The Micro Brown-out: Yes, Utilities Are Cutting Off Power with Smart Grid

Despite questions over climate change as a basis for installing these micro brown-out devices, utilities and manufacturers continue marketing them

Canada Free Press, by Gretchen Olson, Sunday, February 2, 2014 

Long considered rumor and conspiracy gossip, utilities are now confirming they can indeed control the flow of electricity into homes using wireless communication with the Smart Grid.  Under pilot programs in cooperation with the Department of Energy, regional power companies such as EPB in Chattanooga, Tennessee may cut the flow of electricity to specific appliances in the homes of their customers during times of peak use.

According to Danna Bailey, spokesperson for EPB, homeowners who voluntarily enroll in these schemes can save money by giving the utility the option of limiting power to high usage systems in the home or on the property when strain on the grid is most pronounced.

Specifically targeted for efficiency are water heaters, air conditioning systems and heaters for outdoor swimming pools, said Bailey. In a recent program offered by EPB, which was funded by a grant in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, customers could save money by adding a wireless device, approximately the size of a garage door remote, onto the assigned appliances which would allow the electric flow to be controlled by the utility company.

CONTINUED.

Federal Loans for Electric Cars That Lose Money : The Tea Party Economist

The latest boondoggle: 

They’re at it again! The government wants to bring back a zombie. Originally created by Congress in 2007, the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program provided low-cost government loans that were subsidized, guaranteed, and then in part eaten, as we now know, by hapless and strung-out American taxpayers. 

Ford was the top beneficiary. While bragging vociferously that it hadn’t been bailed out by the government, as opposed to GM and Chrysler, it received a $5.9 billion loan under that program ostensibly to retool its plants and start producing electric vehicles. Those billions were in addition to other Federal programs, including subsidized loans from the Export-Import Bank (example). Though Ford has plenty of hybrids, it doesn’t have, despite the $5.9 billion, anything resembling a plug-in EV. 

Nissan got $1.4 billion to build its plug-in EV, the Leaf. Tesla got $465 million. It is building a few, very expensive plug-in EVs a day. With its highflying stock, it prints its own currency and used some of it to pay off that loan in May. 

Others weren’t so “successful.” Fisker was awarded a $529 million package. But in May 2011, the Department of Energy, after paying out $193 million, cut Fisker off; it was supposed to have produced 14,000 cars by then but had only slapped together a few hundred. Superstorm Sandy then mangled 338 of those Karmas that would have normally sold for $100,000 a pop – a pop because their batteries exploded. They’d been made by A123, also a beneficiary of bi-partisan boondoggle money, now bankrupt. In early April this year, the DOE seized the $22 million remaining in Fisker’s account. By that time, the company had laid off 75% of its staff. There is salvation on the way, however. A German group is rumored to contemplate buying what’s left for a measly $25 million. The remainder of the $1.4 billion, including the $1.2 billion that Fisker had weaseled out of private investors? Gone up in smoke. 

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz praised the office at the DOE for how it handled the program and for its “due diligence.” And he added, “I think it shows in the portfolio.”


But what the government is funding isn’t exactly a new technology. On September 14, 1899, a guy named Henry Bliss got run over by a taxi in Manhattan. A plaque points out that he was the first automobile fatality in the “Western Hemisphere.” The taxi was a plug-in EV. As were 90% of the taxis in New York City and about 30% of all cars sold in the US. Most other cars were steam-powered. They had a longer range and more power. And a marketing advantage: speed records. They were great for long trips, such as to the next town, but you had to preheat the boiler. So, plug-in EVs were better for tooling around town. But they had a more limited range, and it took a long time to charge the batteries. Very familiar problems today, in the otherwise ideal and mature technology. 

Other companies tried to finagle their way into the DOE loan program but after years of talks abandoned their applications, including bankrupt and bailed out GM and Chrysler … and Coda. It bought cars without powertrains from Chinese automaker ChangAn Hafei, installed its electrical equipment, and sold them for $37,250! That didn’t work too well. While it didn’t get the $334 million in taxpayer money it had applied for, it burned through $300 million from private investors – including ex-Secretary of the Treasury and bailout goon Hank Paulson – and filed for bankruptcy protection. 

After these rousing successes, the $25 billion corporate welfare program petered out in 2011. But now the Obama administration wants to resuscitate it (though last month, a House Appropriations Committee panel voted to use those funds to pay for other things, like wildfire fighting). The DOE is actively considering what a new loan solicitation program might look like, DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz told the Detroit News. “That’s an ongoing discussion,” he said.

CONTINUED:  Federal Loans for Electric Cars That Lose Money : The Tea Party Economist

Big Brother? Feds Order Schools to Monitor Kids Facebook Posts & Lunchtime Chatter

The Daily Caller is reporting that Department of Education (DOE) officials “are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students’ lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students.”


According to the report, the DOE issued new guidelines in a “Dear Colleague” letter in October, which the site sums up as saying “federal officials have reinterpreted the civil-rights laws that require school principals to curb physical bullying, as well as racist and sexist speech, that take place within school boundaries.”

MORE FREEDOM ERODED!

READ MORE AND THE LETTER ON THE BLAZE:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/govt-tells-educators-to-monitor-kids-internet-use-while-not-at-school/

How Conservatives Can Limit the Scope and Size of Government

By Chris Gacek
Published January 18, 2011, FoxNews.com

With a new, conservative House of Representatives and a legislatively checked Senate, the question is no longer whether to scale back the size and scope of government, but how. Yet even if the era of big government is on a downward trajectory, reducing the size of government will require a long, dogged and savvy effort. “Abolish the Department of Education” has been a rallying cry for conservatives since the Reagan administration, but simply eliminating the Department of Education (DoE), and other agencies, is not enough.

To stop big government, the laws that empower agencies must also be eliminated.

The Department of Education was created in 1980. Before that, a Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), managed the federal education functions the U.S. Congress enacted. Interestingly, DoE has the fewest employees of any cabinet department (4,200), yet its reach is huge, touching “approximately 56 million students attending some 97,000 schools and 28,000 private schools,” and its programs “also provide grant, loan and work-study assistance to about 11 million postsecondary students.”

Laws make a bureaucracy. If a conservative Congress “abolished the Department of Education,” the only thing that effectively would change is the name on the building and stationary. Federal education laws and regulations would still have to be enforced – somewhere.

DoE is governed by a mesh of laws that includes: Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965); Higher Education Act of 1965; Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975); Equal Access Act (1984); No Child Left Behind Act (2001); the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004); and, Race to the Top (2009). Each one of these laws permits the lawyers amongst those 4,200 DoE employees to write regulations that have the force of law.

Consider No Child Left Behind: As noted by education analyst Lindsay Burke, “As a result of No Child Left Behind, states were burdened with nearly seven million man-hours of paperwork in order to comply with new federal mandates, costing states an estimated $141 million. And while the federal government provides just nine percent of funding for public education, it is the source of an estimated 41 percent of the administrative compliance burden for states.”

After a while the statutes and regulations become so arcane that only legal specialists can hope to understand them. Medicare regulations are a great example. Eventually, the government employees enforcing laws and writing regulations become special interests dedicated to fighting any simplification that would limit their Gnostic powers and high-paying legal jobs.

The result of this blizzard of law and rules has been a major cause of federal and state government employment – stretching across states and agencies and burdening Americans.

As a statute’s support industry and special interest beneficiaries accumulate, changing government becomes increasingly difficult. And attempts to provide corrective regulations by conservative administrations have generally failed.

First, regulations cannot override statutes, so they cannot eliminate a statute-created program or mandate.

Second, agency bureaucrats who know the law better than the political appointees will draft the regulations and implement them to impede deregulation.

Third, regulations can be reversed or rescinded by the next liberal president.

Thus, the only effective way to eliminate programs or reduce government is to repeal the statutory language that creates agency power.

In many cases, the statutes would not be hard to identify. Take the EPA for example: Amend the statute that has allowed the EPA to run amok regulating that “pollutant” carbon dioxide. With one stroke, EPA’s economy-strangling global warming regulations would be nullified. As the Obama administration moves to govern by regulatory fiat, conservatives will have to limit government by using the new weapons of statutory fixes and eliminating agency funds for specific actions.

Repealing existing laws will be difficult. President Obama will veto such legislation, which requires a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate for an override. That won’t happen often. Thus, it is critical to elect a president dedicated to limited government, and senators who will give conservatives a 60-vote majority to overcome filibusters.

Finally, those dedicated to limited government – especially law students, lawyers and administrative experts – must lay the groundwork for such actions by learning what key provisions in various laws, if removed, would cut the heads off these various regulatory snakes.

This will take years of effort and innovative thinking. Public policy organizations and their donors will need to devote substantial resources to laying the groundwork for limited government by producing leaders who know how to bring it about. Our Bunker Hill will be Capitol Hill.

Conservatives are generally uninterested in the nitty-gritty aspects of government. This is understandable, given how aggravating the study of such minutiae can be. However, that must change if we are to win this long war against entrenched statism and preserve liberty in America.

Chris Gacek is Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/01/18/conservatives-limit-scope-size-government/

The Great "Climate Change" Taxpayer Rip-Off of 2011

Mon, January 17, 2011

The Great "Climate Change" Taxpayer Rip-Off of 2011 By Alan Caruba


Unless I am seriously mistaken or misinformed, the rate of unemployment in the U.S. remains high and the foreclosure rate on homes is approaching the level of the Depression years. Two major bond rating companies, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s just warned that, if the federal government doesn’t stop spending and borrowing, America’s Triple-A highest ranking will be down-graded.


Along with all the other things in the federal budget wish list for 2011 are millions to be spent on climate change.


It helps to understand how obscene this is if you pause to consider (1) there is not one damn thing anyone can do about climate change, (2) climate change has been researched and studied since the late 1980s, enough to fill an entire wing of the Congressional Library to hold all the reports, and (3) the only climate change Americans really need to know about is what the weather will be tomorrow.

With a tip of the hat to Climatequotes.com and the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) report on “research development, fiscal year 2011”, let me share just a few of the ways the Obama administration intends to squander your money.

The magic number is $2,481,000 and it represents specific amounts devoted to "climate change" research or other programs requested for the 2011 budgets by an alphabet soup of federal agencies that include the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, Department of Energy (DOE), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of the Interior (DOI), and the Department of Agriculture (DOA).

The figures cited all come from chapter 15 of the AAAS report and you can access it via Climatequotes.com

NOAA’s total budget request is for $5.6 billion, an increase of 17%. It intends to devote $437 million for climate research funding, an increase of $77 million over last year.

Over at the National Science Foundation (NSF), its budget of $7.4 billion (that’s a lot of science!) includes a request for $480 million for Atmospheric and Earth Sciences, $765.5 million for NSF’s Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability program and $19 million for a joint program with DOE “to promote education in clean energy research. An additional $10 million would fund “Climate Change Education” in the nation’s schools. It’s not education, it’s indoctrination.

The Department of Energy which currently is projecting that permits for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be forthcoming until, maybe, June. DOE seems oblivious to the fact that the price of oil is set to hit $100 a barrel and higher costs will hit everyone driving anything using gasoline or diesel fuel. Fuel oil prices will rise and any business that uses oil or anything made with oil will be forced to raise its prices. In short, everything.

DOE, however, is in no hurry and, of course, the Obama administration is dead set against ANWR or off-shore exploration and extraction of the BILLIONS of barrels of crude oil projected to exist.


However, DOE is set to receive $28.4 billion in 2011 and that includes $4.6 billion for research and development in its Office of Science and $2.4 billion for energy research and development. Its Office of Biological and Environmental Research is devoted to atmospheric science, including “climate modeling”, which would be allocated $627 million. Last time I checked, oil, coal, and natural gas were not found in the “atmosphere”, but rather were extracted from deep within the Earth.

The entire global warming hoax was and is based on “climate modeling”, all of which consistently found that the Earth was warming at an alarming rate. Except that the Earth is NOT warming. It has been cooling since 1998. And DOE intends to waste $627 million on more modeling. It is worth noting that the most sophisticated models of the National Weather Bureau still cannot predict with any confidence what the weather—not the climate—will be next week.

 The Environmental Protection Agency, gearing up to regulate all utilities that produce carbon dioxide and all other industries that do the same, has zero authorization to do so under the Clean Air Act. It is CO2 that is designated by the warmists as the chief culprit for the global warming that is NOT happening.

Despite this, EPA has requested $169 million “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, with $43.5 million in new funding for “regulatory efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” through the Clean Air Act. And it wants $22 million for its Global Change Research Program. It is time to shut down this rogue agency before it totally destroys the economy.


Even the Department of Agriculture wants $159 million for “climate change research”, an increase of 42% and $179 million for renewable energy, to “help farmers.” Farmers are heavy users of fossil fuels to operate the machinery needed to till, plant, and harvest crops. They need reliable energy, not "renewable" energy.


The Recovery Act of 2009 has managed to blow more than $600 million on climate change research and billions on greenhouse gas mitigation.

This is just the tip of the ‘climate change’ rip-off in terms of billions wasted or soon to be wasted on “research” that can only be deemed an obscene diversion of taxpayer money that will not benefit a single taxpayer, generate any new jobs except for those in government agencies, and further bankrupt a bankrupted nation about to have its credit rating reduced.

The “scientists”, “regulators”, and “administrators” feasting off this federal largess should be handed a shovel to earn a living on one of those “shovel ready” projects we were told about.

Beyond that, if Congress was really intent on cutting back on spending, they could begin by defunding or shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and all the other federal grifters with their snouts rooting around in the climate change trough.



© Alan Caruba, 2011
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/article/great-climate-change-taxpayer-rip-2011