Alabama Right News

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

18 months, $100 million, 117 workers: Solar firm going dark

from Liberty Pundits Blog by Clyde Middleton

18 months, $100 million, 117 workers: Solar firm going dark: "

The 3d variant of “funny,” besides “ha ha” and “peculiar,” is “pathetic.” SpectraWatt, Inc., soaked up public and private investment as if it actually possessed an idea worth developing, capable of being marketed, and likely to turn a profit.

Pimping their “CrystalBlue” solar cell, their website informs us:

SpectraWatt is a U.S. based manufacturer of crystalline silicon solar cells focused on delivering innovative products of superior quality. Our state of the art, fully-automated, cell manufacturing process along with our extensive research and development capabilities are ideally suited to meet the ever-growing needs of the solar industry.

It turns out, however, that the “ever-growing needs” are growing enough to keep the company business. From its start in April 2009, they just announced that the plant is closing and their 117 workers will be laid off in March 2011.

Predictable? Yeah. One cannot subsidize an industry into being. A lot of the start-up money came from Intel, but that was feel-good investment to appease Obama. When the training wheels are removed, and the company needs to stand on its own, reality hits. Here, the reality is that they are a private company pimping a product in the private marketplace. The private marketplace doesn’t want their product – there just aren’t enough swimming pools to heat.

Just pathetic. Throwing money after concepts is so progressive.

This oughta be fun: WikiLeaks and Gorbachev Team Up For Russian Document Dump

from Liberty Pundits Blog by Clyde Middleton

This oughta be fun: WikiLeaks and Gorbachev Team Up For Russian Document Dump: "

We’ll start with this cut:

Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta will team up with WikiLeaks to expose corruption in Russian government, reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

“Assange said that Russians will soon find out a lot about their country and he wasn’t bluffing,” Novaya Gazeta said. “Our collaboration will expose corruption at the top tiers of political power. No one is protected from the truth.”

The newspaper has been given full access to the Wikileaks database and will begin publishing documents next month.

But quickly jump here … note the last seven words:

Novaya Gazeta is a weekly newspaper run by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and billionaire Alexander Lebedev, known as an independent and critical alternative to the state-run papers. It was home to Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who wrote about civil rights abuse in Chechnya and corruption in Putin’s Kremlin and was assassinated on Putin’s birthday in 2006.

Thump. Watch yourself, Julian. You’re playing with the big boys now.

Progressive Vision of Borderless US: Rep Keith Ellison — ‘God Willing…Border Will Become an Irrelevancy’

from The Blaze - Stories by Naked Emperor News

Progressive Vision of Borderless US: Rep Keith Ellison — ‘God Willing…Border Will Become an Irrelevancy’: "

Barney Frank: Not Allowing Gays and Straights to Shower Together is ‘Discrimination’

from The Blaze - Stories by Jonathon M. Seidl

Barney Frank: Not Allowing Gays and Straights to Shower Together is ‘Discrimination’: "

Not allowing gay military personnel to shower with straight military peronnel would be “discrimination.” That’s the position of Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), an openly gay member of Congress who is a proponent of banishing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Frank told CNSNews.com that the idea that people might be concerned over gays and straights showering together, and the possible disruption it could case, is a “silly issue”:

“To accept the principle that homosexuals can’t shower with other people is a degree of discrimination that goes far beyond this. We don’t get ourselves dry cleaned. We tend to take showers when we go to the gym; when we play sports,” Frank said.

Mass. School Requires Permission Slips to Recite Pledge of Allegiance

from The Blaze - Stories by Jonathon M. Seidl

Mass. School Requires Permission Slips to Recite Pledge of Allegiance: "

A public school in Brookline, Massachusetts is bringing back the Pledge of Allegiance. Except now, in a move that suggests the recitation and its words are controversial, the school is requiring parents to sign a permission slip so their kids can participate.

“It’s uncomfortable. The pledge is a promise, and I’ve always taught my kids to think very carefully before making any promise. It’s not a decision I want to make for them,” parent Judi Puritz Cook, who has two sons at Devotion School, told the Brookline Tab.

According to a letter sent to parents last week by Principal Gerardo Martinez, the school is implementing the Pledge in order to comply with state law.

“In order to meet the state legal mandate for public schools and to support our learning expectations, I will, once a week, as part of my morning announcements, recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag,” he wrote in the letter. “Under our Constitution, neither teachers nor students can be mandated to participate in this exercise.”

“I urge you to have a conversation as a family to help your children understand why I will be reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and to support them in feeling comfortable and confident in the decision on whether or not to participate,” Martinez added.

According to the Tab, it seems many parents aren’t upset that the school is requiring special permission to recite the Pledge, but rather they are concerned the slips could mean parents are imposing their beliefs on their children.

Superintendent Bill Lupini said that won’t be the case: no student will be compelled to participate or not participate simply based on how a parent filled out a permission slip.

“We’re celebrating diversity and including people… and then to be the one sitting there, waiting for the pledge to finish, [that] doesn’t feel inclusive,” said one parent who checked “No” on the slip. “Yeah, it’s weird. That’s the right word for it.”

The ACLU agrees. “I think that’s really strange that they’d do that… even children don’t lose their right of expression simply by walking into a schoolhouse’s doors,” said ACLU attorney Sarah Wunsch, who lives in Brookline.

“It suggests that this is a decision for parents alone. Are they going to enforce that?” she asked.

Also strange is a breakdown of the Pledge included in the permission slip. It explained every phrase, and what the school thinks it means. Next to the fragment “under God,” the school says, “there is one Supreme entity for every citizen.”

It was later revealed that the principal included that portion without official permission.

Read the full report from the Brookline Tab.

This story has been updated.

Update: WH Admits Nat’l Intel Director Not Briefed on UK Arrests

from The Blaze - Stories by Jonathon M. Seidl

Update: WH Admits Nat’l Intel Director Not Briefed on UK Arrests: "

After initially blaming Diane Sawyer and an “ambiguous” question for National Intelligence Director James Clapper’s inability to answer a question on recent UK terror arrests, the White House has now admitted that Clapper was not briefed on the issue prior to the interview.

The arrests had taken place the morning of the interview, and had been popular news on all the major networks. Still, Clapper had no idea about them when Sawyer asked him about their implications for the U.S.

“Director Clapper had not yet been briefed on the arrests in the United Kingdom at the time of this interview taping,” said ODNI spokeswoman Jamie Smith in a statement.

She explained that Clapper had been “working throughout the day on important intelligence matters, including monitoring military and political developments on the Korean Peninsula, providing answers to questions concerning the ratification of the START nuclear treaty, and other classified issues. He wasn‘t immediately briefed on London because it didn’t appear to have a homeland nexus and there was no immediate action by the DNI required. Nevertheless, he should have been briefed on the arrests, and steps have been taken to ensure that he is in the future. The intelligence community as a whole was fully aware of this development and tracking it closely.”

ABC’s Jake Tapper broached the issue during a White House press briefing today, Smith’s position was repeated by White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, who was present during the Sawyer interview.

“[Clapper] was working on developments in the Korean Peninsula, in terms of political/military developments,” Brennan said. “He was focused on trying to provide support to the Congress as far as the START treaty deliberations were concerned. He was engaged in a variety of classified matters.”

Brennan then tried to spin the gaffe into a positive, by suggesting that it was a good thing Clapper wasn’t watching the news:

Should he have been briefed by his staff on those arrests? Yes. And I know there was breathless attention by the media about these arrests, and it was constantly on the news networks. I‘m glad that Jim Clapper is not sitting in front of the TV 24 hours a day and monitoring what’s coming out of the media. What he is doing is focusing on those intelligence issues that the president expects him to focus on and to make sure that we don’t have conflict in different parts of the world.

Take comfort.

Morning Bell: Merry Christmas, Moscow

from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. by Conn Carroll

Morning Bell: Merry Christmas, Moscow: "

In the spring of 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a plastic button that was supposed to read “reset” on both sides, once in English and once in Russian. But while the Obama Administration got the English part right, the State Department got the Russian word for “reset” wrong, instead emblazoning the button with the word “overload.”

With the Senate set to ratify New START sometime today, that error might just prove prophetic as already identifiable flaws in the treaty grant the Russians numerous opportunities to pressure for restrictions to American missile defense capabilities. The Senators voting for this treaty should be vigilant to resist any further erosion of our sovereign right to self-defense.

The first order of business will be to ensure that President Barack Obama follows through on the promises he made in his letter to the Senate to fully develop a U.S. missile defense system in Europe. Senators should also monitor any new rounds of nuclear and defense arms negotiations with Russia to make sure they do not repeat the mistakes of New START. Already there are troubling reports of negotiations about further U.S. reductions of launchers and warheads. With the rise of China and other nuclear states, the U.S. should not undertake any further nuclear reductions that would favor Russia as strongly as New START does or would increase U.S. vulnerability to those that possess nuclear weapons now or in the future.

Unfortunately, further undoing the viability of our nuclear arsenal appears to be exactly what is next on the foreign policy agenda. The New York Times reports today that the White House plans to press ahead with President Obama’s campaign promise to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) up for another vote. President Bill Clinton first brought the CTBT to the Senate in 1999, where it fell more than 15 votes short of ratification. The Senate rejected ratification in 1999 for good reasons, and the ratification of New START only makes those reasons more pertinent today. The effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrence posture has declined in recent years through atrophy within the weapons complex, and the United States has no margin for error. Ratification of the CTBT, on top of New START, would be nothing less than gambling with the survival of the United States.

The Obama Administration will certainly take even more unilateral steps toward nuclear disarmament. Their combined nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament policy is now clear: The policy requires that the U.S. take an additional unilateral step toward nuclear disarmament in order to prove its good intentions in response to each additional adverse development in the realm of nonproliferation. This misguided policy will significantly increase the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons against both the U.S. and its allies.

To mitigate the harm done by New START, Congress should insist on reversing this President’s cuts to missile defense programs, expediently move to build comprehensive missile defenses, and commit to developing a new generation of nuclear weapons suitable to meet U.S. security needs as rapidly as possible.

Quick Hits:

The EPA is expected to roll out costly greenhouse gas regulations for power plants and refineries as soon as today.

HHS announced its new health insurance price control policies yesterday.

The National Association of State Budget Officers warns that Medicaid is about to push state budgets “for a cliff in July.”

The White House is preparing an executive order that would formalize indefinite detention without trial for detainees at Guantanamo.

Al-Qaeda is attacking our food.

Environmentalists New Plan Same as Old Plan: Higher Energy Costs, Fewer Jobs

from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. by Conn Carroll

Environmentalists New Plan Same as Old Plan: Higher Energy Costs, Fewer Jobs: "

The Washington Post‘s Juliet Eilperin reported yesterday that “U.S. environmentalists are engaged in their most profound bout of soul-searching in more than a decade” and are planning to “redirect strategies” in the coming year. Faced with the failure of cap and trade and the defeat of “many of their political allies on both the state and federal level” the enviros are shifting focus away from “the toxic partisanship of Washington” and back to “the grass roots.” And just what type of grass roots activism will the left be pursuing at the local level? Eilperin reports:

The Sierra Club, meanwhile, is bolstering its long-standing campaign to block the construction of power plants across the country, assembling a team of 100 full-time employees to focus on the issue in 45 states.

Our national unemployment rate is 9.8% and the Sierra Club is investing their resources in blocking new power plan construction. The Sierra Club is blocking not only the jobs needed to build power plants, but they are also ensuring hiring energy costs for the entire economy. No wonder “many of their political allies on both the state and federal level” got shellacked at the polls last month.

But really, this strategy is no different than the one they pursued in Washington over the past two years. Both cap and trade and renewable energy standards, the two biggest environmentalist pushes on Capitol Hill, are premised on the same idea: decreasing carbon emissions by raising energy costs. As the Center for Data Analysis has documented both polices would kill millions of American jobs over the next 25 years.

According to the CDA, cap and trade would cause:

1) Net annual job losses of 1.9 million in 2012 and 2.5 million by 2035

2) Single-year GDP losses reaching $400 billion by 2025 and will exceeding $700 billion by 2035;

3) 90% higher household electric rates and 58% higher gas prices

According to the CDA, a renewable electricity standard would:

1) Raise electricity prices by 36 percent for households and 60 percent for industry;

2) Cut national income (GDP) by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035;

3) Cut national income by $2,400 per year for a family of four;

4) Reduce employment by more than 1,000,000 jobs; and

5) Add more than $10,000 to a family of four’s share of the national debt by 2035.

Oregon proves raising taxes on rich lowers revenues

from USACTION NEWS by Editor

Oregon proves raising taxes on rich lowers revenues: "

Oregon voted to raise taxes on the top 2% of earners last year and saw revenues drop by one third.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

“In 2009 the state legislature raised the tax rate to 10.8% on joint-filer income of between $250,000 and $500,000, and to 11% on income above $500,000. Only New York City’s rate is higher. Oregon’s liberal voters ratified the tax increase on individuals and another on businesses in January of this year, no doubt feeling good about their “shared sacrifice.”

Congratulations. Instead of $180 million collected last year from the new tax, the state received $130 million. The Eugene Register-Guard newspaper reports that after the tax was raised “income tax and other revenue collections began plunging so steeply that any gains from the two measures seemed trivial.”"

And it seems Oregon is not unique in its results. WSJ adds:

“All of this is an instant replay of what happened in Maryland in 2008 when the legislature in Annapolis instituted a millionaire tax. There roughly one-third of the state’s millionaire households vanished from the tax rolls after rates went up.

If Salem officials want to find where the millionaires went, they might start the search in Texas, the state that leads the nation in job creation—and has a top income and capital gains tax rate 11 percentage points lower than Oregon’s.”

The voters in Oregon and Maryland may have actually thought that they could fill their budget gap with more revenues from the ‘the wealthy’ who already pay a disproportionate share of the tax burden but the more likely reason for such tax increases is ideology.

Both states are very ‘blue’ meaning mostly Democrats. Obama reflected the tax ideology of the typical Democrat in his 2008 campaign when he said he would raise the capital gains rate even though it has always proved to result in LESS revenues to the treasury. His reasoning? “For purposes of fairness’”. He said so in a Democrat debate with Hillary.

A Gallup poll recently showed that Democrats and liberals are mostly socialists:

“A majority of 53% of Democrats have a positive image of socialism, compared to 17% of Republicans.

Sixty-one percent of liberals say their image of socialism is positive, compared to 39% of moderates and 20% of conservatives.””

There are many examples showing that liberals and Democrats today are socialists. Socialism is defined as:

“(in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.”

In Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto the number two measure needed to eliminate capitalism and establish communism is “A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” Its all about ‘fairness’ not raising revenues. Liberals and Democrats want to punish those who may have worked harder and been more successful. They especially want to punish those who have engaged in commerce instead of a career in academia or public employee unions.

This is also the attitude of the Obama administration and majorities of both houses of the 111th congress. The facts don’t matter. They continue to spend the US into bankruptcy in some utopian hope of punishing anyone who succeeded in capitalistic endeavors to prove to themselves that their failed philosophy of ’spreading the wealth’ and ‘fairness’ also known as socialism works when it never has and never will.

Alan Greenspan summed it up well when he said “Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.”

~ Michael Whipple, Editor usACTIONnews.com

Raising tax rates on the ‘rich’ lowers the tax revenues

Obama on capital gains tax rates:

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Democrat Mythology, Part I: Tax Rates and Revenue

Late-Stage Animal Farm

The Modern Left (Unmasked)

Democrats’ Policies Based on Dogma, Hopes, Dreams, not Reality

Obama’s Emerging Enabling Act

More people realizing Obama IS a socialist

The Enemy Within

Exposing Un-American Activities

Why Barack Obama doesn’t much care for Britain

Understanding the roots of Obama’s rage

Obama’s Destruction Of Capitalism

Barack Obama’s Surrogate Father

How Obama Thinks – and why we are in deep doodoo

Marxist Obama: Why The Media Has Been Silent

‘Is Obama a Socialist?’

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution

Black liberation theology, Marxism and the 2nd killing of Christ

Obama’s Communist Mentor

Why Obama IS anti-business

Progressive Politics and Marxist Class Warfare

Conservatives Behind the Curve on Obama

Obama’s Radical Past – key to America’s radical future

The Marxist Roots of Obama’s Rage, Part One

The Marxist Roots of Obama’s Rage, Part Two

Weather Underground Manifesto – blueprint for the Obama revolution

Walter Williams on Leftists, Progressives And Socialists

Is green the new red (communism)?

BUSTED! Conyers Meets With Marxists – How Democrat Politics REALLY Works

Is Keynesianism a socialist Maneuver?

Obama’s Radical Past – key to America’s radical future

The Marxist Roots of Obama’s Rage, Part One

The Marxist Roots of Obama’s Rage, Part Two

Security Risk? More Evidence of Mary Jo Kilroy’s Socialist Connections

Barack Obama, Fabian Socialist

Top 12 Politician Constitutional Contempt Clips

Communists and Red Hand Clappers: A Report from the Progressive Rally

Print and pass this one out: The Tipping Point

Progressives and Communists: Out of the Closet — Together

One Nation under socialism rally

Agenda 21 for dummies – the tyranny of ’sustainability’

The Five Year Plan Makes Its American Debut

Understanding the roots of Obama’s rage

Why Do Progressives Defend Communists and Terrorists?

Beck: “The facts are the president is surrounded by communists and Marxists”

Know thine enemy – over 900 leftist groups to watch out for

The list of organizations offering their official endorsements for Saturday’s “One Nation” rally reads like a who’s who of the far-left in America

November’s choice: socialism or capitalism

AN APE OF A COLD GOD- KARL MARX

AFL-CIO Head Calls for “Popular Control Over Private Corporations”

Barbara Lee is a pro-socialist Democratic member of Congress

Barack Obama’s Surrogate Father

Marxist Solution to the Financial Crisis: Death Tax

Progressive Politics and Marxist Class Warfare

The Midterm Elections and the Communist Manifesto

Only American leftists still believe in socialism

Red Maxine Waters

Progressives in a nutshell

Black liberation theology, Marxism and the 2nd killing of Christ

Public employee unions: A Marxist SCAM

The banana republic ideas are not working

Progressives paving the road to Socialism

Teachers union promotes Alinsky radicals guide to revolution

Communist Goals in 1963

Have we gone too far down the road of nationalization?

Obama’s Destruction Of Capitalism

Alinskys in Action – the O team

Andy ‘workers of the world unite’ Stern Says ‘Worshipping the Market’ Has Failed America

Margaret Thatcher exposes Progressives’ socialist goal – make everyone poorer

Rolling Back the Socialist Tide

Buy Socialism Now, Pay for It Later

A specter is haunting America – the specter of socialism

A Democrat warns of socialist takeover in the Democratic Party

Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

The Federal Reserve: Aging Magician of the Welfare State

from USACTION NEWS by Editor

The Federal Reserve: Aging Magician of the Welfare State: "

We hear of no “Plan B” to address the contradiction in terms that we may actually face: a welfare state bereft of an effective central bank.

By Mikiel de Bary at American Thinker

EXCERPTS:

Almost two years ago, still in the early months of the financial crisis, money supply growth started to falter, frustrating Federal Reserve Board policy. Soon this turned into tenacious rates of decrease. This little discussed development could profoundly affect the course of our history.

Not to put too fine a point on it, unrelenting money supply expansion was from the start a financial drug, which came to be administered in steadily increasing doses. Not just in recent years, but over several decades, the provider of the drug, the Fed, has effectively cooked the nation’s books and, crucially to our theme, contributed mightily to tax collections while substantially easing the strain of financing government debt increases at all levels.

Can the Fed engineer a recovery in broad money supply growth? Possibly, but it has not yet, despite trying now for about two years. To expand the money supply in the traditional way, the Fed needs a general optimism, a broad-based confidence, to take hold.

Paradoxically, the very possibility of the Fed’s somehow regaining its money-producing powers should be a source of unease rather than hope, for a resurgent Fed would imply resumption in the growth of the welfare state, which is to say an intensification of governmental burdens on the private sector.

It was “no accident” that the golden age of Fed money production — 1960, say, to “peak money” in 2009 — was an era that encompassed the long build-up of welfare state entitlement programs. Unless the Fed soon recaptures its money boosting dexterity, its days as the great financial wizard of our welfare state may be over. Without a Fed able to create the appearance of more economic success than is actually occurring, more Americans will question government largesse at their expense.

No serious proposals for dismantling the most fiscally threatening welfare state entitlements have been so much as hinted at. All proposals aim at salvaging them.