Obama Administration Hiding Information and Concocting Reports to Back Expensive Wind Energy Programs March 8, 2010
Posted by seeineye in : Politics , 1 comment so farby Jim Hoft
Barack Obama admitted in 2008 that cap and trade legislation would cause electricity prices to skyrocket.
The senator also admitted that cap and trade would likely cost $700 to $1,400 dollars per US family per year:
Obama also promised that cap and trade would decimate the coal industry. But, did not stop Barack Obama and democrats from pushing their expensive plan. Since that time reports have shown that cap-and-trade would be far more expensive than advertised.
But that’s not all…
Now, a FOIA request revealed that the Obama administration scrambled to respond last year to strong evidence that “green jobs” are a massive economic drain, costing 570,000 Euros apiece. The FOIA documents also show that the Obama Administration asked George Soros and wind energy lobbyists to hide European wind energy program failures. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute broke this news earlier this week at Pajamas Media:
As candidate and president, on eight separate occasions Barack Obama instructed Americans to “think about what’s happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany” if they wanted to know what successful “green jobs” policies look like, and if they wanted to know what we should expect here in the U.S. from his agenda.
Some European economists took a look. In March, a research team from Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University produced a detailed, substantive, heavily sourced, two-method paper: “Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.” The paper concluded that Spain’s “green jobs” program was an economic failure, in fact costing Spain many jobs.
…[T]he Spanish study embarrassed the White House, prompting substantial media attention and even questioning at a press conference, Obama swapped out Denmark for Spain for later references to an enacted “green jobs” program.
Soon, Denmark produced a study (“Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark“) through the think-tank CEPOS. This paper also revealed tremendous costs, and that Obama’s claim about Denmark’s “renewables” experience was also steeped in mythology.
…Back in the U.S., the American Wind Energy Association — the lobby for “Big Wind” in Washington, D.C., which includes a few Spanish wind giants — also attacked the publication of the Spanish paper. Soon, the Obama administration published a five-page talking points memo assailing the economic assessment — written by two young, non-economist, pro-wind activists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Boulder, Colorado…drafted in often personal terms.
It’s well worth reading the whole thing to understand the relationship between the Left in government and the rent-seeking corporations who make their money not by producing anything, but by putting their hands in the next guy’s pocket.
NREL is an extension of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). EERE is run by Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi, who, until assuming this post, served as CEO to Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. Zoi is responsible for many millions of the “green jobs” stimulus dollars pushed for and designed by Van Jones (this according to Jones himself).
So, the Obama Administration was hiding information and concocting their own reports to back their expensive wind energy programs. And, you the taxpayer would end up paying for it. This Obama scam would end up costing each American family $700 to $1,400 a year. Do you suppose the state-run media will report on this?
Christopher Horn is planning on releasing more details on this scandal in the days ahead.
America On the Road to Ruin December 9, 2009
Posted by seeineye in : Politics , add a commentBy Phil Kerpen
Today the EPA declared greenhouse gases a danger to public health. And here’s the bottom line: The biggest threat to Americans, when it comes to huge new energy taxes and government controls, is not from legislation, it’s from regulation.
President Obama, White House Climate Czar Carol Browner, and their Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are not waiting for Congress to pass cap-and-trade. Shrugging off the Climate-gate scandal, today EPA administration Lisa Jackson issues a so-called “endangerment finding,” paving the way for onerous greenhouse gas regulations to be shoehorned into the 1970 Clean Air Act.
Based on a legal theory originally conceived by Climate Czar Carol Browner in the late 1990s, Obama’s EPA is moving ahead with greenhouse gases regulations under the 1970 Clean Air Act even though in 1970 global warming hadn’t even been invented yet, and the doom-saying scientists were instead warning of an impending ice age!
The enormous grassroots reaction to the outrageous Waxman-Markey energy tax bill passing the U.S. House has slowed Senate progress to a crawl. While cap-and-trade remains a major threat (especially with new “tri-partisan” negotiations betweens Senators Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman), the biggest threat of huge new energy taxes and government controls right now comes not from legislation, but regulation.
Next week President Obama will go to Copenhagen to make what he has termed a “politically binding” commitment to reduce greenhouse gases 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, the same levels in the now-stalled cap-and-trade bill. He is able to make this commitment, we can tell from today’s EPA announcement, because he intends to use EPA regulation to short-circuit the democratic process, boycott the Congress, and put us all under a sweeping regulatory regime.
A 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA opened the door to this mischief, although that ruling was about motor-vehicle regulation. The EPA decision today, judging by their proposed regulations, goes far beyond that.
Not only would motor vehicles be regulated, so would light-duty trucks, heavy-duty trucks, buses, motorcycles, planes, trains, ships, boats, tractors, mining equipment, RVs, lawn mowers, fork lifts, and just about everything that has a motor. Because there is no control technology for greenhouse gases, the EPA would require complete redesigns and operational changes.
They would also require permitting for businesses and structures that emit as little as 250 tons of greenhouse gases per year. That threshold may make sense for some air pollutants. But for carbon dioxide it’s frighteningly low, and would subject millions of never-before-regulated entities to an expensive and lengthy EPA permitting process. Any building over 100,000 square feet would be pulled in, as would numerous smaller buildings that produce carbon dioxide. Small businesses, restaurants, schools, and hospitals that have commercial kitchens with gas burners would all be affected.
Don’t take my word for it. Even the 1970 Clean Air Act’s original author, Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, who supports cap-and-trade, says the Obama administration’s latest move is a recipe for disaster. He said:
“We are looking at the possibility of a glorious mess being visited upon this country. This is not what was intended by the Congress and by those of us who wrote the Clean Air Act. We are beginning to look at a wonderfully complex world, which has the potential for shutting down or slowing down virtually all industry and all economic activity and growth.”
The 1970 Clean Air Act is such a bad vehicle to address greenhouse gases that EPA is attempting, illegally, to rewrite the law to suit its purposes. EPA wants to handpick which industries and carbon emitters it will regulate, instead of following the law as written. Not only is it illegal, but it’s also ineffective, because state regulators and courts will still be able to use these regulations to shut down the whole U.S. economy.
Fortunately, the EPA is required by law to accept public comments on its proposal. You can do that by clicking here.
With the Obama administration dead set on selling out our energy policy and economic future to U.N. bureaucrats in Copenhagen, it’s imperative that Congress step in and actively stop his backdoor efforts to implement these policies at the EPA. If they don’t, they must be held responsible for what happens.
