Posted on 08/08/2015 8:11:25 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is spending millions on green energy projects for farms, including putting solar panels on the tops of chicken coops.
The federal agency announced Friday that its Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) will spend $63 million on solar panels and wind turbines for the farming industry.
One project, totaling $16,094, was awarded to Blue Sky Poultry, Inc., of Bainbridge, Ga., to “install a solar array on the roof of poultry houses.”
Other projects announced by the USDA included $18,000 for solar panels for a fruit farm in Ohio, and $19,750 for a wind turbine for a farm in Minnesota.
The majority of funding is going toward similar small projects. The agency is also financing larger solar projects through loan guarantees in the amounts of $3 to $4 million, and funding a $5 million project to turn wood into gas.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the $63 million in funding would “create jobs, reduce greenhouse gas pollution, and helps usher in a more secure energy future for the nation.”
The USDA pointed out that the Obama administration has spent more than $291 million in grants and $327 million in loan guarantees on green energy projects for farmers through the program since the president took office.
This is another 17th Amendment-related issue. More about 17th Amendment shortly.
As mentioned in related threads, previous generations of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate agricultural production.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited. None to regulate agricultural production is given, and therefore legislation by Congress for that purpose is forbidden [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
State sovereignty-respecting justices had also clarified that Congress cannot appropriate taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue that Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers, agricultural production an example.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Getting back to the 17th Amendment, the reason that the feds are providing vote-winning funds for solar panels for agricultural purposes is this. The corrupt Senate failed to protect the states, as the Founding States had intended for the Senate to do, by killing House appropriations bills which not only steal unique, 10th Amendment-protected power of the people, farmers managing their own farms in this case, but also steals farm income in the form of unconstitutional federal taxes to pay for the solar panels for farms in this example.
The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt, Constitution-ignoring senators along with it.
They will now.
Obama needs to study the “life cycle of chicken feed”. Its final form is detrimental to both the illumination on solar panels, and the electronics in them.
Is this for heating or cooling the coops? All I see is a way to drive up the price of eggs and chicken.
As a former and future Chicken Farmer, it’s true! Chickens, throughout the ages, have NOT been able to survive without electricity!
*SMIRK*
You know, with the the amount of roof space on a huge chicken barn, this kind of does make sense,. However, funding this ‘alternative energy boondoggle’ with tax dollars, as always, DOES NOT!
Good question. How are the solar panels going to work when it is raining? It is all about money. Some solar panel company will get federal money to do a make work job and it will only create more problems. That the feds will have to step in to fix with another make work project that will create another problem that they have to come in and fix with another make work project.....
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