The Industry and Economics of Climate Change/Global Warming

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2014

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change met in Lima, Peru, December 1-12, 2014, determined to chisel a new treaty that would mandate a cap and trade on greenhouse gas emissions effective by 2020 and would “eliminate the use of fossil fuels entirely by 2050.”

The hypothesis that rich nations caused climate change by burning fossil fuels to produce energy has never been proven by IPCC’s computer modeling. The fact that now the hypothesis changed its name from global warming to climate change in the face of obvious 18 years of global cooling is enough evidence that the purveyors of the industry of climate change are desperate but are not giving up. Fleecing rich countries with carbon taxes is a very lucrative scam.

“We must leave fossil fuels in the ground and not repeat the steps of the developed countries that brought us to this point,” said Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, international policy advisor for Climate Action Network Latin America.

The Climate Action Network, “a conglomerate of 900 radical green groups from about 100 nations, mocked Australia, Belgium, Ireland, and Austria because they have yet to donate to a new Green Climate Fund.” The real agenda of spreading the wealth from developed countries to poor countries and arresting economic development could not be more transparent. http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/12/02/exclusive-new-legally-binding-treaty-emerges-on-first-day-of-lima-climate-conference/

Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace stated that, “In Lima, the countries must agree on the long-term goal of phasing out fossil fuel emissions to zero by mid-century while moving towards 100 percent renewable energy for all in a fair transition period. Subsidies for fossil fuel industries must be shifted towards renewable energy deployment and climate adaptation for vulnerable countries. In countries like the U.S., China, and the EU, the phase-out of coal must be accelerated.”

So how are renewable energy industries working out so far across the globe as replacements for fossil fuels? Judging by the number of bankruptcies filed and by the billions in taxpayer dollars wasted so far, with scant energy produced, not very well.

Take Ivanpah Solar Power Facility (ISPF), which cost $2.2 billion to build ($1.6 billion from government loan guarantees and $600 million from private investors, including one third from Google), “was supposed to deliver an energy output of approximately 1.7 million MWh (megawatt-hours) of electricity annually.”

According to Dr. Klaus Kaiser, the Ivanpah facility, which covers 4,000 acres and is located in the Mojave Desert, delivered a very low output of 250,000 MWh during January-August, 2014. The visionaries of solar power did not take into account the blasting of mirrors by sand and dust. To solve the problem, ISPF investors decided to seek extensions on the borrowed money and to use more natural gas, “doubling the amount of natural gas usage permitted for ‘preheating’ of the solar towers,” thus spinning the truth and “fudging the numbers.” http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/67861

Eric Wessof wrote in his article, “Rest in Peace: The List of Deceased Solar Companies, 2009 to 2013,” in which he tallied the solar companies that went bankrupt, were acquired, closed, restructured, sold for a song, or in the endangered category, a lengthy list of 102 companies, hardly a success story. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Rest-in-Peace-The-List-of-Deceased-Solar-Companies-2009-to-2013

The Washington Post reported on the billionaire Vinod Khosla who invested in a biofuel plant called KiOR in Columbus, Mississippi, that “was supposed to turn wood chips into hydrocarbons that could be poured straight into a refinery, pipeline, or car.”

Instead of producing the magic catalyst, on November 10 2014, KiOR filed for bankruptcy, “leaving behind 2067 creditors, including the State of Mississippi which can ill-afford the bag of $75 million, 20-year, no interest loan.” The promised 1,000 jobs to be created by December 2015 never materialized. (“The Misadventures of a tech billionaire confronting the stubborn economics of the biofuel business,” Washington Post, November 30, 2014)

According to Washington Post, KiOR spent $5-$10 per gallon notwithstanding the cost of building the plant. KiOR’s losses were $629.3 million and had revenues of $2.25 million. The bankruptcy was inevitable even though “Khosla spent $85 million and Bill Gates $15 million in October 2013.”

The project of transforming biomass into fuels by using “catalytic pyrolysis, or cracking,” an invention by a company in the Netherlands, BIOeCON, turned out to be a renewable money pit for KiOR which produced very little energy. http://www.bioecon.com/

Among other energy programs and initiatives for renewable energy, President George W. Bush promised in 2006 “to make ethanol not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks and switch grass.” http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/energy/

Using corn as fuel was not such a great idea either; corn that fed billions of people around the world skyrocketed in price in recent years and became scarcer, causing people in many countries to riot.

Wind turbines caused health hazards in humans and millions of bird kills around the world, some on the endangered species list. The energy produced was certainly dirty green and inadequate for most developed countries. Conventional fossil fuels were used to run gears to prevent rusting and to supplant electricity when the wind turbines were idle. Turbines had to be cut off in some areas at speeds of maximum production of electricity because the noise and constant thumping was unbearable to the nearby residents. Just because a turbine rotates, it does not necessarily mean that it produces electricity.

Are most large economies of the world ready to ditch fossil fuels entirely as proposed in Lima Peru by the environmental architects of gloom and doom alarmism and replace them with renewables? The answer is a resounding no, unless we are ready to live in the dark ages again.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014 

 

 

 

 

 

ObamaCare and a Bundle of Cash

Photo: Wikipedia

I’ve watched Americans cheering in mass hysteria for the Affordable Care Act of March 23, 2010 that would provide health insurance for 15 percent of Americans who either could not afford health care premiums, were denied insurance based on pre-existing conditions, or chose not to purchase insurance, gambling on their good health and immortal youth.

They believed the promised moon and the stars and Nancy Pelosi who refused to give details when asked - they had to “pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” Four years and a trillion wasted dollars later there are more American citizens without insurance, and with substandard and more expensive insurance that does not meet their needs.

Americans young and old found out what’s in Obamacare and did not like it. Elderly were kicked out of their Medicare plans and moved into Humana. Patients lost their doctors, lost their insurance plans they liked and were forced into exchanges. Premiums were much higher, deductibles through the roof, and reimbursement varied from 60, 70, to 80 percent, depending on whether they had bought bronze, silver, or gold plans.
Congressmen and their staff were in a separate category, a “platinum and diamonds” plan for elitist lawmakers who promptly complained they could not afford the premiums and voted themselves a subsidy.
I suppose those who were uninsured thought Obamacare to be free since they touted health insurance as a right, not a service. Why reward and pay the “greedy” doctors for their expertise and years of expensive schooling and hard training? Everyone should be equally paid in the new, “fundamentally transformed” socialist America.

Things did not work so well when it came time to fund this bonanza of good health. Young people preferred to pay the lower penalty instead of enrolling. Medicare was stripped of $719 billion over ten years to fund Obamacare at the expense of rationed care for the elderly.

It is sad when a patient over 70 becomes a “unit” whose worth to society is being calculated and then services are curtailed based on their “utility.”

Who said there are no death panels when patients in need of physical therapy or expensive chemo are being told, sorry, we’ve done all we can for you, you are just too old and you are never going to get better. A far away bureaucrat makes life-altering decisions for patients they have never met who paid taxes and premiums for years so that their golden years would be protected.

On the other hand, if you are an illegal immigrant, fresh off the train or airplane, Obamacare is free and readily available the very same day, no questions asked.

Scandal after scandal revealed how badly veterans were treated in VA hospitals – many died waiting to be seen by a physician. These were our heroes who put their lives on the line for America and were promised first class care for the rest of their lives and received the worst. Their worth to the new socialist bureaucracy is less than that of illegal aliens. Veterans and military families experienced first the ill-effects of socialized medicine.

You may not like your premiums, you may not like your deductibles, you may not like the loss of your doctor who is not “a preferred physician” under Obamacare and perhaps practices “concierge” medicine or has retired, but socialized medicine is here to stay.

You may have to accept the care of a nurse practitioner or of someone trained in a third world country who was hurriedly licensed in order to fill the void of doctors. No bureaucracy, once ensconced with deep roots in Washington, can be uprooted and nullified no matter how ill-conceived it was.

You may think, how bad can socialized medicine and a single payer system be? Not bad if you have the sniffles, pretty bad if you take into account what happened to Maureen in Ireland and hundreds of thousands of patients just like her who are subjected to nationalized health care in Western Europe, the model for the Affordable Care Act.

Trying to recover from surgery for a broken femur caused by multiple myeloma and blood clots in her lungs, she had to share a room, a bathroom, and a shower with six other co-ed patients. Her femur broke while waiting for a CT scan at one hospital and was then transported to another hospital for surgery.

After a three day wait, she was prepped for surgery but the ambulance did not arrive to pick her up until the following morning. Kept in a semi-coma to alleviate the pain, when she got to the other hospital, the surgery was postponed twice. If that was not enough pain and suffering, Maureen was infected with the dreaded MRSA staph bacterial infection in her nose.

What caused her blood clots? After a 15 minute infusion to strengthen her bones, she was told to wait for her surgeon who wanted to see her and give her biopsy results and discuss treatment. She sat in the waiting room all day, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. By nightfall she was short of breath and very weak and had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance in order to save her life.

On discharge day, she had to wait 12 hours until a fourth person was found to sign off the release papers. Treatment can be good, but the patient can die waiting for it, and the nurses, although very kind and well-trained, are grossly overworked and underpaid, just like doctors.

Maureen had the option to buy a private room for the price of 1,000 euros per day. Single payer insurance in Ireland does not prevent patients from buying additional private insurance if they can afford it. Unfortunately that may not be the case in this country eventually, as more insurers would be unable to underwrite policies profitably and in line with the Affordable Care Act’s dictates.

As Jonathan Gruber said, the American voters were too stupid to understand the ramifications of the passage of the so-unaffordable Affordable Care Act and did not comprehend how their health care will be fundamentally and irreversibly altered.

Do we really want socialized medical care for our American patients? Unfortunately, what happened to Maureen is inevitably coming to the U.S. There will come a time when doctors, proper medical care, treatment, surgery, and drugs will be so scarce that patients will walk around with envelopes stuffed with cash in order to be treated in a timely manner and will look to the black market to find the drugs they need.
Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014

My radio chat with Silvio Canto on ObamaCare December 2, 2014

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2014/12/02/a-look-at-obama-cares-impact-in-the-us-economy

The Kindergarten Booties

Photo: noastracopilaria@yahoo.com

"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose,
And nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free."
- Kris Kristofferson's song

The photograph of a pair of kids’ booties posted on a social website, “Copilaria anilor 80-90,” triggered a flood of memories – it was the exact pair that I used to wear as a child. They were the only ones available for purchase, and required uniform for all children who attended pre-school and kindergarten.

I re-posted the photo thinking that a few of my Romanian friends would comment, but I was wrong. Instead, my much younger cousin from Romania remarked that she had a pair in pre-school in the 1980s. Who knew that commies would stick to the same sorry, cheap, and ugly pair of booties for decades?

One American lady, Gemey, who had traveled to Romania as a missionary in the 1990s, long after communism was temporarily dismantled, wrote, “Having grown up here in the U.S., it’s difficult to imagine no electric, no water, no heat, little food, few clothes. I saw all that, well not the heat, no AC in July was bad enough! But it’s a beautiful country, reminds me of Virginia or Missouri where I live. Green and fertile and full of promise each day. And the people that I met were strong and resourceful and coped with all these situations with grace most of the time. But the moment things got a little better, people were clamoring for more, communist politicians promised more [just like the Bolsheviks] and they voted the commies back into office… sounds like the U.S. doesn’t it?”

She continued, “Superstitions die hard. Even medical doctors believed that evil spirits blew into open windows and people would get sick if they walked barefoot.” They also believed humans got sick if exposed to a slight breeze or draft. Consequently, kids had to wear these felt booties called “sosoni” or “botosei,” crudely made and itchy, in pre-school and kindergarten.

Mom always yelled at me to put on house shoes and she always kept an assortment of slippers in her closet in the U.S. Her granddaughters were amused and loved to irritate her by going barefoot on any kind of surface.

It’s hard to overcome any government dependency, even the communist variety. I have many older relatives who can barely make ends meet today because their pensions from the communist era are so small, yet they are nostalgic for communism. They want to live on the “take-care-of-me plantation,” and “I will do as you say farm.” Why try hard at all when everyone makes the same miserable salary?

The elderly today make an eager voting block that turns out every time to elect the communists back in power – the grey hair commie-voting brigade. They are like jail inmates who spend their entire lives in prison and, when freed, have no idea how to live on the outside, in the free world. They want back in prison where their needs were met poorly but were not expected to do much in return except be on their best behavior, be obedient to strict rules, and be willing to stay behind bars, the very bars that robbed inmates of their freedom in the first place.

I asked my cousin Maria why she voted for communists and she answered, they gave us a small pension, we did not have to work, the rent was low and subsidized, food was hard to find but was also subsidized, cheap alcohol was plentiful, we had rationing coupons, everyone was equally poor and miserable, we did not have to compete, we did not have to try very hard. We just understood that the commies in power were wealthy beyond belief but we accepted that as long as they threw us our daily crumbs and bones. We knew our place and they “protected” us.

What did they protect you from, I asked her. We had a miserable roof over our heads and medical care was free. But Maria, it was free but you could not see doctors nor buy medicines because they were not available, shortages were constant, and you had to fight in lines for the last loaf of bread, toilet paper roll, or bottle of cooking oil, and you had to pay bribes in cash and goods to be seen on time by a better doctor. True, she said, but we had free aspirin and generic Tylenol. She looked down at her feet and remained silent. My arguments did not seem to penetrate her skewed view of reality. No matter what I said, if she had a choice, she would choose communism again and again, graciously resigned and happy with government dependency in exchange for empty promises and scratchy felt booties for her grandchildren.

Having seen the insidious welfare dependency under crony capitalism and under socialism/communism, I seriously doubt that I could change an elderly person’s mentality of addiction to government handouts, even handouts not worth having.
Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014

Cost of Obamacare for Virginians on Bronze Plan

The Affordable Care Act specifies in Section 1401 of its voluminous content that subsidies cannot be paid to people residing in states that do not have a State Exchange. The decision was upheld in the D.C. Federal Circuit Court and the Supreme Court will make a decision in June 2015.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, no subsidy will thus be paid on the 80 percent of subscribers’ premiums who enrolled in Obamacare and are eligible for subsidies. And the 2015 costs of these premiums have not been made public until November 15, 2014, conveniently after the November election.

Using the calculator on the Obamacare website for the Bronze Plan (a plan with a 60 percent reimbursement rate after deductibles have been met) for a Preferred Provider, Thomas L. Cranmer, Vice President of Fairfax County Taxpayers’ Alliance, determined that a northern Virginia family of four would pay “at any income a deductible out of pocket of $12,600 and a premium of $7,224 per year. The total $19,824 represents 40 percent of $50,000 and 20 percent of $100,000 gross income.” http://fairfaxfreecitizen.com/2014/11/25/obamacare-cost-impact-2/

If doctors are not “preferred,” Obamacare labels them “out of network,” in which case the costs can be limitless. The website calculator, which is now operational (HHS had taken it down temporarily before the elections), can be used anonymously to calculate the cost for any individual or family. https://www.healthcare.gov/see-plans/

People, who have lost their plans due to the increased demands of Obamacare on private insurance companies, and have been forced to sign for Obamacare, report two and half times higher costs.

Many insured by Medicare have lost their supplemental insurance and those with Medicare/Medicaid have been moved into Humana. Humana is now busy rationing care to the elderly in order to meet the President’s plan to take billions from Medicare in order to fund Obamacare. Many retirees are thus forced to find other plans with higher premiums and deductibles.

Illegal aliens, who were not “supposed” to be covered by Obamacare as falsely reported, are getting their premiums for free or $2.71. A lady I met recently in a doctor’s waiting room was excited that her premium was $24 a month. She had never bought insurance before, betting on her good health, but was now experiencing declining health in her mid-thirties and was glad for Obamacare’s low premium.

With the three plans, Bronze, Silver, and Gold, the reimbursement rates for doctors are 60 percent, 70 percent, and 80 percent respectively. If doctors accept Obamacare, can they cover their expenses?  Do they ask for payments in advance, considering that the out-of-pocket deductible for patients is $12,600, and they may not be able to pay for the visit?

Tom Cranmer asked his physician in a very direct letter if the “concierge fee” of $1,650 he paid him covers his expenses. Additionally, if the “doc fix reimbursement schedule for Medicare does not pass Congress (it comes up for renewal in December 2014), and doctors’ compensation is lowered,“  how would it affect their medical practice in terms of doing what is best for their patients?

Because many doctors and hospitals have been dropped from Obamacare, their services are not eligible for Obamacare payments. What would happen to their patients who are now suddenly forced into Obamacare? Where would they find new doctors, especially since many are retiring or pursuing other careers? Did the President not promise, “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?” Would these patients be forced to accept nurse practitioner care instead?

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014

 

Executive Action for Immigration

The President’s “immigration accountability executive action” has confused many Americans since a president’s action is more or less a “wish list” and does not have the legally-binding power of an executive order. Unlike an executive order, an executive action is not published in the Federal Register.  An executive order can be reversed by Congress or by the courts. Is this executive action meant to obfuscate the illegal immigration issue and postpone the “fixing of the broken immigration,” a euphemism for refusing to enforce the already existing laws? http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/20/fact-sheet-immigration-accountability-executive-action

Our country cannot afford to amnesty 5 million illegal aliens even though they may be in the country right now or en route. The Heritage Foundation’s chief economist Stephen Moore has calculated recently that illegal aliens cost the American taxpayers $30 billion per year. If we take into account the number of requested work cards by the DHS for 34 million, the cost of an additional 29 million illegals would skyrocket the $30 billion to absolutely unmanageable numbers when our national debt is already impossible to repay, unemployment is in double digits, and the economy is lacking significant job creation.

The November 20, 2014 Department of Homeland Security “Policies for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Undocumented Immigrants” consider drunk driving, sex abusers, drug dealers, and gun offenders secondary priority for deportation; top priority includes terrorists, felons, and new illegal border crossers.  http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120_memo_prosecutorial_discretion.pdf

We’ve been told that illegal immigrants work hard and they do. But they also have large families at home that are supported by various welfare programs and are medically treated freely in any ER in the country and eventually under Obamacare.

Illegals are encouraged to pay taxes using the Internal Revenue Service’s Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) designed to encourage illegal aliens to file and pay taxes but some do not. Many that do file, because they report income below the federal poverty level, receive earned income tax credit from the IRS, using children here in the U.S. and children who are still in Mexico as dependents, costing U.S. taxpayers $4.1 billion per year.  

Many illegal aliens, day workers who wait to be picked up at the local Seven Eleven, work under the table, avoiding paying taxes altogether. They do pay sales taxes as they spend some of the cash and the welfare benefits to live in this country, contributing to consumption, the largest component of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, money that is being trafficked and other large sums are being sent to their home countries and never taxed. They thus benefit from our welfare system without paying into the very system that they milk.

Any taxpayer dollars that are spent on welfare for illegal aliens or American citizens are funds that are not spent on investment and on job creation in our economy.

For example, on any given day, at the local international grocery store where I often shop, there is a line of illegals waiting to send money via Western Union to their home countries. I joined the line one day so I could hear for myself how much they were sending. One guy sent $1,200 to Mexico and another $800 to Guatemala. Assuming the average of the two, $1,000 per month, a simple calculation of 5 million illegals sending money home per month would yield $5 billion, a tidy sum of $60 billion per year. And the numbers of illegal aliens reported to be in this country vary widely, from 11-12 million to as many as 34 million.

When liberals spew economic statistics about the extent that illegal aliens contribute to this economy by spending their earned money here, I am very skeptical. No amount of propaganda coming from the left or Pelosi’s theatrics washing the feet of illegal aliens is going to convince me that it is good for our country to accept floods of law breakers and reward them with unconstitutional citizenship. If we do, the notion of American citizenship no longer exists.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014

Is There Honor in Amnesty?

Thee amnesty by executive fiat is a fait accompli - five million law breakers are now going to become American citizens with all the benefits American taxpayers are forced to provide, including Obamacare.  

The “fiscal cost of immigration” will include: Medicaid, unemployment insurance, Social Security, workmen compensation, TANF, earned income credit, WIC, SNAP, free phones, SSI, free education, free lunch programs, kindergarten programs, day care, and other services such as police protection, fire protection, military protection, libraries, parks, highways,  and over 80 different welfare programs that already provide cash, food, utilities, education, and housing  to 100 million low-income Americans.

Young Americans and their families will pay hefty health insurance premiums for Obamacare, with high deductibles and diminished benefits on the bronze, silver, and gold levels, while illegal aliens will pay nothing or $2.71 per month.

After all, we are such a rich nation; why not spread the wealth around the globe to millions of illegals and to the chain migration that will soon follow. The veterans can wait months to get a doctor’s appointment and American children can be denied entry to colleges or federal grants because minorities and their quotas must be protected and served first. They are the “Dreamers” of tomorrow’s America, the chosen citizens of the new America.

Thumbing their noses at the 4 million foreigners awaiting proper documentation to immigrate legally to the U.S., large groups of illegals bussed into D. C. by Casa de Virginia, a subsidiary of Casa de Maryland, celebrated this week the reward to their lawlessness, waving small American flags handed out to them on the prior-organized buses and at the rally.

Dr. Savage explained on his show that, “while some immigrants work hard, they have large families at home who do not work at all,” subsidized by the American taxpayers. To make matters worse, 30 percent of the prison population in our country is comprised of recidivist illegal aliens, some of whom have committed horrendous crimes.

We are a nation of immigrants but the fundamental difference between the last century’s immigrants and today’s immigrants is that the 20^th century immigrants assimilated, came here to take advantage of the opportunity to make a better life for themselves, learned English the best they could, did not accept welfare, and worked very hard to make this country a better place.

The current immigrants come here for the economic opportunity of government welfare, are not interested in assimilating or learning English, and generally do not like America, they want to transform it into the dictatorships they came from,  where the corrupt culture is a culture of government dependency, survival through dishonesty, and breaking the law is a way of life. They are interested in a better life provided to them by our taxpayers with no allegiance to our nation, or respect for our country, borders, culture, language, and the rule of law.

Can we financially afford 5 million amnestied illegal aliens and the remainder 29 million that will follow? No, but the administration will continue to print more worthless money to add to our already unmanageable and exploding national debt, cut more benefits to seniors, cut the military even more, and cut education to fund Medicaid for the new arrivals.

Once illegal immigrants overwhelm the social safety net and bankrupt various programs, there will be chaos. The people most affected by this flood of illegal aliens are not going to be the middle class or the upper middle class, those affected will be the lower middle class and the people at the bottom, who will be competing with illegals for unskilled employment and other government benefits.

This amnesty will benefit the greed of employers seeking employees who will be paid lower wages. Obamacare made sure there was a provision within that protected from penalty employers who hire illegal workers. Amnestied illegals will depress wages for existing legal immigrants and for American citizens and the unemployment numbers and the welfare rolls will swell to unmanageable levels.

There was a pride and joy in waiting patiently for four years to get a green card legally, then another four years to become a naturalized American citizen. There was an honor to be sworn in as an American citizen.

There is no honor in crossing the border in the dead of night, sneaking into our country illegally like bandits, bringing in untreatable diseases, accepting undeserved amnesty and eventual citizenship from a President who single-handedly decided to alter the meaning of citizenship with the stroke of a pen, break the laws of the United States in the process, and forever “fundamentally transform” America into a banana republic mocked by the world.

Breaking into America’s house in the middle of the night, demanding ownership of the deed of trust is dishonorable. If the Congressional Republicans are serious about representing the interests of the American people who rejected amnesty vociferously in the November election, they should veto the discretionary amnesty and refuse to fund it.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2014