Posts

Obama’s Green Program Paid $11.45 Million for Each Job Created

/0 Comments/in , /by

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.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hypocrite-in-Chief: Blaming Sequester, Medicare Cancer Patients Turned Away While Obama Gives $1.2 Billion to Green Energy

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Sarah L. Voisin

Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.

Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially. Patients at these clinics would need to seek treatment elsewhere, such as at hospitals that might not have the capacity to accommodate them.

“If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York. “The drugs we’re going to lose money on we’re not going to administer right now.”

After an emergency meeting Tuesday, Vacirca’s clinics decided that they would no longer see one-third of their 16,000 Medicare patients. “A lot of us are in disbelief that this is happening,” he said. “It’s a choice between seeing these patients and staying in business.”

Some who have been pushing the federal government to spend less on health care say this is not the right approach.

Read more from this story HERE.

To read about the $1.2 billion giveaway to green energy companies, click HERE.

DOE Awarding More Than $1.2 Billion in Energy Subsidies Despite Sequester

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: janie.hernandez55

More than $1.2 billion in cash payments has been awarded to renewable energy projects by the Department of Energy and the Treasury Department since the beginning of the year, with the majority of them going to solar electricity.

While other agencies grapple with furloughs and service cuts, the DOE continues to hand out 30 percent of the cost basis for renewable projects under its 1603 program, part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Between January 1 and February 14,$1,254,769,726 was awarded to 435 renewable energy projects, 381 of which were to solar, according to the Heritage Foundation.

The 1603 program had awarded more than $9.2 billion to 748 wind projects and $2.7 billion to more than 44,000 solar projects through July 2012, according to a separate Heritage report.

The program won’t escape the sequester completely unscathed. Projects awarded between March 1 and September 30 will be reduced by 8.7 percent.

But the DOE is pressing ahead with awards to green technology. The department also announced last month it will award $150 million left over from a separate stimulus program, 48C manufacture tax credits.

Read more from this story HERE.

Green Energy, Black Water: Duke Energy Sued For Polluting Drinking Water

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Two environmental groups have accused Duke Energy, one of the Democratic Party’s major corporate supporters and a recipient of large green energy subsidies, of contaminating drinking water supplies in Charlotte, N.C.

The plaintiffs say Duke is misleading the public about its environmental record, and could face federal sanctions and a hit to its public image in Charlotte, where the utility is headquartered. Alleged environmental damage by Duke could also pose challenges for the Obama administration, which has strong ties to the company.

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation (CRF) filed a notice of intent on Tuesday announcing that they plan to sue Duke for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.

The plaintiffs claim Duke allowed carcinogenic chemicals from coal ash storage facilities to leak into Mountain Island Lake, Charlotte’s primary drinking water reservoir. “Duke is discharging polluted water into the lake. The pollution includes arsenic, cobalt, boron, barium, strontium, manganese, zinc, and iron,” SELC and CRF claimed in a Tuesday news release.

Duke’s closeness with the Obama administration could be problematic for the president, who is already under pressure from environmentalist groups to kill the Keystone XL pipeline.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Anti-Stimulus: His Energy Policies Take Money Out Of Economy

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Win McNamee“I have to tell you that there are some Democrats, for example, who represent states or districts that are heavily reliant on old power plants and are more heavily manufacturing based,” President Obama said during a Google online chat session with the public on Friday. “And the truth is that if you produce power using old power plants, you’re going to be emitting more carbon, but, to upgrade those plants means energy is going to be a little more expensive, at least on the front end.”

Naturally, Obama understated the costs involved in upgrading power plants and switching to new sources of energy. But his remark is true in its essentials: In exchange for very modest reductions in carbon emissions, his policies require consumers to pay higher upfront prices for electricity.

Now compare Obama’s statement to the theory behind his stimulus package — both the $800 billion package he championed and signed in 2009 and the additional stimulus he has since asked Congress to enact. The assumption underlying his proposed and enacted deficit spending, expansion of entitlements (such as food stamps) and demand-side tax breaks as stimulus is that Americans have a temporary cash-flow problem. The idea is that because people don’t have enough money in their pockets, commerce is suffering, causing hiring to lag. So by providing a small pay increase to workers and extra business for contractors, the Recovery Administration was supposedly alleviating this temporary cash crunch so as to ease the economy back onto the road to recovery.

Read more from this story HERE.

Green Groups Brave the Cold to Protest ‘Global Warming,’ Seek to Kill Keystone XL Pipeline

/6 Comments/in , , /by

photo credit: tarsandsactionEnvironmental groups gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Sunday and marched on the White House for a climate change rally largely aimed at pressuring President Obama to reject the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.

activists attended the rally, where speakers portrayed the battle over the pipeline as a struggle between grassroots green groups and deep-pocketed special interests.

“They’ve got the lobbyists. They’ve got the super-PACs. They made the campaign contributions. They’ve got this town in their pockets — they have got the situation under control. And then you show up. And then we show up. And we change the game,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told the crowd not long before it marched on the White House.

Obama will decide whether the project goes forward because it crosses national boundaries. The pipeline would bring fossil fuels from Canadian tar sands fields to the Gulf Coast. Environmentalists are painting Obama’s upcoming decision as the litmus test for whether he plans to make good on recent comments about tackling climate change.

Activists at Sunday’s rally said approving the pipeline would taint Obama’s record on climate change. They said they hoped the demonstration would give the president the will to nix Keystone, even when a majority of both the House and the Senate want it built.

Read more from this story HERE.

Carbon Tax Hallucinations

/5 Comments/in , , /by

Average planetary temperatures haven’t budged in 16 years. Hurricanes and strong tornadoes are at or near their lowest ebb in decades. Global sea ice is back to normal, while the Antarctic icepack continues to grow. The rate of sea level rise remains what it was in 1900.

And yet, President Obama and many politicians, newscasters and alarmist scientists continue to insist that carbon dioxide emissions are changing Earth’s climate, and we need to take immediate action to prevent storms like Hurricane Sandy and avert catastrophes predicted by IPCC computer models and “scientific consensus.” Not surprisingly, polls show public support for controlling CO2 output and taxing hydrocarbon use – to “ensure climate security” and “save vital federal programs” from budgetary axes.

As the liberal lobby Think Progress put it, people “overwhelmingly” prefer a carbon tax on “big polluters” versus cuts in favorite programs “like education, Social Security, Medicare and environmental protection.”

Five-alarm climate claims, skewed polling questions and phony taxes-versus-grandma budget alternatives will almost always ensure support for carbon taxes – especially among Bigger Government and Ban Fossil Fuels constituencies. More rational analysis reveals that dreams of hundred-billion-dollar windfalls from slapping regressive new taxes on job creation and economic growth are nothing more than dangerous tax revenue hallucinations. They would bring intense pain for no climate or economic gain.

Employing Energy Information Administration data, a recent Heritage Foundation study by economists David Kreutzer and Nicolas Loris found that a tax starting at $25-per-ton of CO2 emitted and increasing by 5% per year would cut a family of four’s income by $1,400 annually, raise their utility bills by $500 a year, and increase gasoline fill-ups by up to 50 cents per gallon. That’s $2,000 a year chopped from their budget for food, vacations, home and car payments and repairs, college and retirement savings, dental and medical care, and overall quality of life.

Read more from this story HERE.

Taxing the Planet Clean: Boxer, Sanders call for $1.2 Trillion Carbon Tax

/6 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: APSens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) announced they will introduce sweeping new energy regulations, including a carbon tax, during a Thursday press conference.

The proposed legislation would use a tax on carbon emissions to fund “historic investments in energy efficiency and sustainable energy technologies such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass,” according to a press release.

“We have the opportunity right now, with the president’s commitment in the State of the Union to make major progress,” Sanders said at the press conference. President Barack Obama called for “meaningful” action on climate change in his State of the Union address Tuesday, and Boxer said her bill was in line with the president’s goals.

“The president is right—we must do more to combat climate change, and Superstorm Sandy was a wake-up call,” Boxer said in a statement. “I strongly support the president’s efforts to move forward with executive actions to address this serious threat.”

Sanders said the bill’s tax—$20 per ton of carbon dioxide above a set limit—would target 2,869 of the country’s biggest carbon emitters, including coalmines, oil refineries, and natural gas processing points.

Read more from this story HERE.

Woman With Pacemaker Refuses Smart Meter- Has Power Cut In The Dead Of Winter

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: YouTubeA handicapped woman in western Ohio has to battle the freezing winter weather this weekend because she refused to allow the local power company to install a “smart meter” on her property.

Brenda Hawk has a pacemaker for her heart and because her brain was injured in a car accident, she requires a breathing machine in order to sleep at night. She does not want the new radio-frequency emitting meter because of the health problems these devices have been said to cause. But American Electric Power AEP-Ohio, the local power company, has persisted in their push to swap out Hawk’s analog meter and replace it with the new one.

TheBlaze spoke with Hawk on Saturday. At the time, she was using a kerosene heater to stay warm in the freezing weather. Hawk gave us a basic timeline on the story.

In October of last year, a utility worker arrived on her property and announced that he had removed her old analog power meter and replaced it with a new one. Hawk told him that she had not approved the meter swap and requested that the old one be restored. A series of phone calls between Hawk, the power company and the sheriff’s office was enough to get the new meter pulled out and the old one re-installed.

Fast forward to Jan. 24, 2013. A certified letter from AEP executive Ralph Rocca, Jr. arrived at Hawk’s home announcing that she would be getting a new meter or her power would be cut off. Her efforts to contact Rocca were not successful. All that Hawk wanted was a guarantee from the company that the new meter’s electrical signals would not interfere with her pacemaker. The company could not give her that assurance and it was her position that unless and until they did, no “smart meter” would be installed.

Read more from this story HERE.

EPA Moves Forward With ‘Climate Change’ Protection Plan

/5 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteyThe Environmental Protection Agency is formally moving forward with its Climate Change Adaptation Plan.

Beginning Friday, the EPA is accepting comments on its draft plan, which calls for the agency to amend its operations — including the promulgation of new regulations — to account for increasingly rapid global warming. The effort comes in response to a 2009 government-wide directive via President Obama’s Council on Environmental Quality, requiring agencies to plan this year for future climate change.

“It is essential that EPA adapt to anticipate and plan for future changes in climate,” according to the 55-page plan, which carries a 2012 date but was put forth now for public consideration. “It must integrate, or mainstream, considerations of climate change into its programs, policies, rules and operations to ensure they are effective under future climatic conditions.”

Rising sea levels, loss of snowpack and drought linked to climate change will likely require the agency to take additional steps to protect watersheds, wetlands and water supplies, the report argues.

Increasing temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events, meanwhile, will demand measures to protect public safety and adapt emergency response plans, it says.

Read more from this story HERE.