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Friday, January 27, 2012

Obama's High Failure Rate


When an Administration starts picking winners in a democracy, it usually picks losers. There are many reasons however a winner doesn't want to be tied up with government red tape and bureaucracy that comes with the money, however, losers will jump at the chance to feed at the public trough.  So it is with the so called "green" initiative  that the Obama Administration has been promoting with our money.


To date there have been three very public failures, namely Solyndra ($535 million), Ener1 ($118 million) and Beacon Power ($43 million.) Now if my math is correct, that is nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars that just disappeared from your and my pockets!

The President would tell you that new technologies are risky and that failure is the part of the future benefits of green.  While we agree with that statement, it is not the business of government to decide which solutions are winners and losers. At least that has always been the case in the US where it is the market that decides who is the winner.

100 years ago, government did not give Henry Ford the money to start his assembly line or fund Edison's research in light bulbs or phonographs. In more recent history, Bill Gates outsmarted other entrepreneurs to create Microsoft and Steve Jobs created products that the world can no longer get along without.  This is the way it should be done. The same should be for companies trying to create green products.

The President is taking the wrong tact and we can see it by the lack of success his funded companies are having. In the upcoming bankruptcy trials and any Congressional hearings, we feel confident in predicting that  malfeasance, theft, and lack of controls over the entire development process will be found in each and every one of these companies. The reason--it was not THEIR money. It was given to them by the government so they did not shepherd it, care for it, safeguard it or treat it as the valuable asset it was. In other words, they did not have any skin in the game.

When an entrepreneur puts his or her money into a venture, they carefully evaluate all expenses because they do not want to lose it. That is not the case when money is given to you.

We all have heard of stories of lottery  or the famous Publishers Clearing House who get instant wealth and before long the money is gone and they go bankrupt.  It is part of human nature to think that the money will never run out. Unfortunately, it does.  The same goes for government funding of businesses. It is meant to fail.

Additionally, when government gives money it comes with strings  and the bureaucrats that no entrepreneur would want to deal with.  So,  we have poorly prepared individuals who see the opportunity to get into the public trough through their connections. No wonder these ideas fail.  

If an enterprise has the "right stuff", it will find venture capitalists to fund their company. This is no place for the government as they are not in that business and do not have the expertise to evaluate a venture. Failure is written all over these ideas.

That is my opinion, what is yours?

Conservative Tom


House Republican Says ‘Three Is A Trend’ in Another Stimulus-Funded Green Company Bankruptcy

(CNSNews.com) – The third federally subsidized green energy company to declare bankruptcy seems to indicate a pattern, said Rep. Cliff Stearns, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations.
“One bankruptcy may be a fluke, two could be coincidence, but three is a trend,” Stearns said in a written statement. “Our investigation continues, and we are working to ensure taxpayers never are never again stuck paying hundreds of millions of dollars because of the administration’s risky bets.”

Joe Biden Visits Ener1 in 2011. (AP Photo)
Joe Biden visits Ener1 plant in 2011. (AP Photo)
Ener1, which makes batteries for electric vehicles, announced Thursday it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company had been awarded a $118.5 million from the Energy Department through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus.

The Obama administration has already been under fire for a $535 million stimulus-funded loan it made to California-based solar panel company Solyndra, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last fall before being raided by the FBI. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has been investigating the Solyndra loan.Also late last fall, the Massachusetts-based Beacon Power, green energy storage plant that got $43 million in stimulus funds, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Ener1 announced the Chapter 11 filing one year to the day that Vice President Joe Biden visited a Greenville, Ind. plant on Jan. 26, 2011.
“President Obama was prophetic this week during his State of the Union address when he casually remarked, ‘Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail,’” Stearns said.
In his 2011 State of the Union address, Obama pledged to put 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. The next day, Biden visited an Ener1 plant in Greenville, Ind., where he said, “Well, ladies and gentlemen, here at Ener1, we’re going to harness electricity and bring it to the world like Edison did more than a century ago,” said Biden. “We're going to reshape the way Americans drive, the way Americans consume, the way Americans power their lives.”
Ener1 makes at least the third company that received money from the Recovery Act to file for bankruptcy protection.
“Unfortunately, you can now add Ener1 to the growing list of failed companies that went belly up after hundreds of millions of dollars in administration backing,” Stearns continued. “Sadly, the Department of Energy’s jobs record seems to grow worse by the day -- first Solyndra, then Beacon Power, and now Ener1 -- and it is American taxpayers who are paying the price.”
CNSNews.com first reported Thursday that the bankruptcy announcement came a year after the Biden visit.
Ener1 spokesman Guy Westermeyer told CNSNews.com the Chapter 11 filing would not effect the federal grant. He said the grant specifically went to Ener1 subsidiary EnderDel.
"EnerDel plans to continue working with the DOE to complete the project for which it received funding through the ARRA grant it was awarded in August, 2009," Westermeyer told CNSNews.com in a written statement. He added,  "EnerDel proactively applied for a grant from the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) to help create a lithium-ion battery market industry in the U.S, where one did not previously exist."

More Chinese Construction In US

China Daily in July last year wrote an interesting article on construction being done in the United States. It is interesting that in a time of 8.5% unemployment, the best in years, that we are having foreign companies, using foreign labor, to build our stuff. Does that make any sense?


After you read the article, let me know what you think.


For the original news article, please go to http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/2011-07/29/content_13010724.htm


Conservative Tom

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Is Fast and Furious Obama's Watergate?


If you take the 5th before testifying, it surely indicates that you have something to hide and so when the Department of Justice's point man on Fast and Furious takes the right not to incriminate himself, one has to wonder who else knew about this and when did they know it.  Seems to us we are going to have another Watergate cover up scenario.  The questions are 1) will there be others who stonewall Congress 2) can the damage to the Administration be held off until after the election and 3) is Holder going to end up holding the bag by taking "one for the team?"


We believe that there will be others who will resign, that the damage might not be completely clear until after the election as the Administration will do everything in its power to put it off and Holder will resign and go work for Buffett.(As a favor to Obama putting the Keystone pipeline on hold.)

So what do you think?  We see this Administration as corrupt beyond imagination and cannot wait for the last day we are blessed with MeeeShel being our First Lady!

Conservative Tom



DOJ Official Who Took the 5th Resigning – Issa Goes After Another…

J. Patrick Cunningham took the 5th and is now running away to the private sector.  Congressman Darrell Issa is now turning his attention to Federal Prosecutor Michael Morrissey to testify just prior to Eric Holder once again coming before Congress to answer for the deadly debacle that was Fast and Furious.
Morrissey worked directly under the supervision of now-outgoing U.S. Attorney J. Patrick Cunningham.  The swift departure of Cunningham – a man the Eric Holder DOJ indicated should be the primary point-man for any and all questions pertaining to Fast and Furious, has only added to the appearance of some serious and ongoing cover-up manipulations byAttorney General Holder.  If Michael Morrissey were to plead the 5th as well instead of answer questions from the Congressional committee, this appearance would most certainly be further solidified.
Eric Holder is scheduled to appear again before Congress on Fast and Furious next Tuesday.

Buffet Profits At The Obama Trough

Over the past several months we have become very concerned with the pronouncements that Warren Buffett has made regarding  taxation and tax fairness as well as challenging Republicans to contribute more to the IRS while he fights the tax collectors in Tax Court. It all sounded like he was losing it and we wrote that a couple weeks ago.


However, today the following article appears and we have heard whispers of it from other sites and now we understand the rationale.  Buffett is crazy as a fox!  He has been Obama's lapdog because his Burlington Railroad will now get to transport the oil that was intended to flow through the Keystone XL pipeline! The costs are significantly higher to transport this way, but hey, he has to make a living!


So this is the reason that he has been the toast of Washington! His infamous overtaxed Secretary even made an appearance in the President's State of the Union speech. We sure do hope that Warren paid for the airfare!  After all his poor secretary just closed on a new house (with swimming pool and putting green) in Arizona and we are sure that she does not have a lot of extra cash laying around after paying those over burdensome taxes! We wonder how much she does earn. Probably would make most of us jealous.


Again, it all comes down to the "connected" get the meat and the rest of us get the drippings! 


Politics is ruining this once great country and instead of doing what is in the best interests of the country, we get this garbage.  It is time to remove all current Congressmen/women, Senators and the President and establish new rules. No more lifetime seat holders, limit it to 6 years in the House and 12 in the Senate.  Any retired person (Representative, Senator, President, military person, government employee) cannot work for a company which has any contracts with the government for 20 years after they retired. Hopefully in that amount of time their contacts and information would be so out of date that they would not be valuable to the company.


Why cannot we get back to a point in history where our leaders make decisions which are in the best interests of the country and not themselves. With the Keystone decision, we are  sure that he ingratiated himself with Buffett and we wonder what else he and Michelle received.


This event has crushed our admiration for Buffett and now understand how he has gotten his wealth. It was not through superior brain power, it was by pulling on the strings of government. Count him in the nearly 50% of the population that is on the dole. We hope that someone will take him down!


Conservative Tom 





John Hayward

Warren Buffett cleans up after Keystone XL

The Sage of Omaha is one lucky guy.
by John Hayward
01/24/2012

When President Obama, who is normally a great proponent of “infrastructure” projects, made his bizarre decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline project, I wondered if he might have been induced to create those thousands of American jobs if the oil could be moved by his beloved high-speed rail.
As it turns out, oil is already moved from northern latitudes, such as the booming oil fields of North Dakota, down to the Gulf of Mexico by rail of the old, low-speed variety.  Fortunately, as Newt Gingrich pointed out during the Monday night Republican debate in Florida, the oil is on private land, so Obama can’t shut production down.
Shipping the oil with a pipeline would have significantly reduced costs, as an Associated Press report explains:
Billions of dollars of infrastructure improvements have been made in recent years to allow North Dakota's oil shipping capacity to keep pace with the skyrocketing production. North Dakota is the nation's fourth-biggest oil producer and is expected to trail only Texas in crude output within the next year.

Alison Ritter, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Mineral Resources, said the state's so-called takeaway capacity is adequate, though producers and the state were counting on the on the Keystone XL to move North Dakota crude.

Shipping crude by pipeline in North Dakota adds up to $1.50 to its cost, compared to $2 or more a barrel for rail shipments, producers say.

"Oil that would have moved by the Keystone XL is now going to shift to rail transportation," Ritter said.
Amusingly, a spokesman for the Sierra Club admitted “there is no question that [transporting] oil by rail or truck is much more dangerous than a pipeline,” but that didn’t stop the zero-growth eco-fanatics from calling in their chips with President Downgrade to kill that pipeline.
Those rail shipments are expected to “increase exponentially with increased oil production and the shortage of pipelines,” according to Justin Kringstad, director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority.  That’s going to be quite a windfall for the railroad companies, isn’t it?
As it happens, 75 percent of the oil currently shipped by rail out of North Dakota is handled by Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC… which just happens to be a unit of Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.  What a coincidence!
For some reason, nobody from BNSF or Berkshire Hathaway would return the AP’s telephone calls, but oilman Harold Hamm told them he was sure this was just a wonderful “lucky break” for Barack Obama’s favorite billionaire, who is “certainly favored by this decision.”  I’ve heard Buffett’s famously overtaxed secretary will be a guest at the State of the Union address tonight.  Maybe someone could ask her about it.
The “tax me more” refrain from liberal billionaires is one of the oldest sucker games in the book.  For the well-connected, the money that can be made through government power – whether by influencing corrupt politicians, or merely predicting what they’re going to do - dwarfs whatever income they offer to cough up.

John Hayward is a staff writer for HUMAN EVENTS, and author of the recently publishedDoctor Zero: Year One. Follow him on Twitter: Doc_0. Contact him by email atjhayward@eaglepub.com.

Keystone Pipeline Approved By All Agencies Except State Department!


Can you believe it, approved by the EPA and the State Department has the gumption to say, it does not have the time to study the issue?  This is politics, pure and simple!

The following report is a summary of the hearings on the Keystone issue.  It will amaze you 

to see the approvals. We keep asking, why?  Hopefully we can find out.

Conservative Tom


Rep. Barton: U.S. ‘Fought and Won WW II in Less Time’ than Obama Had to Evaluate Keystone Pipeline

Rep. Joe Barton
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.(AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) took aim Wednesday at the State Department official dispatched to Congress to explain why President Obama shelved the Keystone XL pipeline – telling her that the U.S. had “fought and won World War II” in less time than the administration had spent weighing the Canada-U.S. pipeline deal.
Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones told the Energy and Power subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the State Department had rejected the deal because it did not have enough time to assess the pipeline.
Barton, a Texas Republican, tried to zero-in on which part of the project the State Department was most concerned about – asking Jones if it was building the pipeline, its operation or an anticipated catastrophe.
“Our concern at this point, sir, is that we did not have time to do the analysis,” said Jones, who heads the Bureau of Oceans and International Environment and Scientific Affairs.
“All of the dimensions of the analysis that you have been talking about we have been studying,” she said. “Certainly the spills certainly the issues around construction and operation. But the reason the decision was taken was because we did not have--”
But Barton, who had already pointed out that the administration had 40 months to examine every aspect of the project, rejected the answer, interrupting Jones.
“Well, we fought and won World War II in less time than it’s taken so far to evaluate this project,” Barton said. “I mean, with all due respect, it is an insult to the American people to say that you need more time.
“There are 10 other agencies that have reviewed this project and – correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that the Corps of Engineers approved it, the Department of Agriculture approved it, the Department of Interior approved it, the Department of Transportation approved it, the Environmental Protection Agency – believe it or not – approved it, the Defense Department approved it; the Justice Department approved it, the Homeland Security Department approved it and the Department of Commerce approved it. Only the State Department, which I believe, by law is required to look at the International implications since its trans-Canada -- only the State Department did not approve it.”
House Republicans, meanwhile, have introduced a bill designed to circumvent the president's denial of the mammoth pipeline, designed to bring oil extracted from shale in Canada to the U.S. Keystone XL pipeline, by putting the decision in the hands of Congress.