Oregon’s biggest problem used to be logging jobs lost from spotted owl lawsuits.
A new sort problem is developing. Green jobs and green programs are going off the rails. Portland recently passed a draconian “Climate Action Plan to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% that has little chance of succeeding by its 2050 deadline.
Read the story from the Oregonian here
The latest news is that the Green Tax breaks aren’t what they were promised to be and taxpayers are getting hosed for a cost 40 times what was voted on:
State lowballed cost of green tax breaks
State officials deliberately underestimated the cost of Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s plan to lure green energy companies to Oregon with big taxpayer subsidies, resulting in a program that cost 40 times more than unsuspecting lawmakers were told, an investigation by The Oregonian shows.
It gets worse. Now tax breaks are being sold in Oregon for less than they are worth.
Read about it here in the Register Guard
The tax credits can be sold, enriching companies that have nothing to do with renewable energy, and the swelling program is a drain on state revenue, critics say.
Here are some examples:
- Peak Sun Silicon, of Millersburg, sold a $3.25 million tax credit to US Bank for $2.18 million.
- Peak Sun also sold a $5.85 million tax credit to two companies: Nordstrom for $2.85 million and Standard Insurance for $2 million.
- Solaicx, of Portland, sold a $9.04 million tax credit to US Bank for $6.05 million.
- SolarWorld, of Hillsboro, sold an $11 million tax credit to Wal-Mart for $7.37 million.
- SolarWorld also sold a $10.96 million tax credit to Flir Systems, of Portland, for $7.34 million.
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It is possible for “green” investments to be made in Oregon just by considering economics. In 2007 the Harney District Hospital in Burns opened a new hospital with high-tech wrinkles (MRI, electronic records, fiber optic communication with Portland subspecialists), but heated by the burning of compressed wood pellets. Water is heated, driving 60+ heat pumps, each of which is controlled by a wall thermostat in different sections of the hospital, and warm forced air appears, the same way it would appear from a normal furnace. The decision to use pellets was driven by the desire to use local sources of energy (waste sawdust from sawmills), and the protection from rising oil and heating oil prices. The decision has been economically brilliant.
Same deal here in the Formerly-golden State.
Ah Life in Kolongougmi world-where the taxpayer are flush with money,the voter is stupid, and the politicians are above average.
Rep.Pete Defazio himself a Lib Dem,calls this the “Green Bubble” too and says this will make the the Housing,Banking and Tech Bubbles look tiny in comparison when this all fails.
I’m glad I’m closer to Idaho than Salem…
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell.
New research: Emissions Trading Scheme costs consumers £3 billion a year
A new report (PDF) from the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) reveals the high costs being imposed on British and European consumers by the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The ETS is intended to reduce carbon emissions across Europe by increasing the cost of energy for households, businesses and other organisations.
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/research/2009/10/new-research-emissions-trading-scheme-costs-consumers-3-billion-a-year.html
“And has anybody noticed that some major environmental organizations are run by economists? For example, the background of the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra K. Pachauri is in economics as is the director of Columbia’s Earth Institute.
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/articles/view/1804
Why is this?” Mark
It is very simple in 1910 or there abouts the “Money Trust” set up the economics departments of the major universities and packed them with their hand picked puppets.
“…then those professors with all of their academic credentials gave speeches and wrote scholarly essays extolling the virtues of the Federal Reserve System…” http://www.bigeye.com/griffin.htm
The group who wrote the Federal Reserve Act included Senator Nelson Aldrich, father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Frank Vanderlip President of the National City Bank of New York, representing the financial interests of William Rockefeller as well as four others representing the “Money Trust” and Warburg representing the international bankers.
Now skip forward to the 1950’s to the present and you find the father of Global Warming and the Environmental Movement is Maurice Strong. Maurice Strong served as Chief Advisor both to the World Bank and the UN. Strong was trustee of the Rockefeller foundation and worked for the Rockefellers in Saudi Arabia just before exploding onto the oil company scenes in Canada and becaming president of Power Corporation. Not bad for a dirt poor high school drop out, Gee I wonder who his mentors were….
Strong took the job with CalTex in 1953-1954, a company formed to exploit Saudi oil. (In 1936, Texas Co. and Standard Oil California formed California Texas Oil (later Caltex) to combine Texas Co’s marketing network in the Middle East with Standard’s operations there.) The Saudis granted the Rockefeller dominated Aramco oil consortium the monopoly of oil in Saudi Arabia. The Rockefellers has controlling interest in not one but four international Oil Companies.
David Rockefeller hosts luncheons at the family’s Westchester estate for the world’s finance ministers and central bank governors, following the annual Washington meetings of the World Bank and IMF. The Rockefeller/Morgan Chase Bank served as training grounds for three World Bank presidents, John J. McCloy, Eugene Black and George Woods. Note the UN’s funds are handled by Chase Bank
http://www.bcrevolution.ca/martin%27s_ties_to_nwo.htm
Adnan Khashoggi is another name to google — as long as you have a strong stomach add Bush to the name Adnan Khashoggi when you google.
There are major connections between oil, banking and the UN. When you branch out you come up with food and Kissinger — “If you control oil, you control nations. If you control food, you control people.”
It is all about money and power.
“John Perkins [“Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”] states he was initially recruited by the National Security Agency, a US Government agency. I contend these were not from our legitimate government elected by the US citizens but traitors representing banking interests. Perkins writes, “The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits – Jaime Rolds, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Rolds and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.” Perkins “ fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire” is certainly not representing the American people, but a cartel intent on a worldwide empire.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wanniski/wanniski53.html
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/15/self_described_economic_hit_man_john
Back2Bat:
It isn’t the state that won’t let us pump our own gas WE voted not to be FORCED to pump our own gas. I’ve checked on gasbuddy.com and gas in Oregon isn’t any more expensive here on the Left coast than in those states where you HAVE to pump your own gas.
The irony in Portland’s Climate action plan is that the leaders who voted for it are on record as being against nuclear power and in favor of removing (“as soon as feasible” whatever that means) the dams that provide 90% of the power in the Pacific NW. Obviously the city council members, none of which I voted for, suffer from an inability to think since their if their opposition to the above and their stated opposition to fossil fuels would be successful everyone but the elite would be without power, walking to work, and cooking on wood burning stoves if allowed to do even that.
Re: “As an afterthought… how many spotted owls get killed every year by the wind turbines?”
Missing link re wind turbines
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=810_1256678713
Oregon is one of the most leftist states in the union. I really have no sympathy for those idiots that vote their fellow travelers into office. They are reaping what they have sown. I hope it is very painful.
Poor Orgeon. Forget about Somali pirates.
Oregon is being raided by domestic pirates in high places hiding behind Emerald Green ideaologies. This is a taste of the objective of Cap & Trade, and the utlimate outcome for the US.
Read your history books for the fate of nations that lose thier economic base and will to be soverign.
woodNfish (14:38:52) :
It won’t stop with Oregon, unless good people stand up and make it stop there.
When they came for Oregon, no one said anything.
And so they came again, for another state.
And when they came to my state, there were no states left to help.
Damn, when Oregon legalized assisted suicide I doubt their population realized it was manditory.
Honestly, I dont care of Oregon commits economic suicide. It was their choice, as long as they dont beg for a federal bailout, they can continue to do what they want IMHO.
Ever wonder why it’s called the LAW of unintended consequences? Not the suggestion, not the possibility, but the LAW.
I have little doubt that these things were allowed with the best of intentions, and who would have ever guessed that someone would “take advantage”?
Really, the idiocy factor at play would surprise me, except that I know too many of these people personally.
Oregon corrupt? Knock me over with a feather.
“It isn’t the state that won’t let us pump our own gas WE voted not to be FORCED to pump our own gas.” Richard Patton
I must have pulled up at the wrong pump then. So you do have self-serve in Oregon?
US citizens should instinctively understand this question better than any other people in the world:
How can a banking model based on fraud, theft and oppression of the poor be benign? Is it any wonder that there is so much crap in the world when one considers that the foundation of our economy is government backed dishonesty?
OR
Most Americans are just naturally stupid.
Which is it?
Gee Gail, it all looked so real and enticing until that last bit and now this is all that comes to mind:
Mel Brooks History of the World
with Brooks and Dom Deluise playing John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Frank Vanderlip (President of the National City Bank of New York), William Rockefeller et al (representing the “Money Trust”, the international bankers … the BilderBergers, the CFR and the Tri-Lateral Commission)
.
.
Hmmm …
Purposefully left out was the winning answer?
(I’ll take “Populism again on the American scene” or “Robert Welch lives and breathes again” for $200 Alex:
“What are straw-man arguments made up out of whole cloth?”)
Populism, I see, makes its appearance again on the American scene …
.
.
.
Most Americans are not stupid, they are the products of the American Public Uneducation System. Our schools are not failing, this is what they were designed to produce, what De Tocqueville called ‘docile subjects’. Read “The Graves of Academe” by Richard Mitchell.
Use it or loose it, no selling off credits!!!
_Jim (21:06:49) :
Purposefully left out was the winning answer?
You’re pretty good with straw yourself.
Actually, I think there is at least one high performance alternative to fractional reserve central banking using competing currencies and banks. It would use bank common stock as money.
But in any case, the burden of proof should be on those who oppose liberty, not those who defend it.
Hey Gail,
Don’t mind _Jim, Lew_Rockwell is a great site for the better (best?) thinkers. You’re are on target; the world is run of, by and for a cheap counterfeiting cartel. Why on earth they think we must continue to use their pieces of paper is beyond me.
ignore “are” after “You’re”
Back2Bat (18:49:43) :
“It isn’t the state that won’t let us pump our own gas WE voted not to be FORCED to pump our own gas.” Richard Patton
I must have pulled up at the wrong pump then. So you do have self-serve in Oregon?
——————-
No, the citizens of the stated noticed that the gas companies were saying in getting the laws taken off the books on other states preventing self-service was a lie. They were saying it would cut prices and the motorist still would have the choice of having his gas pumped for him neither of which happened. Gas prices in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho are higher than Oregon and you HAVE to pump your own gas. So we decided that we didn’t want to get out in the rain for no benefit whatsoever.