Breaking News: Sam Aanestad to Run for Congress

Barry Pruett has the breaking news:

BREAKING – Doug LaMalfa to Draw Sam Aanestad as an Opponent? [Updated at 3:21pm]

Right on Daily is reporting that Sam Aanestad is seriously considering a run for the congressional seat from which Wally Herger recently retired.

[Update from 3:21pm] FlashReport is also reporting via Twitter – “*Breaking* Just off phone w Sen. Sam Aanestad (Retd). He’s exploring a bid for Congress. Would set table for showdown w Sen. LaMalfa.”

Right on Daily states, “[T]here is no truer friend to Conservatives in Northern California than Sam Aanestad. Sam supported his mentor, Tom McClintock for Congress when Doug LaMalfa and 100 local electeds chose the establishment Moderate over now Congressman McClintock.”

This will make for an interesting political season in Nevada County!

Tracking the Union Pay-Wall

Russ Steele

I have created a Navigation button the bar above called Union Readers.  Clicking on this button will take you to a plot of how many unique visitors visited The Union webpage per month, starting in December of 2010. I did this to track the potential impact the pay-wall may have on the number of visitor.  I plan to update the chart monthly when the new Compete numbers are published, which lag about 30 days.

Prop 23 Update – Heads Up California We Are Next

Russ Steele

The Climate Policy Network has some heads up posts this morning for California business.  They could end up in the same shape as Germany if we continue down the alternative energy road being promoted by Governor Brown and his CARB lackeys. Note that companies are moving out of Germany for countries with more reliable lower cost power. California Companies will also be forced to move as renewable energy becomes more unreliable.

Solar Stocks Plunge Worldwide As Germany Vows To Phase Out Subsidies Solar stocks plunged around the world after Germany, the largest market for panels, said it will make quicker cuts to subsidized rates and phase out support for the industry by 2017. –Bloomberg, 20 January 2012The costs of subsidizing solar electricity have exceeded the 100-billion-euro mark in Germany, but poor results are jeopardizing the country’s transition to renewable energy. The government is struggling to come up with a new concept to promote the inefficient technology in the future. –Alexander Neubacher, Spiegel Online, 18 January 2012 Germany’s exit from nuclear power could cost the country as much as 1.7 trillion euros ($2.15 trillion) by 2030, or two thirds of the country’s GDP in 2011, according to Siemens, which built all of Germany’s 17 nuclear plants. The estimate of 1.7 trillion euros assumes strong expansion of renewables, with feed-in tariffs as the biggest chunk of costs. -–Christoph Steitz, Reuters, 17 January 2012 One fifth of every German industrial company has moved activities to foreign countries, or plans to do so, because of the uncertain energy and raw material supply. This is the result of a survey conducted by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), in which 1520 companies participated. DIHK-President Hans Heinrich Driftmann finds this alarming: He fears that Germany is losing its appeal for foreign investors in the wake of it’s energy supply transformation.–Dieter Keller, Südwest Presse, 18 January 2012 Germany’s green politicians here were too dim-witted to foresee the obvious consequences. The German electricity market is on the verge of collapse. The scale of the EEG Renewable Energy Feed-in Act is of unprecedented stupidity, a folly that will certainly go down in German history textbooks. The backpedaling away from solar subsidies in Germany is now happening so fast that it’s making people’s heads spin. Call it the reverse energy supply transition – one from fantasy back to reality. –P. Gosslin, NoTricksZone, 19 January 2012 The European Commission could prevent new nuclear plants being built in the UK if it upholds a complaint over alleged unfair subsidies submitted to Brussels by a pro-renewables campaign group. –Business Green, 20 January 201

Do you believe this poll – California wants more taxes?

Russ Steele

The Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert has the story: Majority supports Jerry Brown’s tax plan, poll finds

 A new poll shows 60 percent of California voters, weary of state spending cuts and unsettled by the prospect of more, are ready to support Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to raise taxes.

The Public Policy Institute of California poll, released Monday, is the first public measure of voter opinion about Brown’s tax initiative since he announced it this month.

Brown plans to ask voters in November 2012 to temporarily increase the state sales tax and to impose higher income taxes on California’s highest-earners, raising $7 billion annually for five years.

PPIC is a bit on the liberal side and they have slanted their question to get the desired results in the past. They may have done the same again.

The questions are:

• Do you agree with Governor Brown’s new taxes?
• Do you think once the taxes are approved, will they ever expire.

Der Spiegel: No Deal – Durban Sinks Into Chaos (It’s Over!)

Russ Steele

P Gosseling at the NoTricksZone writes from Germany:

We’re hearing about clandestine evil deals being made in Durban and that the UN may indeed emerge as the global Führer soon. Rubbish!

Der Spiegel reports here that Durban threatens to sink into chaos.

According to Der Spiegel, a new paper had been drafted overnight and included things like “warming will be limited to 2°C, even 1.5°C” and that “by 2050 greenhouse gas emissions will be cut back 50 to 85 percent compared to 1990″ and that developing countries “will be obligated to cut back projected emissions growth by 2020 by 15 to 30 percent”.

Rumours are out claiming they’re closing in on a deal and that our liberty is about to end. But fear not. Der Spiegel, who have well-embedded reporters in Durban, writes:

In any case, a deal will not happen. In paragraph 47 of the paper, which looks at financial aid for developing countries, it is stated: The payments will be ‘equal to the budget that the industrial country has for defence, security and war.’”

We all know that Europe does very little in defense and military. That would mean the US would have to pay just about everything. If Obama accepted this, it would be a Jonestown-scale political suicide by the US Democratic Party. Even the biggest leftists in the US could hardly fantasize such a massive transfer of wealth by a single country. The condition is a set-up to force the USA to reject it – and thus take the blame again.

Read the rest HERE.  I am not as confident as P. Gosslin that our lefty President would not sign up the this UN Junk Agreement, but it is the Senate that would have to agree it it were a treaty and that is a dead issue. We do not have the money to pay our debts, let alone give the UN a shadow payment for the cost of any war.  As the text said, this was all an attempt create a condition the US could not sign, thus it is the US’s fault for the Durban failure.

 

We are Governed by Scientific Illiterates.

Russ Steele

This folks is our Senator in at article at The Hill:  Sen. Boxer to climate change deniers: ‘You are endangering humankind’

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) blasted skeptics of climate science Wednesday, alleging they are “endangering humankind.”

“The message I have for climate deniers is this: you are endangering humankind,” Boxer said during a press conference in the Capitol. “It is time for climate deniers to face reality, because the body of evidence is overwhelming and the world’s leading scientists agree.”

Senator Boxer here is some reality for you to face. There has been no significant global warming since 1998:

The Earthquake

Russ Steele
I was just snuggling in with Ellen last night when the house started to shake. I picked up my cellphone off the night stand and went to the USGS App to check the quake location. To my surprise the location was where I had reported a swarm of low intensity earth quakes HERE on October 19th, 2011

NOTICE : Stop the the name calling NOW

The name calling in the comments on this blog are so god damn tiring.  I am going to ban the next person that calls another person commenting on this blog a raicist. This term has been used so often it is now with out any descriptive standing.  It will not be used here again!. If you cannot make your point with out using that term, go write your crap some where else.

The real 1%

Frisch, call your office, green jobs training a bust!

Russ Steele

Hot Air has the details HERE.

After spending $17.2 billion of the $38.6 billion allocated for green-jobs stimulation, the programs have created a total of just over 3500 jobs, for a price tag of $4.85 million each.  Now the Inspector General at the Department of Labor has recommended the shutdown of a green-jobs training program that has only placed 15% of its participants:

A $500 million green jobs program at the Department of Labor has so far provided only 15 percent of current participants with jobs, leading the agency’s inspector general to recommend that the bulk of the money be returned to the Treasury.

The program, which was funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aims to find employment for almost 80,000 people by providing grants for labor exchange and job training projects. With those grants expiring over the next 15 months, IG officials concluded that the program would fail to come close to that target.

I am sure you all remember during the Prop 23 debates, with Steven Frisch at the Sierra Business Council, that green jobs were going to save California’s economy and that SBC was supporting the development of green job training programs. Looks like the program is going to be shut down with a price tage of $4.85 million each.  I wonder how much SBC got for the green jobs they created?

Best of the GOP Debate

I watched the GOP debate and the best line in the whole debate was by Governor Gary Johnson

Obama’s Great at Math

Russ Steele

Spotted on Twitter:

“Obama is great at math. He divides the country, subtracts jobs, adds debt and multiplies misery.”

How much longer will be have to deal with his math, 2012 cannot come soon enough.

Californians and their Government

Russ Steele

The Public Policy Institute of California has another poll out on how California feel about their government. They asked what was most important to citizens of the state, starting with this question.

First,thinking about the state as a whole, what do you think is the most important issue facing people in California today?

67% jobs,economy

6 education, schools

6 state budget, deficit, taxes

4 immigration, illegal immigration

2 crime, gangs, drugs

2 government in general

2 health care, health costs

9 other

2 don’t know

I was suprized that global warming or climate change was not near the top of the list, given all the attention this gets in the main stream media. I guess it could be burried in the other category.

Here are some other things that the Sac Bee found interesting:

Garbage Company Packing For TX?

Russ Steele

Katy Grimes writing at the Cal Watch Dog has another head slapper on the how the dithering of the useful idiots in Sacramento maybe driving another company out of California:

Another California company is making noise about moving to business-friendly Texas. With 200 employees in the Sacramento suburb of Folsom, Waste Connections Inc., has been negotiating with Texas officials to relocate the company’s headquarters to Houston, Woodlands or Austin.

“This is the worst state in the country to do business in,” said Ron Mittelstaedt, who said the company has not yet made a final decision to relocate. “There doesn’t seem be be any improvement on the horizon,” the Sacramento Bee reported.

Mittelstaedt started Waste Connections Inc. in Folsom in 1997. But lately he has been doing battle with California’s Legislature.

At issue is AB 1178, which would make it easier for cities and counties to export their garbage to other cities or counties. If AB 1178 (Ma) is killed, Waste Connections would have trouble expanding its Potrero Hills landfill in Solano County, and the company has already made $100 million investment in the landfill.

This is a privately owned garbage facility, that due to a voter initiiative in Solano County cannot expands it’s operations. If it cannot grow in California,  Waste Connections Inc planning a move to more business- frilendly Texas.  Elections have consequences.