April, 2016, I Am A Global Warmer Doubter and A Believer In Science: Wasting Taxpayer Money On Stupid Global Warming Projects and More

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control of our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical posts listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims:

1) We have often discussed the reality that the Obama administration has wasted tens of billions of taxpayer dollars when it gave away our money to alternative energy companies, almost all of which were cronies of the Democratic Party. Almost all of them have gone bankrupt or are near insolvency, e.g. Solyndra, Beacon, A123, and others, providing minimal societal benefit in return. 

And now, according to a recent Townhall article by Matt Vespa, we can add another major failure to this list of failures. Abengoa is a Spanish solar company that for some god forsaken reason was given American taxpayer money but now has filed for bankruptcy. Details of this global warming disaster include the following:

• The company is $16.4 billion in debt.
• The Federal government’s Export-Import Bank gave the company almost two hundred million dollars in loans from U.S. taxpayers.
• The bankruptcy filing now makes it unlikely that any of those dollars will be recovered.
• The total number of loans and loan guarantees totalled over $191 million that was disbursed from 2007 to 2015.

Every Obama administration effort to mess in the market has been a failure, with Abengoa just the latest in a long string of failures. With millions of Americans needing food assistance every month, tens of thousands of Americans dying from drug overdoses every year, veterans not getting the medical care they were promised, etc., why we would risk almost $200 million on a FOREIGN company is beyond me. Very bad priorities.

2) But it is not just alternative energy manufacturing companies like Solyndra and Abengoa that are failures. Consider the failure of a wind energy project in Illinois that came to light recently in the Daily Caller website in an article by Andrew Follet:

• Lake Land College announced plans to tear down the wind turbines on campus since they were not financially viable.
• They were paid for in part by a Federal government grant of $987,697.20 of taxpayer wealth.
• The turbines lasted for less than four years and were very expensive to maintain and keep operating.
• The college confirmed that it has spent almost a quarter of a million dollars in parts and labor costs just to maintain the turbines beyond the construction cost.
• Faced with another $100,000 in expenses needed to make them functional again, after a lightning hit damaged them, the college decided to tear them down once and for all.
• The turbines were supposed to save the college $44,000 annually in electricity costs but only generated a total 8,500 in electricity savings.
• According to the article, the return on investment for the college was -99.14%.
• The original breakeven analysis for the turbines was 22.5 years, an estimate that is now laughable, given that the turbines are being torn down just a few years after they went up.
• The turbines went operational in 2012 after five years of construction in a now vain attempt to reduce the college’s carbon footprint and fight the mythical global warming fight.

Despite another failure in the Federal government’s continual wasting of taxpayer wealth on alternative energy sources, the college has announced that it will replace the failed wind turbines with…. a solar power system to be paid for by, you guessed it, the American taxpayer. All in the name of a global warming theory that falls apart more and more every day, taking taxpayer dollars with it.

3) But the wasting of taxpayer wealth on alternative energy companies and installations is not the only way the Obama administration is wasting your tax dollars while chasing the global warming myth. Consider the following follies and wasting of taxpayer wealth that the Obama administration is pursuing in the name of global warming: 

- The National Science Foundation (NSF) gave a grant of $17,264 to the University of Georgia Research Foundation to study Arctic shrubbery, with the going in assumption that global warming is causing shrubs to grow in the Arctic.

For that money, the American taxpayer will learn the following vital information: “Higher temperatures have already triggered widespread expansion of large, woody shrubs across arctic tundra, and appear to stimulate the loss of soil carbon. This research examines whether shrubs change the composition of microbial communities in a way that positively impacts the shrub growth. This information is critical to understanding how shrubs affect carbon pools of plants and soils in the arctic. Using arctic soils from Alaska, the investigators will establish a plant growth experiment to determine how shrubs respond to different treatments of soil microbes and nutrients. By investigating plants, soils, and microbes in one experiment, this work will improve the accuracy of models of arctic carbon dynamics.”

Seriously, we need to spend taxpayer money to look at plants and model arctic carbon dynamics? And even that was a semi-good idea, how far is $17,000 going to go? You probably could not afford to send researchers to the Arctic for that amount of money never mind build a good science-based model off of it. Tremendous waste of taxpayer wealth.

- But the wasting of money on stupid global warming projects gets better. The Federal government via the NSA granted $350,000 to the University of Massachusetts Amherst to figure out why a bunch of Nordic people abandoned their homes in Greenland several thousands years ago. 

Their inane grant proposal reads as follows: “The climate in southern Greenland is a key area for reconstructions of the North Atlantic Oscillation, a major pattern of northern hemisphere climate, and is also linked to Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation changes, an important oceanic process controlling north Atlantic climate, which recent studies suggest has been weaker over recent decades than at any time in the last 1000 years. This is also the region where Norse settlements were abandoned by the early-15th century; many questions still remain about the causative factors. Although climate change is often cited as the reason for settlement failure, this explanation rests on a very poorly constrained scientific foundation and other explanations have also been proposed.”

Which raises the relevant question of, “So what?” So what if they left their settlement because of climate change, how is that the least bit relevant today? Americans are starving, homeless, drug addicted, and in need of good jobs and we are studying idiocy like this.

- One more piece of Federal government global warming insanity. Researchers at the University of South Florida landed a grant of $297,490 to study 5 million year old Mediterranean sea levels. Their grant proposal reads as follows: “This is important because current published sea level highstands during past interglacial climate are significantly above modern sea level and vary widely over time. The precision of such results are still controversial and accurate data to realistically evaluate potential sea level by the century's end is critical.” 

So well over half a million dollars is being spent to measure the Mediterranean sea levels from 5 millions years ago, Nordic settlements from 2,000 years ago, and shrubs in the Arctic to try and figure out the effects of global warming, assuming that 1) global warming exists (something that has not happened in the past 20 years or so) and 2) try to extrapolate what might happen if global warming should ever really kick in. All based on research grants are too small to really accomplish anything and too big to be wasted on such nonsense when so many Americans need help in their lives today, not at the turn of the next century.

Just the first in a series of global warming discussions this month under the theme of, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” Today was the focus on how our government and society is wasting valuable resources on shoddy, unstrategic science experiments and pipe dreams, wasteful alternative energy installations and stupid, crony-infested alternative energy companies, all under the false god of global warming. 

More global warming nonsense tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

January, 2016, Part 3, Poltical Class Insanity: Afghanistan Goes Down the Drain, Four Times Worth Than Solyndra, and We Do Not Trust Hillary or Donald

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is stalling.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting.

1) Nowhere has Washington political class been more horrid or incompetent than when it comes to managing the war in Afghanistan. It has been America’s longest war, it has killed and wounded thousands of our soldiers, and has probably cost over a trillion dollars to execute. As we have pointed out many times, the fraud, corruption and wasting of American taxpayer dollars has been rampant and widespread. 

And what has all this cost gotten us, seven years into the Obama administration’s management of the war? According to a recent Washington Post article, not a lot:

• Our enemy, the Taliban, have more “battle discipline and initiative far superior to the Afghan security forces trained and equipped by the United States.”
• Privately, top Afghan and U.S. officials admit that the Taliban are resurgent across the country.
• The Taliban control about 30% of the Afghan districts across the country, equating to more territory under their control now than any year since 2001.
• The struggle now is to keep the key area around Helmand in southern Afghanistan from falling into Taliban hands again, fourteen years into the fight, despite the Afghan security forces significantly outnumbering the Taliban forces in the area.
• 7,000 Afghan soldiers have been killed this year fighting the Taliban and 12,000 have been injured, a whopping 26% increase over last year.
• Desertation rates are soaring as it has become apparent that the Taliban are somehow now better organized and better equipped than previously.
• Outside of the battlefield, the economy stinks, there is high unemployment, and high levels of corruption exist throughout the government and political class.

Two administrations, 14 years, a trillion dollars, and likely all for nothing, given that the Afghan government and its armed forces are getting weaker and weaker as the Taliban get stronger. Insanity.

2) We have often discussed how the Obama administration wasted upwards of $40 billion of taxpayer wealth on failed alternative energy companies, most of which were operated by Democratic Party operatives and backers. The biggest loser was Solyndra which crashed and burned, taking down $500 million worth of taxpayer wealth with it.

But now it appears that Solyndra was not even close to being the biggest alternative energy investment failure during the Obama Presidency. It now appears that a company named Abengoa may be have destroyed up to four times as much taxpayer wealth than Solyndra. Details of this disaster include the following:

• The Department of Energy recently released over 1,200 government pages regarding Abengoa as required by a Freedom of Information Act request by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
• Unfortunately, much of the 1,200 pages had been blacked out, making the details of this scandal difficult to scope out from the heavily redacted text. 
• On some pages, every word was blacked out. Which raises serious suspicions on what really happened behind the scenes to this Spanish based alternative energy company if the Obama administration would go to such lengths to deny access to the requested information.
• Of particular interest was Abengoa’s $400 million biofuels plant in Kansas. a plant that received a $132 million Federal taxpayer funded loan and a $97 million grant.
• However, after only a year of operation, plant problems led to Abengoa filing for bankruptcy and shutting down its Kansas plant.
• In a Spanish court, Abengoa’s bankruptcy filing shows the largest single creditor to the bankrupt company is the U.S. taxpayer. Specifically, the Federal government’s U.S. Federal Financing Bank holds $2.3 billion worth of Abengoa’s debt, a debt incurred on behalf of the American taxpayer by the Obama administration.

Thus, Solyndra almost looks like a sick bargain with its half a billion worth of losses compared to the over $2 billion worth of losses that taxpayers will likely suffer from the Abengoa bankruptcy. How many homeless Americans could have gotten shelter for $2.3 billion, how many American drug addicts could have gotten treatment for $2.3 billion, how many teachers could have been put into our schools for $2.3 billion? 

Instead, we got nothing in return for our $2.3 billion. Not a single gallon of alternative biofuel fuel was ever sold from the plant’s operations, nothing, nada.

Oh, I take that back. We did get something from this investment: another failed Obama green energy initiative and another scandal and cover up of the ineptness of this administration.

3) A recent opinion poll by the Economist/YouGov organization asked 2,000 Americans their opinions on the honesty trustworthiness of seven presidential candidates: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. As one would expect relative to other discussions we have had with the growing disgust that Americans have for today's politicians, the results were not good:

• 53% of the respondents view Hillary Clinton as dishonest and untrustworthy.
• Only 31% view as honest and trustworthy.
• Only 59% of Democrats view her as honest and trustworthy, not a good sign when your own party supporters cannot even get to a 60% level on your honesty.
• Donald Trump did not do much better with 51% of people saying he was untrustworthy and dishonest. 
• He did just slightly better on the other side of the question with 33% viewing him as trustworthy and honest vs. only 31% for Clinton.

So if this poll is to be believed, the leading candidates to become the next President are viewed by a majority of Americans as dishonest and untrustworthy.

The other leading candidates were generally bunched together with an equal number of respondents judging them all to be dishonest and untrustworthy at about the same levels, around 33% or so.

How pathetic are the politicians that currently populate our elected offices today? Seems like all of them, regardless of what poll or survey we look at, think that our politicians are untrustworthy, dishonest, inept, por a danger to the country. Heaven help us.

What did learn today: we do not trust our politicians, we continue to lose billions of dollars to Obama’s ill fated and idiotic alternative energy investments, and Afghanistan is going down the drain. More insanity tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w