Tag Archives: Drill

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How well did Obama’s green jobs spending work out for taxpayers?

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From Investor’s Business Daily.

Excerpt:

As solar panel manufacturer Solyndra was sliding into a long-predicted bankruptcy, Energy Department officials began negotiations with the company and two of its main investors about restructuring its $535 million loan to keep afloat the business that was supposed to be a good investment.

Under the restructuring agreement, Solyndra’s private investors were moved to the front of the line and taxpayers were put on the hook for at least the first $75 million if the company should default. Subordinating taxpayers to private investors in recovering loan money is an “apparent violation of the law,” according to Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

During hearings last week, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and other Republicans noted that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 says obligations, or loan guarantees, shall not be subordinated to other financing.

In other words, taxpayers get first dibs on any money recovered and private investors take a number.

Why was the Solyndra loan restructured in this way? Was it because a major donation bundler for President Obama’s 2008 campaign was also a principal investor in Solyndra? Is that why the administration ignored repeated warning’s of Solyndra’s insolvency?

A 2009 report by the Energy Department’s inspector general warned that DOE lacked the necessary quality control for the $38.6 billion loan-guarantee program. In July 2010, the Government Accountability Office said DOE had bypassed required steps for funding awards to five of 10 loan recipients.

[…]Solyndra was the third U.S. solar manufacturer to fail in a month. SpectraWatt Inc., a solar company backed by units of Intel Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection Aug. 19, and Evergreen Solar filed Chapter 11 on Aug. 15.

Other failed companies receiving stimulus funds include Mountain Plaza Inc., which took $424,000 in grants to install “truck stop electrification systems” so truckers could plug in and shut off their idling diesel engines, and Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Acquisition Co., which were handed $10 million.

[…]The administration claims that as a whole this loan guarantee program, which was supposed to create 65,000 jobs, was a success, creating or “saving” some 44,000 jobs. An analysis by the Washington Post says the actual number of permanent jobs created is 3,545.

[…]Even if you accept the administration’s questionable job accounting, divide the $38.6 billion by 65,000 and ask yourself if the administration is spending your money wisely — or honestly.

The Obama administration has already spent about half of the 38.6 billion set aside for Democrat cronies. I mean green energy. If you divide 17.5 billion by 3,545 jobs created, that’s $5 million per job. That’s sound Democrat fiscal policy. Bible-thumping morons like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann could never think of intelligent policies like spending $5 million per job created. To get to that level of intelligence, you need to have degrees from Columbia and Harvard Law School (grades never released). And to vote for Obama’s policies, you need to be smart enough to watch the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on the Comedy Channel, and think that it’s news.

So we took billions of dollars out of the private economy, in order to punish those evil oil companies and coal companies, and we spent it on magic beans – sold to us by Obama’s Democrat cronies. Instead of lowering energy prices, Obama’s policies have resulted in higher energy prices. Was this unexpected?

Actually, for anyone who was paying attention, Obama made clear that he was OK with higher energy prices before he was elected in 2008.

And that’s what we got:

Gas Prices under Obama and Bush
Gas Prices under Obama and Bush

Only two kinds of people voted for Obama in 2008 – the people who were informed about Obama’s record by watching Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and the people who were about to receive stimulus grants for the green energy companies. The people who think that Michael Moore tells the truth about health care, and that Al Gore is an authority on climate science. The people who think that the New York Times is unbiased news.

News

Round-up of news from around the world

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Honduras protesters continue to bash Obama and CNN
Pro-freedom protesters in Honduras defy Obama and CNN

So much foreign policy news!

Iraq

Jason over at The Western Experience has a number of good stories up.

He writes that Iraq is struggling to find foreign investors for its oil fields.

Excerpt:

…the Iraqi government has to decide on how to lure foreign investors and oil firms to setup shop in the many rich oil fields. With modern development, industry and organization Iraq could be a major producer and, potentially, one of the major countries in the world in just a few decades. So far, things haven’t exactly happened in the order many experts and investors hoped. The hang up is, of course, price per barrel. Companies were asking too much for operating in the country in the eyes of the government. Still, others were willing to operate at  loss just to get a foothold in the new market.

It’s funny, because if our war in Iraq were really a war for oil, why is Iraq taking offers to see who will be drilling for all that oil? (The offers are also coming from China, Russia and India, not just the USA)

Egypt

Robert Spenser of Jihad Watch links to this Assist News article about the state of Christian liberty in Egypt.

Excerpt:

Since early 2007 the Egyptian government has been appeasing Muslim fundamentalists by settling matters of sectarian conflict out of court in line with Islamic Sharia law. That prohibits Christians from bringing evidence against Muslims. The government brokers ‘reconciliation’ sessions where the Christians are forced to drop all the charges they are making (arson, looting, assault, kidnap, robbery, criminal damage, rioting, torture, rape, murder) in exchange for Muslim guarantees of ‘peace’.

…Not only is violence against Christian individuals, churches and communities escalating dangerously, but the courts are increasingly subordinating the Constitution to Sharia law. Notably, the courts are refusing to allow Muslims the right to convert. The consequences of this are huge. A woman who is officially registered as a Muslim must by law marry a Muslim and the children of a man officially registered as a Muslim are automatically deemed Muslim by the State. The few who have courageously challenged this have been forced into hiding to preserve their lives.

Please pray for our Christian brothers and sisters in other countries.

Sri Lanka, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, etc.

Wow! Michael Totten has a super-long interview with Robert Kaplan, a moderate who writes about the U.S. military and global conflicts in the most far-flung places in the world.

Excerpts:

Kaplan: …The Tamil Tigers had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the government and say “you have to kill all the people to get to us.” So the government obliged them. The government killed thousands of civilians.

Kaplan: …The Sri Lankan government was elected in 2005 to win the war. And it has done that. Extremely brutally. It’s a government that’s very nationalist Sinhalese Buddhist. These are not the Richard Gere’s “peace and love” Buddhists. These are the real blood and soil Buddhists, where Buddhism is like any other religion when it’s threatened and it’s defending a piece of territory. It can be very brutal.

Wow, this thing was really messy. You have suicide bombing terrorists with human shields on the one side, and a journalist-killing authoritarian government on the other side. There were no good guys. What a mess. These militant Buddhists remind me of the militant nationalist Hindus I talked about before.

And here is a guest post about Russia and Georgia.

Honduras timeline

Here is a pretty useful timeline of events from Atlas Shrugs for the current democratic crisis in Honduras. This article really emphasizes the socialist policies of the wanna-be dictator. The person who provided it is an American investor living in Honduras.

Excerpt:

I have been disgusted at the world reaction to these events. It’s like they only looked at what happened on Sunday morning and ignored what events led to that day. I don’t understand how the removal of Zelaya was anything less than a small country demanding that their country remain democratic. Their constitutional process worked exactly right to remove a rogue president with an agenda that was detrimental to the Honduran constitution and society. While the actions o f June 28 would fit some definitions of a coup, it was certainly a legal and CONSTITUTIONAL coup. There have been several articles written that state that it was a MANDATORY coup. That’s a very difficult concept for most people from the first world to understand, but there are some coups that are good and even required.

I hope that Honduras can bear up under the economic sanctions they are likely to face – and no help from Obama, either. He seems to prefer Chavez and Ahmadinejad.