New EPA rule will cost each taxpaying American $280

By the EPA's own admission, power plants will have to spend $10.6 billion over the next four years to meet new, more stringent standards for anti-pollution controls. The EPA says that these measures will "save $59 billion to $140 billion in annual health costs, preventing 17,000 premature deaths a year along with illnesses and lost workdays."

Of course, just how those ridiculous figures were arrived at is anyone's guess, because the EPA doesn't make that research readily available. Think about it: those statistics are, at face value, patently false. We have 17,000 premature deaths a year thanks to dirty air? Sure we do. And a secret town in Kansas is the source of all baby unicorns.

No, this is another step to de-industrialize America and to "fundamentally transform" our nation into some sort of backwater country. Maybe it's payback, our chickens coming home to roost, in the words of one Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

All that said, what's the impact of these outrageous rules on Americans?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 153,683,000 civilians in the workforce (as of Nov. 2011).

Let's assume that each of these private sector employees are responsible for an equal amount of the EPA's egregious tolls. But Doug, you might say, don't public sector employees also have to pay these bills? Sure, but since the public sector is funded entirely by the private sector, they don't count in this calculation.

Furthermore, only half of workers pay net taxes to the government.

Here's what the EPA's disgusting new rules will cost each of us: $140. Every American will have to pay an additional $140 (really, figure double that because of markup and government inefficiency in these estimates) for the privilege of attaining some arbitrary new air-cleanliness standard that has no merit and no scientific basis.

Kind of like the billions we piss away on the global warming scam.

This administration simply must be turned out of office in 2012 if we are to save this country.

Good News: EPA Funding Modern Dance Troupe

But there's nothing to cut.

A small troupe of highly trained dancers will soon appear before Salt Lake City schoolchildren gliding, leaping and twisting into shapes that intend to teach them about air pollution and the environment.

The program is funded by a federal grant... [namely] $25,000 that the Environmental Protection Agency awarded Monday to the Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) as part of its environmental-justice grants.

All told, the EPA handed out more than $1 million to 46 nonprofit and tribal programs.

This country is headed for fiscal calamity -- and that's not me saying it, it's President Obama's former chief economic adviser, Peter Orszag! -- and I can come to no other conclusion that it's intentional.


Image: Earth Beat Radio.

Holder DOJ, with no pressing matters to deal with, pursues Climategate leakers in the United Kingdom

The Holder Justice Department, having stonewalled Congressional investigations of Murdergate and Kagangate, appears to have a lot of spare time on its hands.

So much so that it is investigating Climategate -- the release of emails that show scientists hiding, destroying and changing data to fit the global warming agenda.

I have learned that last week DOJ sent a search-and-seizure letter to the host of three climate-change "skeptic" blogs. Last night, UK police raided a blogger’s home and removed computers and equipment.

The leaked [Climategate] records derailed “cap-and-trade” legislation in the U.S. and, internationally, as well as talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The emails and computer code were produced with taxpayer funds and held on taxpayer-owned computers both in the US and the UK, and all were subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state FOIA laws.

They also were being unlawfully withheld in both the UK (by the University of East Anglia) and the U.S. (Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including stonewalling me for two years, and three other requesters for longer).

...In the U.S., the academic and political Left have had fits about Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli exercising even more specific, anti-fraud authority to seek further records from University of Virginia in following up on indications from the first Climategate release of possible fraud against the taxpayer.

Apparently, that represented an abuse of the police power. No word yet if they are outraged by DOJ’s current foray or that of the UK raiding team.

...This is a case which has members of the Virginia faculty and establishment beside themselves and demanding an all-out effort to oppose production of the requested documents in an effort to wear us and Cuccinelli down.

So far UVA has spent upwards of $1 million fighting Cuccinelli’s request, and school officials continue to fight us in court every step of the way.

Clearly, this is no small matter in the quarters insisting that this taxpayer-financed information never see the light of day. Even the criminal legal apparatus of the U.S. and UK must be invoked against this threat, apparently.

To review: The UK police and the US DOJ, Criminal Division, are pursuing a leaker of public records subject to one or more FOIA, records that were unlawfully withheld under those laws, which leaks indicate apparent civil violations (tortious interference by seeking dismissal of certain “skeptics”), and raising reasonable questions of fraud against taxpayers.

And they are pursuing the leaker.

But the law works both ways. Former Margaret Thatcher adviser Christopher Lord Monckton is pursuing his own brand of justice.

Now that six policemen from the Norfolk and Metropolitan forces have invaded the home and “borrowed” the computers of “Tallbloke”, the first blogger in the UK to reveal the existence of the 5000 Climategate 2.0 emails, you may ask why the British police seem so much more interested in tracking down and punishing the whistle-blower/“thief” than in dealing with the many crimes by crooked IPCC “scientists” that the emails expose.

...What offenses have been committed? Serious frauds, that's what. Some of the most prominent Climategate emailers appear, on the face of the evidence in the emails, to be engaged with each other and with others in an elaborate series of connected deceptions calculated to enrich themselves and their associates, impoverish everyone else and destroy key industries and national economies wholesale by systematically and often greatly exaggerating the supposed threat and costs of anthropogenic “global warming”, the certainty of the science that underlies the IPCC's claims, and the effectiveness of the various methods proposed for the attempted mitigation of anthropogenic “global warming”, while correspondingly understating the benefits of that warming and the costs of its attempted mitigation.

...In many jurisdictions, fraud is a common-law offense: that of obtaining a pecuniary advantage for oneself, or inflicting a pecuniary disadvantage upon another, by deception. The twin tests are money gain or loss, and deception.

...Suppose that the lead author of an IPCC chapter admits that he allowed a flagrantly incorrect value to appear in the Fourth Assessment Report because “I wanted to influence governments”, and suppose that notwithstanding the objections of the “reviewers” the erroneous value was printed, and suppose that for several months the IPCC, at the highest levels, tried to conceal the deception. That is fraud.

...In each instance, the perpetrators of the fraud will be named and their roles described.

Read the whole thing.

USA Today: Electricity Prices Necessarily Skyrocket

Remember how, in May of 2009, the president said that, "under my plan... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket"?

Well, I'm sure the "middle class" -- whoever that is -- appreciates the one campaign promise that Barack Obama kept.

Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity...

...Households paid a record $1,419 on average for electricity in 2010, the fifth consecutive yearly increase above the inflation rate, a USA TODAY analysis of government data found. The jump has added about $300 a year to what households pay for electricity. That's the largest sustained increase since a run-up in electricity prices during the 1970s...

...Electricty [sic] is consuming a greater share of Americans' after-tax income than at any time since 1996 — about $1.50 of every $100 in income at a time when income growth has stagnated, a USA TODAY analysis of Bureau of Economic Analysis data found...

...High taxes, limits on air-polluting fuels and the expense of maintaining an underground transmission system keep consumer costs high, says ConEd spokesman Chris Olert.

But then again, maybe USA Today is some kind of propaganda arm for the right wing Visigoths.

Or perhaps the EPA is just an out-of-control, unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy bent on de-industrializing America in pursuit of the United Nations' thrice-debunked climate scam.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

More Bad News For the Climate Crooks™: U.S. Has Only 575 Years of Gas and 500 Years of Coal Left in Ground

But, gee, let's not drill. It could contribute to warmal colding. The Institute for Energy Research (PDF) has the bad news for the climate crime gang.

In 1980, official estimates of proved oil reserves in the United States stood at roughly 30 billion barrels.

Yet over the past 30 years, more than 77 billion barrels of oil have been produced here.

In other words, the green energy kooks underestimated supplies by about 150%... just the last time they tried to panic the public.

North Dakota, for example, was barely among the top ten oil producing states less than ten years ago. Today it is the fourth largest producer due to rapid growth in developing the massive oil resources in the Bakken formation in the western portion of the state. North Dakota’s unemployment rate is 3.5 percent, compared to a 9.1 percent unemployment rate for the United States.

But President Obama -- who is opposed to job creation -- continues to refuse to allow massive projects like Keystone XL to proceed.

...the Congressional Research Service... released a report showing that the United States’ combined recoverable oil, natural gas, and coal endowment is the largest on Earth. ...When combined with resources from Canada and Mexico, total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels... [which] is more than the world has used since the first oil well was drilled over 150 years ago in Titusville, Pennsylvania. To put this in context, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of oil in proved reserves.

For comparative purposes, the technically recoverable oil in North America could fuel the present needs in the United States of seven billion barrels per year for around 250 years.

...Moreover, it is important to note that that “reserves” estimates are constantly in #ux. For example, in 1980, the U.S. had oil reserves of roughly 30 billion barrels. Yet from 1980 through 2010, we produced over 77 billion barrels of oil. In other words, over the last 30 years, we produced over 150 percent of our proved reserves.

...Restrictions in the form of federal bans and leasing combined with declining offerings of lease acreage mean only about 2.2 percent of America’s offshore acreage is currently leased for production...

...there is enough natural gas in North America to last the United States for over 175 years at current rates of consumption... [and its] coal supplies are even more staggering. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have over 497 billion short tons of recoverable coal, or nearly three times as much as Russia, which has the world’s second largest reserves... North American recoverable coal could provide enough electricity for the United States for about 500 years at current levels of consumption.

...While the United States and North America contain enormous energy wealth, U.S. policies have increasingly made exploration, development, production and consumption of that energy more difficult. Therefore, a scarcity of good policies, not a scarcity of energy, is responsible for U.S. energy insecurity.

Anyone who opposes the exploitation of America's massive energy treasures should be forced to live for a year without electricity and gasoline.

Of course, if they're like most limousine liberals (***cough*** Al Gore ***cough*** Barack Obama), it's only folks like us who are supposed to go without.


Hat tip: Say Anything Blog.

The Two Funniest Quotes From Climategate 2.0

HAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH... HAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHA... HAHAHAHAHHAHAH *cough* HAHHAHAH *gasp* (need oxygen... can't breathe...)

Oh, my:

Tim Osborne 4007

Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were

Tim Osborne #2347

Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline), and the method will infill these, estimating them from the real temperatures – another way of “correcting” for the decline, though may be not defensible!

After these revelations, any member of the Leftist media that refers to a climate "denier" needs to do a mandatory, eight-hour documentary on the science of Alchemy.


Hat tip: Soylent Green (NSFW)

Beautiful: Chevy Volt Safety Issues 'May Have Been Suppressed' (plus, the Top 12 Chevy Volt Slogans!)

Gee, it seems so surprising that a government-owned auto company would use the instrumentalities of government to suppress safety findings.

Top 12 Chevy Volt Slogans
12. Fight global warming by driving an electric car that bursts into flames!
11. The money you will save at the pump helps you pay the deductible on your homeowners insurance.
10. If you have friends push it around while making ***vroom vroom*** noises, it's a lot like driving a car.
9. Reducing our dependence on foreign oil while reducing our garage to a pile of ashes.
8. We call it the “Volt” because the name "Chevy Coal" didn’t test well.
7. Ask us about our Sail option!
6. The Chevy Volt, the $41,000 before-tax-credit, four-seater that you might as well buy because you’re paying for it anyway car
5. Forward, into the futu-- AGGGHHH!!! AGGGHHH!!! PUT ME OUT!!! ROLL ME AROUND ON THE GROUND!!!
4. Got Squirrel?
3. The Kia of Golf Carts
2. I coulda had a V-8
1. Why pollute around you with exhaust when you can pollute far away with coal?

Following on from the announcement that GM is looking at redesigning the Chevrolet Volt’s lithium-ion battery system in the wake of several highly publicized fires resulting from test crashes, comes further news that both the automaker and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration delayed disclosure of their original findings by months.

Apparently, way back in June, General Motors heard about a Volt fire that happened three weeks after said vehicle was crash tested, yet it wasn’t until November that the company, or NHTSA disclosed there was a potential problem, urging both dealers and customers to drain the battery pack immediately following an accident.

As a result the public relations nightmare surrounding Chevy’s halo vehicle appears to be deepening, though a good deal of the blame in this case also rests with NHTSA.

Joan Claybrook, a former adminstrator at NHTSA believes part of the reason for the delay was the “fragility of Volt sales.” Yet she also believes that “NHTSA could have put out a consumer alert, not to tell them [customers] for six months makes no sense to me.”

GM designed a complex cooling system for the Volt’s lithium ion battery pack to help regulate its temperature (lithium-ion units are known for overheating), yet until July it hadn’t finalized a standard proceedure to power down the battery system, the Volt had already been on sale in the US for six months at that juncture.

The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, which crash tested a Volt back in February reported no incidents of fire as resulting from the accident, yet when a second crash test was performed in August, General Motors sent a technician to power down the battery.

General Motors is certainly blazing a path to a clean energy future!

Can I get a rim-shot?


Hat tips: Biff Spackle, IMAO, Michelle Malkin, The Other McCain, Cruze Forum and Greg Gutfeld.

Hell's Door vs. the Incandescent Light Bulb

In the middle of the Karakoum (Turkmenistan) desert, close to the tiny nomadic village of Darvaza, there is a crater about 100 meters in diameter and more than 25 meters deep. It is called "Hell's Door". Inside this well, a fire has been burning for more than 40 years.

A Soviet prospecting mission began here in the fifties. In 1971, a drilling operation exposed an underground cavity that discharged enormous quantities of gas. Thinking the supply of gas would last but a few weeks, Soviet engineers decided to torch the hole. And it's been burning ever since. The intense heat coming from the crater allows visitors to approach Hell's Door only for a few minutes at a time because of the unbearable temperature.

At night, the hole looks like Dante's Inferno: the fire burns in all its magnificence, giving the well the look of a volcanic burning crater.

* * * * * * * * *
40 years of intense, volcanic heat emitted by a massive, burning hellhole.

But you and I have to give up our incandescent light-bulbs.

For the children. Oh, and the global warming scam, too. But mostly the children. And Ewoks.

Good News: North American Electric Reliability Corporation Warns New EPA Regulations 'Threaten Stability of Power Grids'

After reading Public utility commission and FERC board slam EPA: it "ambushed" utilities, will cause "widespread and uncontrolled blackouts", Matt emailed us with more good news.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released a report yesterday concluding that proposed EPA regulations “may significantly affect bulk power system reliability depending on the scope and timing of the rule implementation and the mechanisms in place to preserve reliability.”

As this Platts report notes, NERC says that these proposed rules could create “insufficient generating resources” and “threaten the stability of power grids in Texas and New England within the next decade.”

Not to mention job losses and economic ruin. Hooray!

Before this latest news, estimates of job losses caused by the EPA had topped 1.44 million.

In reality, it will be considerably more. How many companies can operate without a stable electric grid?

President Obama's mission to turn American into a third-world country continues apace.

Public utility commission and FERC board slam EPA: it "ambushed" utilities, will cause "widespread and uncontrolled blackouts"

The electric grid is in grave danger thanks to the EPA's arbitrary and draconian new regulations for utilities. Oh, and that's not just according to the utilities impacted by the agency's hastily constructed rules, it's a message echoed by public utility boards and the Midwest's seven-state Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Kansas electric utility Westar Energy contends that meeting a mid-December Environmental Protection Agency deadline on new air emission regulations will result in rolling blackouts for its customers.

“We asked the EPA for more time, but they tell us they're enforcing the Dec. 15 deadline,” said Westar Energy CEO Mark Ruelle. “So we're pushing back. KCPL, Sunflower and us have asked a court to stay the rule. It's not our style, but we've sued through the court in D.C. and the Kansas Attorney General has filed his own lawsuit... We've cut sulfur by 80 percent and NOX (nitrogen oxide) by 50 percent,” Ruelle said, from highs in the years 2002 and 2003. “We've still a ways to go, but we have a plan to get there. Then this rule came out based on emissions crossing state lines. It came out in July and it says we must comply by Jan. 1. You can't.”

...The company can meet the more stringent regulations, but not until 2018, Ruelle said... A separate study by the Southwest Power Pool agrees with Westar's assessment... [the] seven-state regional transmission organization [was] mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ensure reliable supplies of power, adequate transmission infrastructure, and competitive wholesale prices of electricity for its region.

In a September letter to the EPA, which used the word concern seven times, the organization warned an initial “reliability analysis” of utility operations under the EPA timeline pointed to hundreds of potential system overloads in the region and more than a thousand cases of system voltages going too low to meet mandated levels.

The result, the letter advised, could include “the potential of cascading blackouts... or localized rolling blackouts initiated by utilities within the SPP region, to avoid more widespread and uncontrolled blackouts and to remain in compliance with reliability standards... SPP encourages the EPA to work with generation owners to develop flexible compliance schedules to ensure equipment installation is completed in a timely, safe, reliable and cost-effective manner without an arbitrary deadline..."

...Even the Citizens' Utility Ratepayer Board, which represents customers in utility rate requests, voiced sympathy to Westar's situation... “The EPA really kind of ambushed the utility, in terms of the process,” said David Springe, CURB's consumer counsel. “Clearly they're all working toward reducing emissions to the level the EPA wants. In their final order they were really radically different than the preliminary. They changed the mark they were supposed to hit and made it under a timeline that is simply not reasonable.”

Whether the EPA sticks with its deadline or works with utilities, it's ultimately the consumer that pays, Springe said... “Whether it's January or 2015, they have to retrofit the plants and rates will go up,” he said. “I don't know that I've seen a full rate estimate, but it won't be small.”

If we don't begin defunding the Environmental Protection Agency -- first by handing a pink-slip to President Obama in 2012 -- the damage to the electric grid will be catastrophic.

We can see that the eco-Marxist Left is well on its way to shredding America's energy infrastructure. 2012 may be the last chance we have to save this country from the Cloward-Piven Leftists bent on -- in President Obama's words -- "transforming this society".

What this society would ultimately be transformed into under Obama I leave as an exercise for the reader.

Circle Quirk: how the EPA takes your money, gives it to the eco-Marxist Left, which then uses it to sue... the EPA

Item 1: EPA sued over unenforced ozone standards

...In a suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the environmental group [WildEarth Guardians] said the Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt regulations by March 2010 requiring states to meet the new ozone levels... Because of the EPA's inaction, air quality is still measured by weaker standards enacted in 1997, the suit said.

...WildEarth Guardians has about 5,000 members, mostly in the Southwest, and is based in Santa Fe... The EPA did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.

Item 2: WildEarth Guardians Annual Report 2010 (PDF)

...WildEarth Guardians’ goal has been and continues to be simple: To help clean energy take root by exposing the true cost of fossil fuels.

• Filed lawsuits to overturn billions of tons of new coal mining in the nation’s largest coal producing region, the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.
• Brought pressure to bear against the region’s largest coal-fired power plants, including New Mexico’s San Juan Generating Station and Four Corners Power Plant, two of the largest coal-fired power plants in the American West.
• Applied pressure until Xcel Energy committed to retiring four coal-fired power plants in Colorado.
• Halted 41,000 acres of oil and gas drilling in Montana.
• Successfully pressured the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt the first-ever rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources of air pollution.
• Filed first-ever lawsuit challenging global warming impacts of coal mining in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

Item 3: Public Sources of Funding for WildEarth Guardians (PDF)

Major Contributors

make our work possible from January 1 - December 31, 2010.

GOVERNMENT GRANTS
City of Santa Fe
NM Enviromental Department
Santa Fe County
US Environmental Protection Agency
US Fish and Wildlife Service
US Forest Service

Item 4: The Executive Summary

The federal government, already spending more than a trillion dollars every year that it doesn't have, is devoting substantial funds to groups like "WildEarth Guardians" so they can sue... the federal government.

Oh, but there's nothing to cut -- right, liberals?

Think about it. The EPA takes your money -- without your permission, mind you -- and then redistributes it to the flat-earth, no growth, anti-civilization eco-Marxists. The flat-earthers then use your money to turn around and sue the federal government! And, at this point, the federal government steals more of your money to "defend" against these insane, self-flagellating lawsuits and hire more bureaucrats!

The federal government already owns nearly a third of all land in the country. And these enemies of humanity want still more, so they can continue to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and continue their mission to turn America into a centrally-planned, socialist-style, agrarian, third-world country.

Consider: the U.S. is the only country in the world that restricts access to its own vast treasure troves of energy.

If this kind of insanity doesn't make you scream in anger, then -- I'm sorry -- you're simply not paying attention.

2012 is coming. And it's high time we nuke these bureaucracies' budgets from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.


Related: Genocide in Green

Climategate 2.0 emails: Warming "Scientist" Michael Mann Eviscerated by the Late John L. Daly

The author of the infamous -- and now debunked -- "hockey stick" graph that purported to prove global warming is a climate "scientist" by the name of Michael Mann.

Mann's work depended in great part upon tree ring data. The relative width of tree rings, in Mann's estimation, could be used as proxy data for reconstructing past temperatures.

Newly revealed by the Climategate 2.0 email drop: the late John L. Daly eviscerated Mann's use of tree rings, in language as terse and powerful as one could imagine (emphases mine).

A tree only grows on land. That excludes 70% of the earth covered by water. A tree does no grow on ice. A tree does not grow in a desert. A tree does not grow on grassland-savannahs. A tree does not grow in alpine areas. A tree does not grow in the tundra. We are left with perhaps 15% of the planet upon which forests grow/grew. That does not make any studies from tree rings global, or even hemispheric.

The width and density of tree rings is dependent upon the following variables which cannot be reliably separated from each other. sunlight – if the sun varies, the ring will vary. But not at night of course.

• cloudiness – more clouds, less sun, less ring.

• pests/disease – a caterpillar or locust plague will reduce photosynthesis

• access to sunlight – competition within a forest can disadvantage or advantage some trees.

• moisture/rainfall – a key variable. Trees do not prosper in a droughteven if there’s a heat wave.

• snow packing in spring around the base of the trees retards growth temperature – finally!

The tree ring is a composite of all these variables, not merely of temperature. Therefore on the 15% of the planet covered by trees, their rings do not and cannot accurately record temperature in isolation from the other environmental variables.

...Mann’s theory simply does not stack up. But that was not the key issue. Anyone can put up a dud theory from time to time. What is at issue is the uncritical zeal with which the industry siezed on the theory before its scientific value had been properly tested. In one go, they tossed aside dozens of studies which confirmed the existence of the MWE and LIA as global events, and all on the basis of tree rings – a proxy which has all the deficiencies I have stated above.

The worst thing I can say about any paper such as his is that it is `bad science’. Legal restraint prevents me going further. But in his case, only those restraints prevent me going *much* further.

Cheers
John Daly

The entire global warming movement was the product of an utterly corrupt United Nations; it can be considered a follow-on project to "Oil-for-Food" and other ripoffs designed to redirect billions of dollars into the pockets of global bureaucrats.

And some "scientists" -- eager to cash in on immense grants offered by governments to strengthen their case for more regulations and more control -- were happy to oblige. The fact is, man-made global warming is the new alchemy -- and the Climategate emails reinforce the raw greed and criminality behind this pseudo-scientific religion.

Climate Crook James Hansen: on the Government Dole While Accepting $1.6 Million in Additional Income... and Counting

Like the rest of the climate crooks, Hansen appears to be on the warmal colding bandwagon for one reason and one reason alone: the Benjamins:

It seems esteemed NASA astronomer turned climatologist turned paid activist Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has not been reporting some income that he is required by law to do. How long will NASA continue to look the other way? Chris Horner explains.

A Summary of James E. Hansen’s NASA Ethics File

NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.

...Hansen [also] failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties ... to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.

Ethics laws require that such payments or gifts be reported on an SF278 public financial disclosure form. As detailed, below, Hansen nonetheless regularly refused to report this income.

Also, he seems to have inappropriately taken between $10,000 and $26,000 for speeches unlawfully promoting him as a NASA employee. This is despite NASA ordering him to return at least some of the money, with the rest apparently unnoticed by NASA. This raises troubling issues about Hansen’s, and NASA’s, compliance with ethics rules, the general prohibition on not privately benefitting from public service, and even the criminal code prohibition on not having one’s public employment income supplemented. All of this lucrative activity followed Hansen ratcheting up his global warming alarmism and activism to be more political... [but] he cannot receive outside income for doing his job, he has placed himself in peril, assuming the Department of Justice can find a way to be interested in these revelations.

...Hansen suddenly became the recipient of many, often lucrative offers of outside employment and awards after he escalated his political activism — using his NASA position as a platform, and springboard. This began with a strident “60 Minutes” interview in early 2006, alleging political interference by the Bush administration in climate science...

...consider these failures to report often elegant air and hotel/resort accommodations received on his SF278 as required by law (the amount of direct cash income received from the party providing him travel, as well, is in parentheses):

• Blue Planet Prize ($500,000), travel for Hansen and his wife to Tokyo, Japan, 2010
• Dan David Prize ($500,000), travel to Paris, 2007
• Sophie Prize ($100,000), Oslo Norway, travel for Hansen and his wife, 2010
• WWF Duke of Edinburgh Award, Travel for Hansen and his wife, London, 2006
• Alpbach, Austria (alpine resort)(“business class”, with wife), 2007
• Shell Oil UK ($10,000), London, 2009
• FORO Cluster de Energia, travel for Hansen and wife (“business class”), Bilbao, Spain, 2008
• ACT Coalition, travel for Hansen and wife to London, 2007
• Progressive Forum ($10,000)(“first class”), to Houston, 2006
• Progressive Forum ($10,000), to Houston, 2009
• UCSB ($10,000), to Santa Barbara, CA
• Nierenberg Prize ($25,000), to San Diego, 2008
• Nevada Medal ($20,000), to Las Vegas, Reno, 2008
• EarthWorks Expos, to Denver, 2006
• California Academy of Science ($1,500), to San Francisco, 2009
• CalTech ($2,000), travel to Pasadena, CA for Hansen and his wife, 2007

The following is an incomplete list of other travel apparently accepted to make paid speeches and/or receive cash awards but not reported on SF278 financial disclosures:

Boston, Washington, DC (twice); Columbus, OH; Omaha, NE; Wilmington, DE; Ithaca, NY (business class); Chapel Hill, NC; Deerfield, IL (Sierra Club “No Coal” campaign); Dartmouth, NH; Alberta, Canada (as consultant to a law firm helping run an anti-oil sands campaign), Stanford; Minneapolis; Missoula, MT

...World Wildlife Fund [also] gave Hansen an engraved Montres Rolex watch, which typically run $8,000 and up (2006), but which was not reported by Hansen on his SF 278 under “gifts”, which must be reported if valued at more than $260...

These activities appear to violate the criminal code, 18 U.S.C. 209.

And Hansen's not the only one enriching himself. Members of the United Nations Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have profited greatly from their various reports advocating man-made global warming, carbon offsets and other money-making schemes.

Oh, my: Obama White House demanded that Solyndra delay its layoff announcements until after... the 2010 midterm elections

The House Energy and Commerce Committee may have just opened up EnergyGate's Pandora's Box:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu is scheduled to appear before a Solyndra inquiry on Thursday, so I’m sure he’ll be asked about this:

The Obama administration urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections, newly released e-mails show...

...Solyndra, the now-shuttered California company, had been a poster child of President Obama’s initiative to invest in clean energies and received the administration’s first energy loan of $535 million. But a year ago, in October 2010, the solar panel manufacturer was quickly running out of money and had warned the Energy Department it would need emergency cash to avoid having to shut down...

As you read content of one of the emails, keep in mind that the 2010 election was on November 2nd:

"DOE continues to be cooperative and have indicated that they will fund the November draw on our loan (app. $40 million) but have not committed to December yet," a Solyndra investor adviser wrote Oct. 30. “They did push very hard for us to hold our announcement of the consolidation to employees and vendors to Nov. 3rd – oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.

This particular “investor adviser” possessed the kind of lack of inquisitiveness that probably contributed to the excitement level in the VP’s office.

As instructed, Solyndra announced the layoffs and a factory shutdown just after the elections were over. In spite of that, the DoE continued to give Solyndra installments of their taxpayer backed loan...

Update: Rahm Emanuel still doesn’t remember anything about Solyndra... whatever that was.

The malevolent propagandist named Jonathan Alter hardest hit:


Hat tip: TrendingRight.

Schweizer's New Book: 80% of Energy Department's "Green Loan" Program Went to Obama's Backers

Peter Schweizer's new book has received attention from across the political spectrum, including law enforcement. Even 60 Minutes reportedly leveraged the book to shine a spotlight on Nancy Pelosi's insider trades.

When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about the need for an economic stimulus to revive a struggling economy... After he was sworn in as president, he proclaimed that taxpayer money would assuredly not be doled out to political friends...

...But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies...

...In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.

...The Government Accountability Office has been highly critical of the way guaranteed loans and grants were doled out by the Department of Energy, complaining that the process appears “arbitrary” and lacks transparency. In March 2011, for example, the GAO examined the first 18 loans that were approved and found that none were properly documented. It also noted that officials “did not always record the results of analysis” of these applications. A loan program for electric cars, for example, “lacks performance measures.” No notes were kept during the review process, so it is difficult to determine how loan decisions were made. The GAO further declared that the Department of Energy “had treated applicants inconsistently in the application review process, favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.” The Department of Energy’s inspector general, Gregory Friedman, ... has testified that contracts have been steered to “friends and family.”

...These programs might be the greatest—and most expensive—example of crony capitalism in American history. Tens of billions of dollars went to firms controlled or owned by fundraisers, bundlers, and political allies, many of whom—surprise!—are now raising money for Obama again...

The ludicrous Jonathan Alter hardest hit.

Good News: Federal Government Will Now 'Dictate the Actual Design of Trucks, Tractors and other Heavy-Duty Vehicles'

You heard that right. Not satisfied with shutting down 8% of the electric grid starting next year, the EPA will now dictate the design of tractor-trailers and other heavy duty vehicles that represent the lifeblood of American commerce.

Fortunately, someone is fighting back.

A lawsuit challenging the Obama Administration’s greenhouse gas emissions standards for heavy- and medium-duty trucks was filed Tuesday by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) on behalf of small businesses and trade organizations whose members the foundation claims would be damaged by the regulations.

The suit charges that federal officials were legally required to submit the regulations for independent scientific scrutiny, but failed to do so.

...The regulations are the first-ever federal restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (such as trucks, tractor-trailers, and RVs). They were promulgated jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA), and were published in the Federal Register on Sept. 15, 2011.

The rules’ negative impact on the economy could be significant, PFL claimed, pointing out that the EPA and NHTSA “themselves admit that from 2014 through 2017, the proposed emissions restrictions will substantially increase costs for everyone involved in transporting goods or people on the nation’s highways, including trucking companies, independent truckers, construction companies, and others.” ...

PFL said the rules are an attempt by government to “micromanage” truck design... “The rules mandate that heavy-duty vehicles increase fuel efficiency while decreasing CO2 emis­sions, thereby requiring the use of new types of fuels and engines, which in turn will require aerodynamic redesign,” PLF senior staff attorney Ted Hadzi-Antich said. “The regulatory requirements will necessarily involve EPA and NHTSA in the redesign of the vehicles because the aerodynamics have a major impact on the amount of work the vehicles can perform to transport freight at common highway speeds. Thus, the federal government now wants to dictate the actual design of trucks, tractors, and other heavy-duty vehicles used throughout the economy.”

For small businesses, it’s an “impossible” price tag, he added.

Pacific Legal Foundation describes itself as a donor-supported watchdog organiza­tion that “litigates for limited government, property rights, free enterprise, and a balanced approach to environmental regulations, in courts across the country.”

If you have a few spare bucks, you can support PLF here.

Some good news on the economic front: Solyndra execs received huge bonuses courtesy of President Obama

The headline in the San Jose Mercury News says it all: "Solyndra executives collected hefty bonuses in months before Fremont company filed for bankruptcy:"

Senior executives at Solyndra collected hefty bonuses -- ranging from $37,000 to $60,000 apiece -- as the Fremont company bled cash and careened toward bankruptcy this summer.

Bankruptcy documents filed in Delaware earlier this week reveal that more than a dozen senior executives at the defunct solar manufacturing company were awarded sizable quarterly bonuses April 15 and again July 8. Solyndra ceased operations in late August and filed for bankruptcy Sept. 6. About 1,100 employees were laid off without severance pay.

The bonuses, awarded to more than a dozen executives, came on top of what were already highly competitive salaries. Karen Alter, Solyndra's vice president of marketing, had an annual base salary of $275,000; she was awarded a $55,000 bonus in April and again in July. Ben Bierman, Solyndra's executive vice president of operations and engineering, had an annual base salary of $300,000; he was awarded $60,000 in April and again in July. Will Stover, the company's chief financial officer, was also awarded a $60,000 bonus in April and again in July.

The bonuses were paid despite the fact that "everyone knew that our solar panels were uncompetitive... including President Obama."

Townhall commenter "turfmann" had a rather strong reaction to this news:

Ladies and gentlemen, what you have just read is a textbook example, a dictionary definition of a conspiracy to defraud the government.

Solyndra was not by any stretch of the imagination a viable enterprise. From what I understand, no reputable funding organization that performed a proper due diligence upon this company would give them the spare change in their pockets, never mind billions of dollars.

Not the Obama administration, though. Having no one in their ranks that has run so much as a lemonade stand, they determined that Solyndra was deserving of an exponentially larger sum of money than would ever be sought or approved of in the private sector - our friggin' money - that will never be paid back by the company, but will certainly be exacted like a pound of flesh upon my grandchildren.

As far as the concept of "retention bonuses" is concerned - I say hogwash. The company is dying and if it cannot successfully keep the rats from jumping off the ship without government-supplied ransom then the proper course of action is to let the company go bankrupt.

Bankruptcy is a necessary and proper instrument of capitalism - creative destruction clears the way for competitors to successfully garner market share.

Solyrdra was a failure on each and every level and should have been bankrupted long, long before the government started picking it as a winner when by every objective measure it was a loser.

What occurred here is a criminal conspiracy. What occurred here was criminal fraud.

Bernie Friggin' Madoff went to prison for the rest of his life for defrauding investors of an exponentially smaller sum than Barack Obama and his ilk have stolen from the American people.

Some brain-dead Obama sycophant responded to a post I made yesterday on these pages that (this will come as a shock, I know) that Chicago Jesus was pure and that the evil Darth Cheney should be brought up on war crimes - never mind the fact that for the final two years of the Bush administration Pelosi & Reid had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress and could have trumped up specious articles of impeachment, could have seen to the indictment of any number of Bush administration personnel on any number of charges, but aside from one notable and trumped up example of Scotter Libby, there was nothing. No charges. None. Zip. Zero. Nada. And nearly three years on into the Obama administration there is no attempt to charge Bush or anyone else with any crime committed while in office - because there were none.

Now we have a criminal organization occupying the White House. There are actual crimes that are being committed, from the murder of a U.S. Border Agent with smuggled firearms to the looting of the U. S. Treasury.

I demand justice for my nation!

I demand that these people be indicted for their crimes, tried, and if guilty sent to prison for a very long time! That goes for the nameless bureaucrat in his cubicle in a windowless office right up to the man in the Oval Office. In this nation, no one is above the law - most certainly the ones most responsible for upholding it.

With weak-kneed RINOs like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell leading the respective Republican delegations in Congress, it will be impossible to effect change.

There's only one thing we can do, you and I. Vote for the... most... conservative Republicans you can... at every level of government. Men and women like Allen West, Michelle Bachmann, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Jim DeMint, and many others I'm forgetting. Constitutional conservatives. Citizen activists in the mold of Sam Adams, John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and other patriots who risked everything to establish this society.

It's time for the Tea Party to roll over the establishment Republicans -- the "neo-Statists" -- and begin to reestablish a Constitutional Republic. We have no choice if we are to save this country.


Related: Your Handy Dandy EnergyGate/Solyndra Cheat Sheet. Hat tips: John Hayward and Mark Levin.

ClimateGate Redux: Co-Author of Seminal Climate Change Paper Refutes Its Conclusion: There's No Damn Warming

The scamtabulous theory of warmal colding hardest hit:

It was hailed as the scientific study that ended the global warming debate once and for all – the research that, in the words of its director, ‘proved you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer’.

Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually... [their] work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it...

...But today ... a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis... Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

...She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago...

...In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained...

...a report to be published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation ... drawn from the BEST project’s data and revealed on its website ... shows that the trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly...

...In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics’ arguments were now taking them much more seriously... They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation – as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.

Rumor has it that Dr. James Hansen, the infamous, taxpayer-funded climate kook, is on suicide watch.


Salacious background details: Inside the U.N.'s Global Warming Scam. Hat tip: Memeorandum.

Your Handy Dandy EnergyGate Cheat Sheet #solyndra [Updated]

Trying to keep track of all of the government-authorized theft of taxpayer dollars in the name of "green energy"? I know: it's difficult, given that new disclosures seem to occur daily.

For that reason, I've assembled a running cheat sheet to help keep all of the Democrat politicians, the crony capitalists, the conflicts-of-interest, and the outright criminality straight. I know, I know -- it's a difficult job, but someone's got to do it.

• James Johnson, erstwhile Fannie Mae chairman during the height of its subprime lending, was a bundler for Obama in 2008 and is listed as raising as much as $500,000 for the 2012 race
• Johnson also heads Washington-based Perseus Group
• Johnson's Perseus investments include the Vehicle Production Group, which received $50 million in "clean energy" loans

• Patrick Murphy, a confidant of Harry Reid, was paid at least $290,000 by "clean energy" company SunPower
• Murphy wasn't the only beneficiary; SunPower's political action committee also gave more than $16K to Democrat Congressional candidates in 2010
• The son of Rep. George Miller (D-CA) is SunPower's top lobbyist and Miller visited SunPower last October with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
• Miller and Murphy appear to have helped SunPower get $1.2 billion in loan guarantees from the DOE

• Harry Reid, according to The New York Times, "was instrumental in securing" DOE financing for "clean energy projects on government-owned land"
• Reid, in particular, helped secure $145 million for a company called "Nevada Geothermal Power"
• Reid has not publicly commented on a recent audit by Deloitte & Touche that expressed doubt that the company would survive
• Reid also hasn't called for investigations of where the taxpayers' money went; he's apparently too busy

• Anthony Podesta raised over $350,000 for Democratic campaign committees this year
• Podesta's lobbying company has received roughly $670,000 in the last two years lobbying on behalf of a "green energy company" called SolarReserve
• Podesta's lobbying apparently helped get SolarReserve a $737 million DOE loan last week

• Ronald Pelosi is the brother-in-law of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
• Pelosi is an executive with Pacific Corporate Group, a private equity group
• Pelosi's firm invested in SolarReserve
• Pelosi's firm benefited directly when the DOE approved a $737 million loan last week

• Billionaire George Kaiser raised at least $50,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
• Kaiser's company, Solyndra, received a $535 million loan guarantee from DOE.
• Kaiser's company received the loan before DOE received final copies of outside reviews of the deal.
• Kaiser is also listed as a board adviser with SolarReserve, the Pelosi-linked firm that received a a $737 million DOE loan last week

• Steven Spinner raised $500,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
• Spinner then became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's key loan advisers.
• Spinner later wrote that he "helped oversee the more than $100 billion" in loans and guarantees.
• Spinner executed 29 stock trades in energy companeis while serving as a DOE adviser
• Spinner held shares in at least four companies that received DOE loans
• Spinner's wife's law firm collected around $2.5 million while representing Solyndra
• Spinner's wife's law firm also represented two other companies that received $34 million from DOE

• Steve Westly raised $500,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
• Westly then became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's key advisers.
• Westly was an investor in five firms that received half a billion dollars in energy grants and loans from DOE.

• John V. Roos raised $500,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
• Roos' law firm (the same firm Spinner's wife worked for) collected "millions" from DOE-funded companies.

Call it "Crony Marxism", call it outright theft, call it an egregious breach of trust. It's the inevitable result of government tampering in areas forbidden to it by the Constitution.

And please consider: if the Climatards are willing to waste billions enriching themselves in the name of green energy, they really can't take the global warming scam seriously.

In other words, the green tech movement no more believes in global warming than you or I.

And, once again, where's the special prosecutor?


Related:
• The Bush administration rejected Solyndra's requests for loans for two years citing incomplete documentation
• Solyndra employee: from day one, everyone knew that our solar panels were uncompetitive... including President Obama
• Bruce Krasting Blows Obama's Solyndra Scandal Sky High
• Oh, my: Emails show White House knew Solyndra was a disaster before it issued $535M crony loan


Hat tip: Laughing Conservative.

Exclusive: Obama Department of Energy Loan Application [Biff Spackle]

Biff Spackle has uncovered another world exclusive from the dumpsters at the Department of Energy. It seems that an application like this one helped secure billions of taxpayer dollars for companies like Solyndra, SolarReserve, etc.

As George Kaiser is reported to have said, "Hey, nuttin's stopping you from filling out your own loan application and sending it in, chumps!"

1. Full name:
Please enter your real name, you will have an opportunity to list your front company later

2. What will your company manufacture?
Solar panels that are outlandishly overpriced
Solar panels made of millions of tiny windmills
Windmills that are outlandishly overpriced
Windmills that have solar panels on their propeller blades
Unicorn methane collection catheters
Magic Solar Energy Beans™
Invention to be named later

3. What are your qualifications for a loan? (please check all that apply)
I'm related to a Democrat politician
I was a qualified bundler for the Obama 2008 campaign
(Enter amount bundled in 2008)
I am a qualified bundler for the Obama 2012 campaign
(Enter amount bundled in 2012)
I am a qualified fundraiser for the Democrat Party
(Enter amount raised in the last calendar year)
I am a billionaire who is not a crony capitalist but I am willing to learn

4. How much money do you want?
(Please round amount off to the nearest $50,000,000)

5. What other considerations should we be aware of when adjudicating your loan application? (please check all that apply)
I belong to the Augusta Country Club
I have a lifetime membership to the Pebble Beach Golf Course
I am a haute couture women's fashion designer
I own a beach-side mansion on Martha's Vineyard
I possess sensitive photographs of Democrat politicians in incriminating and highly embarrassing situations (even for Democrats)

6. Would you like to make an online contribution to the Democrat National Committee today?
Yes


(Note: submitting this application will take you to an online contribution form)

Related: Your Handy Dandy EnergyGate Cheat Sheet.