Category Archives: Front Page

Another Grim Milestone: “What Difference At This Point Does It Make?”

Today is the one year anniversary of Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks, during which, under intense questioning, she lost her cool and, for about 30-seconds, reacted thusly:

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Note that, in the intervening 365 days, NO ONE has been found and “brought to justice”.

Obama Snatches Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory, Redux

After the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama has consistently maintained that Al-Qaeda is a waning threat.  Real-world assessments show that to be merely a politically self serving view, however, and none of the articles written in recent months have demonstrated that better than the one from earlier this week by Dr. Shaul Shay, a Colonel in the Israeli reserve forces, former Deputy Head of the Israeli National Security Council, and currently, a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.  Dr. Shay writes that the Sunni Salafi Muslim are confronting not only the western forces in the Middle East, but also the Shiite and Aliwite factions.  This on Al-Qaeda in Iraq, from Dr. Shay’s article:

In the face of successful US counterterrorism efforts and the Sunni tribal awakening, AQI’s violent campaign has diminished since the peak years of 2006-2007, though the group remains a threat to stability in Iraq and the broader Levant.  Since the withdrawal of US forces in late 2011, AQI has accelerated the pace of attacks on predominantly Shiite targets in an attempt to reignite conflict between Iraq’s Sunni minority and the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Meanwhile, AQI has expanded its reach into neighboring Syria.  In April 2013, AQI announced that it was changing its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and that the Syrian group Jabhat Nusra would join it.  Jabhat Nusra’s leaders objected, however, and the two groups have remained independent.

Much of the violence in Iraq is blamed on ISIS, which has launched a vicious bombing campaign in Iraq as part of an anti-Shiite insurgency that claimed more than 8,000 lives in 2013.  On January 3, ISIS asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah, declaring it an Islamic state.  The capture of Fallujah came amid a campaign of violence across the western desert province of Anbar, in which local tribes, Iraqi security forces, and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have been locked in fighting.  The ISIS fighters have steadily asserted their control over Anbar’s desert regions for months, and resisted assaults by both Iraqi government forces and local tribal leaders to maintain control of all of Fallujah, and perhaps as much as half of Ramadi, Anbar’s capital.

The sectarian tensions between Iraq’s Sunnis and the Shiite-led government have been further inflamed by the war in Syria.  Al-Qaeda’s growing influence in Syria has given terrorists control over the desert territories spanning both sides of the ­Iraqi-Syrian border, enabling them to readily transfer weapons and fighters between the two arenas.

The complete article, HERE, also goes into detail on the activities of Al-Qaeda in Syria and Al-Qaeda in Lebanon.

In related news, the Daily Caller has published THIS piece reminding us that:

Four-star General David Patraeus and former Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker effectively predicted much of the conflict that is sweeping post-war Iraq in a 2007 report.

The report named troop withdrawal, an issue that has divided U.S. voters and politicians since 2004, as a major turning point in deciding state stability.

In the joint Petraeus and Crocker report, released Sept. 10, 2007, the pair questioned whether the divided country could withstand the inevitable sectarian violence that a majority-Shia led government was expected to take on, without the backing of substantial U.S. forces.

The M29/M69 Davy Crockett: Pocket Rocket With A Wallop

And now, for something completely different, the two-minute video below.  Deployed during the early sixties when I was an Army grunt, the M29 was a three-man tripod-mounted recoilless rifle that fired a version of the 50-pound W54 atomic warhead, a 76-lb shell with an 18-ton (NOT kiloton) yield against battlefield targets a mere three miles away.  It was not precisely accurate, and thus was considered to be primarily an anti-personnal and anti-tank weapon since it’s detonation would provide a lethal radiation dose to every enemy soldier within a radius of 500-feet, and have a high fatality rate for enemy soldiers up to one-quarter mile away.  Although it was true that the firing crew could be in jeopardy if the wind was blowing the wrong way, it was deployed in areas that might find it essential as a “weapon of last resort”, such as if and when Soviet tanks suddenly came pouring through the Fulda Gap.

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The Bard of San Luis Obispo

Steven Hayward, now one of the regular posters at PowerLine and a contributor to several other publications, has a piece up on Forbes in which he writes about the growing bureaucracy within every branch of government around the nation, particularly in his home county of San Luis Obispo, California, which has but one town of any size, also named San Luis Obispo.

I can understand why Hayward chose the area for his home.  I spent a couple of days there while doing an audit back in the late nineties, and it is a lovely place.

Anyhoo, Hayward notes the recent ascendance of a local committed liberal named Adam Hill to the Chairmanship of the county’s Air Pollution Control District (APCD, an agency common in California counties), and to the letter he recently wrote to the editor of the local weekly newspaper.  Mr. Hill was apparently responding to local critics who allege mismanagement at the San Luis Obispo County APCD.  The following is an excerpt from Hill’s letter, titled “Who Is Susceptible To Conspiracy-Theory Thinking?”:

Not only the superficially educated and narrow-minded, not only bumpkins with bad breath and worse teeth, not only the gullible and aggrieved, not only those who are nostalgic for a past that never was, not only those who are afraid of losing control—the fire-breathers, the weapons-collectors, wearers of bespoke body armor, anonymous online trollers, lovers of Ayn Rand novels for whom the gift of literacy is truly wasted, not only the teacher’s pets from cardio-prayer class, and the self-appointed scolds of free speech and the memorizers of parables about power …

Not only them, and not only the emotionally obese whose dreams are scarily self-tunneling and find themselves most alive when watching themselves rerun on the government channel late at night while wearing a human mask …

Not only the sufferers of psychosomatic persecutions who use their cats as food tasters, not only the scavengers of propaganda, not only the depressed and bed-crazy, not only those who hear voices in other people’s heads, not only the owners of 66 books on terror, not only those who crowd their homes with canned goods and medical salts, not only the connoisseurs of cartoon porn, not only those with ominous hair and gnawing vendettas against the IRS, not only proudly unregistered voters or voters registered to parties with serpents in their logo …

Not only them, and not only the over-medicated who’ve barricaded themselves behind an alternative reality as a way to hide from their own damaged lives and turn to AM radio for the comforts of hate and heart-worming pet tales …

And not only the adrift and the paranoid and the resentful, not only the rural white, not only the panicky liars, not only racists and anti-Semites, not only those who speak in spittled spurts about the Constitution, not only the no-longer-employable-work-from-homers, not only the smelling-impaired, not only those who would never donate their organs to strangers, not only defunct politicians, not only the fanatics, not only those who fear world music …

My short visit to San Luis Obispo did not entail any contact with the APCD, and I do not know if it even existed then.  But I gotta admit, despite his obvious predilection for run-on sentences, their new chairman is a damn good writer.

In the Middle East, President Obama Seizes Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

Among the many minor revelations in former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ book is an account of the night that Osama bin Laden was killed, while the President bravely watched in real time from the White House Situation Room, along with Gates and others.

Andrew Malcolm has a new and short article up on the website for Investor’s Business Daily about this portion of Gates’ book, which to some extent, reflects on how the fortunes of the USA have declined in the Middle East.  An interesting excerpt:

Gates worried about leaks of operational details revealing how Special Ops conducts such raids nightly in the world’s deadliest corners.  He asked everyone to promise to reveal nothing more of what they saw than the bare facts.  We got him.  He’s dead.  All raiders are safe.  Everyone agreed.

“That lasted about five hours,” Gates recalls sadly.

So intense was the Obama administration’s need to gloat, brag, spike the football, chest-bump, end-zone dance that within hours officials, on background without identification, provided reporters the “tick-tock.”

That’s the beloved minute-by-minute account of some major news event that D.C. media gobble up faster than like free food.  The raid timeline, number of raiders, stealth helicopters, refueling stops, radar-jamming, the hard-drives and documents seized, even the name of the SEALs dog, everything, each detail designed to make the campaigning president look good.

It is likely, I think, that future historians will regard that night as the pinnacle of Obama’s presidency.  To read the whole thing, click HERE.

Amazon Begins Collecting NC Sales Tax On February 1st

WSOC-TV in Charlotte is reporting that Amazon will “be required” to collect sales taxes from NC customers beginning February 1st (Hat Tip to the Daily Haymaker).

The question is, why?  It seems unlikely that they were forced to do so by the McCrory administration, so it may be that they have established a warehouse and shipping hub in the state (a “nexus”) that would trigger the applicable conditions under which the SCOTUS has ruled that states may require an online vendor to collect state sales tax.

In any case, bummer.

Another Bill Moyers Hit & Run

From last week’s Charlotte Observer, slightly edited for brevity and clarity, an article about another televised hit & run piece by the (in my view) execrable reptilian Bill Moyers, the prime instigator of Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy” campaign ad in 1964:

Journalist Bill Moyers on Thursday defended his documentary about NC politics after one critic called it an “unfair attack” on state budget director and conservative financier Art Pope.  The documentary, called “State of Conflict: North Carolina,” aired last week on UNC TV’s digital channel.  It highlighted the political influence of Pope and his family foundation.

“That single foundation has spent some $46 million on a network of advocacy groups and think tanks bent on steering North Carolina far to the right,” Moyers said in the program.

In its online newsletter Thursday, the John William Pope Foundation took issue with the claim.  The program “falsely portrayed the charitable work of the John William Pope Foundation and of our Chairman and President, Art Pope,” wrote foundation official David Riggs.

Moyers, he said, “repeated the false claim that Art Pope and the Pope Foundation ‘bought’ the state of North Carolina, mostly through giving to public policy nonprofits that advocate for common sense free-market reforms … Left-wing operatives have hurled similar accusations for years.  “The claims have never stuck because they are entirely false.”

Riggs said Moyers gave a distorted picture of Pope Foundation giving.  In addition to public policy think tanks, the foundation has given millions to philanthropic efforts like soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

“We know they do charity work,” Moyers told the Observer in a phone interview.  “He’s complaining about a story we didn’t do.”  Moyers said the point of the documentary was to shed light on Pope’s use of money to wield political influence.

The Institute for Southern Studies found that three groups backed by Pope – Americans for Prosperity, Civitas Action, and Real Jobs NC – spent nearly $3.5 million on state races in 2010 and 2012, helping lift Republicans to control of the legislature and the governor’s office.

The documentary, Moyers said, “is about the unique power that one man wields in one state, and Riggs is virtually silent about that.  If he knows of any other single individual in the United States who has spent so many millions of dollars … I’d be glad to do another documentary.”

Moyers said the documentary was designed to show the influence of “dark money,” unlimited amounts of often untraceable money that’s become common since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.  He called such money “a dagger at the heart of democracy.”

[ snip ]

Riggs also said Moyers concealed the fact that other groups have given more than the Pope Foundation, all to what he called progressive causes.  He cited the Z. Smith Reynolds and Mary Reynolds Babcock foundations, both in Winston-Salem, and the Raleigh-based A.J. Fletcher Foundation.  Spokesmen for those groups also could not immediately be reached.

Yeah, them, not to mention all the leftist proselytizing on the part of the Charlotte Observer, the News & Observer, WRAL, etc.

Duke Energy Prez: We can’t say “no, thanks” to Green Energy

MillPondPost_LogoIn yet another perspective from an industry insider on how dumb green energy initiatives really are, here is Duke Energy President Paul Newton in testimony before the North Carolina Joint Legislative Commission on Energy Policy:

“We essentially can’t say, ‘No thanks,’ ” Newton said. “The price our customers pay for QFs [ qualifying facilities ] coming onto our system is higher than they would otherwise pay for electricity.  QFs represent the highest cost generation on our system.”

As Newton also notes, the underlying problem is PURPA, the 1978 Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act, passed during the Carter administration as a measure intended to reduce our reliance on middle eastern oil suppliers.  PURPA mandates subsidies for renewable energy produced by qualifying facilities, which would, of course, include facilities such as Torch Energy’s proposed Mill Pond wind turbine farm.

Read the whole nauseating thing HERE, reported on by Dan Way via Carolina Journal Online.

Certificate Of Need No Longer Needed (and it never was)

One of the issues that came up early in my career with the North Carolina DHS (Department of Human Resources, now the Department of Health & Human Services, DHHS) was the implementation of North Carolina’s new Certificate Of Need (CON) law, enacted to comply with a Federal mandate.  The idea was that health care providers ought to have to convince the State planners that there was a genuine need for any new and substantive (meaning expensive) health care capacity (such as new hospitals, new equipment for existing hospitals, etc.), else those providers in their reckless, willy-nilly way would spend large amounts of money on unwarrented facilities and equipment.  If the customer (patient) base did not expand fast enough to absorb this new spending, the providers would jack up their rates on the existing customer base in order to pay for their new toys, thereby creating a hardship on those patients.

An example that was often cited to support this view was that of medical imaging equipment (MRI, CAT), as it was very expensive at the time and hospitals were competing with each other to see which one could acquire the equipment first.

Most of the accountants in the fiscal section of DHS (myself included) thought that this was a ploy to stifle competition and just another form of rent-seeking behavior on the part of the existing health care providers, particularly the large hospitals and the BCBS establishment.  We also knew that anything that reduces competition will eventually result in higher costs.

And that is exactly how it has played out.  As was stated by John Locke Foundation reporter Jon Sanders in a comprehensive JLF piece last October:

Four decades’ worth of data and research into CON laws have produced a recurring theme in the research literature: CON laws fail to lower health care costs; if anything, they raise them.  In 1987 Congress repealed the mandate, and subsequently 14 states (but not North Carolina) ended their CON regimes.  North Carolina hosts one of the most restrictive CON programs in the country, regulating 25 different services.  While patients and rural communities are negatively impacted by CON restrictions (especially the poor, elderly, and those with emergencies), existing hospitals and medical service providers reap the benefits of CON laws insulating them from competition.  Fewer than one-fourth (23 out of 100) of counties in North Carolina have more than one hospital.  Seventeen counties still have no hospital.

The 2013 General Assembly began to address this issue, but no legislation was enacted.  This year, the CON law should be repealed, or extensively revised in order to promote competition rather than suppress it.

Jon Sanders summarizes the issue in this video, just over two minutes long:

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UPDATE
Law professor Timothy Sandefur, guest blogging at The Volokh Conspiracy, just posted a lengthy article about how CON laws can be made to apply to many business endeavors other than the provision of medical services.  His focus is mainly on states that require CONs for moving companies, but there are many other examples including taxi companies in New York City.  Sandefur’s piece, lengthy but informative, is HERE.

Bad Omen For NC’s Voter ID Bill?

Karen Langley of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports HERE on Friday’s ruling by a Pennsylvania court judge that struck down the State’s new Voter ID law on the grounds that it unduly burdens those that do not have one of the prescribed forms of identification.  A key excerpt, slightly edited for brevity:

The Republican-controlled Legislature in March 2012 passed the law, one of the strictest in the nation, over objections from Democrats, who, along with other critics, said the measure would suppress voting by poor people, minorities, and elderly residents.  The law requires all Pennsylvania voters to show one of certain forms of photo identification — a driver’s license or passport, but not welfare cards or the many college IDs that lack expiration dates.

The legal challenge on behalf of the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, the Homeless Advocacy Project, and a number of voters was met with an initial Commonwealth Court ruling declining to stop the law for the 2012 election and then a state Supreme Court order that the lower court reconsider.  The law’s full requirements have been blocked at each election since its passage.

In a determination issued Friday morning, the judge found that a lack of compelling governmental interest in imposing the requirement — the state acknowledged at the start that it knew of no cases of in-person voting fraud, the kind addressed by voter ID — could not justify the law in the face of “overwhelming evidence” that hundreds of thousands of qualified voters lack acceptable documentation.  “Certainly a vague concern about voter fraud does not rise to a level that justifies the burdens constructed here,” the decision states.

The ruling concludes that the law unnecessarily restricts the types of acceptable identification, leaving out welfare cards, school district employee cards, gun permits, and Pennsylvania college IDs that lack expiration dates.  Noting that military retiree IDs and most student IDs lack expiration dates, he went so far as to conclude: “The voter ID law as written suggests a legislative disconnect from reality.”

We should not read too much into this ruling, as it was in a state court rather than a Federal court, and it may yet be reversed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.  However, the Pennsylvania law has a lot in common with the North Carolina legislation, so we must hope that our law has been more carefully crafted so as to withstand this sort of litigation, as such lawsuits are already underway.

AFP Calls Out Senator Hagan On Promoting ObamaCare

The Washington Free Beacon put up a piece yesterday noting the multiple television ads that Americans For Prosperity (AFP) is putting up targeting Democrats that went out of their way to support ObamaCare.  This is the North Carolina version, targeting Senator Kay Hagan, who is being opposed by Greg Brannon and others for her Senate seat in the primary and general elections this year.

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AFP’s website is HERE.  And by the way, when President Obama visited North Carolina yesterday, Senator Kay Hagan chose to remain in Washington even though the Senate had no votes scheduled.  I guess the expression “run, Kay, run” now means that she will hot-foot it away from Obama at every opportunity.

George Will on Doubts About Common Core

EndCommonCore_LogoOver this past weekend, I posted John Stossel’s views on Common Core.  Now, via his article yesterday in the Washington Post, conservative columnist George Will weighs in.  An excerpt:

The Common Core represents the ideas of several national organizations (of governors and school officials) about what and how children should learn.  It is the thin end of an enormous wedge.  It is designed to advance in primary and secondary education the general progressive agenda of centralization and uniformity.

Understandably, proponents of the Common Core want its nature and purpose to remain as cloudy as possible for as long as possible.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Inside A WW2-Vintage German Submarine

On June 4, 1944, two days before the allied landings in France on D-Day and well into her twelth patrol, the German submarine U-505 was captured by a US Navy anti-submarine task force in the area of the western Atlantic that lies just south of the Canary Islands.  The capture of the sub itself was a great coup, made even greater by the fact that it was captured with a functional Enigma machine on board.

From the boat’s Wikipedia entry:

All but one of U-505’s crew were rescued by the Navy task group.  The submarine was towed to Bermuda in secret and her crew was interned at a US prisoner of war camp where they were denied access to International Red Cross visits.  The Navy classified the capture as top secret and prevented its discovery by the Germans.

The sub is now a museum ship in Chicago, and THIS video, from the Travel Channel and less than three minutes in length, gives a brief tour of the boat’s interior.

Okay, Hillary Just Went Up A Half-Notch

Michael Crowley of Time magazine highlights a little-noticed episode mentioned in former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ recent book, in which the White House brain trust and cabinet members discuss formulation of a US position on an Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities in an oval office meeting during January, 2010.  In the full article, HERE, Hillary is at least willing to consider the possibility that the best US response would be to just get the hell out of the way.

Give Up The Cows, Buster, Or We Drone You

Property owners whose neighbors do not adequately maintain their CopsAbusePowerfences often find themselves in possession of unwanted livestock.  That might have been what happened when North Dakota cattle rancher Rodney Brossart found six cows that had wandered onto his property.  Then, perhaps in an effort to teach the neighbor a lesson, he refused to return them, triggering a very unfortunate chain of events.

The neighbor called the cops, the cops called SWAT, the SWAT called in a Predator drone from Homeland Security, and Brossart was captured and jailed, along with his three sons.

The full story, notable because it reports on the very first instance of federally-owned drones being used in domestic law enforcement against a United States citizen, is HERE.  [ US News & World Report, via Drudge ]

Thirty-Five Years Of Portables, Micro-Computers, PCs, Desktops, and Laptops, Oh My!

I bought my very first computer in the fall of 1979, just months before the IBM-PC was released for sale to the public.  It was a KayPro-II, a portable, sometimes called a suitcase computer, as it was portable in the sense that you could lug it around if you had eaten your Wheaties.  However, it had no battery so it was useless without an electrical socket.  And truthfully, to me it was useless anyway, at least for about two months, because the user manual was, well, let’s just say rudimentary.

Every night I would grab a take-out, go home to my humble lodging, boot up the KayPro, and try to make sense of the words in the manual.  It was tough going, believe me, but eventually I began to pick it up.  It helped somewhat when it finally dawned on me that computers were idiots, utter idiots, stupidly literal idiots, but their saving grace was that they were blazingly fast idiots.

After the KayPro I bought a Compaq, which was my first IBM-PC compatible computer.  In the years since, I have had dozens more desktop machines, but I built them all myself, preferring to buy the best components, but only those components that I really wanted in the machine.

What brought all this to mind was my discovery of a short two-minute video clip from the Today Show in 1994, during which Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, and some other woman sit around discussing the meaning and utility of the “@” symbol in an internet e-mail address string, before finally just asking one of their off-camera staff, “What is the internet, anyway?”

Check out the video, HERE, and ponder how far we have come.

Corp Of Engineers Holds Public Hearing On Dredging Spoils

The US-Army Corps Of Engineers is holding a meeting tonight (January 15, 2014) at Duke Marine Lab on Pivers Island for the purpose of considering the future site for disposal of spoils from the dredging of Beaufort Inlet.  The meeting will be from 6-8pm and, although open to the public, there is no assurance that the public will be afforded an opportunity to speak either in favor or in opposition to any of the proposals under consideration.

Here is a brief edited summary of some background material supplied by Taylor Griffin, the candidate who is opposing Representative Walter Jones in the fall election for 3rd Congressional District:

The Carteret county room tax (6%) is used two ways: 1) To promote tourism (50%), and 2) to manage beach renourishment projects.  The Corp Of Engineers (COE) is considering using Shackleford Banks rather than Atlantic Beach as the repository for the dredging spoils from the next round of dredging in Beaufort Inlet.  Opponents of this plan feel that this will diminish the commercial utility of the spoils if they are not used to renourish the Atlantic Beach strand.  The spoils will also reduce the visual appeal of Shackleford Banks.

The current understanding is that the default position of the Federal Government is that the spoils WILL be deposited to Shackleford Banks.  It is therefore not an issue of debate, but rather one in which opponents need to stop the current process before it reaches final approval. The environmental impact statement has already been submitted along with all the other legal gymnastics so its a done deal absent a successful intervention.

Some additional resources that interested parties may find useful:

The primary website of the coalition of local governments opposed to the Shackleford Banks plan is KeepShackWild.com.
The Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/KeepShackWild.
 An Article that appeared in the Carteret News-TImes is HERE, and it includes a map of the area.
 The newsletter for the Carteret County Shore Protection Office is HERE, and it includes an informative map as well.
 Lastly, the e-mail address for the COE designee for public comment on this issue is Hugh.Heine@usace.army.mil [NOTE:  This is not a link.]

Wrapping Up the Special Commissioners Meeting of Jan-2nd.

MillPondPost_LogoBelatedly and briefly, my takeaways from the January 2nd Special County Commissioners meeting held at the Civic Center in Morehead City to hear public comments of the proposed permitting moratorium and the Mill Pond wind turbine farm idea:

First, the room was packed and there were about sixty speakers over a three-hour period.  There is a lot of public interest in this issue, particularly within Carteret County.

Second, virtually everyone present favored the adoption of the 60-day moratorium, and the Commissioners recognized that sentiment by adopting it soon after the last speaker left the podium.  Also, although the greenies were well represented by Mark & Penny Hooper along with Robert Scull of the Sierra Club, the speakers (and, I think, the entire crowd) ran about three-to-one in opposition to the Mill Pond wind turbine farm proposal.

Third, Weyerhaeuser remains on board.  Although some of our local political representatives had expressed the optimistic hope that Weyerhaeuser would see the strong anti-Mill Pond opinions as posing a potential problem for the continued sale of their timber products to the wood chip operation at the State Port in Morehead City, I spoke at length with Weyerhaeuser spokesperson Nancy Thompson about this.  She was clear and emphatic on two points:

There have been formal discussions between Torch Energy and Weyerhaeuser regarding a possible lease on the property around Mill Pond, but no long-term lease contracts have been entered into or are contemplated for the short term.  Moreover, Weyerhaeuser would not consider it appropriate to enter into such a contract until after Torch Energy had jumped through all the pre-requisite hoops, including the ones mandated by the NC Utilities Commission and the issuance of appropriate permits by Carteret County and the town of Newport.

Like any corporation, Weyerhaeuser is in business to make profits.  They see the Torch wind turbine farm as an opportunity to gain additional revenue from a large tract of their timberland without having to relinquish the usual revenue arising from their wood products, as only a few trees would have to be removed in order to accommodate the wind turbines.  They remain, therefore, receptive.

Stay tuned for further developments, as both Newport and Carteret County are presently considering the enactment of stringent permitting ordinances.

And lastly, some additional resources that readers may find useful:

  • The CITIZEN’S CASE, the text of remarks made by John Droz before the NC Military Affairs Commission on December 19th.
  • The BULLET POINTS, compiled by John Droz.
  • The full fifteen-page HANDOUT, which lays out in some detail the problems with the Mill Pond project.
  • The website for AWED, the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions.

Sign The Petition To Repeal The Third Amendment

Remember awhile back when some prankster was able to get loads of moronic passersby to sign a petition that would outlaw “di-hydrogen oxide”, that toxic liquid most frequently referred to as water?

Well, this guy may have topped him, finding fertile ground to plow in, yep, California.  Complete with video.  [via Drudge]

Can’t Keep A Good Man Down: John Edwards Returns

This may be old news to some, but it bears highlighting.  Well known liar, philanderer, ambulance-chaser, former Senator, 2008 presidential aspirant, and federal indictee John Edwards has again hung out his shingle in Raleigh, this time with former UNC classmate and partner David Kirby, Edwards’ older daughter, Cate Edwards, and a few others.  The former vice-presidential candidate (Kerry/Edwards, 2004) should do well, bringing to the practice the distinction of being a lawyer who has been on both sides of the litigation fence, having been indicted himself on six felony counts of campaign law violations.  (Yep, he skated on all six counts.)

The New York Times online financial news service Dealbook ran a flattering article on 11/18/2013 publicizing his return to the practice of law.  An excerpt:

Before entering politics, Mr. Edwards earned a fortune as a plaintiffs’ lawyer, casting himself as the champion of the little guy. He focused on catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases, obtaining multiple multimillion-dollar verdicts from doctors, hospitals, and corporations.

I’ll say.  Just two of the milestones in that journey toward fame, fortune, and infamy:

In the mid-eighties, Edwards represented a mother and child in a medical malpractice case that was settled for over $4-million dollars.  The mother’s physician chose to have the child born naturally, even though there were signs of fetal distress that may have caused some doctors to opt for a C-section.  When the child developed cerebral palsy, Edwards argued that it was the fault of the physician and the hospital.  His success in winning this award established the precedent in NC law that medical practitioners are responsible for making sure that a patient fully comprehends the medical risks associated with any medical procedures they perform.  This single case is thought by many to be a substantial causative factor in the increased incidence of Caesarean births over the last two decades.

In the mid-nineties, Edwards status as a medical malpractice attorney peaked with the suit against Sta-Rite, a company that manufactured swimming pool drains.  When a little girl suffered permanent injury to her intestinal tract after sitting on a Sta-Rite drain from which the cover had been removed by other swimmers, Edwards sued on behalf of the family and hit the jackpot with a jury award of $25-million.  Fellow trail lawyers hailed his lengthy closing argument, in which he invoked the tragedy of his own teenaged son’s death in a car accident just weeks earlier, as brilliant.

After collecting his 30% on roughly $60-million in damage awards during his first legal career, Edwards turned to public service, and the rest, as they say, is history.  What a guy.

Ariel Sharon, R.I.P.

After living for months in a coma, former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has died.  For most of his tenure, I thought highly of Sharon’s leadership.  But then, to the dismay of many including myself,  he agreed to give the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in 2005.  Although the Gaza Strip is a very small piece of land, turning it over to the Palestinians (essentially to Hamas, the predominate Sunni Muslim faction) significantly increased Israeli’s exposure to hostile borders at it’s western corner, and Hamas has taken advantage of that geography to smuggle in lots of weaponry for use against Israel.

President George W. Bush’s former deputy national security advisor Elliott Abrams, now an author and senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written an informative and realistic assessment of Sharon at the online Commentary Magazine, HERE, and it may be the best of the many written in the days since his passing.

 

ADDENDUM:

Also an interesting read, this account (from the Times of Israel via PowerLine) of how a 20yo Sharon was wounded in a battle during the 1948 struggle for Israeli independence.

John Stossel on Common Core

EndCommonCore_LogoOn January 1, 2014, the well-known libertarian and Fox News commentator wrote this about Common Core:

Most Americans don’t even know what that is.  But they should.  It’s the government’s plan to try to bring “the same standard”  to every government-run school.

This may sound good.  Often, states dumb down tests to try to “leave no child behind.”  How can government evaluate teachers and reward successful schools if there isn’t a single national standard?

But when the federal government imposes a single teaching plan on 15,000 school districts across the country, that’s even more central planning, and central planning rarely works.  It brings stagnation.JohnStossel_1

Education is a discovery process like any other human endeavor.  We might be wrong about both how to teach and what to teach, but we won’t realize it unless we can experiment – compare and contrast the results of different approaches.  Having “one plan”  makes it harder to experiment and figure out what works.

Some people are terrified to hear “education” and “experiment” in the same sentence.  Why take a risk with something as important as my child’s education?  Pick the best education methods and teach everyone that way!

But we don’t know what the best way to educate kids is.

As American education has become more centralized, the rest of our lives have become increasingly diverse and tailored to individual needs.  Every minute, thousands of entrepreneurs struggle to improve their products.  Quality increases, and costs often drop.

But centrally planned K-12 education doesn’t improve.  Per-student spending has tripled (governments now routinely spend $300,000 per classroom!), but test results are stagnant.

“Everyone who has children knows that they’re all different, right?  They learn differently,” observed Sabrina Schaeffer of the Independent Women’s Forum on my show.  “In the workplace, we’re allowing people flexibility to telecommute, to have shared jobs.  In entertainment, people buy and watch what they want, when they want.”  Having one inflexible model for education “is so old-fashioned.”

No Child Left Behind programs were an understandable reaction to atrocious literacy and graduation rates – but since school funding was pegged to students’ performance on federally approved tests, classroom instruction became largely about drilling for those tests and getting the right answers, even if kids did little to develop broader reasoning skills.  So along comes Common Core to attempt to fix the problem – and create new ones.

Common Core de-emphasizes correct answers by awarding kids points for reasoning, even when they don’t quite get there.

A video went viral online that showed a worried mom, Karen Lamoreaux – a member of the group Arkansas Against Common Core – complaining to the Arkansas Board of Education about complicatedly worded math problems meant for fourth-graders.  She read to the Board this question: “Mr. Yamato’s class has 18 students.  If the class counts around by a number and ends with 90, what number did they count by?”

Huh?

But I could be wrong.  Maybe this is a clever new way to teach math, and maybe Lamoreaux worries too much.  Unfortunately, though, if Lamoreaux is right, and the federal government is wrong, government still gets to decree its universal solution to this problem.

Promoters of Common Core say, “Don’t worry, Common Core is voluntary.”  This is technically true, but states that reject it lose big federal money.  That’s Big Government’s version of “voluntary.”

Common Core, like public school, public housing, the U.S. Postal Service, the Transportation Security Administration, etc., are all one-size-fits-all government monopolies.  For consumers, this is not a good thing.

With the future riding on young people consuming better forms of education, I’d rather leave parents and children (and educators) multiple choices.

Despite Common Core, Schaeffer pointed out that this year did bring some victories for educational freedom.  “We saw new education tax credit programs and expansion of tax credit programs in numerous states – Alabama, Indiana, Iowa and others.  Education Savings Accounts expanded in other states; voucher programs expanded.”

This is good news.  Vouchers, Education Savings Accounts, and tax credits create competition and choice.

Details Behind The Dismissal Of Major Gen. Michael Carey

There have been a number of reports in recent months about what is perceived to be the Obama Administration’s excessive culling of military leaders who do not adhere to Obama’s world view, but there seems to be at least one instance, that of Air Force Major General Michael Carey, in which the dismissal was justified.

In late July of 2013, General Carey was interviewed by Popular Mechanics magazine.  From their current piece:

At the time, Carey was Commander of the 20th Air Force, which controls America’s land-based nuclear missiles. He was in town to meet with members of NASDAQ, where we would ring the opening bell in September, and a visit to PopMech happened to fit his schedule. Carey toured the office, checked out our view of Central Park, and sat for an interview about intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests for a feature coming up in our March 2014 magazine.

[ snip ]

But just months later, Carey was disgraced. In October the Air Force fired him. Officials offered no details, saying only that the dismissal involved personal conduct.

Now, however, Popular Mechanics has a piece up, HERE, in which they give the gory details.

Liz Cheney Withdraws

In what I think is a wise move on the part of her and her husband (Washington DC attorney Phil Perry), Liz Cheney has announced the discontinuance of her campaign to unseat Republican Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming.  Other than his age (69 at present), there was no reason for anyone to vote for a candidate other than Enzi, as he has been a staunch conservative throughout his tenure.

Senator Burr Wants to Consolidate Federal Departments

Along with Senate co-sponsors James Inhofe (R-OK) and Dan Coats (D-IN), Senator Richard Burr want to consolidate the current Departments of Commerce and Labor into a new Department of Commerce and the Workforce.  A part of the legislation would also move the Small Business Administration (SBA, currently a stand-alone agency) into the new Department.

Burr’s bill is aimed at saving money, and in addition to combining Commerce and Labor, it would also transfer the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) out of the Commerce Department and into the Department of the Interior.

Full details are in the News-&-Observer article, HERE.

Ship Of Fools

Ship_Stuck_In_Ice

Okay, I will spare readers another presentation of the “polar ice image” I so love in favor of the one above, an actual picture of the expeditionary ship now trapped in the Antarctic ice pack.  However, the delicious irony of the plight that climate change Professor Chris Turney and his merry band of global warming alarmists find themselves in, with their vessel now stuck fast, is too good not to comment on.  The rescue of the people on this “Ship Of Fools” is now draining away considerable time and money from the ongoing scientific research of several countries.

From a post by Pierre Gosselin at his climate science blog “NoTricksZone” (scroll down):

The first error expedition leaders made was under-estimating the prevailing sea ice conditions at Mawson Station, their destination.  The scientists seemed to be convinced that Antarctica was a warmer place today than it had been 100 years earlier, and thus perhaps they could expect less sea ice there.  This in turn would allow them to charter a lighter, cheaper vessel.

This seems to be the case judging by their choice of seafaring vessel.  They chartered a Russian vessel MS Akademik Shokalskiy, an ice-strengthened ship built in Finland in 1982.  According to Wikipedia the ship has two passenger decks, with dining rooms, a bar, a library, and a sauna, and accommodates 54 passengers and a crew of up to 30.  Though it is ice-reinforced, it is not an ice-breaker.  This is a rather surprising selection for an expedition to Antarctica, especially in view that the AAE website itself expected to travel through areas that even icebreakers at times are unable to penetrate, as we are now vividly witnessing.  Perhaps the price for chartering the Russian vessel was too good to pass up.

What made the expedition even more dubious is that Turney and his team brought on paying tourists in what appears to have been an attempt to help defer the expedition’s costs and to be a source of cheap labor.  According to the AAE website, the expedition was costed at US$1.5 million, which included the charter of the Akademik Shokalskiy to access the remote locations.  “The site berths on board are available for purchase.”  Prices start at $8000!

The expedition brought with it 4 journalists, [and] 26 paying tourists.

It is worth noting that this is primarily an Australian effort, as the public acceptance of AGW alarmism in Australia is still at about the level it was here in the states three years or so back.

A Rarity In Chess

I barely remember the moves now, but a half-century ago, mostly during those periods of my military service that occurred every month from about two days after payday until the next payday, when both I and my barracks roomie were absolutely penniless and had to devise our own entertainment, I enjoyed many chess games with him.

Those of you who play, or once played, may be interested in THIS ACCOUNT of a very rare “double check” that happened yesterday, from law professor Eugene Volokh.

Well, Duh! They Are Among Their Natural Constituencies

An article by Paul Bedard in today’s Washington Examiner, verbatim:

A new study of how criminals vote found that most convicts register Democratic, a key reason in why liberal lawmakers and governors are eager for them to get back into the voting booth after their release.

“Democrats would benefit from additional ex-felon participation,” said the authoritative study in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

The authors, professors from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, found that in some states, felons register Democratic by more than six-to-one. In New York, for example, 61.5 percent of convicts are Democrats, just 9 percent Republican. They also cited a study that found 73 percent of convicts who turn out for presidential elections would vote Democrat.

But despite recent moves in states to notify convicts that they can vote again, the study finds little evidence that they do, undercutting Democratic efforts to get them to the polls.

The study looked at three states which are reminding convicts that they can vote after leaving jail: New York, New Mexico and North Carolina.

They provided the following Democrat-to-Republican breakdown in felon party registration patterns:

– New York: 61.5 percent register Democratic, 9 percent register Republican

– New Mexico: 51.9 percent Democratic, 10.2 percent Republican

– North Carolina: 54.6 percent Democratic, 10.2 percent Republican

Overall, said the study, there are 5.8 million eligible voters in jail, about 2.5 percent of the voting age population. Most are young black males, it added.

I had two thoughts after reading this.  The first was, “Yep, if I was a criminal, I also would vote for the party that tends to be most lenient on criminal offenders.”  The second was, “Why the hell are we in North Carolina spending tax dollars to encourage convicts to vote?”