Free Republic

The internet is filled with scam artists who try to swindle unsuspecting people out of their money. But impersonation scams that use Elon Musk and his bevy of tech companies—including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X—have exploded in popularity in recent years. And Gizmodo obtained reports about many of these scams filed with the federal government over the past year. Gizmodo submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking for complaints about scams that used the name of Musk and his companies to trick internet users into handing over their money. The FTC identified thousands of...

Maine’s Department of Education is reportedly urging school districts to stop using taxpayer-subsidized electric school buses that were purchased within the last year. The districts reported problems with the new buses, which were supplied by Canada-based Lion Electric Co., last fall ... The windshields on the buses would leak whenever it rained, as the glass didn’t appear to be securely in place. concerns about mixing electricity and water from the leaking windshields led them to stop driving some of the buses. The buses, which cost about $345,000 each, were also sold with misaligned or incorrect lettering on the sides, and...

An investigation has been launched into the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) after Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration was found to have sent billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money to a fraudulent solar company. Biden’s DOE recently gave a $3 billion award to a solar energy company that has been accused of scamming vulnerable customers. Republican leaders in the House and Senate are probing the DOE over the move. The investigations are being led by House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-WY). In a letter to DOE...

Tech worker and part-time dog trainer Maddie Guy, 33, couldn’t figure out what was going on with her English Springer Spaniel, Rudder. He was being snippy with other dogs and facing a medical issue so mysterious that every test had been run and a doggy MRI ordered.

On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “The Open,” acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su responded to a question on why the Biden administration is using tax dollars to give wealthy people credits to buy expensive electric cars by stating that they’re trying to create jobs and people support tax credits that help create jobs, and also because there’s a climate crisis. After Su mentioned the Biden administration’s economic policies, host Jonathan Ferro asked, “Let’s talk about those policies. There is something really peculiar going on at the moment. If you think about what’s happening at the picket line, they have serious...

BROOKINGS, S.D. — An executive for a carbon dioxide pipeline company said during a debate Tuesday evening that eminent domain is “a tool of absolute last resort.” Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, vice president of government and public affairs for Navigator CO2, debated South Dakota state Rep. Jon Hansen, R-Dell Rapids, at the Dacotah Bank Event Center. Hansen is a critic of Navigator’s proposed pipeline and another pipeline proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions, both of which would capture carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol plants in multiple states and transport the gas in liquid form to be injected underground or sold for industrial use....

The world’s corporations produce so much climate change pollution, it could eat up about 44% of their profits if they had to pay damages for it, according to a study by economists of nearly 15,000 public companies. The “corporate carbon damages” from those publicly owned companies analyzed — a fraction of all corporations — probably runs in the trillions of dollars globally and in the hundreds of billions for American firms, one of the study authors estimated in figures that were not part of the published research. That's based on the cost of carbon dioxide pollution that the United States...

It's August. Many young people head off to college. This year, fortunately, fewer will go. I say "fortunately" because college is now an overpriced scam. Overpriced, because normal incentives to be frugal and make smart judgements about who should go to college were thrown out when the federal government took over granting student loans. Why? Because our government basically vomits money at everyone who applies. If private lenders gave out the loans, they'd look at whether they were likely to be paid back. They'd ask questions like: "What will you study? You really think majoring in dance will lead to...

… A gallon of sustainable aviation fuel costs almost twice as much as traditional aviation fuel, according to the International Air Transport Association. Carbon recycling technology is broadly expensive, limiting how widely these kinds of systems can be embraced, which can then limit their development and adoption. The Biden administration took a step to address that chicken-and-egg problem Monday with the announcement of a $100 million grant program aimed at subsidizing carbon recycling purchases by state and local governments, as well as public utilities. Geoff Cooper, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, said that the funding will also help stimulate...

If EVs were really an innovation, the state wouldn’t have to bribe and force companies to produce them. The left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient but more expensive doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation. Even the purported amenities and technological advances EV-makers like to brag about in their ads have been a regular feature of gas-powered vehicles going back generations. At best, EVs, if they fulfill their promise, are a lateral technology. Which is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in...

Glib, charismatic and larger than life, Carmichael enjoyed her first 15 minutes of fame during the fuel crisis of 1974. At the time, she was billing herself as a maverick who planned to “rule the auto industry like a queen” by selling a low-cost, high-efficiency three-wheeled vehicle—the Dale—described in promotional literature as “the most exciting new car of this century” and “dollar for dollar, the best car ever!” You didn’t have to be a professional fact-checker to realize that this was too good to be true. Sure enough, within a year, Carmichael was indicted after authorities discovered that the Dale...

EXCLUSIVE: Two former U.S. ambassadors are sounding the alarm on the increasing number of green energy projects nationwide being developed with the involvement of Chinese companies. Former U.S. Ambassadors Peter Hoekstra and Joseph Cella said Chinese companies, which are subject to strict Chinese laws, have made a concerted effort to take advantage of U.S. green energy goals. The companies, they said, are exploiting American tax incentives to build facilities and projects in the U.S., bolstering Chinese industry and ensuring continued U.S. reliance on technology from China. "It'd be very ironic if we moved towards electric vehicles to the numbers that...

The “energy transition” continues to receive thunderous applause from all the usual Beltway suspects, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing to behold. For those with actual lives to live and thus uninterested in silliness: The “energy transition” is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy inexpensive (Table 1b and here), reliable, and very clean given the proper policy environment, toward such unconventional energy technologies as wind and solar power. They are expensive, unreliable, and deeply problematic environmentally in terms of toxic metal pollution, wildlife destruction, land use massive and unsightly, emissions of conventional pollutants, and in a...

This is Count Vlad's tribute to Led Zeppelin and the Middle-Eastern sound of the late 60s. To hang out in Marrakesh and Morocco was groovy – almost as groovy as in India with the Beatles. If you like the music please subscribe.

It's no mistake that Biden is coming out with his student loan cancelation plan at this time- just before midterms. It's a baldly obvious effort to cement the whiny socialist mooch vote that he already had but it comes at a great cost to everyone who either paid for their own educations or didn't go to college. President Biden caused an uproar Wednesday by announcing that his administration will forgive billions of dollars in federal student loan debt, potentially wiping the financial slate clean for 20 million Americans — despite Republicans and experts warning the bailout would worsen America’s tenuous...

Two weeks ago the Biden administration proposed a $33 billion support package for Ukraine. After de-linking COVID-related funding that had managed to latch itself to the proposal, the cost came to $40 billion. Let’s see what’s in there. “H.R. 7691, Making emergency supplemental appropriations for assistance for the situation in Ukraine for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2022, and for other purposes,” is very short and disturbingly vague. As of this writing, only a draft copy is up here. Total cost is $39,841,338,500. The title is a bit disingenuous. Less than $8 billion is to be fully expended this...

Long before FBI computer contractor and Clinton operative Rodney L. Joffe allegedly trolled Internet traffic for dirt on President Trump, he mined direct-marketing contact lists for the names and addresses of unwitting Americans to target in a promotional scam involving a grandfather clock. ... Not just any clock, mind you, but a “world famous Bentley IX” model, according to postcards his companies mailed out to millions of people in the late 1980s claiming they'd won the clock in a contest they never entered. There was just one hitch: the lucky winners had to send $69.19 in shipping fees to redeem...

For years, I have heard that the only constants in this life are death and taxes, but I suspect this is not true. I think there’s at least one other constant, at least in my life — the Garcon Point Bridge. I have been writing about this Panhandle boondoggle for more than 20 years. Every time I’ve written a story about it, I have been convinced that that would be the last. Then something else happened that made me shake my head and start writing another bridge story. I’ve gotten more mileage out of that bridge than the motorists who...

John Matze, the co-founder and former CEO of free speech platform Parler, is suing the company for wrongful termination and the alleged theft of his 40% ownership of the company. Matze was ousted shortly after Parler’s trouble following the Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol. In the lawsuit filed at the Clark County District Court, in Nevada, Matze is seeking “millions in compensatory damages.” The suit alleges that Parler’s main funder, Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, and other board members, engaged in a scheme to steal his ownership in the company he founded. We obtained...

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