Tax Dollars Blowing in the Wind of Crony Capitalism

We recently posted an excellent article by former Congressman Ernest Istook highlighting the battle we face in the upcoming lame duck session of Congress over a proposed $18 billion extension of the wind-energy production tax credit being fueled by crony capitalism.

For the latest example of wind blown tax dollars and crony capitalism in Ohio we only need to look at the shores of Lake Erie and the Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo).

LEEDCo was founded as a non-profit economic development corporation in 2009 as a result of a public/private funded feasibility study for the Great Lakes Energy Development Task Force to put wind turbines in Lake Erie. Members of LEEDCo include the Cleveland Foundation, NorTech, the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain and Ashtabula counties.

The projected costs for the 6-9 wind turbines alone is approximately $92 - $100 million. This does not include any overruns of construction costs, the cost of installing the transmission lines to get the power from the turbines to the shore, reworking or updating of the existing power grid to accommodate the wind power and/or the estimated yearly maintenance costs of $5 million as outlined in the feasibility study.

After several failed bills in the U.S. Senate to promote funding for wind energy (Here & Here) by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and after his continued badgering, LEEDCo received an initial $4 million grant in 2012 to fund their Project Ice Breaker. Project Ice Breaker is for research & design engineering on the bases needed for the proposed wind turbines in Lake Erie.

This grant is through the first stage of a $180 million U.S. Dept of Energy sponsored offshore wind power competition.  Along with this, three other N/E Ohio companies with ties to LEEDCo received grants;

• Freshwater Wind LLC (LEEDCo's private developer) $500,000
• Nautica Windpower LLC (A LEEDCo Partner) $500,000
• Case Western Reserve (A LEEDCo Partner) $540,000

Failing to qualify for the full $47 million available for each project in the second round of the grant awards (tax dollar giveaways), LEEDCo was only awarded $2.8 million by the D.O.E. to complete engineering and other related studies on Project Ice Breaker.

But this setback is not about to stop LEEDCo. Lorry Wagner, president of LEEDCo, acknowledges the setback but reaffirms their dedication to forcing this project through.

In 2012 the left-leaning Brent Larkin of the Plain Dealer was surprisingly critical of the wind turbines in Lake Erie and again questioned the cost & sensibility of the turbine project....

There are 534,899 households in Cuyahoga County. Installing five or six wind turbines seven miles out would generate enough power to light a maximum of 6,100 of those households.

The cost is pegged at about $150 million. In Cleveland dollars, that means overruns would push the final figure past the $200 million mark. That doesn’t include annual maintenance costs of about $5 million.

Because businesses and manufacturers always use between 30 percent and 40 percent of the power produced, the wind turbine pilot project would produce about 0.5 percent of the county’s required electricity.

Nevertheless, windmill supporters haven’t given up the chase. Even as business leaders who know how to read a bottom line have quietly backed away, proponents – led by the Cleveland Foundation – have refused to follow the lead of other Great Lakes cities and scale back their grandiose plans. (Emphasis Added)

And this brings us to the wind-blown bile of crony capitalism we see in many of these wind turbine projects.

When speaking of crony capitalism in Cuyahoga County and/or Ohio, somewhere along the line you will find some sort of non-profit group being controlled or influenced by the cabal of corporate charlatan's at The Cleveland Foundation & the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP).

Taking a look at the original Great Lakes Energy Task Force and LEEDCo the non-profit economic development corporation specially created for wind turbine project, you will see it is nothing more than a shell game of incestuous relationships fleecing the public with our own tax dollars.

The Cleveland Foundation and Nortech, a non-profit front group for the GCP, both served on the Great Lakes Energy Task Force. The task force in turn hired JW Great Lakes Wind LLC to create a wind feasibility study for turbines in Lake Erie.  

In creating this wind feasibility study for the Task Force, JW Great Lakes Wind LLC had the "help" of the Great Lakes Wind Energy Center, a front group for the Cleveland Foundation pushing for turbines in Lake Erie. 

From this wind feasibility study for the Task Force, paid for partially with public money & created with the help of groups tied to the Task Force, the non-profit Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. (LEEDCo) was created by the Task Force to oversee the push for wind turbines in Lake Erie.  

With a quick click here, you will see many of the Board members of the Task Force that created LEEDCo, are now Board members for LEEDCo.

The non-profit LEEDCo hired Bechtel Development Company, Inc. (Bechtel), Cavallo Great Lakes Ohio Wind, LLC (Cavallo) and Great Lakes Wind Energy, LLC (GLWEnergy) to work on the project.

Bechtel, Cavallo and GLWEnergy have formed Great Lakes Ohio Wind, LLC (GLOW), the company that will own and develop the project.

With only the tip of the corporate cronyism pointed out in just this one "wind" project in Ohio, do you really need more reasons as to why Speaker Boehner & the upcoming lame duck Congress should reject extending the $18 billion Wind Energy Tax Production Credit?
 

Tax Dollars Blowing in the Wind Energy Production Tax Credit

It appears most of the 'green' energy being created by these tax-payer funded wind-energy production tax credits is the 'green' fueling up the pockets of a select few crony capitalists.

When done reading the below, please click here to read about the crony capitalism infecting the wind turbine efforts on Lake Erie.

From Ernest Istook --

Crony capitalism plans are so lucrative for a select few that they are hard to kill. Those who get rich make generous campaign contributions, hire lobbyists and run massive public relations propaganda campaigns, using the billions of our tax dollars that they receive.

One “temporary” measure — the wind-energy production tax credit (PTC) — has received eight “temporary” extensions since 1992 and now backers want to add several years more. After 20 years of soaking taxpayers for billions of dollars in subsidies and raising electric bills, it’s overdue for the PTC to end. It expired at the end of 2013, yet some lawmakers want to give it new life, plus an additional $18 billion, during the post election lame-duck session of Congress.

Typically, those getting the money boast of being job creators or “green energy” saviors who will save our planet from roasting owing to global warming. They omit that the job numbers are inflated, often temporary and often filled by overseas vendors.

They also omit that taxpayers are paying twice — through taxes and through higher electric bills. Green energy is not cheap and not affordable. If it were, green energy would not need subsidies.

To maximize chances of backroom deals and minimize public accountability, the fate of the PTC will be decided as part of a tax package in the lame-duck Congress, when wheeling, dealing and political horse-trading are at their worst. That’s because Congress will have two years before facing the voters again. Departing senators and House members won’t have to face voters at all.

Green energy sounds good and polls well — until people learn how much it costs them. The Congressional Research Service reports the annual cost to taxpayers of green grants and tax subsidies is $40 billion. That’s only part of the picture, however. It also raises your electric bill because wind simply is less efficient than generating power from fossil fuels. And less consistent.

The managing editor of Environment and Climate News, James M. Taylor, citing the U.S. Energy Information Administration, writes, “Data show nine of the 11 largest wind-power states are experiencing skyrocketing electricity prices, rising more than four times the national average.” Those states are: Colorado, up 14 percent; Idaho, up 33 percent; Iowa, up 17 percent; Kansas, up 29 percent; Minnesota, up 22 percent; North Dakota, up 24 percent; Oregon, up 15 percent; South Dakota, up 26 percent; and Wyoming, up 33 percent.

These increases come even after federal taxpayers absorb some of the higher costs of wind energy by giving producers a subsidy of 2.3 cents for each kilowatt-hour generated. They’ve had this benefit for 20 years, but still clamor to revive the PTC, which expired at the end of 2013. Sponsors not only want it restored, but to make that retroactive to 2013 and to extend it through 2017. That would carry an $18 billion price tag.

Since 1999, the PTC has been renewed eight times, and three times the extension was retroactive. It had expired but was resurrected. Three resurrections is more than the rest of us get. The PTC doesn’t deserve a fourth.

In the lame-duck Congress, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, is leading the push to revive the PTC. Fortunately, House members, such as Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, Michigan Republican, have been unwilling to include that in the tax package that will be considered. It’s vital for House members to hold the line.

But the cronyists haven’t gone away. Their position is illustrated by how billionaire Warren Buffett explained his investments in wind power, “We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

Congress should resist all the pressures and let the thing die. Wind power is fine — so long as its backers don’t seek special favors. If it’s so expensive that 20 years of subsidies aren’t enough to make it competitive, then the sponsors need to improve their technology. They also don’t deserve the state-level mandates that force utilities to buy wind-generated power from them.

It’s overdue that we embrace free enterprise and abandon crony capitalism. We’ll have less national debt, and consumers will benefit from more affordable energy.

• Ernest Istook is a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma. Get his free email newsletter by signing up at eepurl.com/JPojD.

Second Ebola patient in TX flew from Cleveland

Photo credit: wolhazmat.de

A second nurse has been diagnosed with the Ebola virus. Bryan Preston at PJ Media reports:

  

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The CDC has announced that the second healthcare worker diagnosed with Ebola traveled by air Oct. 13, the day before she first reported symptoms.

The CDC is now reaching out to all passengers who flew on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth. The flight landed at 8:16 p.m. CT.

The CDC is asking all 132 passengers on the flight to call 1 800-CDC INFO (1 800 232-4636). Public health professionals will begin interviewing passengers about the flight after 1 p.m. ET.

Fox 8 News has more here.

And it gets scarier. PJ Media again: 

Dr. Betsy McCaughey appeared on Fox just after she had attend a CDC conference call with hospitals this afternoon.

Host Stuart Varney asked her what it would take to set up 50 hospitals to be ready for Ebola.

McCaughey’s answer is stunning.

According to her, after the CDC outlined its preparation strategy, one hospital administrator responded, “What you’re telling us would bankrupt my hospital!” She said that that administrator represents a Southern California hospital.

McCaughey noted that there was no word on the call of who would pay for hospitals to get themselves ready for Ebola patients.

And then she added: “Treating one Ebola patient requires, full time, 20 medical staff. Mostly ICU (intensive care unit) people. So that would wipe out an ICU in an average-sized hospital.”

In the case of Texas Presbyterian, McCaughey says that the hospital cordoned off its ICU to care for Thomas Eric Duncan and sent the rest of its ICU patients to other area hospitals. She added that many communities will not have multiple hospitals to choose from, so one Ebola case could cripple ICUs in small towns.

“But the most important thing,” McCaughey said, “is that doctors and nurses are not ready for the challenge of using this personal protective equipment even if you see them with the helmet, the respirator, the full suits, as the CDC said on the call today, even all that equipment is not enough to guarantee the safety of health care workers because it is so perilous to put it on and particularly to remove it once it’s become contaminated.”

McCaughey said many of those on the call were “daunted by the expectations, the separate laboratory next to the isolated patients, all kinds of — all kinds of adjustments, where to put the waste. Many states won’t even let you dispose of this waste from such a toxic disease.”

# # #

US Slips To 12th In Economic Freedom

Art credit: canwebelieveit.info

Not good news from Breitbart:

US Slips To 12th In Economic Freedom

A new report of "economic freedom" around the world finds the US ranked 12th among 152 countries, tied with the United Kingdom, and lower than neighbor Canada or Australia. The index, published by the Cato Institute and Canada's Fraser Institute, has been published since 1996. As recently as 2000, the US ranked 2nd in the world, in terms of boasting a free economy. The US's declining ranking will lower future economic growth. 

The index, built on decades of research by Nobel laureates and dozens of leading scholars,measures 5 broad factors that impact the economy: 1. Size of government; 2. Legal structure and security of property rights; 3. Access to sound money; 4. Freedom to trade internationally and; 5. Regulation of Credit, Labor and Business. Countries where citizens are freer to engage in business and trade and property and legal rights are protected by the rule of law will score higher on the index. According to economic research, though, these countries will also do better economically and create and generate more wealth. 

The 10 freest economies in the world are: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Mauritius, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia, Jordan, and Chile and Finland tied for 10th. 

America's descent down the ladder of economic freedom is unsettling, in itself. More troubling, however, is the chief factor behind the US decline. The biggest drop in US economic freedom has been in the country's legal structure. The report notes that, "increased use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ramifications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case have weakened the tradition of strong adherence to the rule of law in United States." 

The rule of law has long been the foundation of America's economic prosperity and liberty. The US ranking in this area has plummeted to a terrible 36th place in the world. This, combined with increased regulation is stifling US economic growth. The report observes, "[t]o a large degree, the United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized, and heavily policed state."

Read the rest here.

Five Voter Fraud Myths & Truths

From PJ Media

PJ Media has put together this publication about voter fraud called Crimes Against the Republic. When it comes to voter fraud, there are several myths and several truths of note – enough to leave everyone unhappy.  Here are five:

1. Myth: President Obama won reelection because of voter fraud.  Nonsense.  The margins in key swing states such as Ohio and Virginia were too vast to be driven by voter fraud.  No voter fraud scheme can move tens of thousands of votes.  That’s impossible and would be detected.  The machinery of elections simply doesn’t allow for the possibility of organizing and procuring tens of thousands of votes.  If you are desperate for a singular explanation for Obama’s reelection, you should get to know Catalist.  This massive database and how the modern left uses it to drive turnout among the base is behind Obama’s releection, not voter fraud.  That Republicans and conservatives have absolutely no effective counterpart makes it even more so.

2. Fact: Voter fraud has altered the outcome of elections.  Senator Al Franken (D-Lino Lakes), the Saturday Night Live clown, is in the  United States Senate because of voter fraud.  Franken won his election because Minnesota has same day voter registration, where a person can register to vote and cast a ballot simultaneously.  Felons were ineligible to vote but did so anyhow – by the thousands – 1099 of them to be exact.  This means that Franken owes his Senate seats to graduates of Faribault andLino Lakes.  Remember, Franken won by only 312 votes.  News media in Minnesota contacted many of the felons and they admitted they were proud of their vote for Franken.  Not a one voted for Norm Coleman.  But it’s worse.  Al Franken was the 60th vote to pass Obamacare over a fillibuster.  Because of voter fraud, Obamacare passed.

3. Myth: Paper ballots are the safest.  Paper ballots actually facilitate voter fraud.  Electronic voting machines cannot be hacked from outer space.  The machines are not connected and manipulated by the Illuminati.  The worst form of elections are paper ballots because they are subject to human interpretation.  When paper ballots are counted, partisans on each side get to interpret stray marks the way the want to.  X’s stray from boxes, and magically votes move.  Electronic machine counting is the best way to eliminate voter fraud.  The single best election system is the optical scan ballot where you make selections inside ovals and the paper is fed through an electronic counting scanner.  People who waste time on electronic voting machines are overlooking the many other ways the system is manipulated.

4. Fact: Eric Holder’s Justice Department is Facilitating Voter Fraud.  It isn’t hard to find the ways Eric Holder’s radical version of law enforcement is facilitating voter fraud.  That’s the central story of Crimes Against the Republic.  For starters, multiple individuals have been caught voting more than once in a federal election.  This is a federal felony.  The response from the Justice Department? Crickets.  Take Wendy Rosen.  She was a Democrat running for Congress.  We have reached the Alice in Wonderland moment where a Democrat can pen an editorial admitting she violated federal election law and no federal charges ensue.

 Her excuse for committing a federal felony?  Because election integrity laws make it hard for the poor and blacks to vote.  She  actually says this.  Maybe Eric Holder isn’t prosecuting Wendy Rosen because 1) Rosen is a Democrat and 2) She  is mimicking Holder’s own talking points.   Such are the lawless ways of the Obama age – felons get a pass as long as they are allies of the President, sort of like the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia.  This is the stuff that makes American’s furious, and the Democrats best beware of the whirlwind they may reap.  Many more examples of Holder facilitating voter fraud are in Crimes Against the Republic.

5. Myth: Just Electing Republicans Will End Voter Fraud.  Voter fraud is a non-partisan issue.  Both Republicans and Democrats have been found guilty, though Democrats seem to outnumber Republicans by significant amounts.  Voter fraud is particularly common in Democrat primaries where Democrats use it against other Democrats.  That’s why the Democrat run Rhode Island legislature passed a voter ID law.  Moreover, Republicans sometimes lack a spine to address the institutional and structural issues which open the door to voter fraud.  No excuse absentee voting, one of the most fertile areas of voter fraud, is one example.  In other places, like Colorado, some Republicans are actually collaborators with the beneficiaries of fraud.  Colorado election clerks Pam Anderson and Shelia Reiner were but two.

Ohio Board of Education District 5 - Send a Message to Governor Kasich on Common Core!

The voters in the Ohio State School Board District 5 race have an opportunity to send a loud & clear message to Governor John Kasich regarding his support of Common Core.

Ohio Board of Education District 5 covers a swath of northeastern Ohio, but does not include the cities of Cleveland or Akron.

It includes the following counties: Ashland, Medina, Richland, Wayne plus Cuyahoga County outside of the city of Cleveland, Summit County outside of Akron, the northwestern corner of Holmes county and a small part of western Stark county. For map of State School Board Districts click here.

The voters in this race have the ability to be the voice for all Ohioans fighting against the forced implementation of Common Core across our state.

Currently the OBE District 5 seat is held by Brad Lamb. Mr. Lamb, former Executive Director of the Cuyahoga County GOP, was appointed to fill the empty District 5 OBE seat by Governor Kasich and supports Common Core...

Asked last year if he supported the Common Core, Lamb said: "The Common Core standards continue to be implemented in the state of Ohio. I support the need for consistent standards, however I am concerned with losing local control of the education of our students in an effort to teach to a test."

Pushed for clarification this evening, Lamb said he now supports the Common Core.

Of the four candidates in this race, Chris Sawicki is the only candidate that supports the repeal of Common Core in Ohio.

The candidates:

Chris Sawicki (Supports REPEAL of Common Core)

Website: Click Here

Brad Lamb (Kasich appointee / Supports Common Core)

Michael Grusenmeyer (Supports Common Core)
Website: Click Here

Roslyn Painter-Goffi (Supports Common Core)
Website: Click Here

For a profile of the candidates in State School Board District 5 race, please click here.

More Legislative Logrolling with the CR

log·roll·ing

noun

NORTH AMERICAN

1. 1.

   informal

   the practice of exchanging favors, especially in politics by reciprocal voting for each other's proposed legislation.
2. 
   

From the Mansfield Tea Party:

More Legislative Logrolling with the CR In case you didn't catch it, the Republican lead House voted to include the extension of the Ex-Im Bank in yet another Continuing Resolution Click Here to Read the Heritage Brief. By combining the Ex-Im extension and Syrian rebels' funding with the CR, they have the excuse of having to vote for it, so as not to shut down the government. Only six Republicans voted against this rule/procedure of "Logrolling" legislation, none of which were from Ohio.  Therefore, the few legislators from Ohio who then voted against the CR were covered.  They can now say they voted against it, even though they allowed it in the first place. This latest CR is set to expire during the Lame Duck session, the perfect storm for unaccountability in spending. Click Here to see how your legislator voted. # # #