salazar (4)

 
 
 
 
                “The path to a clean energy economy starts here, in places like SunPower’s research and development facility . . . .” Ken Salazar Interior Secretary
 
“How exactly did SunPower qualify to receive a $1.28 Billion loan when it was operating $820 million in the red; announcing three weeks before the loan that it was moving a huge amount of its jobs south of the border to Mexicali, Mexico; its stock has lost 94% of its value in the last four years; and it was being attacked by numerous shareholder lawsuits? How did such an obvious lemon receive more than twice the government handouts that Solyndra received?”
 
 
SunPower Stock Plummets 94%
Green Co. Gets $1.2 Billion Loan
Each SunPower Permanent Job
Costs$80 Million
 
            As you might remember, the Obama administration’s green-tech jobs initiative was supposed to create five million brand new jobs. As you also might know, for almost three years Rajjpuut has been comparing Obama’s idea for America to the green jobs program in Spain that took that country’s economy from #1 in Europe at 4% unemployment to Europe’s second worst in 2010 with a whopping 22% unemployment after a dozen years. In that Spanish study each subsidized green job cost 2.2 real jobs lost from the real economy (five million Obama green jobs would translate to losing eleven million real jobs) and only one Spanish green job in ten proved permanent (translating to only half a million permanent green jobs created in America).  
You’ve also recently heard about Solyndra Corp. getting $535 million in loan guarantees before going bankrupt last month putting 1,100 workers out on the streets; as well as hearing about a grand total of 3,500 green jobs created in almost three years at an average cost of almost $11 million per job.   Well, the embarrassment for Obama’s green tech initiative is growing worse by the day: the new Obamanation and corruption, like Solyndra, also originates in California with another solar panel company SunPower Corp. (SPWR-NASDAQ). 
How exactly did SunPower qualify to receive a $1.28 Billion loan when it was operating $820 million in the red; announcing three weeks before the loan that it was moving a huge amount of its jobs south of the border to Mexicali, Mexico; its stock has lost 94% of its value in the last four years; and it was being attacked by numerous shareholder lawsuits? How did such an obvious lemon receive more than twice the government handouts that Solyndra received?
SunPower’s planned photovoltaic “electricity ranch” project was so deep in the hole that it had announced it was already building its new panel manufacturing plant in Mexicali when the loan came through. Creating jobs in Mexico? When did that become worth nearly $1.3 Billion in government help? Three key voices put SunPower into the “winner” category for Obama’s energy department and got them the loan: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar; California Democratic Representative George R. Miller III; and SunPower lobbyist George Miller IV, the Representative’s son. 
SunPower, operating in a refitted Ford plant in Richmond, CA, was the scene of an October 14, 2010 tour of the plant choreographed by Rep. Miller (the elder) in which its CEO, Thomas H. Werner and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar saluted SunPower’s future. “The path to a clean energy economy starts here, in places like SunPower’s research and development facility,” said Salazar during the tour. Miller (the younger) is accused of drumming up campaign contributions for his father from SunPower. Salazar continued, “The work that comes from these facilities transforms renewable energy ideas into a reality.  When renewable energy companies continue to invest in places like California, the realization of a new energy future is within our reach.”
Rep. Miller the Elder added his own smoke . . . “We’ve worked hard to make renewable energy a priority because it represents America’s future economic growth.  Today, businesses like SunPower are moving forward, hiring 200 people for good clean energy jobs in the East Bay.” According to the SunPower PAC filings in the 2010 midterm election campaign cycle, SunPower donated $15,650 donated to House and Senate candidates, $14,650 went to Democrats, with the top recipient: $4,000 to Sen. Harry Reid, the Democrats Senate Majority Leader. Sunpower also gave Miller, the Elder, $500 and gave his son a job.
            The loan guarantee was earmarked to create 350 temporary and 15 permanent jobs at the California Valley Solar Ranch (CVSR) in San Luis Obispo County. One wonders if the 15 permanent jobs are for panel-dusting janitors. The math works out to $80 million for each SunPower job, about seven times higher than the $10.88 million average cost per Obama green job. How bad an investment is SunPower? The tiny company was listed as the “ninth-most-shorted solar stock in either the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ markets.  Short sellers are betting that a stock price will go down, as opposed to those who buy long, who expect a stock price to up. 
In early December, 2007, SunPower sold for $133 per share. Earlier this month the company was selling for $6.60 per share; it is now selling in a range between $8-$9 per share. The company has been accused of numerous accounting irregularities purportedly to deceive its stockholders; and at present several lawsuits have been filed in California courts relating to allege gross mismanagement, breach of fiduciary responsibility, unjust enrichment and abuse of control.  The first of these lawsuits was in November, 2009, and so far no suit has yet been resolved.
 
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
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B.P = “Beyond Perverted?” or “Bad People?”

The further from the political center you are and the further from the Constitution and common sense you get, the more likely that the political system is going to exploit you. There are countless foolish Democrats, feminists, Black and Hispanic and Jewish organizations who have clearly and dearly sold their souls to Barack Obama. Along the same lines, there are numerous idiotic conservatives who will basically never say a word against a particular corporation or against some of the atrocities that go around under the guise of corporate climate, etc. When it comes to exploitation, we are already seeing many of the Left’s progressive toadies starting to feel political repercussions for their loyalty to the Annointed One Barack Obama and the legions (54% of voters backed him in November, 2008) are paying the price for not doing their homework and not casting informed votes and will do so far into the future if the toadies have their way. Similarly, let us look at the case of British Petroleum. Does B.P. = “Beyond Perverted?” Can any self-respecting conservative give lip service to B.P. as a responsible corporate entity?

Before going forward, in the interest of fairness before searing B.P., let’s say a few very obvious things about the Gulf Oil Spill . . . MMS under Ken Salazar had the responsibility to ensure safety at the Macondo drilling site where Deepwater Horizon was located. They gave B.P. several write-offs on safety requirements required by the 1990 and 1994 beefed up drilling safety regulations. Their inspections failed to detect an inadequate failsafe device (a deadman-shut off switch) which ultimately in concert with other problems caused the explosion. They failed to force B.P. to have the ten fire booms necessary at the site (there were exactly zero fire booms on site). MMS officials and inspectors, in the booze, drugs, sex and offshore drilling revelations scandal was shown to be repeatedly in bed with B.P., Obama promised that and the whole climate at MMS would change immediately when he got into office . . . apparently the MMS inspectors were still NOT doing their jobs. More recently, MMS and Salazar and Obama knew on February 13, (ten days after problems arose) about ten weeks before the fire, explosion and sinking of Deepwater Horizon that there were serious problems at the Macondo site when (as one California University engineer put it) “the whole damned place got within a hair of exploding” . . . so if there were ever a great time for a Moratorium on drilling at that site and that site only . . . that was the moment.

Now let’s look more closely at British Petroleum . . . . If Obama’s cap and trade bill becomes law, B.P. may make more money by doing nothing than it ever did by drilling for oil. They are in bed with Al Gore’s London-based Generation Investment Management and they own about 8% of ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) which in turn recently bought CCX (Chicago Climate eXchange) when the heat from Glen Beck’s probes into this massive conflict of interest scandal began ratcheting upwards. In effect, B.P. is investing its profits to the utter detriment of the oil industry . . . .

B.P. is the single largest Obama-contributing corporation. Since backing Obama in 2008 (this is a no-brainer) was sure to tighten the screws on the oil industry and on loosey- goosey B.P. in particular, this was a highly cynical and corrupt attempt to win a “get out of jail-free pass” from the Annointed One.

British Petroleum, it was recently revealed, has for years been violating the internation sanctions on Iran and been freely dealing with that rogue government.

Just because MMS had the ultimate responsibility to the American people for the safe operation of Deepwater Horizon, B.P. is clearly running a close second in ultimate responsibility. B.P. chose which safety rules to ignore and ignored a batch of them. B.P. had been warned by its own inspectors about not just the one dead-man kill switch but several related problems. B.P. chose to operate with not even one of the required ten fire booms on site. B.P.’s negligence killed eleven men, hurt their stockholders and destroyed the Gulf environmentally and economically.

Shady seat-of-the-pants operations seems to be the B.P. norm. Just type the words “British Petroleum MMS scandal” into your search engine and you’ll get about 72,000 hits and 90% of these hits will be over two years old . . . for which the Bush administration and in a few rare cases the MMS under the Clinton and Bush administrations are at fault.

Right here in Colorado B.P. has been fined $5.2 million for false, inaccurate or misleading production and reports . . . in effect cheating the Ute Indian nation out of royalty money they’d earned. Because of B.P.’s scandalous relationships with MMS auditors it took over three years for the case to come to decision. California Republican Darrell Issa has been pushing for some time to re-open investigations into the scandals involving primarily B.P. and MMS but “something always seems to get in the way.”

Finally, there’s the freeing of Abdul Al Megrahi, the Lockerbie Bomber. BP admitted to pressuring the British Government in 2007 to speed up a prisoner release so that they might gain Libyan area drilling permits. Blood money is all over the hands of B.P. executives and for the 189 Americans who died in Al Megrahi’s terrorist attack, Rajjpuut can only say, this is why blanket protection of corporations like Enron and B.P. without first getting all the facts is a foolish, foolish thing for conservatives to do -- by the way, some men live up to 25 years with prostate cancer.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

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Rajjpuut has a pretty shameful story to tell you. A story involving the progressive (We need to progress beyond that outdated Constitution”) politicians’ cap and trade bill, British Petroleum, Al Gore and Barack Obama and all the “usual suspects tied into the shameless Chicago Climate eXchange (CCX), and an incredibly incompetent Ken Salazar and MMS (oops we mean an incredibly incompetent Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement now run by Ken Salazar). There’s plenty of blame to go around, but after doling out accurately and precisely the obvious and semi-obvious blame . . . it’s time to point out what seems to be a potential conspiracy. But, more on that after we take care of “ordinary business” first.

Barack Obama recently claimed during part of his non-ending speechifying that “the Buck stops here” while then going on to blame the Bush Administration for the Gulf oil spill within the next three minutes. Now, ten weeks and counting since the explosion that killed eleven men and caused this disaster, it’s time enough for settling responsibility and doing so accurately. It’s obvious the British Petroleum explosion and ensuing Gulf of Mexico oil Spill is a horrendous environmental disaster. British Petroleum is getting the vast majority of the criticism but in truth, the federal government’s Minerals Management Service (MMS which has now changed its name to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement --a la Nancy Pelosi changing the name of the “public option” to the “citizen’s option” when she was trying to win Obamacare votes) . . . in any case, MMS signed off on safety requirements, not met, from regulations passed in 1990 and 1994 and in Rajjpuut’s eyes MMS, whose job was to protect us from exactly this sort of thing . . . MMS bears most of the blame for the explosion and fire and leak, here’s why . . . .

Most distressing, ten fire booms were required by law to be on the site when in fact there were zero, none, nil, zip, nada to stop the fire. MMS was so deliriously incompetent that they were in the process of awarding BP a safety award for that very same Macondo Drilling Site where the Deepwater Horizon operated. All this becomes even more troubling when you realize that BP began having problems with the Macondo site and mysterious “cracks” as early as February 3rd of this year. At first they did not seem serious, but by February 13th, ten days later, they were acknowledged to be worth reporting and MMS and Ken Salazar and Barak Obama came into that knowledge then or shortly afterward. The American public was never informed.

One University of California engineer described an incident that then happened shortly after this, this way: “I’m telling you, they almost blew the whole damn rig sky high.” Now, if there were ever a time for MMS to insist upon full implementation of safety measures and to “call a moratorium on drilling” at the Macondo site until everything was 100% copasetic and to call in those ten fire booms . . . this was the time. But this was never done, was it even contemplated? Again, the American public was NOT informed. Salazar has not been called to task for his failures which is what Obama would have done were he a strong leader . . . and Obama has still not informed the American public of the full listing of BP problems ten weeks before the explosion or the full listing of MMS failures. Instead, apparently with his approval MMS has changed its name. Now that’s really taking responsibility, Mr. Prez!

So the explosion and SPILL can be blamed about 52% on MMS and Ken Salazar the Secretary of the Interior; about 48% on British Petroleum and roughly 100% of the cover-up of the early problems and not informing the public, can be attributed to Salazar and Obama. ‘Nuff said, now there’s the matter of the clean-up (before we get to the incredible little ‘potential conspiracy’ that needs to be unearthed for our readers) . . . .

While it’s well-known that Barack Obama has never once taken any responsibility for any problems of his administration, the Buck really does stop with him. How surprising is it that after a fire and an explosion that an oil spill might occur? Here it is on his and Salazar’s watch and absolutely NO PROACTIVITY takes place. From his days studying Kepner-Tregoe Management techniques, Rajjpuut can tell you that the first question out of the mouth of Obama and Salazar needed to be, “An explosion, what else could go wrong?” And they needed to be have Salazar on site and the president informed from the get-go. And within hours when it’s known that oil is leaking . . . a plan to avoid the hideous problems we’re now facing needs to be in place to save the beaches, the jobs and the wildlife as much as possible. Let us put 70% of the blame on Obama (the buck stops there) and 30% upon Salazar for not knowing enough about simple management principles that they could immediately spot that oil on the beaches, and oil ruining fishing and tourism was a very likely potential problem they needed to deal with. Obama has repeatedly said he and his administration was “on it” from day one . . . well, once again “Day One” was actually February 13th and they certainly weren’t “engaged” back then. And “Day One” after the explosion didn’t show any engagement either . . . but, in any case, the real problem comes now down to Barack Obama’s total lack of leadership – total lack.

The unions that are so vital to Barak Obama don’t want foreigners coming in to help the clean up . . . so Barack Obama refuses to waive the Jones Act so that none of the 14 nations (many with extensive clean up expertise and clean up experience) who volunteered their time, effort, manpower and expertise to help with the clean-up have been allowed in to help by Obama himself. Obama, only had to say, “that’s nonsense” we’ll take whatever help we can and we'll take it now and then waive the Jones Act, his precious unions be damned.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has in at least fifteen different instances proved to be severely delaying the clean-up, and blocking the clean up, and blocking the protection of the beaches and wetlands, and blocking removal of the oil from the Gulf itself. What? I hear you saying, the EPA is delaying the clean-up? the EPA is blocking the cleanup? The EPA is blocking protection of the beaches and wetlands? The EPA is blocking removal of oil from the Gulf itself? Yes, that’s exactly what the EPA is doing.

Item: The EPA insisted upon running “environmental impact studies” over several weeks before allowing much clean-up activity to even begin. They're worried about little problems ten years down the road, when Aramageddon approaches?

Item: The EPA has decided that virtually no berms, preventing the oil from reaching the beaches and wetlands can be built.


Item: The EPA has decided that all skimmers which remove the oil must comply with ordinary EPA standards (rather than creating emergency standards in keeping with the emergency situation) and others canNOT skim the oil . . . so by insisting that helpful ships not be allowed to go 10% over ordinary very tight standards they have allowed virtually 100% of the oil mess to stay unskimmed.

Item: the EPA has insisted that 200 skimmers located elsewhere cannot come to the Gulf because they just might be needed in an emergency right where they are now. Let’s see once big accident in 30 years of offshore drilling, what are the odds?

Item: the EPA has not approved of even one from the over 2,000 ideas that have been generated by concerned Americans and American businesses for deep clean-up of the spill on the beaches and wetlands. Some of these ideas are so simple and so cheap (like bringing in hay and domestic plant refuse such as corn stalks to soak up about 70% of their weight in oil) and so effective one can only wonder how much better the situation would be if they’d been in place, say from Day three.

Item: that humongus white boat named the “Whale”, you’ve seen in so many stories about the Gulf, has the capacity in one day to skim up virtually as much oil as has been collected in all the days over the ten plus weeks since the Gulf disaster occurred, but she stays in port because she might put some oil into the water, tsk, tsk and the EPA doesn’t approve . . .
And there’s the Occupational Safety and Health Administration a.k.a. OSHA which is insisting that clean-up workers can only work 20 minutes straight in a given hour. That wouldn’t slow things down, would it? The Coast Guard has gone around forcing skimming ships back to port because they were one life jacket short for the number of workers . . . now that’s beautiful! All this nonsense, bespeaks one sad fact: Neither Barack Obama nor Ken Salazar is a leader. When managing any problem and, in particular, when managing a crisis, the most important things are:

1. Get all the information possible from all the credible sources possible

2. Understand what is going wrong, and what must be done about it

3. Among all the possible goals, understand what is crucial, what is merely necessary, what is just “nice”, and what actually impedes success and progress . . . that is set priorities for goals

4. Communicate that big picture and those priorities

5. Keep monitoring the situation closely

It’s safe to say that Salazar and Obama have missed the boat continuously and are still missing it today when it comes to clean-up and prevention of oil spill related problems for the people of the Gulf. Barack, in particular, has routinely and continuously been saying things that aren’t so, (“on the job from Day One?”) and it appears that his lying is contagious, for example his Feds have said repeatedly that roughly 140 skimmers were at work, but the maximum counted by aerial survey was a mere 31 . . . but let’s get to the big surprise story . . . something that smacks of an awful and terrible conspiracy . . . say it ain’t so, Barack, say it ain’t so . . . well . . . .

The well-known point of view of the environmentalists; the cap and trade activists; the global-warming activists; the green jobs industry (for which Barack Obama promised to provide five million green jobs); and Barack Obama and Al Gore and Maurice Strong and all their scores of Chicago Climate eXchange (CCX) cronies like Joel Rogers and George Soros and that other GS and its people (Yep, Goldman Sachs owns 10% of CCX) and Franklin Raines . . . the key fact is that they’d all be so much, much better off if oil drilling came to a virtual stop and America immediately transformed itself (with government help and most importantly with CCX help) into a green energy country like Spain (unemployment there now 21% but was only 3% in 1997). Obama’s ridiculous six month offshore drilling moratorium is just one expression of their malevolent eyes turned against the oil industry, never mind that immediately instituting those policies would scoot our way of life back to about 1890 . . . . Ah, but now comes the crux of the matter. Guess who else is indirectly involved in CCX and likely to benefit from passage of the cap and trade bill Obama’s pushing right now? Take your wildest guess . . . we’ll wait. Answer below . . .

Ho Hum . . . .

Ho hum . . . .

Do re mi fa sol la ti do! Tah-dah
British Petroleum (BP) owns 7.59% of an entity known as ICE which also owns Obama-Gore-Rogers and Sandors' CCX entity. (No, ICE is NOT the Immigration Control and Enforcement agency) This ICE stands for Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. and is just a cover for CCX, indeed the infamous Richard Sandor (“Carbon Exchange will be a $10 Trillion a year business . . . “) who presides over our little CCX is also on the ICE board of directors -- they’re also in the carbon emissions trading business, of course. ICE is an entity nominally located in London, England near Al Gore’s special little operation Generation Investment Management, you may have heard of it – Gore’s the Biggest of GIM's bigwigs and they are a major owner of CCX, but its real headquarters is Atlanta, GA, USA. So BP is an owner of ICE and BP stands to make a fortune doing NOTHING, not drilling, not supplying oil or any product or service but just for owning a big share of the Carbon-Trading Swindle** we're talking about here. . . hmmmm makes a body shiver, no? It's even conceivable that should cap and trade pass, BP would make more money for doing nothing than they now make drilling for oil. Imagine that!

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

**Yes, George Soros is the second largest investor in Petrobras (Brazilian Oil) and yes they did recently get a several billion dollar loan from the Obama administration to drill at 14,041 feet, but that’s only small potatoes in the scheme of this horrific scam on the American people . . . . here’s the important stuff: Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle his policies would “bankrupt the coal industry” and he’s mentioned on several occasions that his policies would “necessarily make the price of electricity skyrocket.” Actually that was only a half-truth. Here’s the real truth: The United States economy is $15 TRillion worth of goods and services. Mr. Sandor has fairly accurately stated that carbon-trading (selling blue sky, literally) which adds not a single product or service to the U.S. economy will be a $10 TRillion industry. So without adding any benefit, we will, in effect be taxed $10 TRillion giving us a $25 TRillion economy. All prices will rise on average by 67% ($25 TRillion divided by $15 TRillion = 167%) and entities like ICE and CCX and all those who own and run them (including BP) and non-productive (but non-polluting) businesses created by entities like ACORN and the progressive foundations (mentioned here in the next link) will rob all the rest of us and push our standard of living back 120 years:

So the oil spill response hasn't been very efficient and seems to be dithering along, does it, well that might not be so bad for Mr. Obama, Mr. Gore, BP and the usual gang of crooks involved with CCX . . . just thought we'd mention that just in case you missed it because the American mainstream media refuses to cover any news Obama and his gang don’t approve of, here’s what an ultra-liberal but NOT progressive esteemed European source had to say about Climate Gate and "global warming":

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece

So it seems the Gulf oil spill response has been very ineffective with huge amounts of dithering every step of the way? Perhaps that's not consider too bad by BP, Barack Obama, Al Gore and the CCX people?

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Barack Obama's Job-Killing
Western Land Grab Moves Forward
Perhaps, Ken Salazar should turn in his cowboy hat for a Simon Le Gree waxed moustache? Mr. Obama and Mr. Salazar, his Secretary of the Interior, are poised to steal usage of vast tracts of land (13 million acres?) from a dozen western states by placing huge amounts of acreage under stricter federal government control by naming them "national monuments." This dramatic job-killing Bureau of Land Management measure aimed at eliminating private grazing, private mineral development, etc. amounts to a horrific theft of resources and most importantly jobs and income for Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana and one of the grossest single violations of the Constitution’s 10th Amendment yet in a string of unending raids on states’ rights and individual rights raids since Obama became president.

The federal government has long forced an unwelcome “erotic relationship” upon the western states. While public land in some smaller eastern states might amount to a whopping 2% of total land area; and average about 7% in the lands just west of the Mississippi . . . a total of 28% of all the country’s land is owned by the federal government. Today several far western states find over 50% of the land inside their borders is owned and controlled by the feds. States have exercised some right to control usage and gained income, jobs and mineral resources as a right. The recent Obama-Salazar effort will amount to just one more sabotage of the 10th Amendment and betrayal of the individual western states in the name of Big Brother Obama’s Ever-Growing Bigger Government.

Ya'all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

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