Free Republic

According to the interior ministry's final count of votes cast at polling-stations (in German), Mr Hofer took 51.9% to 48.1% for Mr Van der Bellen. But ORF public TV's projection (in German), which is usually considered reliable, has both men on 50%.

Report: Tesla Used Illegal Foreign Labor to Expand CA Plant by Chriss W. Street 17 May 2016Newport Beach, CA148 First Digital’s Bay Area News Group investigative reporters have accused Tesla Motors of employing foreign contract laborers at $5-per-hour, 10 hours a day, six days a week to expand its government-subsidized California auto plant. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy in loaned Tesla Motors $465 million to open a plant for its all-electric Model S vehicle. Despite the $1 billion traditional automakers were paying to build and equip new auto plants, Tesla acquired the bankrupt General Motors “New United Motor...

It isn’t just tropical nations like Panama that act as safe havens for tax avoiders; the US stands accused of the same thing according to a new study by the European Parliament’s Green faction. EurActiv Germany reports.The release of the Panama Papers has been like opening Pandora’s Box: more and more countries around the world are seemingly ready to follow global rules on data exchange in order to curb tax fraud. But it’s not just the well-known tax havens like the Seychelles, the Virgin Islands, Panama and Liechtenstein that are being asked to up their efforts against tax loopholes, according...

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) on Tuesday slammed the administration’s handover of $500 million to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, asking a State Department official how the “handout to foreign bureaucrats” could be justified at a time when there were “real problems” that need to be addressed at home. Barrasso told Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom he viewed the payment to the “new international climate change slush fund” — the first installment of a $3 billion pledge — as both a misuse of taxpayer dollars and a violation of legislation that prohibits federal agencies from spending federal funds...

Renewable energy advocates like to point out that the cost of renewable fuels, like solar power, have dropped substantially in the last few years. The cost of solar power for instance has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2009. Yet for all the excitement about renewable power, the reality is that the entire energy sector has essentially been in a state of deflation for the last decade. The notable drop in oil prices over the last two years aside, costs of producing oil both in the U.S. and in many parts of the world have fallen dramatically. The phase out...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. Barack Obama began peddling his national healthcare system. On more than one occasion, he pointed to Canada and the United Kingdom as examples of a workable national healthcare system. When I first heard him point to them, I instantly thought of Rachel, a work acquaintance who lived and worked in the United Kingdom. She was experiencing abdominal pains and having problems eating for months before England’s National Health Service doctors finally diagnosed the problem to be her gall bladder. The doctor said it needed to be removed. However, from the time they wrote the...

The Pentagon is ordering the top brass to incorporate climate change into virtually everything they do, from testing weapons to training troops to war planning to joint exercises with allies. A new directive’s theme: The U.S. Armed Forces must show “resilience” and beat back the threat based on “actionable science.” It says the military will not be able to maintain effectiveness unless the directive is followed. It orders the establishment of a new layer of bureaucracy — a wide array of “climate change boards, councils and working groups” to infuse climate change into “programs, plans and policies.” The Pentagon defines

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dropped a legal appeal Thursday to reinstate a rule that would have allowed the killing of bald eagles by wind and solar power companies.

The prime suspect in the alleged German terror plot to blow up hundreds of people may have had contact with Mohammed Atta, the suicide pilot who smashed a hijacked plane into the Twin Towers. German police reports are vague about the encounter, but it has helped investigators to trace Fritz Gelowicz’s path from average Bavarian schoolboy to Islamic radical. His case has also highlighted the curious and sinister role of Neu-Ulm — a small township in the Roman Catholic heart of southern Germany — as a cradle of Islamic extremism. The connection between Gelowicz, 28, who was arrested this week,...

Islamic State earns about $500 million a year from its oil revenues. But according to former CIA director Mike Morrell, US fighter aircraft have been ordered not to bomb their oil wells in case they cause “environmental damage.”Yes. That makes sense. Clearly one of the main priorities in any war of attrition should be to do everything possible to protect your enemies’ lives, wellbeing and resources.Some might argue that a merciless death cult which now controls swathes of Iraq and Syria and a population of around 10 million, which makes $2 billion a year from oil and extortion, which rapes and...

The Environmental Protection Agency is spending $25,000 to teach churchgoers in Connecticut about food waste.The agency announced over $1.7 million awarded through its Healthy Communities Grant Program on Thursday, including $50,000 for its “Food Too Good to Waste” initiative that seeks to curb climate change by teaching adults how to write a grocery list.Sustainable America, a nonprofit group that wants people to turn off their engines instead of idling and buy hybrid cars, was given $25,000 to bring the program to churches.“This initiative will recruit households from faith-based congregations in the Greater Bridgeport and Stamford areas to implement a Food...

City-parish president candidates Joel Robideaux and Dee Stanley navigated questions on coal-generated power, the disruption an elevated interstate might cause in Lafayette and whether the city has too many traffic signals — all posed at a Thursday evening forum sponsored by the local chapter of the Sierra Club. In a campaign season where the candidates have often found themselves repeatedly addressing the same issues in the string of debates and forums leading up to the Oct. 24 election, Stanley and Robideaux covered some new ground at the environmental group’s forum at the Lafayette Public Library downtown. Robideaux, a longtime state...

In a recent lecture at Cornell University entitled "Check Your Green Privilege: It's not environmentally friendly to allow millions to die," British Member of Parliament, the Rt. Hon. Owen Paterson exposed the deadly facts behind the "green" charades perpetrated by activist groups, exemplified by Greenpeace. Mr. Paterson scathingly castigates the rich "environmental" (green) groups that are funded by wealthy elites and foundations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Working Group (EWG), Friends of the Earth, and (especially) Greenpeace, for their baseless but well-devised campaigns to manipulate consumers' fears and spread suspicion and mistrust among the public. These well-heeled...

A federal judge on Friday declined to halt the Obama administration's controversial water rule nationwide, rebuffing the request of 13 states that are battling with the Environmental Protection Agency.Judge Ralph Erickson of the North Dakota U.S. District Court ruled that there are “significant prudential reasons to limit the scope” of the injunction he already gave the 13 states last week. Other courts have denied injunctions, he said, and some states want to implement the “Waters of the United States” rule. “On the one hand, there is a desirability for uniformity regarding a national rule with national application,” Erickson wrote. “On...

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...

Pope Francis says that global warming is a fact and that a new global political authority is necessary in order to save humanity from utter disaster. The new encyclical that was scheduled to be released on Thursday has been leaked, and it is being reported that this new global political authority that Pope Francis envisions would be in charge of “the reduction of pollution and the development of poor countries and regions”. The funny thing is that this sounds very much in line with the new sustainable development agenda that is going to be launched at the United Nations in...

NEW LONDON, Conn. (Reuters) - Rising seas and thawing permafrost caused by warmer global temperatures threaten U.S. military bases and will change the way the U.S. armed services defend the country, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday. In a commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy, Obama underscored the risks to national security posed by climate change, one of his top priorities for action in his remaining 19 months in office. "The threat of a changing climate cuts to the very core of your service," Obama told the 224 graduating cadets, who studied the impacts of global warming...

The green energy movement in America is dead. May it rest in peace. No, a majority of American energy over the next 20 years is not going to come from windmills and solar panels. One important lesson to be learned from the green energy fad’s rapid and expensive demise is that central planning doesn’t work. What crushed green energy was the boom in shale oil and gas along with the steep decline in the price of fossil fuel that few saw coming just a few years ago.

Five years ago this week, a blowout of BPÂ’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig 40 miles from the Gulf Coast tragically claimed eleven lives and spilled 3 million barrels of oil from the damaged wellhead into the Gulf. ItÂ’s hard to forget the video images of thick oil gushing, day after day, into the regionÂ’s waters. It was a horrific accident that caused substantial damage to the ecology and commerce of the region. Gulf-area wildlife, portions of the shoreline, tourism, fishers and shrimpers, and energy-sector workers suffered large losses in the aftermath of the spill. BP has paid close to $27...

It's been five years since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and released 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists are highlighting the disaster by pointing to the 800,000 birds that have died because of the spill in the five years since the disaster, but activists have been eerily silent about the fact that way more birds have been killed by wind turbines — a supposedly “eco-friendly” energy source.The liberal blog Mother Jones reports that 800,000 birds have been killed and the Pelican population in the Gulf has decreased 12 percent. While the 2010 Gulf spill was...