The Sun is a relatively fixed object in space…it isn’t going anywhere
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/business/09solar.html?hp
* Beware the inaccuracies of the well-meaning…
EXCERPT:
[My comments in brackets.]
Mr. Cody said users should be realistic about how much power portable solar panels could create.
“People who are starting from scratch don’t realize that solar panels don’t always put out a consistent stream of energy,” he said. “The sun comes and goes [no it doesn't...the sun stays put and we revolve around it]. There’s a shadow that reduces the current flow [yes, that could be true].” As a result, Mr. Cody suggested using the devices to charge internal or external batteries [not necessary for a home connected to the utility grid, in which case the meter swings both ways], rather than to run electronics directly [this applies to this kind of portable solar-electricity]. “Here’s an analogy,” he said, likening a battery to a water storage tank. “You have a little water pump pumping a small, constant stream of water in a tank. Without that tank, you couldn’t have a shower.”
The occasional intermittence of these devices’ energy supply can be a drawback. But for some users, they are literally lifesavers. “We have lions and elephants nearby here,” said Martin J. Graber, a doctor and international development consultant who works in the Narok district of southwest Kenya. Dr. Graber uses a solar-powered lantern when he goes to the outhouse at night. “I want to make sure there are no animals.”
*Although, pretty cool potential to have electricity wherever you go on planet Earth because of the Sun.
Fande = Fact & Evidence; Cande = Conjecture & Exaggeration
Bring your Fande, leave your Cande!
The Moment is Real
As sure as the Earth is spinning, a new day is beginning. This is the first day of the Present…the Past is gone and the Future is always happening!
Trust Wall Street?
http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/108787/will-we-ever-again-trust-wall-street?sec=topStories&pos=2&asset=&ccode=
Will We Ever Again Trust Wall Street?
Monday, February 8, 2010
provided by
For many investors, the market’s turbulence hasn’t just destroyed wealth. It has shattered their faith in the financial system itself.
Consider Philip Eberlin, 56 years old, who runs a woodwork-restoration business in Chicago Heights, Ill. Trading hot stocks a decade ago, Mr. Eberlin got burned on picks like Krispy Kreme and Tyco. In 2007 he got back into stocks, only to take another hit.
“Having been burned twice in 10 years,” says Mr. Eberlin, he now has about 80% of his family’s assets “protected from the market” in certificates of deposit and fixed annuities. “I don’t have trust in Wall Street to help the small investor in any way, shape or form.”
Mr. Eberlin isn’t alone. Late last year, Decision Research of Eugene, Ore., asked Americans how much they trusted bankers and other Wall Street leaders “to reduce the risk of the financial challenges the country is facing now.” On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning no trust at all, the rating averaged a paltry 1.7….
This time around, however, many investors who followed the best advice were punished the worst. Someone who held a total-stock-market index fund lost more than 58% from October 2007 through March 2009 and remains 31% behind even after last year’s recovery.
These people can’t blame themselves; they did as they had been told. Meanwhile, they watched Wall Street firms parcel out billions in bonuses….
How can faith be restored?
Wall Street firms need to be forthright in admitting their shortcomings. The more they protest their innocence, the more they make the typical investor feel that the financial world is unjust.
The Pecora hearings, held in the U.S. Senate in the 1930s, served partly as a form of public expiation, in which Wall Street’s leaders apologized for their firms’ conduct. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, formed by Congress in 2009 and now holding its own hearings, may help investors feel that Wall Street can own up to its mistakes.
Finally, financial advisers need to be much less dogmatic and confident in their predictions. By admitting the extent of their own ignorance today, they would help prevent investors from feeling railroaded tomorrow.
http://www.jasonzweig.com/bio.html
Tesla: the American-made, 100% electric sports car
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/automobiles/autoreviews/07tesla.html?hpw
EXCERPT:
Tesla sells a 40-amp universal mobile connector (about six hours for a recharge) for $1,500. A 70-amp home connector, which will top off the battery from empty in less than 4 hours, goes for $1,950.
“As many as 20 percent of our owners actually have installed solar recharging systems,” Mr. Snyder said. “One owner has even come up with a calculation of the Roadster’s fuel economy on sunshine.”
The Roadster’s range on a full charge is 244 miles in the E.P.A.’s combined city-highway test, which precludes it from being a long-haul vacation car. I inquired about driving it the 280 or so miles from Los Angeles to Las Vegas….
All Roadsters use an air-cooled A.C. induction motor rated at 215 kilowatts — the equivalent of 288 horsepower — but the Sport gets a boost to 295 pound-feet of torque over the regular Roadster’s 273 pound-feet, making acceleration stronger from 20 m.p.h. to 50 m.p.h.
The automatic transmission has a single speed. Tesla says that accelerating to 60 m.p.h. in this 2,723-pound dart takes less than 3.7 seconds; the top speed is electronically limited to 125 m.p.h….
Brembo brakes will effectively stop the car, but the immediate regenerative braking when taking your foot off the accelerator is more than enough to whoa it down (to about 3 m.p.h.). The car can be driven at least 90 percent of the time with just your right foot….
Give Tesla Motors its due; despite many setbacks along the way, it ultimately delivered the Roadster — though the car ended up over budget and far behind schedule, and many executives left the company under unhappy circumstances.
Still, the Tesla Roadster works pretty much as promised. And, as such, it is worthy of a measure of acclaim as an automotive pioneer.
*********************************************************************************************************
* Next up, the Tesla Model-S, which aims to have a 300-mile range and a 45-minute recharge time (perfect for a lunch break on any road trip).
http://www.teslamotors.com/
http://www.teslamotors.com/models/
Fande = Fact & Evidence; Cande = Conjecture & Exaggeration
Bring your Fande, leave your Cande!
The Duplicity of Goldman Sachs, playing both sides of Subprime and then raking in billions of dollars from taxpayers
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/business/07goldman.html?hpw
EXCERPTS:
Behind-the-scenes disputes over huge sums are common in banking, but the standoff between A.I.G. and Goldman would become one of the most momentous in Wall Street history. Well before the federal government bailed out A.I.G. in September 2008, Goldman’s demands for billions of dollars from the insurer helped put it in a precarious financial position by bleeding much-needed cash. That ultimately provoked the government to step in.
With taxpayer assistance to A.I.G. currently totaling $180 billion, regulatory and Congressional scrutiny of Goldman’s role in the insurer’s downfall is increasing. The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining the payment demands that a number of firms — most prominently Goldman — made during 2007 and 2008 as the mortgage market imploded.
The S.E.C. wants to know whether any of the demands improperly distressed the mortgage market, according to people briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because the inquiry was intended to be confidential.
In just the year before the A.I.G. bailout, Goldman collected more than $7 billion from A.I.G. And Goldman received billions more after the rescue. Though other banks also benefited, Goldman received more taxpayer money, $12.9 billion, than any other firm.
In addition, according to two people with knowledge of the positions, a portion of the $11 billion in taxpayer money that went to Société Générale, a French bank that traded with A.I.G., was subsequently transferred to Goldman under a deal the two banks had struck.
Goldman stood to gain from the housing market’s implosion because in late 2006, the firm had begun to make huge trades that would pay off if the mortgage market soured. The further mortgage securities’ prices fell, the greater were Goldman’s profits.
In its dispute with A.I.G., Goldman invariably argued that the securities in dispute were worth less than A.I.G. estimated — and in many cases, less than the prices at which other dealers valued the securities.
The pricing dispute, and Goldman’s bets that the housing market would decline, has left some questioning whether Goldman had other reasons for lowballing the value of the securities that A.I.G. had insured, said Bill Brown, a law professor at Duke University who is a former employee of both Goldman and A.I.G.
The dispute between the two companies, he said, “was the tip of the iceberg of this whole crisis.”
“It’s not just who was right and who was wrong,” Mr. Brown said. “I also want to know their motivations. There could have been an incentive for Goldman to say, ‘A.I.G., you owe me more money’ ”….
To be sure, many now agree that A.I.G. was reckless during the mortgage mania. The firm, once the world’s largest insurer, had written far more insurance than it could have possibly paid if a national mortgage debacle occurred — as, in fact, it did.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the relationship between Goldman and A.I.G. was that without the insurer to provide credit insurance, the investment bank could not have generated some of its enormous profits betting against the mortgage market. And when that market went south, A.I.G. became its biggest casualty — and Goldman became one of the biggest beneficiaries….
Mr. Sundaram’s trades represented another large part of Goldman’s business with A.I.G. According to five former Goldman employees, Mr. Sundaram used financing from other banks like Société Générale and Calyon to purchase less risky mortgage securities from competitors like Merrill Lynch and then insure the assets with A.I.G. — helping fatten the mortgage pipeline that would prove so harmful to Wall Street, investors and taxpayers. In October 2008, just after A.I.G. collapsed, Goldman made Mr. Sundaram a partner.
Through Société Générale, Goldman was also able to buy more insurance on mortgage securities from A.I.G., according to a former A.I.G. executive with direct knowledge of the deals. A spokesman for Société Générale declined to comment.
It is unclear how much Goldman bought through the French bank, but A.I.G. documents show that Goldman was involved in pricing half of Société Générale’s $18.6 billion in trades with A.I.G. and that the insurer’s executives believed that Goldman pressed Société Générale to also demand payments….
In addition to insuring Mr. Sundaram’s and Mr. Egol’s trades with A.I.G., Goldman also negotiated aggressively with A.I.G. — often requiring the insurer to make payments when the value of mortgage bonds fell by just 4 percent. Most other banks dealing with A.I.G. did not receive payments until losses exceeded 8 percent, the insurer’s records show….
On Aug. 18, 2008, Goldman’s equity research department published an in-depth report on A.I.G. The analysts advised the firm’s clients to avoid the stock because of a “downward spiral which is likely to ensue as more actual cash losses emanate” from the insurer’s financial products unit.
On the matter of whether A.I.G. could unwind its troublesome insurance on mortgage securities at a discount, the Goldman report noted that if a trading partner “is not in a position of weakness, why would it accept anything less than the full amount of protection for which it had paid?”
A.I.G. shares fell 6 percent the day the report was published. Three weeks later, the United States government agreed to pour billions of dollars in taxpayer money into the insurer to keep it from collapsing.
The government would soon settle the yearlong dispute between Goldman and A.I.G., with Goldman receiving full value for its bets. The federal bailout locked in the paper losses of those deals for A.I.G. The prices on many of those securities have since rebounded.
The New York Times Op-Ed Board bringing the Fande
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/opinion/07sun1.html?ref=opinion
The Truth About the Deficit
Published: February 6, 2010
EXCERPTS:
The Republican amnesia and posturing are playing well on the hustings, where Americans are deeply anxious about the economy and fearful of losing their jobs and homes. Far too many Democratic lawmakers are losing their nerve.
Americans should be anxious, for reasons including the huge deficit. But the cold economic truth is this: At a time of high unemployment and fragile growth, the last thing the government should do is to slash spending. That will only drive the economy into deeper trouble….
We fear the demagoguing is not going to stop, especially with Congressional elections this November. As the budget debate plays out, here are some basic facts about the deficit that Americans need to consider:
HOW DID WE GET HERE? When President Bush took office in 2001, the federal budget had been in the black for three years, and continued surpluses were projected for a decade to come.
By the time Mr. Bush left office in early 2009, the government had run big deficits for seven straight years, and the economy was on the brink of another Great Depression. On Jan. 7, 2009 — two weeks before Mr. Obama was inaugurated — the Congressional Budget Office issued new budget estimates showing a fiscal year 2009 deficit of well over $1 trillion.
About half of today’s huge deficits can be chalked up to Bush-era profligacy: mainly cutting taxes deeply while borrowing to wage two wars and to enact the Medicare prescription drug benefit — all of which Republicans supported, virtually in lockstep.
The other half of recent deficits is due to the recession and the financial crisis.
To avoid a meltdown, the government — under President Bush and President Obama — rightly decided it had no choice but to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out banks and car companies and to stimulate the economy. That prevented a very bad situation from becoming much worse, but as the recession dragged on, hundreds of billions in tax revenues have also dried up.
As for why the financial system and the economy imploded, President Bush and Congress deserve much of the blame for their devotion to debt-driven growth and blind deregulatory zeal — although on deregulation, President Clinton and his team (some of whom are back in the White House) were also complicit….
When the White House released its new budget last week, including more spending to create desperately needed jobs, Republican leaders in Congress denounced President Obama for driving up the deficit and demanded that the Democrats halt their “reckless” ways.
The deficit numbers — a projected $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2011 alone — are breathtaking. What is even more breathtaking is the Republicans’ cynical refusal to acknowledge that the country would never have gotten into so deep a hole if President George W. Bush and the Republican-led Congress [from 2001-2006] had not spent years slashing taxes — mainly on the wealthy — and spending with far too little restraint. Unfortunately, the problem does not stop there….
So what are the immediate fiscal lessons here? The first lesson is that spending without taxing is a recipe for huge deficits, and that running big deficits when the economy is expanding only sets the country up for bigger deficits when the economy contracts. The second lesson is that once a deep recession takes hold, slashing government spending is not going to solve the problem. It will only make it worse.
WHAT CAN BE DONE NOW? Here is an unpopular but undeniable fact of life: When private sector demand is weak, the federal government must serve as the spender of last resort. Otherwise, collapsing demand sets in motion a negative, self-reinforcing spiral in which lack of demand — for goods, services and new employees — leads to ever deepening economic weakness.
That is why when the banks and the economy began to crumble in 2008, President Bush responded with a $700 billion bank bailout and a $168 billion stimulus package. When Mr. Obama took office, the banks were still shaky and the economy was still plunging— as measured by real-life indicators like jobs, consumer spending, credit availability, home equity, retirement savings and business confidence. The new administration made the sound decision to continue the bailout and pushed a $787 billion stimulus through Congress, with very little Republican help.
The stimulus package slowed job losses and helped spur activity — in the third quarter of 2009, the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.2 percent, and the initial fourth-quarter reading was 5.7 percent, a rebound few thought possible a year ago.
Still, without a jobs revival to boost consumer spending and tax revenues — and with the states facing immense budget shortfalls — the economy is unlikely to do anything other than limp along, at best, once the effects of the stimulus fade this year.
In his recent budget, Mr. Obama proposed to spend $266 billion on tax credits for hiring and new job-creation investments, and on other short-term stimulus including extended unemployment compensation. That would improve on the House-passed $154 billion jobs bill. But in the Senate, Republicans are balking at the prospect of a big bill, saying they need to hold down the deficit. They have spooked the Democrats, who are now trying to negotiate what appears to be a far too modest bill in hopes of winning Republican support.
What they should be saying — and what the White House should be saying a lot louder — is that a prolonged downturn or a renewed recession would do far more damage to the budget than upfront deficit spending. In fact, a clear lesson from the Depression of the 1930s is that reducing deficits at a time of economic fragility undercuts recovery….
SO HOW DO WE FIX IT? Mr. Obama’s budget makes a down payment on deficit reduction by freezing some nonsecurity discretionary spending for three years, and by letting the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans expire at the end of this year.
To truly tame deficits will require serious health care reform, the sooner the better. Other aspects of the long-term fiscal problem — raising taxes and retooling Social Security — must take place in earnest as the economy recovers.
Contrary to popular belief, there are many well-thought-out ideas for such reforms. Where technical questions are difficult, particularly on health care costs, reformers have advocated demonstration projects that can be tested over time. Where the real difficulty lies is summoning the political will to do what must be done, even though it will be unpopular.
If these problems are not addressed, here is what we face: Under current policies, federal debt in the United States — the sum total of annual deficits — would grow from 53 percent of the size of the economy in 2009 to more than 300 percent by 2050, driven mainly by rapidly rising health care costs and, in part, by the aging of the population. Combined, those two factors exert enormous pressure on the government’s biggest spending programs, Medicare and Medicaid, and, to a lesser extent, Social Security.
Unless health care costs are controlled, there is no way to solve the country’s long-term deficit and debt problems.
But that will not be enough. Broad tax reform is also essential to ensure that revenues keep pace with expenditures. From 1978 to 2008, revenues averaged about 18.4 percent of the economy. But without policy changes, expenditures for everything other than interest on the national debt will increase from 19.2 percent of the size of the economy in 2008 to 24.5 percent in 2050.
On the need for more taxes, Mr. Obama has been less than candid, pledging never to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. Republican lawmakers have been worse, calling for tax cuts at most every opportunity — and never acknowledging that a shortfall in revenue is one of the important causes of the deficit.
The deficit commission that Mr. Obama intends to establish could be helpful in breaking this logjam, by calling for necessary changes that politicians would be loath to broach without political cover.
We hope that health care reform will move ahead before that. If it does, the commission will still have to press for new taxes that both raise revenue and broaden the tax base, including a value added tax.
And then there is Social Security. What is needed is a combination of benefit cuts and tax increases that preserve the program’s essential nature — a contract under which the young support the old via taxes and the rich help the poor via a benefits formula that favors low- income beneficiaries. One sound approach would be to link benefit levels to life expectancy, so that as people live longer, future benefits would be modestly reduced while payroll taxes that support Social Security would be modestly increased.
•
There is no way to get deficits under control until our political leaders are willing to acknowledge difficult truths and make even more difficult political choices. We have heard and seen too little of that from the Democrats lately, and none at all from the Republicans. That is truly a recipe for disaster.
Fande = Fact & Evidence; Cande = Conjecture & Exaggeration
Bring your Fande, leave your Cande!
* Even Opinion-Editorials should be based on fact and evidence, exhibited perfectly by the NYT Op-Ed writers.
The Palin Plan?
Go to…51:30…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7gVp3diPbI
“Free-market principles that reward hard work and personal responsibility.” I guess she didn’t approve of the $7 billion no-bid contracts to Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton, during the U.S. occupation of Iraq or the $700 billion bank bailout by Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs–the biggest recipient of the bailout.
* And when it comes to national security and the ‘War on Terror,’ Palin favors Ronald Reagan’s phrase from the Cold War…”We win, They lose–we do all that we can to win.” God, that sounds so much like Bush–”Bring ‘em on!”…”We’re gonna smoke ‘em out”…”You’re either with us or against us.”
Thanks to that kind of thinking we have wasted approximately $1 Trillion on a false war, without catching Osama bin Laden. Bush failed to capture the man responsible for the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. in September of 2001. In fact, he wasted so much of our time, money and resources, and provided al Qaeda with so much anti-US recruiting material (Abu Ghraib, Blackwater mercenaries, Guantánamo), Bush left us more vulnerable and weakened our national security. He stretched our Army so thin (while cutting health care benefits for veterans returning from the Iraq war) that we are not prepared to meet new threats. Our National Guard was also so overextended in Iraq that we didn’t have enough Guard members to help save survivors in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit.
I will now go to bed with nightmares of Palin and tea parties in my head. Please tell me the majority of Americans see through this pandering huckster’s gibberish.
http://design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/Jabberwock.html
The Jabberwocky
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought–
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arm, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe
(Carroll, The Annotated Alice, 191-97).
“It seems very pretty,” [Alice] said when she had finished it, “but it’s rather hard to understand! … Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas–only I don’t exactly know what they are!” (Carroll, The Annotated Alice, 197). Alice’s reaction to Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” is relatively typical. Few people understand what the poem is about. “…Somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate–,” Alice continues (Carroll, The Annotated Alice, 197). After all, what is a Jabberwock anyway, and how, exactly, does one chortle or galumph? How is it that a poem can be full of nonsense, and seemingly devoid of meaning, but still sound like proper English? The answer to these questions lies in Carroll’s unique ability to manipulate language.
Dow Jones touches the 9…Did I hear a niner in there?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Stocks-fall-on-mixed-jobs-apf-3414941666.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=
“After falling below 10,000 and then 9,900 amid worries about the recovery and Europe’s debt woes, the Dow clawed back in the final hour of trading.”
Time for a Public Works Program like FDR used to put unemployed Americans back to work building a sustainable infrastructure for generations to come. The roads, bridges, aqueducts and dams those men built in the 1930s, we’re still using them today. This time with Obama, we can build a CO2-free infrastructure. We can put out-of-work men & women back to work installing solar electricity, for example. Hammer-and-nail jobs, manufacturing jobs, management jobs. And we can take control of the cost of running our homes and offices again. We can become energy independent, which is good for our national security, too. The icing on the cake: we can help to preserve our environment, as well.
You can’t trust the private sector to do the right thing. You give the banks $700 billion to buy up their bad assets and clear them off the market, and the banks don’t buy up the bad assets but instead cover their holes, start investing again and assigning record bonuses to their employees…as if they hadn’t just caused a financial meltdown. The banks were supposed to lend that money to the general economy, so that small businesses could continue using commercial paper to cover payroll and monthly expenses (just in case payments from their customers were a few days late, they could still stay in business). But no, because the banks did not lend the TARP money, the credit markets froze and unemployment increased. Yeah, it was called “Troubled Asset Relief Program,” but the banks did not use the TARP to “cover” their losses. They used the TARP as a man-made trampoline…you know, where a circle of people heave somebody high into the air, like at a beach party in the Hamptons. Those clever bankers. They really are the smartest people in the world. They will figure out a way to maximize profits for themselves with whichever prop you throw at them. (Not all people in the private sector are scoundrels. But the scoundrels are winning these days, and the majority of hardworking Americans are getting rolled.)
Here’s how Larry Kudlow, conservative financial commentator who served in the Reagan administration, put it. He said the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy of low interest rates “amounted to throwing red meat to a pack of sharks in the deepest waters.” Subprime was then right around the corner. Of course, the Bush White House condoned subprime by not regulating it. They were busy spending $700 billion dollars-plus on a war in Iraq that we supposedly started because there were “Weapons of Mass Destruction” ready to be used on Americans. There were no WMDs, but that price tag is accurate. Has anybody done the cost-benefit analysis on the Iraq War yet? Damn, what a waste. Of human life, of hundreds of billions of dollars. A waste of our time, resources and energy. But we’re all here on this planet. So let’s get to work making it better for the majority of people who live here.
Source: http://article.nationalreview.com/421241/obama-rewards-losers-punishes-winners/larry-kudlow
Since the private sector has proved that they consistently overvalue assets to the detriment of the society at large, most recently in 2007-2008 with the subprime-mortgage-backed securities scandal and subsequent bailout (Crashes of ‘29 & ‘87 also come to mind)…I think it’s time to get a government-backed, meaning government funded, Public Works Program going. We get Americans back to work rebuilding our country for generations to come. I wish every Wall Street banker or affiliated hedgie in Connecticut, or wherever around the world you guys and gals are trading paper like hagglers at a flea market, would just every once in a while, stop, and look around. Recognize you are not in a flea market, you are not on the floor of the NYSE, you are not in a cushy office with a scenic view (well maybe you are on the floor of the NYSE, and maybe you are having your third course of lunch served to you by white-gloved attendants in the executive suites overlooking the water)…remember to have a global view when making your financial decisions. That big blue and green ball you are on, we’re on it, too. One World. One Love.
Wall Street, you got a lot of making up to do. If you don’t get it by now, your actions hurt a lot of people. President Obama, you’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do. Yeah, Bush left one hell of mess to clean up. It’s time for some solar-electricity installations with the stimulus money. Not tax credits. Not tax incentives. Not tax benefits. Not tax whatever, whatever, whatever. I’m talking about a department, fully funded (hey, maybe with the bankers’ bonus money?) and ready to make employees out of the American unemployed. Please.
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/mixed-bag-unemployment-rate-falls-to-9.7-but-job-losses-continue-to-mount-419530.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,DIA,TBT,TLT,UUP&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=
Fande = Fact & Evidence; Cande = Conjecture & Exaggeration
Bring your Fande, leave your Cande!
Propaganda nougat
Alex Jones’ political-manifesto movie, “The Obama Deception,” is sort of like eating a chocolate-covered candy with a propaganda-nougat center. Mental flossing becomes necessary to clear away the gunk.
I like the commentary from KRS One. I also agree with most of what I heard from Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute. And some of what I heard from historian Webster Tarpley makes sense (although I don’t agree with his 9/11 conspiracy). Overall, Mr. Jones and his sources make convincing arguments in his movie. We need major financial reform in this country and around the world, no doubt. Some of our problems have to do with good laws, like Glass-Steagall, being reversed. A lot of our problems have to do with the Military-Industrial Complex.
However, a lot of “Surprise!”-problems popped up due to the hands-off-the-wheel-style of financial regulation by the Bush White House and its Securities and Exchange Commission. The Bush administration condoned the subprime mortgages being sold as stocks and allowed AIG to take billion-dollar bets with money it didn’t have in real assets. The Bush team also started an illegitimate war in Iraq, which cost $700 billion (so far), and which is the same price tag–$700 billion–for the bailout of the Wall Street banks by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs.
It really is too intertwined…Wall Street and the White House. I’d like to see Timothy Geithner replaced as Treasury Secretary, as I have stated before.
But here’s the Cande…to accuse Barack Obama of being a puppet of the Wall Street banks is to blame him for cleaning up the mess left by George W. Bush. It is conjecture and exaggeration to claim that this former community organizer and man of the people (Obama is no rich scion, like W.) is manipulating the levers of power to benefit the Oligarchy at the expense of the majority of Americans.
Time will tell if President Barack Obama worked to benefit the majority of Americans. He still has time on his side. After all, he just completed his first year in office, after Bush handed him the keys to an economy in free fall. The stock market lost almost half its value, home prices dropped by as much as 30%, and the credit markets were frozen after Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, AIG, Merrill Lynch, and dozens of other banks went bankrupt, along with two of the Big Three automakers in Detroit…just as Barack Obama was walking through the front door of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C., after 8 years of George W. Bush living there.
Background on the Bilderberg Conference from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/weekinreview/nation-conspiracy-theorists-unite-secret-conference-thought-rule-world.html?pagewanted=1
Solar Electricity and Nuclear Energy are both CO2-free, but…
…Nuclear Energy produces radioactive waste.
* Solar Electricity is CO2-free without the radioactive part.
Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/11/us-nuclear-industry-plans-new-reactors
EXCERPT:
“The [pro-nuclear] campaign faces two challenges: the huge cost of construction and the lack of permanent storage for nuclear waste.
The Obama administration has blocked a 22-year project to dump waste from reactors in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain….
Much of the push for nuclear power comes from the conservative south, which has more reactors than anywhere else in the US and which is less suited than other regions for wind or solar development.”
* Photograph related to article shows “a storage facility for highly radioactive waste at Sellafield nuclear plant.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/business/energy-environment/28nuclear.html
EXCERPTS:
“Levels of radioactive tritium have risen rapidly in recent weeks in the groundwater surrounding Vermont’s sole nuclear power plant, leading both longtime supporters and foes of the reactor to question whether it will be allowed to keep operating….
The plant began searching for tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, under a 2007 nuclear industry initiative. The industry began the effort because leaks had been found at reactors in Illinois and New York….
Levels found in the last few days exceed the federal standard for drinking water, although they were found in monitoring wells, not drinking water wells. The state has moved to weekly from monthly testing at the elementary school across the street from the plant, but has not detected anything unusual off the plant site….
Mr. Ball said that some legislators had told him that the discovery of the radioactive contamination “gave them pause” and that they wanted more information before voting [in 2012 to extend the nuclear plant's operating license for the next 20 years]….
Tritium is usually incorporated into a water molecule, and such molecules behave chemically just as ordinary water does. But it gives off a beta particle that can cause damage inside the body. Like ordinary water molecules, those incorporating tritium pass through the body quickly.
In November, technicians measured tritium at Vermont Yankee at 700 picocuries per liter. But in January the plant notified the state that the level had risen to thousands of picocuries per liter. In one monitoring well, it recently exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for drinking water, which is 20,000 picocuries per liter.
Plant workers also found that water in a concrete trench that holds pipes in one building contained millions of picocuries of tritium per liter, as well as traces of other radioactive materials.
It was not immediately clear if water could find its way from that trench into the groundwater.
Under federal rules, the plant does not have to alert the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the presence of tritium in the groundwater unless the level reaches 30,000 picocuries per liter. At that point it would have 30 days to tell the commission, and specify what it planned to do.
Robert Williams, a spokesman for Vermont Yankee, said the company was working hard to find a leak. “It’s a necessarily slow and methodical process,” he said. The plant is already in touch with federal and state regulators, he added.
Dozens of reactors around the country have had their 40-year licenses extended by 20 years without much debate. Under the Atomic Energy Act, such decisions are usually the sole purview of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
But Vermont struck a deal with Entergy when it bought the plant in 2002 that gave legislators a veto role. An official with the federal nuclear commission noted that if the state blocked a license renewal, Entergy could file a court challenge.
Vermont Yankee is the largest generator of power in Vermont. But New England’s power grid has a surplus of electricity because of the recession.
And Entergy is seeking permission to spin off Vermont Yankee and five of its other reactors into a new subsidiary, a move that the plant’s opponents view as an attempt to limit Entergy’s legal liability.”
