Photo Credit: GettyThe world’s tallest tower should have been built by now. Officials said last year that the great edifice with 220 floors would be erected in three months flat in China’s inland city of Changsha by March, snatching the crown from Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
The deadline has come and gone, yet the wasteland sits untouched. It now looks as if the fin d’époque project – using prefab blocs – may never be approved. Even China knows its limits.
Prime minister Li Keqiang has asked the State Council to clamp down on the excesses of the regions. Not before time. A top regulator says local government finances are “out of control”.
Mr Li aims to cut China’s economic growth to a safe speed limit of 7pc next year and rein in rampant investment – still a world record 49pc of GDP – before it traps the country in a boom-bust dynamic of frightening scale.
Vested interests are conspiring to stop him, launching a counter-attack from their power-base in the $6 trillion state industries. Even so, uber-growth is surely over.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-09 03:15:152016-04-11 11:21:45China May Not Overtake America this Century After All
Photo Credit: APA judge ruled Wednesday that cheerleaders at a Southeast Texas high school can display banners emblazoned with Bible verses at football games.
But the ruling might not have settled the issue of whether the banners are protected free speech, according to an attorney for the cheerleaders’ school district.
State District Judge Steven Thomas determined the Kountze High School cheerleaders’ banners are constitutionally permissible. In the ruling, Thomas determined that no law “prohibits cheerleaders from using religious-themed banners at school sporting events.”
The Kountze school district had initially said the banners could not be displayed after receiving a complaint about them in September from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The foundation argued the banners violated the so-called First Amendment Establishment Clause that bars government — or publicly funded school districts in this case — from establishing or endorsing a religion.
Thomas ruled that the establishment clause does not prohibit the use of such religious-themed banners at school sporting events.
Photo Credit: WNDAs the House Oversight Committee hears from witnesses presenting a chronological timeline that starkly contrasts with initial statements by the Obama administration on the Benghazi attacks, it is instructive to recall how the administration spent $70,000 in taxpayer funds on an ad denouncing an anti-Muhammad film.
The ad aired on Pakistani television amid White House claims that the Benghazi attacks were caused by popular protests against an obscure Muhammad film released on YouTube.
It would later emerge that no such protests took place and that the Obama administration almost immediately had evidence the Benghazi attacks were carried out by jihadists.
The ads reportedly aired on seven Pakistani networks. They also came in response to protests in Pakistan that were reportedly a reaction to the film. However, it was the claim of popular protests in Benghazi at the time that garnered the biggest public reaction from the White House.
The Sept. 19, 2012, ads feature Obama and Clinton making statements against the film in the wake of the Benghazi attacks, which transpired one week prior.
Photo Credit: Jeff ChiuCalifornia’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that individual cities and towns can ban the medical marijuana dispensaries that have sprouted around the state, dealing a blow to advocates of broader legal access to the drug and invigorating calls for the Legislature to speed measures regulating the business.
Because of the scores of jurisdictions across the state that have already banned the dispensaries, the ruling by the seven justices essentially leaves in place large contiguous tracts of territory where patients with a doctor’s prescription cannot purchase the drug legally.
Some medical marijuana advocates said the ruling made it likely that more cities and towns, angry that the regulatory burden falls on them and not the state, also would enact bans.
In the case before the court, a ban on such dispensaries was imposed by the city of Riverside in 2010. The plaintiff, the Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Wellness Center, which was objecting to being shut down, sued the city on the grounds that the ban contravened the state law’s objective of “ensuring access to marijuana for the seriously ill who need it in a uniform manner throughout the State.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-09 03:08:202016-04-11 11:21:46Setback for Medical Marijuana as California Court Upholds Local Ban (+video)
Photo Credit: SJSU.eduWhat could prompt two college professors to burn a book? Disagreement with the contents, of course.
Two San Jose State University professors took a picture as they held a match to a book that takes on the idea of global warming, and the photo landed on an official school website until some realized the idea of academics burning books is not exactly scholarly. The image depicted Alison Bridger, a professor and chairwoman of the university’s department of meteorology and climate science, holding a lit match beneath “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania” as the 312-page paperback was held by assistant professor Craig Clements.
“This week we received a deluge of free books from the Heartland Institute,” the original caption read, according to an archived version of the webpage. “ … Shown above, Drs. Bridger and Clements test the flammability of the book.”
The picture and the accompanying caption, which was posted late last month, were later removed from the university’s servers after a popular climate change website, Watts Up With That?, noticed it and referenced Fahrenheit 451, the 1953 novel by Ray Bradbury in which books are outlawed and widely burned.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-09 03:07:482016-04-11 11:21:46Igniting Debate: School Scrubs Photo of Professors Burning Book
Photo Credit: DOE Loans Programs OfficeWithout much fanfare, the Department of Energy (DOE) recently updated the list of loan guarantee projects on its website. Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama pledged to create 5 million jobs over 10 years by directing taxpayer funds toward renewable energy projects, there were no press conferences or stump speeches. But the data are nonetheless revealing: for the over $26 billion spent since 2009, DOE Section 1703 and 1705 loan guarantees have created only 2,298 permanent jobs for a cost of over $11.45 million per job.
As the astronomical cost of the DOE’s loan guarantee program indicates, subsidizing renewable energy is not a good deal for taxpayers. But loan guarantees are just one of the ways the federal government bankrolls risky green energy projects. Energy-related tax preferences cost taxpayers about $13.5 billion in FY 2012, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. But solar and wind power, for which the majority of the tax preferences for renewable energy were directed, produced only 3.6 percent of the nation’s generation in 2012.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-09 03:05:352016-04-11 11:21:46Obama’s Green Program Paid $11.45 Million for Each Job Created
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-09 03:02:092016-04-11 11:21:47Fun Video Recap of this Week’s Stories
Photo Credit: US NewsThe second man to set foot on the moon wants to see NASA send people further into space than he ever traveled. Buzz Aldrin trashed NASA’s plan to bring an asteroid into lunar orbit in a speech, advocating for a Mars colony.
Aldrin, who recently published the book “Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration,” said at the Washington, D.C. Humans to Mars summit Wednesday that President Barack Obama’s asteroid mining plan is merely a distraction.
“Bringing an asteroid back to Earth? What’s that have to do with space exploration?” he asked. “If we were moving outward from there and an asteroid is a good stopping point, then fine. But now it’s turned into a whole planetary defense exercise at the cost of our outward exploration.”
The Apollo-era astronaut, now 83, has devised a plan to “cycle” spacecraft to Mars, continually launching humans to the red planet to expand on its colony. Aldrin advocates using Phobos, a moon of Mars, as a sort of home base for landing on the planet.
“Going to Mars means permanence, we’d become a two planet species. In Mars, we’ve been given a wonderful set of moons … where we can send continuous numbers of people,” he said. The trips would be one-way.
Photo Credit: Daily CallerAmong the least important questions raised by the current immigration debate is this: Who is America’s most famous illegal immigrant to have sneaked across the Mexican border? The answer may just be Fidel Castro.
He wasn’t an illegal immigrant for long, but according to both Castro himself and a former CIA officer who has followed Castro since the 1960s, the long-time Cuban dictator, who ceded power to his brother Raul in 2006, entered the U.S. illegally in 1956.
In his 2007 book “After Fidel: Raul Castro and the Future of the Cuban Revolution,” former CIA officer Brian Latell recounts Castro’s 1956 journey across the Rio Grande to raise money to fund his fight against the Cuban regime of Fulgencio Batista.
“Houston was new to Fidel, but in fact he had visited Texas once before,” Latell writes.
“It is the only one of his now-numerous visits to the United States — a clandestine one — that he has never publicly acknowledged. In 1956, when the brothers were in exile in Mexico, training and preparing for the insurgency they launched at the end of that year, Fidel needed to enter the United States a second time to solicit contributions. But his visa had been canceled following protests by the Batista regime.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-09 02:59:242016-04-11 11:21:47Fidel Castro May be America’s Most Famous Illegal Immigrant
If the revelations of the Benghazi whistle-blowers haven’t been enough, Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations should surely be laid to rest after enough Americans see the below video.
The mother of Sean Smith, one of the Americans killed in Benghazi due to Obama’s and Hillary’s willful inaction, is continuing to angrily confront the Administration for not coming clean on what happened.
In the interview, Pat Smith describes the minimal contact that she’s had with the Administration. And what little contact she has had is “all lies.”
She angrily concludes, “I blame Hillary.”
If you don’t watch anything else in the following video, skip forward to Hillary Clinton’s 20-second outrageous outburst (2:18 to 2:38), that Ms. Smith then comments on. Hillary’s presidential aspirations should be dead in the water if enough Americans see this clip:
Transcript:
CNN’s JACK TAPPER: One woman still looking for answers is Pat Ms. Pat Smith. Her son, State Department Information Officer Sean Ms. Pat Smith was one of the four Americans killed. Pat, thanks so much for being here. I know this is not an easy time. How are you holding up?
MS. PAT SMITH: Terrible. I cry every night. I don’t sleep at night. I need answers.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: What do you want answers to? What do you not know?
MS. PAT SMITH: Why was there no security for him? When they were supposed to have security and the security that they did have was called back. It just — things do not add up and I’m just told lies.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: Last week, you heard this in the piece the White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that Benghazi happened a long time ago.
MS. PAT SMITH: Yes, it did.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: Eight months ago.
MS. PAT SMITH: Yes.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: What is your reaction to that?
MS. PAT SMITH: Why don’t they have answers by now? They’ve had plenty of time to come up with something other than the things they have not told me.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: Are you concerned at all that the hearings and Benghazi that has become a political issue, the Republicans have turned it into a political issue. The Democrats have turned it into a political issue as opposed to being a scandal and a tragedy apart from politics?
MS. PAT SMITH: Of course, it’s political. That’s the way it’s been. That’s how they’re treating it. That’s what they’re doing with it. They’re making it into something that — why don’t they just do their job? They didn’t do their job and now they’re hiding behind the word political and going from there.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: You have expressed disappointment in the past because President Obama, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, all of them came to you, talked to you.
MS. PAT SMITH: Yes.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: And then you haven’t heard from them. Have you heard from anybody in the Obama administration? Have you gotten any outreach or any answers at all?
MS. PAT SMITH: I got one telephone call from a clerk that was a couple days after it happened. He was reading to me from the time line, which I already had. And that was it. And since then, all they have told me is that I am not part of the immediate family so they don’t want to tell me anything.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified about the Benghazi tragedy shortly before she left office. I want to play a little bit of what she said.
(START VIDEO INSERT)
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.
(END VIDEO INSERT)
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: What was your reaction to that?
MS. PAT SMITH: Well, that’s what I want to know. Why did it happen? And she is in charge. Why couldn’t she do something about it? I blame her.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: You blame Secretary of State Clinton.
MS. PAT SMITH: Yes.
CNN’S JACK TAPPER: Why?
MS. PAT SMITH: Because that’s her department. She is supposed to be on top of it. Yet she claims she knows nothing. It wasn’t told to her. Well, who is running the place?
