.....and still no independent council from the squishes in Washington.

Some people will believe anything, those that want to avoid embarrassment don't act on the crap some sites spew.

Energy Dept Spends $7 Million On North Alaska Solar Power, Except It’s Dark 24/7

ANDREW FOLLETT
Energy and Environmental Reporter
8:37 AM 02/16/2016


The Department of Energy (DOE) announced Monday it will provide $7 million in technical support for solar power to Native Alaskan tribes, especially those in the far north.

The parts of Alaska where the DOE intends to spend the cash have nearly 24 hours of darkness in the winter, which is precisely when Alaskans need the most electricity. Alaska has nearly 24 hours of sunlight during the summer, but that’s when demand for power is at its lowest point as there’s no need to crank up the heat. Alaska’s harsh winters make the state’s per capita energy consumption the third highest in the nation.

The villages which will receive the cash influx don’t actually have much demand for power and are currently reliant upon diesel generators.

A DOE study actually estimates northern Alaska has more solar power potential than Germany. The study admits any solar power in northern Alaska would require conventional diesel generators to serve as a backup during the winter. However, it does not examine if the program will save the Native Alaskan tribes money or even if the research would be economically feasible.

Despite these shortcomings, DOE anticipates giving Alaskan tribes $300,000 to $1,000,000 in awards for the next three to five years so the tribes can develop solar power. The $7 million and additional awards will only be available to “Alaska Native Regional Corporations” or “Inter‐tribal Organizations.”

“These efforts support President Obama’s commitment to strengthen the government-to-government relationship with tribal nations,” Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz wrote in a press statement Monday. “By building energy awareness and expanding existing networks, Indian tribes and Alaska Native communities are better positioned to find energy solutions that fit with their unique needs.”
The entire program is being run through the DOE’s Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, which has requested a budget of $23 million in 2017. Interestingly, this is an increase of exactly $7 million from the 2016 budget.

to paraphrase the late, great Sam Kinneson...

move them to where the light IS!!!

If you actually care, seasonality is addressed as are some of the other issues. I indirectly work with the Alaskan tribes and found this report interesting.

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/02/f29/Solar-Prospecting-AK-final.pdf 

It's actually a pilot project with relatively modest cost (much less than many of the projects I work on). It's a feasibility study in effect. And the 7M is available (cap) for procurement. Depending who bids, and if it's fixed price vs cost plus etc. it could be less or even zero if the locals/tribes don't want to do it. It's merely available.

Conclusion
This analysis compares the cost of installing and operating a moderately sized solar PV system to recent diesel
fuel expenditures for electricity generation for several remote villages across Alaska. The high-level results
indicate there are plausible scenarios in which PV can be economically competitive with diesel fuel prices at
low PV penetration levels. In this analysis, the cases where PV appears economically competitive generally
required a combination of (1) high diesel fuel prices (at least 40 cents/kWh), (2) relatively low, for Alaska, PV
prices (approximately $6 to $9 per W installed), (3) relatively high, for Alaska, solar production levels
(capacity factor of nearly 10% or higher), and (4) the ability to make use of economically valuable tax
benefits provided by the federal government. Solar development is likely to be favorable for other Alaskan
villages not considered in this analysis but that have a similar combination of characteristics. However, to
advance this high-level analysis to more precise estimates and eventually a large increase in deployed solar
projects in Alaska, a select number of potential barriers noted previously will require further research or
business ingenuity to address. Some of these barriers include, but are not limited to, the following.
• The integration of solar PV with a diesel generator is an ongoing area of study and demonstration.
The simplifying integration assumptions, including seasonal variability, made in this analysis should
be revised when better information is available.
• Regulatory and business structures such as how to work with the current PCE formula and how to
utilize the valuable federal tax incentives will need to be addressed by the stakeholders involved.
• Further refinements in real-world installation and maintenance costs of large-scale PV systems in
rural Alaska will provide more accurate inputs to the economic modeling.
Despite each of the simplifying assumptions made here, this analysis suggests that solar PV—along with fuel
and other electricity savings measures—can be economically competitive in many remote Alaskan villages
and could have a number of benefits including reducing a village’s dependency on diesel fuel, improving
electricity price predictability, providing local environmental benefits, and more.

Do they need ice..?? Cause I can prolly get them some ice for the right price.... 😟

ice ice baby

as long as its the low carbon footprint stuff

From The Hill:

By Jordan Fabian - 02/17/16 02:14 PM EST

President Obama “regrets” filibustering the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in 2006, his top spokesman said Wednesday, though he maintains that the Republican opposition to his effort to replace Justice Antonin Scalia is unprecedented.

“That is an approach the president regrets,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

ADVERTISEMENT

Obama and the Democratic senators who joined him in filibustering Alito “should have been in the position where they were making a public case” against the merits of his nomination to the high court instead, Earnest said.
“They shouldn’t have looked for a way to just throw sand in the gears of the process," he added.

As a senator from Illinois, Obama and 23 other senators attempted to stage a filibuster to block a confirmation vote on Alito, one of former President George W. Bush’s picks to serve on the bench. The filibuster bid failed and Alito was confirmed.

Conservatives have seized on Obama’s filibuster vote to accuse him of hypocrisy for criticizing Republicans for saying the next president, and not Obama, should nominate Scalia’s successor.

But Earnest said the GOP is going further than Obama did in pledging to not consider any nominee the president puts forward.

“These are two different things,” the spokesman said.

He argued that the Democrats’ 2006 filibuster of Alito was symbolic because he had the votes to be confirmed.

And he said Obama’s decision to filibuster was “based on substance” whereas the GOP’s blanket opposition to any Obama nominee is purely political. The president has yet to choose a nominee to replace Scalia.

Earnest went further than Obama did during a press conference when he was asked about his choice to join the filibuster effort against Alito.

“I think what’s fair to say is that how judicial nominations have evolved over time is not historically the fault of any single party,” Obama said Tuesday. “This has become just one more extension of politics.”

---

Obama's decision to filibuster was based on substance?

Here is what Obama said about Alito before his "substantive filibuster":

“While I certainly believe that Judge Samuel Alito has the training and the qualifications necessary to serve as a Supreme Court Justice,after a careful review of his record, I simply cannot vote for his nomination."
Obama claimed that, "Judge Alito simply does not inspire confidence that he will serve as an independent voice on the U.S. Supreme Court."

...yet he nominated Kagan, his own lawyer- she is certainly an independent voice.

no hypocrisy here, move along, nothing to see here.

^
wrong thread

Anywhere he posts is the wrong thread.

Hello pot. Meet kettle.

Hi kettle.

I'm sure white republicans would have flown commercial coach.

racist.... 😟

Saudi Arabia has killed a staggering number of civilians in its bombardment of Yemen. But few days in that year-long war have been as bloody as March 15, 2016, when Saudi planes destroyed a market in the village of Mastaba. Now, a newly released Human Rights Watch report offers a gloomy scolding, not just for the Saudis but their American allies too (emphasis added):

Saudi Arabia-led coalition airstrikes using United States-supplied bombs killed at least 97 civilians, including 25 children, in northwestern Yemen on March 15, 2016, Human Rights Watch said today. The two strikes, on a crowded market in the village of Mastaba that may have also killed about 10 Houthi fighters, caused indiscriminate or foreseeably disproportionate loss of civilian life, in violation of the laws of war. Such unlawful attacks when carried out deliberately or recklessly are war crimes.

“One of the deadliest strikes against civilians in Yemen’s year-long war involved US-supplied weapons, illustrating tragically why countries should stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The US and other coalition allies should send a clear message to Saudi Arabia that they want no part in unlawful killings of civilians.”

This isn’t even the first time the United States has been admonished for this. Last summer, the Saudis killed at least 65 civilians when they blew up two apartment complexes in the Yemeni port city of Mokha; a subsequent Human Rights Watch investigation warned that America could be held liable for war crimes. And earlier this year, Human Rights Watch again issued a reprimand, after Saudi-led jets indiscriminately dropped U.S.-made cluster bombs on populous residential neighborhoods near the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.

Yet on we go, supporting the mission in Yemen, providing Saudi Arabia with intelligence support, and forking over weapons shipment after weapons shipment.

Back to the market attack, Human Rights Watch has more details:

Two Mastaba residents said that many members of their extended families had died. One lost 16 family members, and the other 17. A local clinic supported by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) received 45 wounded civilians from the market, three of whom died and were counted in the total death toll.

It’s important to understand just how besieged poor Yemen is. For years, Yemenis endured regular and destructive attacks from American drones attempting to wipe out al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula fighters, which left them scarred and angry. According to British psychologist Peter Schaapveld, who conducted field experiments in Yemen, an estimated 92 percent of the population in affected areas is suffering from PTSD thanks to drone strikes—”traumatizing an entire generation,” as he put it.

And that was before the Saudis showed up. Today, civilians are regularly bombarded from the skies. A blockade at Yemeni ports has left the population starving and parched. And al Qaeda, our enemy in Yemen, has expanded into the vacuum created by Saudi disorder, even infiltrating the major southern port city of Aden. Meanwhile, the Saudis’ purported enemy, Houthi rebels with shaky links to Iran, still control the capital of Sanaa, and the air in Riyadh is thick with Vietnam comparisons.

The United States is backing the war in Yemen, most likely because President Obama wanted to demonstrate his commitment to our great and glorious Saudi allies after he spooked them by negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran. As civilian bodies pile up, what once seemed like a sop now increasingly resembles a blood ransom. The United States is correct when it assails Bashar al Assad and Russia for amassing intolerable civilian casualties in Syria, but as long as it continues to back the Saudis, those criticisms will sound with a stentorian hollowness. The notion that the world’s sole superpower needs to placate its allies because it had the nerve to engage in diplomacy is ludicrous. American support for the war on Yemen should cease, and it should cease yesterday.

The problem is, even if we do pull the rug from under the Saudis, this is a problem that goes back generations. The United States is currently the world’s biggest arms dealer, and President Obama—that blessed peacemaker—has only increased the pace of our weapons shipments to Saudi Arabia. We helped build the Saudi military, but never trained their armed forces to use the equipment properly, which has contributed to Yemen’s misery—rookie Saudi pilots are dropping their bombs from much too high an altitude.

What to do? The European Union parliament recently approved an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia over their conduct in Yemen. Joining them would be a good start.

US Ambassador to Hungary: Overthrow Assad, Let in Refugees, and Fight Russia...or Else!


written by daniel mcadams
friday may 6, 2016


If anyone wants a short course on what's wrong with US diplomacy look no further than US Ambassador to Hungary Coleen Bell's speech Friday to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian Parliament. In typical diplo-speak there was plenty of flowery language about shared values, fish swimming together in the same water (?), sappy poetics like "together, out of that winter, we would force the spring," and talk of together being "part of the world’s greatest military and political alliance."

But make no mistake: Inside Ambassador Bell's velvet glove is an iron fist, poised to strike should Washington's annoyingly independent-minded Fidesz-led government step out of line on the big issues. And by "big" issues it should be understood that the US means the issues it considers in the interests of its own foreign policy, not those in Hungary's interest.

Message to Hungary: do as we say or you will be sorry.

Ambassador Bell's previous job was as a television soap opera producer, but raising more than two million dollars for the election of Barack Obama "earned" her the position of top US diplomat in Hungary.

The former television producer does know how to deliver her lines, though. She lectured the Hungarians about Syria, explaining to them that ISIS and Assad are both equally evil and both equally to blame for the disaster that is Syria.

ISIS has flourished in Syria, she told the Hungarians, because it "exploits the chaos of civil war in Syria, a conflict that has now claimed more than 250,000 lives." But she does not mention that it was US backing for "regime change" in Syria -- beginning at least in 2006, as we learn from a critical Wikileaks-released US Embassy Damascus memo -- that created that very chaos she blames for the rise of ISIS.

In fact it is propaganda to call what is happening in Syria a "civil war," as the forces battling the Syrian government are all sponsored by foreign powers like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the US. It is a proxy war against the Syrian government, not a civil war.

She then tells the Hungarians ISIS will never be defeated in Syria until Assad is overthrown:
[W]e know we won’t be able to defeat Daesh in Syria unless we also deal with the civil war and particularly with Assad. Because as long as Assad is there, he remains the most powerful magnet for foreign fighters and recruits to Daesh.
Does she assume Hungarians are so stupid that they believe that by attacking and beating ISIS back nearly to Raqqa (with Russian assistance), the Syrian government of Assad is actually benefitting ISIS? Attacking ISIS means Assad is on the side of ISIS?

"Since February, the cessation of hostilities reduced the violence in Syria, allowing millions of Syrian civilians to take the first steps toward reclaiming a normal life," says the Ambassador, without even mentioning what brought the ceasefire about in the first place: Russian participation along with the Syrian army in the decimation of al-Qaeda and ISIS positions in northwest and central Syria. In fact it is absolutely bizarre that in the world of Ambassador Bell (and the State Department hacks who drafted her speech), the Russian intervention against al-Qaeda and ISIS simply never took place or was too inconsequential to mention.

Is any Hungarian so ill-informed that he would believe such nonsense?

Bell used the tragedy in Syria to pressure Hungary on the (largely American-made) refugee crisis. Hungary's firebrand prime minister, Viktor Orban, has, along with several of his central European counterparts, stood up to Brussels' (and Washington's) demands that Hungary take in tens of thousands of migrants who heeded German Chancellor Angela Merkel's call to come to Europe and enjoy lots of free stuff.

Last month Orban told Hungarian Radio that if he accepts the EU migrant resettlement plan, “it would be determined not in Hungary but in Brussels who we have to live together with, and how the ethnic composition of the country will look in future.” He has rejected such a notion.

"Every sovereign nation has the right and an obligation to protect its borders," Bell told the Hungarian Parliament, "But every nation, as a part of the international community, also has a fundamental obligation to help refugee populations seeking safety."

Translation: your sovereignty is not determined by you, but rather by us. It is a practice articulated by Orwell in 1984 whereby a person can think two completely contradictory thoughts at the same time seemingly without any mental conflict.

But here is where the iron fist inside Bell's velvet glove glints in the sun. She pointedly condemned the Hungarian government position by praising those in Hungary who hold the opposite view, i.e. the Hungarian opposition:
We commend the humanitarian spirit of Hungarian leaders, law enforcement and military personnel, and ordinary citizens who are responding to this crisis with generosity and compassion.
Then she gives Hungary Washington's marching orders:
We continue to stress that any solution to these migration challenges should focus on saving and protecting lives, ensuring the human rights of all migrants are respected, and promoting orderly and humane migration policies. That includes the support of all Member State governments for the refugee agreement forged between the EU and Turkey.
Translation: Hungary must support the EU agreement with Turkey which would see tens of thousands of migrants settled in EU member countries, including Hungary itself. The problem is that the Hungarian parliament explicitly rejected Brussels' forced migrant settlement plans for Hungary and plans to hold a nationwide referendum on the subject. Bell is saying here that Hungary's elected representatives and even the Hungarian voter must be ignored and Brussels' dictate obeyed.

When it comes to Russia, Ambassador Bell also has some instructions for Budapest: Moscow is your enemy and don't you forget it.

She told Hungarian parliamentarians:
As many Hungarians have reminded me, you need no introduction to the nature of Russian aggression. Your response has always been to show resolve. Our best weapons, in fact, are resolve and solidarity.
Weapons? Quite a loaded word.

Orban has been seen in Washington as insufficiently enthused about sanctions on Russia, which hurt Hungarian trade and business interests. Ambassador Bell makes it clear that Hungary must adhere to US demands of Russia, even if they are completely incoherent:
As the United States and Hungary have both stated many times, Russia has a simple choice: fully implement Minsk or continue to face sanctions. Russia must withdraw weapons and troops from the Donbas; Russia must ensure that all Ukrainian hostages are returned; Russia must allow full humanitarian access to occupied territories; Russia must support free, fair, and internationally-monitored elections in the Donbas under Ukrainian law; and most important, Russia must restore Ukraine’s sovereignty.
That last point should be taken to mean that Russia must ignore the will of the people of Crimea who voted in overwhelming numbers to re-join Russia after just 25 years as part of independent Ukraine.

Not to worry, Ambassador Bell is confident that Budapest will do everything Washington tells it to do:
More than this, Hungary is equal to the great challenges of our times, and the United States is counting on you.
To stiffen their spine, US Ambassador Bell reminds the Hungarians that they are part of "our global order" and touts the great examples set by the US, including:
Our system of international economic, political, and social norms and institutions have kept the peace and fostered prosperity for decades. Whether it is international law, environmental protection, trade regulations, anticorruption laws, child labor laws, human rights safeguards, the nonproliferation regime, public health systems, international financial institutions, UN peacekeeping, or a robust civil society – these norms and institutions give life and stability to our global order.
In the era of NSA spying on innocent Americans, Guantanamo, CIA torture, weapons sales to the world's worst dictators (Saudi Arabia for one), destruction of the environment by the US war machine, "regime change" operations that violate the sovereignty of other states, and outright aggression in opposition to US and international law (Libya, etc.), Bell's suggestion that "our global order" is the pinnacle of civilization should get a laugh out of most Hungarians. In fact, from Libya to Syria to Ukriane to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the US interventionist attempt to forge a global order with blood and bullets will go down in history along with the authoritarianisms of the 20th century as one of humanity's darkest chapters.

Here is the short version of Ambassador Bell to Budapest: "to be our partner means you do what we say whether or not it is in your interest."

Funny, that was Moscow's message to Budapest from 1948 to 1989.

AY 21, 2016 7:56 PM

(Washington Examiner) – Justice Department officials used unusual bank settlements to fund liberal activist groups without the consent of Congress, rather than help the victims of the housing crisis, according to congressional investigators.

“Instead of trying to help more people who were harmed by the downturn, they instead decided to line the pockets of third-party groups,” House Financial Services oversight subcommittee Chairman Sean Duffy, R-Wis., told reporters Friday morning in a call hosted by Cause of Action.

The DOJ bank settlements have attracted suspicion in both chambers of Congress, where Republicans have practical concerns about where the money went, as well as constitutional problems with how the Justice Department came up with a plan to extract money from banks that it could use without having to go through a congressional appropriations process.


Senate investigators are especially frustrated with how the Justice Department circumvented Congress and the law. “The DOJ used the threat of litigation — and the corresponding financial and reputational costs — to cause the banks to take actions that a court would not have ordered them to do,” according to a report issued late Thursday by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis. “The use of these settlements to create incentives for shaping broader housing policy shows a disregard for separation of powers considerations inherent in the U.S. Constitution.”

Rather than have the settlement money be placed in the U.S. Treasury, at which point it would be subject to congressional authority, DOJ and the Department of Housing and Urban Development gave the banks the option of sending money to an approved list of third-party groups.

“The DOJ also incentivized banks to donate to these third-party organizations rather than to pay the entire settlement directly to aggrieved homeowners,” according to a report from Johnson, which was released late Thursday. “Specifically, both the Citigroup and Bank of America settlement agreements include provisions providing a two-for-one credit for donations to third-party groups. For example, every dollar the bank donates to a HUD-approved housing counseling agency, it receives two dollars in credit towards its total settlement obligation.”

That incentive structure allowed the Obama administration to funnel money to activist groups that support favored political causes, such as La Raza, which received $1.5 million from the Bank of America alone. “The group has garnered attention from some lawmakers as being particularly extreme in its views on immigration — with some suggesting that La Raza promotes illegal immigration and advocates for benefits and driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants,” Johnson’s report noted.

Not every group approved to receive money has such liberal leanings, but federal officials made certain that no group with conservative beliefs would benefit from the settlements. “There is correspondence that makes it clear that there was an effort to structure the language to prohibit conservative groups from being considered on the list to receive money from banks that participated in the settlements,” Duffy told reporters.