dead Chinese.

We're in the best of hands.

If 10 is a bad idea can't wait to see what happens with 15

Congress finally put a stop to the ethanol boondoggle but apparently that memo didn't get to the EPA which has, wait for it... granted a waiver for the sale of E-15.

In January, the EPA issued a waiver that allowed E15 (gasoline with a 15 percent ethanol blend) to be sold for vehicles with model years 2001 and later. This decision was made at the behest of the ethanol industry, but it will come at the expense of American drivers.

While the EPA deemed E15 environmentally safe for models produced after 2001, this higher blend of gas could seriously damage cars. Don’t take my word for it, just ask those who built them.

I sent letters to the major U.S. automakers to investigate how E15 would affect people’s cars. The response was startling. Overwhelmingly , I received complaints that E15 would void warranties, damage engines, and lower fuel efficiency. To date, I have received twelve responses, and all twelve oppose the EPA’s waiver.

Just a reminder, gang: we gave billions in subsidies to a "green" energy industry who's product has a production carbon footprint larger than that of gasoline's, is more expensive to produce than gasoline, does not yield the same energy output as gasoline, makes food more expensive and is most/very likely to shorten the life span of the equipment it is powering.

That's right: Ethanol. The absolute worst energy idea of all time and the EPA doubles down by permitting the production of E-15.