UK towns blow millions on wind turbines with 190-year payback periods

Towns all over Britain are blowing millions of dollars on wind turbines that are generating almost no revenue and will take hundreds of years to pay for themselves, reports the UK Telegraph.

The Telegraph reports that UK localities are spending hundreds of pounds installing wind turbines in an effort to boost renewable energy generation and fight global warming.

“Some turbines generate so little energy they would take hundreds of years to repay their original value,” reports the Telegraph. “Experts argue that the failure of some wind turbines to recoup their value shows how small wind turbines are a poor way to generate renewable energy.”

In fact, only three out of a handful of localities that responded to the Telegraph’s inquiries had wind turbines with payback periods of less than ten years.

The locality of Eastleigh, Hampshire spent nearly $50,000 installing a wind turbine in 2005, but the inefficient turbine only generates about $21 worth of power every month — meaning the payback period on this turbine is 190 years.

In Leeds, officials spent about $102,000 on a wind turbine in 2009 at an inner city sports facility, but the turbine did not generate any power last year. In Derbyshire, a $147,000 turbine was built in 2004 but has not produced power since September 2011.

“Wind energy is an experiment, and sometimes the lessons learnt are hard and dearly bought,” Dr. John Constable, director at the Renewable Energy Foundation, told the Telegraph. “The truth is that foolishly ambitious targets and silly levels of subsidy have overheated the wind industry, resulting in defective technologies and poor installations.”

Constable added that smaller wind turbines were only expected to last up to 15 years, meaning that virtually none of the ones the Telegraph investigated would pay for themselves.

Via: Daily Caller
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TOP TEN TRENDS OF 2023: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

As we look back at the year 2023, we can see ten important trends that will continue to shape our lives in 2024—and beyond.    

First, America has not fully recovered from its military defeat in 2021 at the hands of China. 

The US has had to reconcile itself to an inferior status in the Pacific—and perhaps the world.  To be sure, the actual military losses suffered by the US were minimal; the American surveillance satellites, blinded by Chinese lasers, have now all been replaced—albeit they are limited to new orbits that do not violate China’s Sovereignty Zone.   The three US aircraft carriers that were sunk in the first ten minutes of the conflict represented a great loss of life, of course, but as  the Sharpton-Paul Commission concluded in 2022, the US had no legal authority, in the first place, to patrol that close to Chinese waters.   Moreover, now that Taiwan has accepted reunification with Beijing, and now that Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea have agreed to accept People’s Liberation Army “Friendship Bases” on their territories, experts can cite no reason for the US Navy to venture east of Hawaii.  

On the other hand, the stock market continues to hit record highs, although skeptics attribute this rise to the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve, as opposed to the basic strength of the US economy. 

Second, we have seen the final elimination of US influence in the Middle East.   It’s been eight years now since President Obama pulled the last American troops out of Afghanistan.  The US had high hopes for the 2015 peace agreement between the late Hamid Karzai and the Taliban, but those hopes were dashed the following day.   

Via: Breitbart

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UPS and FedEx Ruin Christmas and Prove Republicans Wrong About Killing the Post Office

People across the country got a look at what package delivery will look like if the Postal Service is privatized after both UPS and FedEx ruined Christmas by being unable to delivery holiday packages on time.

UPS admitted that some children would not receive their Christmas gifts on time because their system could not keep up with demand, “We understand the importance of your holiday shipments. However, the volume of air packages in our system exceeded the capacity of our network.” A spokesperson for Fed Ex said, “We’re sorry that there could be delays and we’re contacting affected customers who have shipments available for pickup.” Fed Ex’s solution was to make customers who paid for Christmas delivery go to their local Fed Ex store and pick up their packages on Christmas Day. If you didn’t have a local Fed Ex store, you were out of luck.

Things were so bad at Fed Ex that local depots were overwhelmed with packages to the point where they didn’t attempt to make deliveries. The AP confirmed that the delivery issues impacted Alabama, California, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Via: Politicus USA

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Bloomberg Says Administration ‘Literally’ Saved 9,200 Lives

With just four days left before his 12-year tenure in City Hall comes to an end, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is celebrating what he views as one of his crowning achievements: the record-low homicide rate across the five boroughs.

Speaking at an NYPD graduation ceremony today, Mr. Bloomberg wasn’t bashful in making sure both his administration and police department get full credit for the drop in crime over the past decade.

“The crime reductions the NYPD has driven over the past 12 years have defied the odds and far outpaced the rest of the nation. Twelve years ago, no one thought New York City’s crime rate could go any lower. But then it did,” said Mr. Bloomberg, rattling off statistics to support his claim, including “the most important measure of public safety”: less than 340 murders logged so far this year.

“If you compare this decade to the previous eras’ murder rates, we can literally say that we have saved more than 9,200 lives in the last 12 years,” the mayor added.

Mr. Bloomberg’s policing policies have come under intense scrutiny throughout the year. A federal judge ruled against the controversial stop-and-frisk tactic’s current implementation and Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio–who will replace Mr. Bloomberg come January–emerged as one of the foremost stop-and-frisk critics during his winning campaign.

But it is not just Mr. Bloomberg who is in legacy mode in the face of potential skeptics. Outgoing Police Commissioner Ray Kelly also spoke today and touted both his record and Mr. Bloomberg’s accomplishments.

Via: Politicker

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MSNBC's Taylor: Republicans 'Almost Single-Handedly Blew Up This Economy'

On Thursday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, during a discussion of Republican resistance to extending unemployment benefits, MSNBC political analyst Goldie Taylor charged that the  GOP "almost single-handedly blew up this economy," and that it was "as if" they "blew up" the "bridge" and then "dared people to cross to the other side of the canyon on their own."

After host Al Sharpton played several soundbites of Republican elected officials and complained that they "act as though" the unemployed are "dependents, that they're some kind of beggars," he turned to Taylor who responded:

You know, this is a party who almost single-handedly blew up this economy. You know, it's as if they stuck dynamite on the bridge, blew it up and then dared people to cross to the other side of the canyon on their own. And so, at the end of the day, this is going to hurt them in 2014. It's going to hurt them in 2016 because you don't know who your next door neighbor happens to be who might be receiving benefits from the Department of Labor.

A bit earlier, Taylor served as a reminder that when conservatives discuss the disproportionate poverty or unemployment rate of the black population in the context of trying to help, that they are attacked as having a racist motivation just for noticing, but when liberals do the same, it is considered a perfectly reasonable topic of conversation. As she tried to make Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul seem insensitive to the needs of the black population, Taylor recalled that "African-Americans have a higher disproportionate unemployment rate than the rest of the country."

Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the Thursday, December 26, PoliticsNation on MSNBC:

AL SHARPTON: Goldie, you know, Senator Rand Paul is standing behind his comments that extending jobless benefits does a disservice to the workers. Listen to this.

SENATOR RAND PAUL (R-KY): And so really, when I said it's a disservice, I mean this. I am worried about the workers. Not that I think they become bad people by being unemployed longer, but that the longer they're unemployed, the less likely they are ever to get a job again.

SHARPTON: Now, Goldie, keep in mind in Senator Paul's home state of Kentucky, about 53,000 people will lose benefits if Congress fails to act. But this is his position.

TAYLOR: Yeah, I've got to agree with Governor Rendell here. You know, you've got to force them to vote because if they do have to vote, then they're going to turn around to the people in their district, the people who are receiving SNAP benefits that they wanted to cut, the people receiving unemployment benefits that they refuse to extend. Now, the people who want to sign up for the Affordable Care Act when they refuse to create these exchanges.

You know, we need to force them to vote on not extending this unemployment benefits package so that the 53,000 people of Kentucky who are going to lose those benefits can see exactly where Rand Paul stands and all of the rest of them. That's what this is really about.

I heard Rand Paul say that he was using this as a part of this mission to attract more African-American voters. Well, African-Americans have a higher disproportionate unemployment rate than the rest of the country. And so, certainly, this is not the constituency you want to talk to about cutting unemployment benefits that people earn who have lost their jobs through no fault, clearly, of their own.

Via: Newsbusters

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New Jersey Cops Suspended for Serving Their Country?

Two New Jersey cops say they were suspended over their military service. Michael McCracken and Hector Cartagena are Iraq war veterans and airmen in the Air Force Reserves.

They’re being suspended without pay and could lose their jobs for allegedly misusing military leave time. An attorney for both men says they’re upstanding cops and did everything by the book. The police union claims the cops are being targeted by their department to discourage other cops from joining the reserves.

“It’s devastating,” McCracken said. “I’ve got a wife and three small children. […] I’m without a paycheck now.”

Cartagena said, “It’s hard for the family. There’s no Christmas presents for them right now. We’ll get through this, I have no doubt, but it’s just everything I worked for up to this point.”

Lawmakers are calling for the state’s attorney general to investigate.

UPDATE: Sunday morning on Fox and Friends Weekend, McCracken and Cartagena told their side of the story. Their attorney said that audiotape from investigation revealed other Bloomfield police officers were complaining that they couldn’t take vacations due to the soldiers’ military leave.

Via: Fox Insider

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Obama’s contracting chief uses revolving door for job at reverse-auction company

The White House’s contracting policy chief is leaving to take a job at a company that conducts billions of dollars in reverse auctions for federal agencies, raising more concerns about the “revolving door” that President Obama pledged to end between government and special interests.

Joseph Jordan, the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, is leaving to take a job at FedBid, a private Virginia-based company that has come under congressional scrutiny in recent weeks over whether its reverse auction model saves the government much money.

Mr. Jordan’s career move is the latest to alarm watchdogs who say the jumps from government to the private sector seem to do more to enrich individuals than they do to help taxpayers.

“Unfortunately, we think the OFPP has become a launching pad for future contractor lobbyists,” said Joe Newman, spokesman for the Project On Government Oversight, which monitors government contracting.

Weeks before news of Mr. Jordan’s move to the company, questions about reverse-auction rules arose in Congress. Congressional auditors asked the White House Office of Management and Budget, where Mr. Jordan works, to amend federal acquisition rules on reverse auctions to mitigate confusion among agencies about the contracting technique.

Via: Washington Times

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MARK STEYN: Why does Obama get a pass for sending a stuntman to sign him up for Obamacare?

Mark Steyn says that despite the stated need for Obama to sign up for Obamacare in person due to the complexity of it, he still sent a stuntman to do it. Steyn wonders why Obama should get a pass for this when no one else can forgo the burdens of signing up for Obamacare.

But to make an even bigger, more profound point, Steyn says this:

“Is the ruling class bound by the laws it imposes on you, because if it’s not then it’s not any kind of Republic except for the Banana kind.”

Via: The Right Scoop

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Marc Siegel: The Death of the Bedside Manner

ObamaCare is speeding the decline in the quality of medical practice.

'It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born," James Joyce wrote famously in his masterpiece "Ulysses." I recently had such an experience when my office manager—who protects me from the daily insurance grind of referrals and approvals and pre-certifications and blood drawing—was out sick. Thus the veil was lifted from my eyes, and I awoke to the harsh realities of our medical future.

One patient was severely depressed and needed medication and a referral to a psychiatrist. Another was having trouble breathing from asthma that requires inhalers. A third had a faded rash on her arm that she was ready to call a spider bite until she showed me a two-day-old iPhone photo. It was the angry red rash of Lyme disease. Each problem had an effective treatment but each visit took over half an hour to carefully complete.

The appointments were gratifying, in an old-fashioned way. Patients still have the expectation that their doctor will be patient and listen carefully, but one by one doctors and patients are awakening from that comforting vision of the past to the rushed, restricted world of the ObamaCare future. Thanks to that eye-opening week without my office manager, when I ran hours behind, I was forced to forfeit the vision I had of myself as an old country doctor practicing in a big city.

For me and many of my colleagues, the real practice of medicine is supposed to involve an intimate encounter with each patient and a diagnosis of illness leading to a potential cure. In the future, however, a diagnosis of Lyme disease or the severity of a patient's depression may be missed because showing the photo or taking an extensive mental-health history doesn't fit squarely into the 10-minute visit authorized by insurance, along with mandatory computer documentation, insurance verifications and appointment scheduling.

These problems predate ObamaCare, but the new law brings more regulations and low-quality insurance at a time when we are already struggling to comply with the electronic health-record mandate.

Via: Wall Street Journal

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Senate Conservatives Fund Ramps Up Earmarking Effort

Using a special method of fundraising that permits moving large amounts of funds to a candidate, a federal PAC has collected and forwarded more than $500,000 in earmarked contributions for five conservative Senate and House candidates.

The Senate Conservatives Fund, a federal PAC that already gives contributions and makes independent expenditures for federal candidates, has reported collecting and forwarding $541,565 in earmarked contributions since May. During November they reported forwarding $201,460 to candidates.

The PAC was founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and seeks to elect conservative candidates, but does not support liberal Republicans, and is not affiliated with the Republican Party or its campaign committees.

Individuals may earmark their original contribution for a specific candidate, and pass it through a PAC, who then forwards the contribution to that specific candidate. The contribution is considered from the original donor and does not count toward the PAC’s contribution limit. The individual gets the credit for the contribution, and the PAC gets the credit for the soliciting, collecting and forwarding of the funds.

Matt Bevin, R-Ky., who is running against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., received $304,132 in earmarked contributions from individuals that were collected through the PAC. This includes $173,579 in October and $130,552 in November.

Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., who is running for re-election, received $70,008 in earmarked from the PAC.

Col. Rob Maness, R-La., who is running against Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has received $63,983 in earmarked funds collected by the PAC. This includes $40,979 in October and $23,004 in November.

Conservative commentator and State Senator Chris McDaniel, R-Miss., who is running against Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., has received $58,750 in earmarked contributions from the PAC. This includes $33,954 in October and $24,796 in November.

Midland University president Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., has received $44,692 in earmarked contributions for the PAC. This includes $30,439 in October and $14,253 in November.

In 2012, former Sen. Jim DeMint cut his formal ties with the Senate Conservatives Fund, and started a separate Super PAC, Senate Conservatives Action, that makes only independent expenditures and is not bound by limits on contributions or spending.

Via: Roll Call

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Mary Landrieu expected for Energy chair, #Keystone approval, defeat in re-election.

Some people might think that this news might disappoint me, given that I am of course a partisan hack.

Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana will probably become the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee early next year, giving the gavel to a lawmaker with deep ties to home-state oil producers and refiners. The shift stems from President Barack Obama’s nomination of Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana to be U.S. ambassador to China, and the likelihood that the current energy panel chairman, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, will replace Baucus at the head of the Senate Finance Committee.

[snip]

The energy committee’s top Republican, Lisa Murkowski, hails from another oil and gas producing state, Alaska. That may improve chances for bipartisan alliances around industry priorities such as expanded exports of natural gas sought by Cheniere Energy Inc. (LNG:US) and Dominion Resources (D:US) Inc., as well as TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

Actually, it pleases me greatly. Senator Landrieu’s weakness this election cycle is not due to her energy policy positions; it’s because she’s a Democrat who provided the crucial 60th vote on Obamacare. Trying to get out of the way of that rapidly-approaching career-killer – and trust me: Obamacare is hurting Democrats most wonderfully dreadfully – by embracing the Keystone Pipeline will be very useful to the GOP, without noticeably changing the electoral calculus.  The truth of the matter is, Barack Obama rather badly wants to sign off on that stupid pipeline; the only reason that he hasn’t yet is because if Obama does then radical Greenies will rant and rave at the perceived slight to their religion.  Better by far if the Senate gives him a fait accompli. The President can blame the Senate, and Senate Democrats can shrug and piously claim that none of the environmentalist faithful voted for the pipeline.  Everybody wins.  Well, except for Landrieu in the long term.

And radical Greenies, of course.  And the best part?  There’s no reasonable chance that the radical Green movement can actually stop Landrieu from becoming Energy chair in the first place.  All bark, no bite from those guys.

Via: Red State

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