NC Media Watch

Mercatus Policy Guide

Attache is the Mercatus Policy Guide. A little background reading for March

Russ

Download Mercatus-Policy-Guide-2013_1.pdf

Terminated

This Blog is no longer active

New Blog is The Next Grand Minimum

I have add another blog: Is it 2012 in Nevada County Yet?

  Before I end up like this little fellow, who has spent too much time in the “middle of the road,” it is time to move on and focus my passion on the coming global cooling. While our left leaning bloggers and political leaders are promoting anthropogenic global warming, it is clear to me that what we are really seeing is global cooling that will accelerate in the coming years. Yes, we will see warm years and cooler years but the overall trend will be a cooler and a colder planet.

Why do I believe this?  The sun is going quiet, the sunspots are declining, as are the magnetic fields which are the driving force in sunspot generation. This has been verified by multiple peer reviewed studies and supported my own investigations into past historical climate cycles. More details here. 

We are on the cusp of the next Grand Minimum and the general public is not prepared for the coming climate changes. The public is being distracted by the global warmers  and a compliant main stream media.  Billions of our tax dollars are being spent on global warming studies and the reduction of CO2, which only has a minor influence on the climate. We are being misled.

The Next Grand Minimum blog will examine the climate trends, look at the past history of grand minimums and the social and political consequences of these minimums. During past minimums, millions starved when the agriculture infrastructure was unable to feed the population and the farmers and their families perished from crop failures. While it is true that we have more modern food storage facilities, we also have billions of more mouths to feed.  Any significant reduction in the production of wheat, corn and other food gain by the bread basket nations in both hemispheres, and millions will starve every year.

This is my last post on this blog. Please join me at the Next Grand Minimum and join the discussion.  However, be warned that I am going to use the more powerful moderation tools in Wordpress to maintain more control over the comments. If a comment does not directly apply to the issues under discussion, it will never be posted. If one gets by my moderation, it will vanish with out comment. Since there will be some moderation, there may be delays in post of a comment. My apology in advance, but strict control of the comments makes the blog more readable for the majority of readers.

My other reason from moving to Wordpress is they are much more smartphone and PDA friendly. It will be much easier to read my blog on your smartphone.

Again, please join me at The Next Grand Minimum.

  H/T to Dixon for the photo.

Prop 23 Update: Green Job Explosion a Pipe Dream

Russ Steele

During the Prop 23 debate our local left told us that an explosion of green job were going to bring California out of the recession and voting for Prop 23 was going to destroy that dream of green wealth. Now reality has set in and the pipe dream has exploded, and even the über-liberal New York Times has taken notice.

In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream.

000

A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more — 2.2 percent — in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent.

Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development.

The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry. Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on as homeowners balked at the upfront costs.

Oh my, now what?  We told our local lefties, who were supporting the full implimentation of AB-32, that going green would be a job killer.  It did in Spain, which was often cited as a model for California to follow by our former RINO Governor. As the study demonstrated,  "Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent."

Exit Question:  How are we going to recover from this lefty driven green pipe dream?

Another Company HQ is Leaving California

Russ Steele

As a freelance writer and RV owner, Trailer Life has been one of the my target publications since 2005.  The Affinity Group Inc. publishes Trailer Life Magazine in Ventura CA.  This week I was informed by the editor that I am working with on several stories that the company is moving it's Headquaters from Ventura California to Minneapolis, Minnesota in November. 

According to the Funding Universe Data Base "the Affinity Group Holding Company is the parent company of several businesses, including Affinity Group, Inc. (AGI), that provide goods and services to the outdoor recreation market, primarily recreational vehicle (RV) enthusiasts. Through its subsidiaries, the company owns and operates the Camping World chain of retail stores for RV parts and camping equipment and oversees several clubs for RV owners, including the Good Sam Club, Coast to Coast, Camping World's President's Club, Motorhome America Club, as well as Golf Card International. AGI publishes books, such as campground directories and buyer's guides, and consumer magazines, including Trailer Life, Highways, MotorHome, and several regional publications. Another publication, RV Business, serves the recreational vehicle industry. Through several Internet sites and a cable television show, AGI provides technical and non-technical information to RV enthusiasts and act as forums for RV-related businesses. The company publishes several magazines for other outdoor recreational activities, including ATV Sport, American Rider, Woman Rider, and Thunder Press."

According to Hoovers Affinity Group Inc. has 1,637 employees, but it is not clear how many are at the Headquarters in California and wil be moving. My editor will not be moving to Minneapolis, and I will soon have a new editor.

Exit Question: How many more companies will be leaving California for more business friendly states?

Obama, "The One" playing Marie Antoinette

Russ Steele

"The president will spend the next 10 days holed up at a tony, 28-acre elite playground called the Blue Heron Farm as the country plummets toward a double-dip recession," according to an article in the New York Post.

Not the common touch: With its million-dollar buses, the Obama “jobs” tour of the Midwest failed to strike the intended populist note.

Does nobody in the White House realize how poorly this act is playing?

Hitting three Midwest communities in two sleek, specially outfitted, Canadian-made million-dollar campaign buses, the president came off like a visiting Marie Antoinette, out among the besieged peasantry for a few days to preach his newfound religion of jobs.

The Black Caucus wants to know how come that bus never made it to a black community?  They have a higher unemployment rate than the communities than the ones "The One" visted with his bus tour. This whole tour is coming off as one big bust!   No one is happy. Only 11% are happy with the way things are going. This becoming a let them "eat cake" situation for "The One."

Tea Party Patriots -- Not a political party, but a state of mind

Russ Steele

Our local left is "going postal" as the local Tea Party gains recognition in the community. The TPP was the largest group in the 4th of July Parade.  The Tea Party Patriots are holding monthly events, including dinners, luncheons, free movies on critical issues, holding idea exchange forums, hosted a County Fair Booth, and are developing a strong presence on Facebook. They are every where, including attending BOS meetings and meeting one-on-one with Supervisors, City Council members and our local newspaper Publisher.

For some reason, the left is upset by this expanding visibility of the Tea Party Patriots in our community.  They keep posting about polling information reported to show declining interest in the Tea Party and what they stand for:

• Fiscal Responsibility

• Limited Government

• Free Markets

• Respect for our Constitution and Bill of Rights

• A government that respects and answers to the people.

I am not buying those polls. These cored values are a state of mind that is shared by many people in our community. Look at the high fives, raised arm and smiles when the Tea Party marched by hundreds of spectators during the 4th of July Parade.  While these observers were not parading down the street, they indicated they share the same state of mind as those Tea Party Patriot who were marching. 

Many local and regional citizens stopped by the Tea party Fair Booth to let those in the booth know that they also share the Tea Party’s core values of fiscal responsibility, limited government, free markets and respect for our Constitution. Many are joining the growing ranks of the local TPP Chapter.

I am having trouble understanding how our local left can be against these core values. The seem to want larger, fiscally irresponsible, socialist government, that trashes the Constitution. And, are willing to trash anyone that supports these Tea Party core values, as demonstrated by our local lefty bloggers.

Exit Question: Do you support the Tea Party Patriot core values?  If not, why not?

Prop 23 Update: Shutting down the Green Energy Sector

Russ Steele

The UK Climate Policy Newwork points to an interesting story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, by Don  Hopey: Corbett quietly turning off the lights on renewable energy.

Quietly but systematically, the Pennsylvanian administration has all but shut down the state Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Energy and Technology Deployment -- the state's primary energy office -- and removed directors and reassigned staff in the Office of Energy Management in the Department of General Services and the Governor's Green Government Council. It has also forbidden state executive agencies from signing contracts that support clean energy supply. One former DEP employee said of the Energy Office, "it's being taken apart piece-by-piece and the pieces are being thrown away.

ooo

Pennsylvania is not the only state reassessing or reducing green policies. Governors and legislators have voiced similar concerns in Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, according to the Pew Research Center

While other states are folding up the green energy tent while California is prompting a dangerous dependency on renewable energy. This dependency will drive up energy costs for business  and citizens. As California energy prices climb higher and higher, those states with lower costs will begin to attract California business and those with high paying portable jobs. 

I find it interesting that Pennsylvania is benefiting from extensive shale gas drilling, which is producing cheap easily transportable fuel for power plants and the heating of homes and factories. This is exactly what the EPA and the environmentalist wackos were concerned about. They are trying to shut down shale gas drilling by banning "fracking" which an essential tool for securing this cheap energy.  The sooner we put EPA in a political coma the better off we will all be.

Interesting question: Whose Idea was Martha’s Vineyard

Russ Steele

Victor Davis Hanson asks the question in NRO at The Corner.

Whoever in the White House decided on another first family vacation at Martha’s Vineyard must be unhinged, coming as it does (a) after previous jaunts to places like Vail and Costa del Sol, and serial golf outings; (b) in the midst of tough economic times and bipartisan acknowledgment that national cutbacks for the vast majority of Americans are in order; (c) on the heels of three years of class warfare and anti-wealth demagoguery of the “fat-cat,” “unneeded income,” “spread the wealth” sort; and (d) during a presidential approval slide that seems to be based, at least in part, on the fact that the president’s usual rhetoric has nothing to do with reality, that he suggests one thing while doing quite another.

If the president thought that a campaign bus tour would rescue his numbers, he was mistaken — it seems to have had the opposite effect, perhaps because it seemed staged, almost like what a wealthy person would do if he wanted to act “real” for a bit.

But if President Obama has already purchased the new bus, why not use it Winnebago-style to see America with his family for a week, visiting a national park, a closed-down plant — or a real vineyard?

I think that Michelle knows that it is all over in 2012 and she is cramming in as many high end government paid vacations as she can. It appears that O is “submissive” to Michelle’s serial vacation demands, as she knows the end of the good life is near.  2012 is just around The Corner!

Jerry Brown takes owenship of Arnold's high speed black hole

Russ Steele

The Sac Bee Capitol Alert has the story here:

Gov. Jerry Brown said this afternoon that California's embattled high-speed rail project should move forward, despite growing criticism about the project's management and cost.

ooo

Brown said he is "really getting into" the project and that "we're working directly with the authority to get their act together."

High Speed Rail will become the biggest black hole that California has ever created and we the tax payers will be be responsible for filling an bottomless pit.  High Speed Rail has just never pencils out, while the Fed will help to fund, the maintenance and operation will be the responsibility to CA taxpayers, and the fare box will never support the operation, just like we have to subsidize our local Gold County Stage by 85%.  Perpare your wallets!

PG&E and SmartAC - - Reading the fine print

Russ Steele

The good folks at PG&E have sent us yet again another offer to join their SmartAC program, so I can help the citizens of California keep over 84,000 homes powered up in the event of an a supply emergency.  They are offering a $50.00 reward if we let them control my AC power.  According to PG&E over 145,000 customers have already accepted their bribe.

Here are some the benefits of the SmartAC program:

• PG&E will install the control device -  No indications what the charges will be.

• The device will control the power to the compressor - just hold open the relay for a while, what could possibly go wrong?

• We get to control the thermostat, but they control the compressor- house will never warm more than 4 degrees, well maybe it all depends says the small print.   

• Control event will not last more than six hours - really,  who determines which six hours if we are having a Texas hot spell lasting 30 days above 80 degrees at night?

• I can decline to participate on a day to day basis with out penalty says the letter - unless there is a real extreme emergency says the small print.

Bottom line, read the small print in this offer, as there very few advantages for the home owner and a desperate need for PG&E to control the load when they are totally dependent on 33% renewable power. They have no control over when the wind blows and clouds roll over the solar farms, or the out of state distribution grid crashes. They are desperate to control the load, to control your AC.

 My solution, return the empy form. I can do with out the $50.00, and welcome the peace of mind that I am in control of our AC.