Floating wind is not a highway.
The Biden Administration is illegally redirecting hundreds of millions of dollars in highway grant money to fund construction of floating wind manufacturing facilities.
The funding mechanism is the INFRA Grant Program in Biden’s Transportation Department. To begin with, here is how the website describes the Program:
“What is the INFRA program?
INFRA (the Nationally Significant Multimodal Freight & Highway Projects program) awards competitive grants for multimodal freight and highway projects of national or regional significance to improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of the movement of freight and people in and across rural and urban areas.”
Projects typically range from as little as $8 million up to $200 million. Here is their list of eligible projects, which is pretty clear and simple:
“Eligible projects:
A highway freight project on the National Highway Freight Network
A highway or bridge project on the National Highway System
A freight intermodal, freight rail, or freight project within the boundaries of a public or private freight rail, water (including ports), or intermodal facility and that is a surface transportation infrastructure project necessary to facilitate direct intermodal interchange, transfer, or access into or out of the facility
A highway-railway grade crossing or grade separation project
A wildlife crossing project
A surface transportation project within the boundaries or functionally connected to an international border crossing that improves a facility owned by Fed/State/local government and increases throughput efficiency
A project for a marine highway corridor that is functionally connected to the NHFN and is likely to reduce road mobile source emissions
A highway, bridge, or freight project on the National Multimodal Freight Network”
And yet INFRA recently awarded a whopping $426,719,810 for the Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind MVP (Minimum Viable Port) in Northern California. This is not a port in the transportation sense where freight and people get on and off ships. It is where they are going to build a bunch of floating wind turbines, which then get towed out to sea and anchored in a big federal offshore wind lease area. In short, it is a big boatyard.
A boatyard is clearly not eligible for INFRA funding, given the above list. Even clearer is this eligibility statement from the website:
“To be eligible under INFRA, a project within the boundaries of a freight rail, water (including ports), or intermodal facility must be a surface transportation infrastructure project necessary to facilitate direct intermodal interchange, transfer, or access into or out of the facility and must significantly improve freight movement on the NHFN.”
NHFN is the National Highway Freight Network, which the Humboldt Bay production facility has nothing to do with. It certainly is not going to “significantly improve freight movement on the NHFN”, which is the big INFRA grant requirement. In fact, bringing in the hundreds of thousands of tons of steel or concrete needed to make the floaters for the giant turbines is likely to increase freight congestion.
Surely, it is illegal for a Federal Agency to take money that Congress has allocated for a specific program like INFRA and spend it on something else. It seems clear that is what is happening here unless there is some hidden exemption loophole in play, which I doubt very much. To hell with the rules seems to be Biden’s hallmark.
Nor is this a one-shot deal. The State of Maine has an application for an even bigger $456,000,000 grant to build the Sears Island floating wind production site. Maine’s is called the Dirigo Atlantic Floating Offshore Wind Port, but it too is not a port in the transportation sense. It is a boatyard, a place where they make boats, in this case, giant turbine floaters. (Dirigo is Latin for “I lead” and is Maine’s state motto.)
So here we have almost a billion dollars possibly being illegally diverted from INFRA. That means a lot of worthwhile highway projects do not get funded. Moreover, there are more floating wind production facilities in the planning stages to go with the numerous deepwater leases in the works.
Someone in authority needs to take a hard look at these INFRA offshore production facility grants and stop them if they are, in fact, illegal, as they certainly seem to be. If the Biden Administration wants to throw billions at offshore wind production, then Congress must first provide the funds. That is how the American system works.
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The US government is a live production of “Weekend at Bidens”. Rigor has set in and they installed wheels to move him about. Even Obama got into the act tugging Biden offstage last week. Charlie McCarthy was more believable. At least he could talk.
Why is anyone surprised by this? The democrat party platform of getting rid of fossil fuels has not changed, it has only accelerated.
You get the party platform you vote for. Since reliable automobile and freight transportation is now opposed by democrats, they wont spend money on it. It’s always the bait and switch with them.
Now they need to get rid of their Fossil Fools in Congress and the Executive
Money approved by the Legislative Branch (Congress) is being redirected the Executive Branch.
That’s not how it’s supposed to work.
Congress should stop it or at least investigate it.
The Executive Branch is not supposed to be a dictatorship or totalitarian.
Exactly. House Oversight, Transportation and Appropriations Committees should all be upset by this violation of the budget process.
A new POTUS and inspector general to investigate all bureaucrats who were involved in this evaluation. Any bureaucrat that did not resist the improper use of funds to be summarily terminated, with a “never to be hired by any government or private entity that receives ANY federal funds of any kind.
Saw a news article that the EPA is requiring IRA and Infrastructure bill spending on roads to include a LARGE sign indication that Biden did that. Recently traveled across the country and saw such signs in several places. Didn’t know that somehow the EPA was involved. Eliminate the EPA and do not allow any bureaucrats of any nature to transfer to other agencies. But first have the NEW IG investigate WHO forced this through and fire them as above.
Of course the termination language to be in legislation with added language that any suit against the government for wrongful termination must post a minimum one MILLION dollar bond, paid by the attorneys if such attorneys are pro bono or paid by someone other than the litigant themselves. If crowd funded, bond shall be 50% of funds over the 1 million level. Funders liable for all government attorney’s fees, with triple damages available to the government. Any judge attempting to block such removal to be guilty of a felony with a minimum 10 year sentence.
That seems a violation of the Hatch Act and probable cause for indictment for election interference.
Any other year, that would probably happen.
This administration, this DOJ, not a chance.
Start placing similar signs at Potholes, sink holes and anyplace A$$holes are present
As long as the Democrats are in charged, no Democrat malfeasance will ever be investigated.
Yea I know, theoretically, the Republicans are in charge of the House, but unfortunately there are enough go along to get along Republicans, that the Democrats are effectively in control there as well.
I remember making a comment back when Trump was first running in the Republican primaries but before he was the choice. (My first choices were Ben Carson or Ted Cruz but they’d dropped out before my state’s primary.)
I’d said something along the lines that we needed someone who would use Executive Orders to cancel all of Obama’s EO’s then declare all the “emergencies” that enabled them to be ended.
I might have this wrong, but EO’s are only supposed to be to deal a genuine emergency that needs action before Congress can meet.
Keep the nuclear football one in place. (Only minutes to respond.) But “climate” as an existential threat? Hell NO!
Climate as a threat takes Centuries to have a deleterious effect, more than long enough to prespond with mitigation
This is the same bunch of bureaucrats who instituted a massive censorship program as witnessed by the Twitter Files.
Rules? Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules…
Biden DoE changed Title 9 from sex to gender orientation. Changing a port to a wind turbine shipyard is easy. And just as invalid.
There should be at least an asterisk attached to such things pointing to the definition of the terms when it was passed.
Did we dodge a bullet when the “Equal Rights Amendment” failed!!
The main part of it, “Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
At the time, just as with Title 9, “sex” just male or female, AT BIRTH.
(It’s a shame I had to add “at birth” to clarify. I think even “old school” homosexuals and lesbians know the difference.)
Homosexuals and lesbians are well aware there are only 2 genders.
They just prefer the “company” of the same gender.
A lesbian cannot call herself a lesbian unless she knows her partner is female.
Homosexuals have now confused themselves with the alphabet labeling.
I notice that they ignore the ‘-‘ label completely. I think this is discriminatory against all those who identify with the ‘-‘ gender.
The UN/WMO changed “climate” to mean 30 years from the thousand to millions of years most people were taught in school. There were the Polar or Arctic, Desert, rainforest, Tropical, and Temperate climates.
They are really good in redefining anything – marriage, free speech, “success”. They don’t need to change laws if they redefine the complete understructure. Title IX is just an example.
And the (US) liberals have attempted to do just that by appointing people to be judges who will do just that.
(We now have a SCOTUS who refused to define what a “woman” is during her confirmation hearings. And the Dems and Brandon approved her!?!?)
Who believes that zealots who engage in such illegality would blink at cheating in an election?They think we are all going to die if CO2 emissions are not stopped.
Indeed, November 5 could mean the death of the planet, from their point of view.
Climate alarmism is morphing into climate hysteria.
Those who care about law and sanity need to be vigilant this election season.
Election cheating?
Time to revisit an article by W.E:
https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2022/11/11/election-fraud-is-easy/
“Floating wind is not a highway.”
Sure it is. It is the road to ruin.
When has Biden, or any Democrat for that matter, ever cared about what the law or the Constitution actually says. Just look at how he has treated the SC’s striking down of his Student Loan “forgiveness” plans.
Contempt for the law and the courts has been characteristic of Biden’s administration. Losing Supreme Court decisions, like West Virginia v EPA or the student loan giveaway only led to their doubling down on the rejected policy.
Fiscal malfeasance is impeachable.
Democrats will never vote to impeach a Democrat. Unless you have a solid majority of Republicans in the House and 65 to 70 Republicans in the Senate, it’s a wasted effort to go after a Democrat president, and the media will spend everything they have to make sure the country thinks the whole thing is just a witch hunt. Regardless of how much evidence you have.
I know you only need 60 votes to convict in an impeachment, however there are too many quisling Republicans who will fold in rather than risk having the NYTs say bad things about them.
Seems to me it was Ronald Regan who started the custom of using highway funds (collected mainly from federal taxes collected at the gasoline pump) for non-highway use but perhaps it was already a well established practice that I didn’t know about.
No, I don’t think he did. However, the federal government used (and uses)the threat of withholding highway funds to coerce the states into adopting the 55 mph speed limit, raising the drinking age to 21, requiring motorcycle helmets, passing “click it or ticket” mandatory seatbelt laws (I really wish the sound made by a seat belt buckle was “cluck” instead of “click”), That coercion is just as unlawful as diverting funds to other uses.
I suppose, (not to give THEM any ideas but) you could equate the project with creating the generation necessary to begin the electrification of National Transportation of goods across state borders. Electric Semis.
Why is anybody surprised or shocked by a Dem illegality? We have a dictator, I think, who does as he is directedto by his handlers.
I think we have a Sock Puppet Figurehead in Chief that gets assigned credit by the collusive media for what the Democrat Machine does in his name
Which is why I doubt they will ever invoke the 25th Amendment because it would raise far too many questions as to when his obvious dementia started to be a problem and who made the decisions for him until the declaration.
Lets say that on a Tuesday they invoked the 25th, it is fair to ask what threshold was passed and what metric they are using where invoking it on Monday was not warranted.
So who was making these decisions when it is blatantly obvious the sitting imposter was never in charge?
Is that the reason why the feckless GOP refuses to impeach Biden, because while it has been determined that he is not fit for a regular criminal trial, that similarly they can’t accuse him of being a dictator when he has simply been a vegetable front-man for a cartel that is behind all of this mayhem?
This is exactly why the government needs to be removed from all projects like this. They are unaccountable, they lie, they cheat and do all manner of disgusting things. Our government is really really bad. It needs to be drastically reduced.
Floating wind is not a highway.
Sure, but it is Highway Robbery!
I think the upcoming Maine floating wind catastrophe has been exposed elsewhere fot it’s impractical cost, engineering, deployment, msintenamce aspects
Well, I sent a message to my 2 senators (Scott & Rubio) and my congressman (Bean) and simply copied the pertinent parts of this post. I doubt that it will do much, but if enough readers here do the same, maybe one of our elected officials will pay attention.