“Groups fighting any industrialization of the Lakes … are requesting that federal funding for this expensive boondoggle, estimated to eventually run up to $125 million, or about $25 million for each turbine, be immediately truncated, and that a complete audit of existing monies granted be undertaken with fulsome reporting to taxpayers.”
“There is absolutely NOTHING ecologically friendly about an industrial wind turbine. It is designed for one thing: profits.”
The Icebreaker Windpower project, proposed by the Norway-based Fred. Olsen Renewables, would be the first proposed freshwater wind turbine project in the United States. The proposal, however, is running into serious opposition from ratepayer, taxpayer, and environmental groups.
As an offshore project (six turbines about seven miles off the shore of Cleveland Ohio), it should be compared to the $0.24/kWh cost debacle of Rhode Island’s Deepwater Wind project that is about to begin production.…
Continue Reading“How could Clinton make money when people on average lose? There are two possibilities: She may have been incredibly lucky. Or it may have been fixed that she would gain and not lose. Neither possibility reflects well on her.”
“[T]he investment records of commodities between 1900 and 1975 … showed that the investor would have lost spectacularly by buying and holding commodities; AAA bonds produced a rate of return 733 per cent higher than holding resources.”
- Julian Simon: 1996 (below)
Remember the Clinton commodity-investment home run back in 1994? One thousand dollars increased one-hundred-fold in ten months of trading. Some of the facts were reported at the time by the Washington Post:
… Continue ReadingHillary Rodham Clinton was allowed to order 10 cattle futures contracts, normally a $12,000 investment, in her first commodity trade in 1978 although she had only $1,000 in her account at the time, according to trade records the White House released yesterday.
“Retribution-and-restitution regulations should be favored over command-and-control. Wherever possible, regulated entities should have the flexibility and authority to find ways to prevent bad outcomes, while still assuring liability for bad outcomes or behaviors.”
Regulations that are overly complex, outdated, and obscure typically favor large well-connected entities over smaller entities and the general public. Regulations that have been on the books for decades are obvious targets to be modernized, clarified, and in some cases eliminated. Texas Railroad Commission regulations are certainly in such a state. The Commission has been promulgating oil and gas regulations for a century now. A good house cleaning is certainly in order.
Regulatory reform should start by establishing a culture of review and regular procedures for ensuring continuous re-evaluation. A sunset review policy could target something like 10% of all regulations per year, starting with the oldest ones first.…
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