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Keyword: boondoggle

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  • Obama to pitch $1B climate change 'resilience fund' in Fresno, CA

    02/14/2014 10:15:14 AM PST · by Sub-Driver · 91 replies
    February 14, 2014, 06:39 am Obama to pitch $1B climate change 'resilience fund' By Laura Barron-Lopez President Obama will pitch a new $1 billion climate change resilience fund during a visit Friday to California. The fund, which would need to be approved by Congress, is intended to help communities dealing with negative weather that's the result of climate change. Obama is touting the fund during a trip to California, which has been devastated by a drought that is threatening the Central Valley's agriculture production and has led Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to call on Californians to conserve water. During a...
  • Dems' new 2014 plan: Neutralize Obamacare (They Want a Fight to a Draw)

    02/17/2014 5:03:35 AM PST · by Timber Rattler · 11 replies
    Politico ^ | February 17, 2014 | JAMES HOHMANN
    Democrats know their biggest problem in this year’s midterm election is Obamacare. So top party operatives have settled on a strategy to try blunting the GOP’s advantage: Tell voters Republicans would make the problem worse — raising prescription drug prices, empowering insurance companies and even endangering domestic violence victims. The battle plan, details of which were in a memo obtained by POLITICO, recognizes the unpopularity of the Affordable Care Act. But it also banks on voter fatigue with the GOP’s relentless demands for repeal and counts on poll-backed data that show many Americans would rather fix Obamacare’s problems than scrap...
  • World's largest solar plant scorching birds in Nevada desert

    02/16/2014 2:30:44 AM PST · by Fzob · 25 replies
    Fox News ^ | 02/15/2014 | Fox News
    A stretch of the Mojave Desert has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, but the milestone is being met with criticism from environmental groups concerned about the effect of solar energy on desert wildlife. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opened Thursday after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating tortoises to assessing the impact on plants. The $2.2 billion complex of three generating units, owned by NRG Energy Inc.,...
  • Obama to propose billion-dollar Climate Resilience Fund; Icy blast heats up coal debate

    02/14/2014 11:12:44 AM PST · by Olog-hai · 15 replies
    Politico ^ | 02/14/14 10:08 AM EDT | Alex Guillen
    President Barack Obama will ask Congress to set up a $1 billion “Climate Resilience Fund” in his proposed budget next month. Obama travels to Fresno, Calif., today to discuss the drought plaguing most of California and the Western U.S. and to announce new administration actions, including the proposed billion-dollar fund. According to the White House, the fund would go to research on the projected impacts of climate change, help communities prepare for climate change’s effects and fund “breakthrough technologies and resilient infrastructure.” […] As another snowstorm socks the East Coast, the coal industry has a message for the nation’s electricity...
  • A Huge Solar Plant Opens, Facing Doubts About Its Future

    02/14/2014 8:11:25 AM PST · by lbryce · 56 replies
    New York Times ^ | February 13, 2014 | DIANE CARDWELL and MATTHEW L. WALD
    The Ivanpah solar power plant stretches over more than five square miles of the Mojave Desert. Almost 350,000 mirrors the size of garage doors tilt toward the sun with an ability to energize 140,000 homes. The plant, which took almost four years and thousands of workers assembling millions of parts to complete, officially opened on Thursday, the first electric generator of its kind. It could also be the last. Since the project began, the price of rival technologies has plummeted, incentives have begun to disappear and the appetite among investors for mammoth solar farms has waned. Although several large, new...
  • This high-speed rail thing is kinda’ becoming a disaster for Jerry Brown

    01/13/2014 8:46:11 PM PST · by dennisw · 43 replies
    hotair ^ | JANUARY 7, 2014 | BY ERIKA JOHNSEN
    California’s ludicrously ambitious plan to build a high-speed railway connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco has been besieged with all kinds of problems from almost the moment of its official conception, but let that not restrain California Democrats from doubling down on what they seem to view as their iliadic quest to make high-speed rail happen. Back in August, a judge declared that the project had already violated the 2008 ballot initiative that first authorized the $10 billion in bonds for the 500-mile train, because the state didn't actually having funding sources on the books for the $31 billion required...
  • Other voices: Let the wind subsidy blow away

    01/08/2014 5:58:03 PM PST · by TurboZamboni · 11 replies
    Pioneer Press/Chicago Trib ^ | 1-8-14 | Editors
    In the early 1990s, with dreams of cheap and clean wind energy ascendant, Congress lavished a generous subsidy on power from the tall, twirling turbines. The wind industry responded, and since then has increased its installed generating capacity 30-fold. For 20-plus years the subsidy has been intermittent, although not as unreliable as the winds that drive the turbines. The most recent authorization, a 2013 extension tucked into the federal budget deal that avoided the so-called fiscal cliff, expired Dec. 31. Applause, please, for our do-little Congress: What's known as the wind production tax credit has long outlived any public policy...
  • Minnesota solar subsidy revised

    11/25/2013 10:59:18 AM PST · by TurboZamboni · 18 replies
    MPLS Star & Sickle ^ | 11-22-13 | DAVID SHAFFER
    Minnesota’s expanded $15 million-a-year program to support homegrown solar panel manu­fac­turing will of­fer output-based in­cen­tives for the first time, ac­cord­ing to de­tails re­leased Fri­day. The program, fund­ed by ratepayers of the state’s four investor-owned utilities, will pay homeowners, businesses, nonprofits and governments from 13 cents per kilowatt-hour to 27 cents per kilowatt-hour over 10 years of output from solar arrays built by either of the state’s two panel makers. The retail electricity rate in Minnesota is about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. The payments are on top of what system owners get for selling power back to utilities, a signal that...
  • Turmoil at climate talks as blame game heats up

    11/20/2013 3:36:49 PM PST · by TurboZamboni · 16 replies
    AP ^ | 11-20-13 | karl ritter
    WARSAW, Poland—Rich and poor nations are struggling with a yawning rift at the U.N. climate talks as developing countries look for new ways to make developed countries accept responsibility for global warming—and pay for it. With two days left, there was commotion in the Warsaw talks Wednesday after negotiators for developing nations said they walked out of a late-night meeting on compensation for the impact of global warming. "We do not see a clear commitment of developed parties to reach an agreement," said Rene Orellana, head of Bolivia's delegation
  • The left is now eating its own: MoveOn.org not happy ObamaCare has become a "political nightmare'

    11/20/2013 7:46:21 AM PST · by SeekAndFind · 25 replies
    American Thinker ^ | 11/20/2013 | Sally Zelikovsky
    MoveOn.org is not happy that ObamaCare has become a "political nightmare" so they are blaming their cronies in the "mainstream media" (yes, they actually use that term) for failing to present balanced coverage of ObamaCare's successes. [See their latest mass email below.] To combat this grave injustice, they are launching a campaign against the Democrat-Media Complex by flooding newsrooms and the internet with stories of the millions of Americans who have purportedly benefitted from ObamaCare. Anyone who has been paying attention for the last 5 years -- even a liberal -- knows that any claim that the press is slanted...
  • As high-speed rail project falters, Obama’s vision of government remains unfulfilled

    11/08/2013 1:34:26 PM PST · by Brad from Tennessee · 30 replies
    Washington Post ^ | November 8, 2013 | By Juliet Eilperin
    MILWAUKEE — The gleaming red-and-white trains sit motionless in a cavernous warehouse in Century City, an industrial neighborhood that cranked out 100 million car and truck frames in its heyday. The seats are draped in plastic; an electronic screen on one reads, “Quiet Car. 11:10 a.m. 000 MPH.” President Obama once hoped that these high-speed trains would be transporting passengers from Milwaukee to Madison, Wis., part of a broader system crisscrossing the Midwest and the nation. But Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, rejected $823 million in funding that the federal government was offering, and the Transportation Department transferred the funds...
  • Report: DOE Withheld Data on Bankrupt Green Energy Company

    11/05/2013 4:42:40 PM PST · by Nachum · 11 replies
    Free Beacon ^ | 11/5/13 | Lachlan Markay
    The Department of Energy withheld troubling cost and performance data on a major stimulus award from a federal watchdog before the company servicing the award went bankrupt, according to a report released on Tuesday. The report focuses on the department’s handling of a pair of federal awards worth about $126 million for ECOtality, a San Francisco-based green energy company that declared bankruptcy in September. DOE’s inspector general, which authored Tuesday’s report, released an audit in July that expressed concerns about the department’s management of ECOtality’s $100 million stimulus award for the installation of electric vehicle charging stations. The report revealed...
  • Department of Veteran Affairs Spent Millions on Florida Conferences

    10/30/2013 7:32:13 PM PDT · by huldah1776 · 7 replies
    Washington Free Beacon ^ | Oct 30, 2013 | Daniel Wiser
    The Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing materials and promotional items for a pair of conferences that cost taxpayers at least $6.1 million. Included was $50,000 on a parody video of the Oscar-winning movie Patton and a request to have the Washington Redskins cheerleaders appear at a kick-off event.
  • Experts stunned at cost for Healthcare.gov website development

    10/22/2013 6:05:39 AM PDT · by Oldeconomybuyer · 173 replies
    My FOX-TV DC ^ | October 22, 2013
    “My overall sense, right from day one, was it was created by people who had never created a commercial database application before," said FMS Software developer Luke Chung. Chung looked over the site and was stunned by the code and the cost - by some estimates, perhaps $200 million. Chung continued, “At $200 an hour, that would be a million man hours, 5,000 man years. I don't think they had time to use 5,000 man years. So I don't know where the money went. I don't know what these people were doing. There're not that many web pages. I don't...
  • Feds: Tenn cost for reopening Smokies $60K per day

    10/15/2013 5:58:05 AM PDT · by don-o · 41 replies
    AP via WJHL ^ | October 14, 2013 | ERIK SCHELZIG
    CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Gov. Bill Haslam says a deal to open the Great Smoky Mountains National Park parks in Tennessee for the weekend came too late for the state to send money to the federal government. The price tag? $60,000 per day.
  • The Obamacare bomb - The scheme is about to blow up the incentive to work

    09/14/2013 11:04:20 AM PDT · by Jim Robinson · 62 replies
    Washington Times ^ | Sept 9, 2013
    A mere three weeks remain before the Obamacare exchanges open for business. The likely result will be the closing doors on Main Street, as shopkeepers and entrepreneurs shut down, unable to make ends meet. It’s clear that the wounded economy can’t cope with the exploding costs ahead. Ohio announced that premiums would rise in the individual market by an average of 88 percent next year. Premiums will rise 72 percent in Indiana, 125 percent in Wisconsin. Even California, with its relatively robust individual market, is bracing for increases of 66 percent. The Obamacare train wreck bearing down on us is...
  • Key Obamacare questions remain unanswered

    09/13/2013 9:55:25 AM PDT · by Jim Robinson · 5 replies
    Orlando Sentinel ^ | Sept 13, 2013 | By Scott Powers
    With fewer than three weeks until the kickoff of the new Obamacare health-insurance exchange, Florida's 3.8 million uninsured residents still don't have answers to key questions, such as how much will the plans cost, what they will cover and how to sign up. Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature opted not to participate directly in Obamacare, making Florida one of 26 states that have left it to the federal government to set up the online "exchange" that will enable individuals and families to purchase subsidized coverage. Obamacare requires that most uninsured people purchase coverage — either through their jobs,...
  • If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person (LEFTIST BRAINWASHING ALERT)

    09/01/2013 6:38:34 PM PDT · by Aircop_2006 · 27 replies
    Slate Magazine ^ | 08/29/2013 | Allison Benedikt
    ou are a bad person if you send your children to private school. Not bad like murderer bad—but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad. I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. (Yes, rich people might cluster. But rich people will always find a way...
  • Embezzler was hired by CA high-speed rail agency

    08/29/2013 3:39:43 PM PDT · by Attention Surplus Disorder · 6 replies
    San Francisco Chronicle aka SFGate ^ | Thursday, August 29, 2013 | unk
    SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A woman who embezzled $320,000 from a California state agency was later hired by the state's High-Speed Rail Authority — and she says nobody asked about her background. The Sacramento Bee (http://bit.ly/141r1Z6 ) says Carey Moore spent two years in prison after pleading no contest to grand theft in 2007. Prosecutors say she embezzled from the Department of Child Support Services. In 2011, Moore was hired by the High-Speed Rail Authority. Her job included making travel plans for officials. Her state job application didn't ask whether she'd been convicted of a crime and Moore says nobody...
  • Exclusive: U.S. delays deadline for finalizing Obamacare health plans

    08/28/2013 9:49:24 AM PDT · by Jim Robinson · 5 replies
    Reuters ^ | Aug 28, 2013 | By David Morgan and Caroline Humer
    Reuters) - The Obama administration has delayed a step crucial to the launch of the new healthcare law, the signing of final agreements with insurance plans to be sold on federal health insurance exchanges starting October 1. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified insurance companies on Tuesday that it would not sign final agreements with the plans between September 5 and 9, as originally anticipated, but would wait until mid-September instead, according to insurance industry sources. Nevertheless, Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for HHS, said the department remains "on track to open" the marketplaces on time on...