I research news articles and comment. The deep state includes corrupt state and local officials.
Some links are out of date on this blog and information on some of these links has changed.
1803 posts are too many to go through and change a link that is bad or has been purchased by someone other than me.
The Information on links I no longer own or control, I am not in no way responsible for what is on the link. Just beware.
So the bank would rather foreclose and make a profit than to accept the amount owed???These days banks and mortgage companies are taking such a hit with people "walking away" from their mortgages that they will in turn screw whoever they can to try to make up for their own losses. What a shame this guy had to doze his home to make his point, but I applaud him. The US economy is going under. Obama is destroying the economy. This bank took advantage of this man. He never missed a payment yet because of the bank's greed and irs leans on his bussiness the bank tried to steal his home because of cross collateral. ........................................................................................... Man bulldozes home to avoid foreclosure ...........................................................................................
Man bulldozes home to avoid foreclosure Terry Hoskins said he would do 'what it takes
MOSCOW, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio man says he bulldozed his home after a bank began foreclosure proceedings and says he won't let the bank take his carpet business either.
Terry Hoskins of Moscow in southwest Ohio says he has struggled with the RiverHills Bank over his Clermont County home for years and had problems with the Internal Revenue Service. He says the IRS placed liens on his store and commercial property and the bank claimed his house as collateral.
Hoskins says after spending millions on attorneys he just had enough and two weeks ago bulldozed the home, 25 miles southeast of Cincinnati.
When asked if he would level the store, Hoskins said he would do "what it takes."
Messages were left for the bank and its attorney, and with the southern Ohio office of the IRS.
Tiger was praising the US military in this short speech. Notice he didn't saying ANYTHING about the FRAUD obama. Credit is due woods for ignoring the BO. The speech was not all about him. Obama's speech is all about himself and what he proclaimed he would do. We all know what obama has done as of this date Feb 19,2010. He has not stimulated the economy. He has not accomplished anything except giving teleprompter speeches that boast of what he has done or will do. In Nov 2010 the leash will be put on obama. Obama's failures will be restrained.
PatB 1-20-2009 8:18AM
Thanks to all of those WHITE people who voted him into office.God works in myterious ways His wonders to perform and He will use whatever and whomever He chooses to fulfill the work of His hands here on earth.
Tiger Woods is a sick man. Barack obama is a sick man/child.
Tiger Woods acknowledged he needs help. Barack obama is in denial and will not acknowledge his needs help. Woods is in therapy. Obama needs to resign and be in therapy. Tiger is a buddist. Obama is a narcissist.
Woods believes the buddha is his only master. Woods does not believe that this world is created and ruled by a God. .........................................................................................
terrorist act - the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.
Until Stack uploaded his suicide note, his site consisted of a handful of pages describing his business, Embedded Art, and its history.
This definition of threats in order to attain political goals fits joe stack because he left this statement.
........................................................................................ HOUSTON - In a rambling six-page letter, pilot Joseph Stack blames his troubles on everything from gluttonous companies to political hypocrites to unfair laws. While portraying himself as a victim Stack directs much of his fury at the IRS.
"That little lesson in patriotism cost me 40 thousand dollars plus, 10 years of my life and set my retirement plans back to zero," Stack writes.
Stack writes about his divorce, lost retirement funds and his failure to file a tax return. He rails against the federal bailout of the auto industry and the downfall of Enron.
Stack writes, "I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I ensure nothing will change."
Towards the end of his letter Stack tries to explain his actions.
"Sadly though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn't so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer."
Stack ends the six-page letter with this:
"Well Mr. big brother IRS man let's try something different, take my pound of flesh and sleep well." ........................................................................................
Kamakazi pilot Joe Stack was a terrorist. Terrorists are insane as joe stack was. The government will call him a lone wolf and equate him to peaceful protestors against obama and his socialist/comminist agenda.
The radical left wing radical extremists will use this to further their agenda to spread the wealth around. Everyday obama "crashes a plane" into the US economy by destroying free enterprise. Obama "terrorism" is in just another form and much more subtle.
Also obama does everything he can to aid our ememies. The economy is being destroyed on purpose. Yes obama is an unindicted co-conspirator. Obama said the buck stops with him which means he is responsible for his failures.
The conspiracy of silence about obama's failure as a president, including people who know about it that have agreed that they will not talk publicly about it, ie the state run media, know it would probably be a good thing if people knew the truth, obama is a communist who is destroying America by destroying free enterprise.
Kamakazi is a good way to describe Joe Stack. My take on this guy is that he was crazy. He wanted to destroy himself and make a statement. I can equate this sick individual to obama.
Obama is doing something very similar. He is flying his plane of destruction into the US economy. Obama is a "kamakazi president". Because obama is also a coward he would never destroy himself but is more than willing to destroy the free enterprise system to spread the wealth around as he stated.
Joe Stack said: "Sadly though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn't so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer."
Joe stack's statement is the rant of a madman. Violence in the defense of one's own self is acceptable. Violence that is justified to attain political goals through murder cannot be justified. Joe stack not only killed himself and committed suicide he also killed innocent people. Joe stack also set his own house on fire trying to kill his family. This is what a terrorist does. They kill innocent people to obtain political goals or make a political statement. Obama has and will drive demented individuals to acts of despiration
"I don't know what to base his madness on," said Michael Cerza, who played drums, piano and trumpet with Stack in The Billy Eli Band. "It must have been lurking beneath the surface."
The liberal/socialist rats of the democrate party are jumping off the sinking obama ship.
Obama Is Using The EPA To Destroy Free Enterprise
Everything obama does seems to help destroy the US economy. The EPA is ignoring the fact that global warming is a hoax. The EPA has no evidence whatsoever that carbon dixoide is causing climate change or global warming. This is because man made global warming or climate change does not cause the earth to increase or decrease in temperature. The EPA under the direction of the communist obama is trying to use the hoax of global warming to spread the wealth around.
........................................................................................ The red-hot scam unravels
The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in Britain was regarded as the leader in climate research and the fount of raw data on which the science was based until leaked e-mails between researchers revealed evidence of doctoring of data and manipulation of evidence. The director of the research unit, professor Phil Jones, was regarded as an archbishop in the Church of Global Warming. He was pressured to resign in the wake of the scandal. Now he has conceded to an interviewer from the BBC that based on the evidence in his findings, the globe might have been warmer in medieval times. If so, the notion that fluctuations in earthly temperatures are man-made is rendered just that, a man-made notion.
The learned professor told his interviewer that for the past 15 years there has been no "statistically significant" warming. He conceded that he has lost track of many of the relevant papers — that his office was overwhelmed by the clutter of paper. Some of the crucial data to back up scare stories might be lying under other stuff, but he's not sure. An environmental analyst for the BBC said the professor told him that his "strengths" include "integrity" and "doggedness" but not record-keeping and "office tidying." He's just not dogged about keeping things straight.
This was good enough in the early years of the scam, but not any longer. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and once a ranking member of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says the temperature records have been compromised and cannot be relied on. The findings of weather stations that collected temperature data were distorted by location. Several were located near air-conditioning units and on waste-treatment plants; one was next to a waste incinerator. Still another was built at Rome's international airport and catches the hot exhaust of taxiing jetliners.
The global-warming hysteria, on which the Obama administration wants to base enormous new tax burdens, is just about as reliable as the weather hysteria presented nightly on your favorite television channel. Man is driven by his ego and finds it impossible to think even the weather is not all about him.
Obama is driven by his ego and the fact he as a communist wants to spread the wealth around using the EPA massive tax burdens on business and the American public.
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.
The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
This is what the EPA bases its new proposed regulations on, the HOAX of global warming.
Obama knows the hoax can be used as a political tool to control Americans through EPA regulations.
Obama can't get a global warming bill passed by congress so he is tring to ram the scam through the EPA.
Professor Jones said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.
The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Professor Jones cannot produce the date he has used to form the hoax of global warming.
Its similar to obama in that he cannot produce his long form certificate of live birth from Hawaii.
Both global warming and obama are a scam and hoax.
Global warming cannot be proved. Obama cannot prove he is a US citizen. The obama scam is being exposed. Obama is an IMPOSTER. Global warming is a HOAX.
Rahm Emanuel said sees the "crisis" as an opportunity to "advance the agenda,". The agenda is the destruction of the free enterprise. This is how communism spreads the wealth as obama has said he would do. The toyota "crisis" is another manufacutred crisis of the obamanation administration. Toyota as other car dealers have recalls that occur during the year. Obama has blown Toyota's recall up to make it look like a crisis the government must solve.
Toyota claims the recall actions were "voluntary," but Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was quoted as saying the Obama administration had ordered the recall.
Obama made it a "crisis". Rahm Emanuel, obama's ballerina, said: “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”
The "important things" obama wants to do is create panic, a crisis, that could fuel lawsuits big enough to put Toyota out of business in the U.S. What a boon for Government Motors! Last Friday, GM, Chrysler and Ford all announced ad campaigns aimed at worried Toyota owners.
(Ford is taking advantage of the new "cars for clunkers toyota program", to trade in the obama toyota scam clunkers. Ford's ad campaign to get people to trade in their old "Toyota CLUNKERS" for a ford will only perpetuate the government created fake crisis obama and rahm emanuel won't waste.)
What's at stake here is not just the safety of the individual Toyota vehicle, nor even the financial health of that company – but the very existence of a free competitive vehicle market in the U.S. Obama is using the power of the federal government to destroy the free competitive vehicle market to help him "spread the wealth around" because obama is a communist.
Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) pared earlier declines after U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he had misspoke when he had advised in congressional testimony that people stop driving cars involved in Toyota’s recall, advice that had initially caused a steep drop in Toyota’s shares.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was asked what advice he would give to owners of Toyotas subject to the recall.
“My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it,” LaHood said.
Afterwards he told reporters that wasn’t what he meant to say.
The obama hack Lahood meant to tell drivers to, "stop driving it". Obama's purpose is to destroy Toyota through a manufactured crisis.
Mr. LaHood’s comments Wednesday were the latest in an aggressive campaign by his department over the Toyota situation. Last week, Mr. LaHood took credit for the company’s decision to stop building and selling eight models involved in a recall over accelerator pedals that could potentially stick, saying Toyota did not take the step until urged to do so by the department.
Some safety advocates said, however, that Mr. LaHood might be trying to protect federal safety regulators from potential liability issues over their role in investigating defects.
A comment: Does every single one of the people ‘Bambi has appointed have a case of motor mouth with no pre-thought of how it’s going to sound or be taken by the public?
Its a case of motor mouth communists. They can't wait to spew their verbal fungus of destruction. They follow their "leader" the fraud obama. He stumbles and bumbles his way through a news conference where he also just can't wait to spew his verbal fungus of lies. .......................................................................................... The government typically receives a surge in complaints following a recall. None has yet been verified. .......................................................................................... Testing by Toyota, NHTSA and Exponent, an outside consulting firm hired by Toyota, has found no evidence of problems with Toyota’s electronics, said Toyota Vice President Bob Carter at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in Orlando, Fla.
“There is no problem with the electronic throttle system in Toyotas,” Carter said Monday. “There’s not anything that can even remotely lead you in that direction.” Carter said Exponent was told to tear the components apart to try to find anything wrong and initial tests could find nothing.
A year ago, Toyota was riding high. With non-union manufacturing plants in Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky and Indiana, Toyota made the most popular and most highly regarded vehicles in the U.S. Rivals GM and Chrysler were imploding, and the fraud president stepped in with massive taxpayer cash infusions and took over these companies as joint ventures between the federal government and the UAW.
Why is Toyota singled out for SUA? A Consumer Reports study indicated that, for the model year 2008, there were 52 complaints filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration against Toyota for SUA, representing 41 percent of all such complaints even though Toyota had just 18 percent of the U.S. market.
However, the same Consumer Reports study relates that GM and Chrysler also were the subject of SUA complaints to the NHTSA, but none of their plants were shut and the affected models were not recalled nor banned from sale. One of the vehicles named in these complaints is GM's Pontiac Vibe but the NHTSA has not ordered its recall nor banned its sale.
(Mr. LaHood is trying to protect federal safety regulators from potential liability issues over their role in investigating defects. Obama's aggressive campaign by his department head over the Toyota situation is hiding the fact NHTSA has not ordered recalls in the past when GM and Chrysler had many complaints.)
The American Company (CTS of Elkhart, Ind.) that supplies some Toyota models with the gas pedal in question also supplies the same gas pedal to Honda, Ford, GM and Chrysler.
Worth noting, too, is the fact that SUA complaints increased after 2002 when Toyota replaced mechanical throttle linkages with electronic ones. It's just easier to find and fix mechanical defects than software glitches. Even the NHTSA could not find the electronic defect that some "experts" allege must be causing the SUA in these complaints.
All of this is a field day for the Plaintiff's Bar, another Obama ally. Attorneys made fortunes in the "unsafe at any speed" Corvair, exploding Pinto and rollover Ford Explorer cases. These could pale in significance compared to SUA and the scale of Toyota's recall. The publicity over 52 complaints out of 1.8 million Toyota/Lexus vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2008 has made every owner concerned about the safety of their Toyota vehicle.
This panic/crisis could fuel lawsuits big enough to put Toyota out of business in the U.S. This is just what obama wants to do. Government Motors would have less competition and the fraud obama could spread more or the wealth around.
Michael O'Brien - 02/16/10 CNN poll: 52% say Obama doesn't deserve reelection in 2012. Obama faces a 44-52 deficit among both all Americans and registered voters.
Retiring Senator Evan Bayh quote. “If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”
Bayh is telling the truth. Instead of creating jobs obama is destroying jobs and faking the unemployment and job numbers to hide his real agenda to, spread the wealth around, as he has stated.
This post consists of various sources. Some of the content is original and from various other sources. My blog's purpose is to comment on the news and other peoples comments.
Abandoned rusting wind turbines in California, Hawaii and other locations are the result of government subsidies that have been discontinued. Wind energy is just a tax scam.
If wind power made sense, why would it need a government subsidy in the first place? It's a bubble which bursts as soon as the government subsidies end.
It the same scam as the so called stimulus money obama uses as a slush fund to buy votes in congress and prop up state budgets. When the slush fund stimulus money dries up along with government jobs obama will abandon his useful idiots. His goal of destroying the US economy will have been completed. Bankrupt europe has a lesson for Americans. Obama is a fraud. Global warming is a fraud. Wind turbines are a scam. .........................................................................................
Wind Energy's Ghosts By Andrew Walden
Bankrupt Europe has a lesson for Congress about wind power.
Wiwo...wiwo...wiwo.
The sound floats on the winds of Ka Lae, this southernmost tip of Hawaii's Big Island, where Polynesian colonists first landed some 1,500 years ago.
Some say that Ka Lae is haunted -- and it is. But it's haunted not by Hawaii's legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are "Na leo o Kamaoa"-- the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm.
The voices of Kamaoa cry out their warning as a new batch of colonists, having looted the taxpayers of Spain, Portugal, and Greece, seeks to expand upon their multi-billion-dollar foothold half a world away on the shores of the distant Potomac River. European wind developers are fleeing the EU's expiring wind subsidies, shuttering factories, laying off workers, and leaving billions of Euros of sovereign debt and a continent-wide financial crisis in their wake. But their game is not over. Already they are tapping a new vein of lucre from the taxpayers and ratepayers of the United States.
The Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade Bill appears to be politically dead since Republican Scott Brown's paradigm-shattering Massachusetts Senate victory. But alternative proposals being floated by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and others still promise billions of dollars to wind developers and commit the United States to generate as much as 20% of its electricity from so-called "renewable" sources.
The ghosts of Kamaoa are not alone in warning us. Five other abandoned wind sites dot the Hawaiian Isles -- but it is in California where the impact of past mandates and subsidies is felt most strongly. Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California "big three" locations -- Altamont Pass, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio -- considered among the world's best wind sites.
Built in 1985, at the end of the boom, Kamaoa soon suffered from lack of maintenance. In 1994, the site lease was purchased by Redwood City, CA-based Apollo Energy.
Cannibalizing parts from the original 37 turbines, Apollo personnel kept the declining facility going with outdated equipment. But even in a place where wind-shaped trees grow sideways, maintenance issues were overwhelming. By 2004 Kamaoa accounts began to show up on a Hawaii State Department of Finance list of unclaimed properties. In 2006, transmission was finally cut off by Hawaii Electric Company.
California's wind farms -- then comprising about 80% of the world's wind generation capacity -- ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa. In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.
The City of Palm Springs was forced to enact an ordinance requiring their removal from San Gorgonio. But California's Kern County, encompassing the Tehachapi area, has no such law. Wind Power advocate Paul Gipe, who got his start as an early 1970s environmental activist at Indiana's Ball State University, describes a 1998 Tehachapi tour thusly:
"Our bus drove directly through the Tehachapi Gorge passing the abandoned Airtricity site with its derelict Storm Master and Wind-Matic turbines and the deserted Wind Source site with its defunct Aeroman machines. We also got a freeway-close glimpse of Zond's wind wall with its 400 Vestas V15 turbines, the former Arbutus site on rugged Pajuela Peak where only the Bonus turbines are still in service, and steep-sided Cameron Ridge topped with FloWind's few remaining Darrieus turbines before reaching SeaWest, our first stop.
"As we approached SeaWest from the desert town of Mojave, the old Micon 108s were spinning merrily, but the Mitsubishis with their higher start-up speed were just coming to life. SeaWest and Fluidyne had done a commendable job of cleaning the Mitsubishis of their infamous oil leaks for the tour's arrival."
Writing in the February, 1999 edition of New Energy, Gipe explains:
From 1981 through 1985 federal and state tax subsidies in California were so great that wealthy investors could recover up to 50 percent of a wind turbine's cost. The lure of quick riches resulted in a flood of development using new and mostly untested wind turbines. By the end of 1986, when projects already underway in 1985 were completed, developers had installed nearly 15,000 wind turbines. These machines represented 1,200 MW of capacity worth US$2.4 billion in 1986 dollars.
It took nearly a decade from the time the first flimsy wind turbines were installed before the performance of California wind projects could dispel the widespread belief among the public and investors that wind energy was just a tax scam.
Ben Lieberman, a senior policy analyst focusing on energy and environmental issues for the Heritage Foundation, is not surprised. He asks:
"If wind power made sense, why would it need a government subsidy in the first place? It's a bubble which bursts as soon as the government subsidies end."
After the collapse, wind promoters had a solution to their public image problem. Hide the derelict turbines. Gipe in 1993 wrote for the American Wind Energy Association:
Currently most of the older, less productive wind turbines are located within sight of major travel corridors such as I-580 and I-10. Many first generation turbines and some of the second generation designs are inoperative, and all turbines of these generations are more prone to mechanical failure than contemporary designs. Public opinion surveys have consistently found that inoperative wind turbines tarnish the public's perception of wind energy's efficacy."
Gipe then quotes a 1991 UC Davis study, which explains:
"Our research and that of others show that turbines' non-operation and public fear of wind farm abandonment is still a critical issue, and it therefore behooves the wind industry to return to the 'big three' wind farm sites (Altamont, San Gorgonio, and Tehachapi) and to ensure that these areas are operating as efficiently as possible, and all turbine arrays which do not contribute significantly and conspicuously to power production are either replaced or, if necessary, removed."
Altamont's turbines have since 2008 been tethered four months of every year in an effort to protect migrating birds after environmentalists filed suit. According to the Golden Gate Audubon Society, 75 to 110 Golden Eagles, 380 Burrowing Owls, 300 Red-tailed Hawks, and 333 American Kestrels (falcons) are killed by Altamont turbines annually. A July, 2008 study by the Alameda County Community Development Agency points to 10,000 annual bird deaths from Altamont Pass wind turbines. Audubon calls Altamont, "probably the worst site ever chosen for a wind energy project." In 2004 the group unsuccessfully challenged renewal applications for 18 of 20 Altamont wind farms.
From its beginnings as a slogan of the anti-nuclear movement, wind energy has always been tied to taxpayer support and government intervention. Wind farms got their first boost with the Carter-era Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) which encouraged states to enact their own tax incentives. PURPA also for the first time allowed non-utility energy producers to sell electricity to utilities -- the first step towards a bungled half-privatization of electricity supply which would come two decades hence.
In the 1985 book "Dynamos and Virgins" a San Francisco based PG&E utility heir tells the story of how he joined forces in the 1970s with lawyers from the Environmental Defense Fund. Together they worked for years to obstruct coal and nuclear power plants until utilities were forced to do business with wind energy suppliers.
Protest and litigation remain among the foremost competitive tools used by the now multi-billion dollar "alternative" energy industry.
Reviewing the book, Robert Reich, a Kennedy School of Government professor who would later become Clinton's Secretary of Labor, wrote:
"The old paradigms of large-scale production, centralized management, and infinite resources are crumbling. We are on the verge of a new political economy."
The political economy obama has created via the stimulus slush fund is on the verge of destroying the US economy. The radical comminist obama is destroying large scale production and centralizeing government control of the US economy. The new political economy is a total failure. Obama's purpose is to destroy the US economy to spread the wealth around. He is a successful failure. Story Reports
The new paradigm created by the generation of 1968 is more political and less economy. Without government intervention, utilities normally avoid wind energy. Wind's erratic power feed destabilizes power grids and forces engineers to stand by, always ready to fire up traditional generators. Wind does not fit into an electric supply model made up of steady massive low cost "base load" coal or nuclear plants backed up by on-call natural gas powered "peaker" units which kick in during high demand. No coal or nuclear power plant has ever been replaced by wind energy.
Although carbon credit schemes often assign profitable carbon credits to wind farm operators based on a theoretical displacement of carbon emitted by coal or natural gas producers, in reality these plants must keep burning to be able to quickly add supply every time the wind drops off. The formulae do not take into account carbon emitted by idling coal and natural gas plants nor the excess carbon generated by constant fire-up and shut down cycles necessitated to balance fluctuating wind supplies.
But with PURPA on the federal books, the State of California quickly created "Interim Standard Offer" (ISO4) contracts guaranteeing a purchase price based on utilities' "avoided costs"--launching the first "California Wind Rush". By 1982 turbines were sprouting from the dusty terrain of Altamont Pass, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio. The ISO4 contracts were written with the assumption that fuel prices would continue to soar.
But that's not what happened.
By 1985 oil and natural gas prices were dropping. This changed the "avoided cost" calculations to the disadvantage of alternative energy producers. ISO4 contracts no longer guaranteed a price sufficient to attract investment in wind energy. Construction of new turbines stopped. As the old ten-year contracts began to expire in the late 1980s, renewals were pegged at much lower avoided cost estimates. As a result, many California wind developers quickly closed up shop, abandoning their turbines to moan out the one note song.
Then Enron got involved.
Building on the foundation laid by PURPA, 1992 Energy Policy Act (EPAct) began the partial deregulation of wholesale -- but not retail -- electricity. Reich in 1985 had lauded the "crumbling" of "large-scale production (and) centralized management". He got his wish. EPAct set the stage for Enron's California energy market manipulations which led to the 2003 recall of Governor Gray Davis (D-CA). The movement started by a PG&E heir led to the bankruptcy of PG&E. Perhaps this is why some call the children of the 1960s "the destructive generation."
Designed to create a renewable energy trading market, EPAct -- much of which took effect in 1997 -- created a combination of mandates, incentives, and tax credits. These included:
* laws requiring large wind producers to be allowed to tie into the existing utility grid * "Renewable Portfolio Standards" forcing utilities to buy intermittent wind generated electricity. * "Renewable Energy Certificates" tradable separately from the electricity itself to sell to companies needing to meet the portfolio standards. * A 10-year "Production Tax Credit" that now equals $.019/kWh * Accelerated depreciation allowing tax write-off using an accelerated 5-year double-declining-balance method (40% per year).
Wind capacity had stagnated through the mid-1990s. But Enron in January, 1997 bought out Tehachapi-based industry leader Zond Corporation - launching the second California Wind Rush.
Four years later, Enron would implode. The company which gamed a government-crippled artificial marketplace was deconstructed as poster boy for unbridled capitalism.
But the tax credits, mandates, and regulations which made Enron possible did not die with it. Enron Wind's turbine manufacturing subsidiary was purchased by General Electric. Many of its wind farms went to Florida Light and Power. By 2009, the US Department of Energy estimates mandate-and-subsidy-driven wind capacity would rise to 28,635mw.
That much coal or nuclear "capacity" would power 28.635 million homes, but wind "capacity" is calculated assuming perfect wind 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. At the best wind sites, such as Kamaoa, newly installed turbines generate only 30-40% of "capacity". At most sites, the figure is 20% or less. After 30 years of development, wind produces only 2.3% of California's electricity.
And then there is maintenance. The turbines installed in the first wind rush were not very reliable. Some never worked at all. As the years passed and the elements took their toll, downtime climbed ever closer to 100% and production dwindled to negligible amounts. Developers often set malfunctioning turbines to "virtual" mode -- blades spinning without generating electricity -- in order to keep oil circulating inside the turbine drive. Of course this habit also gives passing drivers an illusion of productivity.
Wind developers claim that today's American and European-made turbines are more reliable and longer-lasting than their old-tech predecessors. But new Chinese turbine manufacturers of untested quality are crowding the marketplace Europe's subsidy-driven turbine meisters are chased from their home markets.
After the debacle of the First California Wind Rush, the European Union had moved ahead of the US on efforts to subsidize "renewable" energy--including a "Feed in Tariff" even more lucrative than the ISO4 contracts. EU governments provided government-backed securities to support utilities burdened by Feed-in Tariff costs. But last year, as the national debt of wind-intensive EU countries became unbearable, the EU subsidy bubble burst.
Wind maven Gipe proudly takes a page from the disastrous European playbook, crediting himself with "Almost single-handedly launch(ing) a campaign for Advanced Renewable Tariffs (electricity feed laws) in North America."
But addressing a Heritage Foundation seminar last May, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, Professor of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid explained what Feed In Tariffs and other wind subsidies did to Spain (as well as Portugal and Greece) got into debt:
"The feed-in tariff... would make (utility) companies go bankrupt eventually. So...the government guarantees...to give back the money in the future -- when (they) are not going to be in the office any more. Slowly the market does not want to have these securities that they are selling. Right now there is a debt related to these renewable energies that nobody knows how it is going to be paid -- of 16 Billion Euros."
In early 2009 the Socialist government of Spain reduced alternative energy subsidies by 30%. Calzada continues:
"At that point the whole pyramid collapsed. They are firing thousands of people. BP closed down the two largest solar production plants in Europe. They are firing between 25,000 and 40,000 people...."
"What do we do with all this industry that we have been creating with subsidies that now is collapsing? The bubble is too big. We cannot continue pumping enough money. ...The President of the Renewable Industry in Spain (wrote a column arguing that) ...the only way is finding other countries that will give taxpayers' money away to our industry to take it and continue maintaining these jobs."
That "other country" is the United States of America.
Waxman-Markey seems dead, and Europe's southern periphery is bankrupt. But the wind-subsidy proposals being floated in Congress suggest that American political leaders have yet to understand that "green power" means generating electricity by burning dollars.
Bankrupt Europe has a lesson for Congress about wind power
People who believe in global warming are caught in the web of their own deceit. They have too much invested in the hoax to just accept the fact the scam has been exposed. They must keep the scam alive to safe the earth. They are in denial like a man who is a drunk but denies it.
The same is true for obama. He must keep the scam alive. He knows many people will believe him instead of the truth. Obama and others like him have too much invested in the hoax of global warming.
Its time to sober up and get off the bottle that al gore and obama are selling.
The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.
In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.
It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.
“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.
These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.
Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.
“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”
The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.
The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.
“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.
Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.
His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment.
Some are next to air- conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous shows a weather station next to a waste incinerator.
Watts has also found examples overseas, such as the weather station at Rome airport, which catches the hot exhaust fumes emitted by taxiing jets.
In Britain, a weather station at Manchester airport was built when the surrounding land was mainly fields but is now surrounded by heat-generating buildings.
Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.
“The earth has gone through warming spells like these at least twice before in the last 1,000 years,” he said.
