United Liberty

ABC News reports that $2 billion in “stimulus” funds went to pay for windmills as part of “green” energy initiatives. The only problem is the funding, which was supposed to be for jobs in this country (wasn’t that the point of all that spending?), went overseas:

Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C.

Nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been spent on wind power, funding the creation of enough new wind farms to power 2.4 million homes over the past year. But the study found that nearly 80 percent of that money has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines.

I’m a free-trader, so I’m not bothered by jobs going overseas because it generally means better jobs are being created in our country. I do disagree with the government investing in this type of venture, I just find it funny, but sad too, that the Obama Administration, for it’s populist pandering on trade and penalizing American companies sending jobs overseas, is doing the same thing.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s comments regarding skeptics of man-made climate change are very inflammatory:

There is an anti-science group, there is a flat Earth group, if I may say so, over the scientific evidence for climate change.

I was forwarded that story by a reader and found myself really getting riled up by it, bringing to fruition this post. Gordon Brown’s comments are totally ridiculous. Most climate change skeptics have very nuanced views that basically argue that climate change is occurring, but that the Al Gore style zealotry is totally inappropriate because 1) CO2 is totally natural even in massive quantities, (in Washington state, it was a common statistic that volcanoes such as Mt. St. Helens emitted more CO2 in one eruption than Washington state’s car drivers did in one year) and 2) the world is in a constant state of climate flux, evidenced by the fact that ancient history describes the Middle East as green and abundant when it’s barren and sandy now. None of these points refute climate change, but instead refute the arguments that man’s activity on earth is the cause for it.

The view of skeptics is much more complex and nuanced than that of Prime Minister Brown, Al Gore or the like. By referring to skeptics as “a flat Earth group,” Brown seems to be comparing us to the Church as it persecuted Galileo Galilei. Brown has the comparison reversed. It’s really him, the United Nations, Al Gore and all those who are trying to silence and deligitimate criticism and dissent that are acting in an authoritarian and regressive manner.

An article in the Sunday, March 15 edition of The Birmingham News, entitled “Lots crumble and mud flows”, discusses some of the complications resulting from the plethora of unfinished housing projects that have been put on hold in the current economic crisis. The problems include excessive runoff and mud flows, crumbling roads without a final seal coat, empty houses in various stages of construction, construction debris posing safety hazards, and other various forms of pollution. Curiously, nowhere in the article does its author acknowledge that most of these housing construction projects are the result of a housing bubble.

Barack Obama doesn’t have the votes to pass his $4 trillion budget:

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he has spoken to enough colleagues about several different provisions in the budget request to make him think Congress won’t pass it.

Conrad urged White House budget director Peter Orszag not to “draw lines in the sand” with lawmakers, most notably on Obama’s plan for a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions.

The Alabama Public Service Commission recently approved a measure that would allow consumers to permit Alabama Power to install a device that would automatically cut off their air conditioners during peak usage times (when most people are at work anyway). The incentive is that consumers would save $20 on their November electric bills.

Although I think this is a good start towards providing consumers with greater flexibility and options as far as their electricity usage, it’s still way behind the times.

When I ran for the Alabama Public Service Commission in 2008, I learned a great deal about existing technology that would save power and dramatically cut utility bills.

The world was greeted on Saturday with Barack Obama’s announcement of a massive public works program to “save or create at least 2-1/2 million jobs so that the nearly 2 million Americans who’ve lost them know that they have a future,” as Obama put it in his weekly radio address (yes, he’s already doing this, even before the inauguration). A detailed article at Politico.com opens with the following:

President-elect Barack Obama added sweep and meat to his economic agenda on Saturday, pledging the largest new investment in roads and bridges since President Dwight D. Eisenhower built the Interstate system in the late 1950s, and tying his key initiatives – education, energy, health care –back to jobs in a package that has the makings of a smaller and modern version of FDR’s New Deal marriage of job creation with infrastructure upgrades.