BREAKING: They Did It- Deleted Benghazi Emails RECOVERED!

BREAKING: They Did It- Deleted Benghazi Emails RECOVERED!

By Kay Francis | Jul 28, 2017

 

 

The Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak reports this week that; “FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s information technology (IT) administrator, Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman.
Awam, who had access to the emails and files of more than a dozen House Democrats, had desperately tried to get back the smashed hard drives that were seized by the FBI, which contained sensitive information about the 2016 Democrat primary, the General election as well as interactions with Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State, including the 2012 attack in Benghazi – according to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.
A high-level congressional source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, confirmed that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into ‘serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network’ by Imran and three of his relatives, who had access to the emails and files of the more than two dozen House Democrats who employed them on a part-time basis.”
Ben Shapiro sums up what happened then and next:
Retired Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said Thursday on Tucker Carlson Tonight that there is now evidence that then-Democratic National Chairwoman and current Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz used Imran Awan for “malevolent activities” and “manipulative things” against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary race.
Shaffer talked about Awan’s other brothers who worked on Capitol Hill, family members fleeing the country to Pakistan, and that he got paid 3 times the average Congressional I.T. employee.
FOX News reported on bank fraud by one of the brothers, how he double-billed the House of Representatives, and the possibility of “putting sensitive House information on the ‘cloud’ and potentially exposing it to outside sources.”
A federal judge in May ordered the State Department to release another batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server related to the 2012 terror attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, according to Judicial Watch.
Related to the Benghazi emails, Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa reintroduced a key player from the Clinton email scandal, Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal in hearings this week: He asked why Blumenthal did not register as a foreign agent while working as an “off-the-books” intelligence resource for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while simultaneously working on behalf of a foreign entity—a political party in the country of Georgia.
Blumenthal, who served as a senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton between 1997 and 2001, reportedly was prohibited by the Obama administration from taking a job with Clinton’s State Department. Blumenthal, instead, sent Clinton guidance on sensitive diplomatic matters, most notably intelligence information about Libya around the time of the 2012 attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans.
Those memos emerged as part of the release of documents from Clinton’s private email system.
Some background: The congressional investigation into the 2012 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi officially closed and the House committee filed its final report, USA Today reported.

Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State, has stuck to her story that she handed over all of her work-related emails, even though, she wiped her computer with the equivalent of electronic bleach, not a simple cloth, yeah…she has absolutely nothing to hide!
The report severely criticized military, CIA and Obama administration officials for their response as the attacks unfolded and their subsequent explanations to the American people. It accused the government of incompetence at various levels, including a failure to deploy needed military assets, CIA intelligence reports that were “rife with errors,” and misguided planning even in the midst of the violence.
The best part, Hillary holds fast to her claim, even as new batches of emails are recovered. Emails, that were not included in her alleged “complete” batch, she’d originally turned over.
30 emails that had been previously wiped off the face of the earth, were recovered. Unfortunately for Hillary, they were related to Benghazi, but she knew that didn’t she?

FBI investigators recovered 30 emails from Hillary Clinton’s wiped server which discussed Benghazi, government lawyers said in federal court. The disclosure was made during a hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta in a case involving a lawsuit filed by the watchdog group Judicial Watch.
Government lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta Tuesday that an undetermined number of the emails among the 30 were not included in the 55,000 pages previously provided by Clinton to State.
Clinton gave the State Department more than 30,000 of her workrelated emails in Dec. 2014. Of those, the State Department released 296 emails related to Benghazi and Libya. The agency asserted that those were all of the Clinton emails it had pertaining to Benghazi. But the State Department discovered another 925 Benghazi-related emails. Those were handed over to the House Select Committee on Benghazi – but it was revealed that Clinton deleted “several thousand” work-related emails from her server.

Gowdy on Monday called the report the “final, definitive accounting” of the Benghazi attacks.

“The committee is proud to have been able to tell the story of the ingenuity and bravery displayed by our nation’s heroes in Benghazi, who banded together to save one another, when no other help was ever on the way,” Gowdy said.
I like Robert Reese of Winter Haven, Florida’s summation the best:

Giving billions of dollars to Iran, bowing to Chinese leaders, giving Russia’s Vladimir Putin free rein to rule Europe are just a few of many other apologies Obama has made to world leaders. We have listened to excuses and lies for eight years.
Keep your doctors was a lie. Benghazi was a lie. Hillary Clinton’s email was a lie. Money to Iran was a lie. Telling the parents of their sons killed in Benghazi because of a video was a lie. Denying Bill Clinton interfered with the FBI and talked secretly with Loretta Lynch to cover Hillary was a lie.

Hmmm..  Indeed.

Read more: https://ihavethetruth.com/2017/07/28/breaking-they-did-it-deleted-benghazi-emails-recovered/#ixzz4oS6quXBV

A LIST OF OBAMA’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT OF THE USA

A LIST OF OBAMA’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT OF THE USA

Quit trashing Obama’s accomplishments. He has done more than any other President before him. Here is a list of his impressive accomplishments:

• First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
• First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
• First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.
• First President to violate the War Powers Act.
• First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
• First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
• First President to spend a trillion dollars on “shovel-ready” jobs when there was no such thing as “shovel-ready” jobs.
• First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
• First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
• First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
• First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
• First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to resign.
• First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.
• First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation.
• First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
• First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
• First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.
• First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.
• First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
• First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
• First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).
• First President to fire an inspector general of AmeriCorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
• First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.
• First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.
• First President to golf more than 150 separate times in his five years in office.
• First President to hide his birth, medical, educational and travel records.
• First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
• First President to go on multiple “global apology tours” and concurrent “insult our friends” tours.
• First President to go on over 17 lavish vacations, in addition to date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayers.
• First President to have personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
• First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.
• First President to fly in a personal trainer from Chicago at least once a week at taxpayer expense.
• First President to repeat the Holy Quran and tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth
• First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs Arizona).
• First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they “volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences.”
• Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion. (Thank God he didn’t get away with THIS one.)
• First president to allow Iran to inspect their own facilities.
• First president to have blood on his hands from Benghazi to the assassinations of several police officers.
• First president to trade 5 terrorist for a traitor
• First president to facilitate the Iranians to acquire nuclear weapons.
• First president to light up the White House in rainbow colors to honor men that lust after other men’s rear ends.
• First president to put young children in danger by forcing states to allow men in women’s restroom and showers.
• First president to marry a man.
• First president to smoke crack cocaine in the White House.

I could go on for days but you get the point.

NPR: AT LEAST 25 MILLION DEAD AND FRAUDULENT “REGISTERED VOTERS” IN 2016

NPR: AT LEAST 25 MILLION DEAD AND FRAUDULENT “REGISTERED VOTERS” IN 2016

July 31, 2017

INFOWARS| Trump proven right: millions of dead and invalid voters not included in study showing 800,000 illegals for Hillary!

A study revealing that over 800,000 non-citizens voted for Hillary Clinton doesn’t account for dead and fraudulent voters, which accounted for over 25 million “registered voters” during the 2012 presidential election – and little has changed since then.
Illegal alien voters combined with dead and “multiple state” voters could easily explain Clinton’s “popular vote” margin over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, especially considering that her “victory” came from Democratic-controlled counties known for illegal immigration and loose voter ID laws such as in New York and California.
“A report by the Pew Center on the States finds that more than 1.8 million dead people are currently registered to vote, and 24 million registrations are either invalid or inaccurate,” NPR reported in 2012, which is ironic given how NPR is heavily controlled by Democrats.
And many of the dead, registered voters somehow keep voting Democrat from beyond the grave, most recently in Philadelphia, Penn.and Colorado. It’s also worth noting that the U.S. population has increased since 2012, meaning that there’s likely more dead and invalid voters than before.
“…The Pew study found that almost 3 million people are registered to vote in more than one state,” NPR added.
That’s because when a new resident registers to vote in a state, officials usually never bother to tell his former state about the change in voter residency.
Under the “catch and release” immigration program by the Obama administration, illegal aliens were routinely given bus tickets to travel to other states by immigration officials, so it was theoretically possible for non-citizens to register to vote in a border country illegally, then register to vote in another state after their taxpayer-funded bus dropped them off.
Clinton won most of the 163 most populous counties in the US that account for half of the total votes in the election, including dense urban areas in New York and California, yet she only won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes, which reveals the lack of enthusiasm voters had for her in comparison to Trump – and that Democrats would have depended more on illegal votes.
A portion of the 24 million invalid voter registrations combined with a portion of the 1.8 million dead voters and the over 800,000 known illegal voters could explain the difference of 2.8 million votes, and it’s worth noting that the 800,000 figure could be a low, conservative estimate.
That said, a popular vote victory is meaningless; if the president was elected by popular vote, then both Trump and Clinton would have campaigned in entirely different states because only densely population regions of the U.S. would decide who would become president.
Without the electoral college, the United States of America would be reduced to the United States of New York and California, with 48 other vassal states.
Yet notice how Clinton campaigned in other, less populated states.  They knew the popular vote was meaningless ahead of the election.
However, the popular vote is useful as a barometer for voter fraud since the most populous countries are also the most susceptible to election tampering by illegal, invalid and dead voters.

It’s absolute fantasy to think we can move to all electric cars without fossil fuels | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

It’s absolute fantasy to think we can move to all electric cars without fossil fuels | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

It’s absolute fantasy to think we can move to all electric cars without fossil fuels

July 30, 2017

By Paul Homewood


A good summary from Booker on the electric car saga:

To the few of us who have long been trying to follow the Government’s woefully unreported plans for Britain’s energy future, the news of the switch in 2040 to electric cars was hardly a surprise. But the full implications of this drive to phase out virtually all use of fossil fuels in the coming decades have not yet begun to sink in. And there are many more shocks to come. Brushed aside in the daylong blizzard of propaganda to which we were treated in favour of all-electric cars, there are of course many practical reasons these have not caught on.


Despite hundreds of millions of pounds in taxpayer bribes to persuade motorists to buy them, they make up only 0.3 per cent of the 31.7 million cars on our roads. It didn’t take long for the crucial question to be asked: where is all the extra 30 gigawatts (GW) of electricity needed to charge these cars to come from, when this would add nearly 50 per cent to our current peak electricity demand, half of it still supplied by the fossil fuels the Government wants to eliminate?
The answer from Michael Gove, our Environment Secretary, was that it would come from wind and nuclear power. One estimate suggested that to provide 30GW from wind would require 10,000 new turbines, on top of the 7,613 we already have. But this was based on the familiar mistake of confusing the full capacity of these turbines with their actual output which, thanks to the wind’s intermittency, is less than a third as much. To achieve 30GW of output would thus require 100GW of capacity, bringing the necessary number of new turbines to 30-40,000, five times as many as now, each taking six months to install. And on windless days these could not charge the batteries of many electric cars.



Are we really going to more than double the number of wind turbines in Britain? Credit: Ashley Cooper/Alamy Stock Photo

As for nuclear, to produce 30GW would require us to spend a minimum of £200bn on nine more nuclear power stations the size of Hinkley Point, although this itself is unlikely to be built before 2030 (if ever); and no more are yet firmly in the pipeline. To say that Mr Gove and his colleagues are living in cloud- cuckoo land is the most generous of understatements.
But so is the most recent forecast by National Grid, which talks blithely of how by 2030 we will need 146GW of capacity to meet all our electricity needs, of which they claim nearly half will come from wind and solar, although this is based on the same confusion between capacity and actual output, which would be barely 14GW. Scraping around desperately to justify its 146GW figure, National Grid also assumes that by 2030 we will still need 18GW from gas-fired power stations to provide instantly available backup for when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
But this will be nothing like enough to close the gap when we have no more coal-fired power stations, and many fewer than now using gas. Amazingly, National Grid also anticipates that another 18GW will be supplied by interconnectors from other countries, six times more than now. But this will be at a time when every other European country is struggling to meet the EU’s target of a 60 per cent cut in CO2 emissions by 2040. I said there were many more shocks to come, not least the Government’s plan that, after 2030, we will not only be switching to electricity for our transport system but also for all our heating and cooking.

A Parliamentary report, based on an Imperial College study, estimates that this will boost our electricity needs to 350GW, nearly six times higher than our current peak demand. This is all such insanity that eventually the penny will drop that it is leading us to a complete national catastrophe. But as we saw from last week’s propaganda- fest, that day is still a long way off.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/29/absolute-fantasy-think-can-move-electric-cars-without-fossil/

The Appalling Delusion of 100 Percent Renewables, Exposed – STOP THESE THINGS

The Appalling Delusion of 100 Percent Renewables, Exposed 

The Appalling Delusion of 100 Percent Renewables, Exposed

July 31, 2017 by stopthesethings 1 Comment

And you will find grid-scale battery storage just over there.

For STT followers Robert Bryce needs no introduction. Here he is exposing the delusional belief that whole nations can be entirely powered by sunshine and breezes.
The Appalling Delusion of 100 Percent Renewables, Exposed
 
National Review
Robert Bryce
24 June 2017
The National Academy of Science refutes Mark Jacobson’s dream that our economy can run exclusively on ‘green’ energy..
The idea that the U.S. economy can be run solely with renewable energy — a claim that leftist politicians, environmentalists, and climate activists have endlessly promoted — has always been a fool’s errand. And on Monday, the National Academy of Sciences published a blockbuster paper by an all-star group of American scientists that says exactly that.
The paper, by Chris Clack, formerly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado Boulder, and 20 other top scientists, appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It decimates the work of Mark Jacobson, the Stanford engineering professor whose wildly exaggerated claims about the economic and technical viability of a 100 percent renewable-energy system has made him a celebrity (he appeared on David Letterman’s show in 2013) and the hero of Sierra Clubbers, Bernie Sanders, and Hollywood movie stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio.
Jacobson became the darling of the green Left even though his work was based on Enron accounting, alternative facts, and technology hopium. Nevertheless, his claims were politically popular, and his academic papers routinely sailed through peer review.
In 2015, Jacobson published a paper, co-written with Mark Delucchi, a research engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper, which claimed to offer “a low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem” with 100 percent renewables, went on to win the Cozzarelli Prize, an annual award handed out by the National Academy. A Stanford website said that Jacobson’s paper was one of six chosen by “the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from the more than 3,000 research articles published in the journal in 2015.”
The fact that the National Academy would bestow such a prestigious award on such weak scholarship greatly embarrass the Academy, which gets 85 percent of its funding from the federal government.
In their scathing takedown of Jacobson, Clack and his co-authors — who include Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, Dan Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley, former EPA Science Advisory Board chairman Granger Morgan, and Jane Long of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — concluded that Jacobson’s 2015 paper contained “numerous shortcomings and errors.” The paper used “invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions.” Those errors “render it unreliable as a guide about the likely cost, technical reliability, or feasibility of a 100 percent wind, solar, and hydroelectric power system.”
Among the biggest errors — and one that should force the Academy to withdraw Jacobson’s 2015 paper — is that Jacobson and Delucchi overstated by roughly a factor of ten the ability of the United States to increase its hydropower output. Furthermore, the paper ignores two key issues: electricity storage and land use. Jacobson claimed that the U.S. can store energy underground or store it in the form of hydrogen. Clack and his co-authors wrote that “there are no electric storage systems available today that can affordably and dependably store the vast amounts of energy needed over weeks to reliably satisfy demand using expanded wind and solar power generation alone.”
But the most obvious flaw in Jacobson’s scheme involves his years-long refusal to admit the massive amount of land his proposal would require; his myriad acolytes have repeated his nonsensical claims. For instance, last year, Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org and one of America’s highest-profile climate activists, wrote an August 2016 cover story for The New Republic in which he lauded Jacobson’s work and repeated Jacobson’s erroneous claim that his all-renewable program would need only “about four-tenths of one percent of America’s landmass.” Clack et al. correct the record by pointing out that Jacobson’s scheme would require “nearly 500,000 square kilometers, which is roughly 6 percent of the continental United States, and more than 1,500 square meters of land for wind turbines for each American.”
In other words, Clack found that Jacobson understated the amount of land needed for his all-renewable dystopia by a factor of 15. But even that understates the amount of territory needed. Jacobson’s plan requires nearly 2.5 terawatts (2.5 trillion watts) of wind-energy capacity, with the majority of that amount onshore. The Department of Energy has repeatedly stated that the footprint of wind energy, known as its capacity density, is 3 watts per square meter. And so 2.5 trillion watts divided by 3 watts per square meter equals 833 billion square meters (or 833,000 square kilometers): That’s a territory nearly twice the size of California.
The idea of using two California-size pieces of territory — and covering them with hundreds of thousands of wind turbines — is absurd on its face. And yet, Jacobson’s 100 percent renewable scenario has become energy gospel among left-leaning politicians. For instance, in January, New York governor Andrew Cuomo touted his renewable-energy goals and declared that his state was not going to stop “until we reach 100 percent renewable because that’s what a sustainable New York is really all about.” In February, 54 Massachusetts lawmakers — representing more than a quarter of the members of the state legislature — signed on to a bill that would require the Bay State to get 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050.
The bill (S. 1849) says that the goal is to “ultimately eliminate our use of fossil fuels and other polluting and dangerous forms of energy.” In April, U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.), and Cory Booker (D., N.J.) introduced the 100 by ’50 Act, which calls on the United States to be completely free of fossil fuels by 2050. The bill, available here, is a laundry list of terrible ideas, including a “carbon duty” on any foreign-made goods that are made by energy-intensive industries. And as is standard with all-renewable promoters, the bill doesn’t contain a single mention of the word “nuclear” even though some of the world’s highest-profile climate scientists, including James Hansen, have said nuclear must be included in any effort to reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions.
The 100 by ’50 legislation was — of course — endorsed by a who’s who of all-renewable cultists, including actor Mark Ruffalo; Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club; and May Boeve, the executive director of 350.org. Jacobson’s response to the Clack paper (and to the ensuing Twitter storm attacking his work) would have made Captain Queeg proud. He has claimed, among other things, that his paper contains no errors; that Clack and the other authors are simply shilling for the nuclear and hydrocarbon sectors; and that the Department of Energy’s capacity data on wind energy (3 watts per square meter) is wrong and that, instead, the figure should be 9 watts per square meter.
The late David J. C. MacKay, a physics professor at the University of Cambridge, would have been horrified.
In 2008, MacKay published Sustainable Energy — wthout the Hot Air, one of the first academic books to look at the land-use impacts of renewables. MacKay, who recognized that nuclear must be part of any effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, also calculated that wind energy needs about 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site. Three years ago, shortly before his death at age 46 from cancer, MacKay talked with British author and writer Mark Lynas about his work. During that interview, MacKay called the idea of relying solely on renewables an “appalling delusion.”
The punch line here is clear: The Clack paper proves that it’s well past time for the green Left and their political allies to quit claiming that we don’t need hydrocarbons or nuclear energy. Alas, it appears they prefer appalling delusions about renewables to real science and simple math.

White House Holds Weekly Bible Study; Lamestream Media Definitely Won't Report This! 

White House Holds Weekly Bible Study; Lamestream Media Definitely Won’t Report This!

Wayne Dupree

According to Breitbart, it’s been close to 100 years since a bible study was held at the executive branch of the government but it’s a welcome approach that many will appreciate.

Many Christians have been praying for President Trump and his administration amid all the mainstream media attacks, allegations, accusations, and innuendos. A regular human that didn’t commit to serve and follow Jesus Christ would have succumbed to the atmosphere and either quit, resigned or allowed the media, Democrats to see how weak they were.
This administration has turned to God to fight their battles. Members of Trump’s cabinet have joined to pray God’s instruction on how to deal with certain issues, and if it were not for blogs like this one, you might not even know about it.
Source: Breitbart

Bible study regulars include Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Agriculture Secretary Sunny Perdue, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
“It’s the best Bible study that I’ve ever taught in my life,” Drollinger said. “They are so teachable; they’re so noble; they’re so learned.

Imagine if Hillary Clinton had won the election, they might be having spirit dinners with John Podesta leading the way.

Drollinger, a former NBA player, founded Capitol Ministries “with the idea that if you change the hearts of lawmakers, then their Christian world view will guide them to make good policies,” CBN News reported.

Drollinger has started Bible studies in 40 state capitols and a number of foreign capitols. He also teaches weekly Bible studies for members of the the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.
And now he’s holding one with the executive branch, which Drollinger said has not happened in at least 100 years.
Drollinger said Pence has promised to attend, schedule allowing.
“Mike Pence has uncompromising biblical tenacity and he has a loving tone about him that’s not just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” Drollinger said.
Drollinger said he doesn’t think the spiritual awakening taking place in the White House isn’t just a coincidence.
“I just praise God for them,” Drollinger said. “And I praise God for Mike Pence, who I think with Donald Trump chose great people to lead our nation.”

After reading this, what do you think about the future of our country? Does this light a fire of hope under your feet? Share your comments below and add this to your Facebook/Twitter page.

Top 1% pay nearly half of federal income taxes

Top 1% pay nearly half of federal income taxes

Robert Frank | @robtfrank

Tuesday, 14 Apr 2015 | 6:00 AM ETCNBC.com

The high share of taxes paid by one-percenters is due partly to their share of income, but also to the progressive tax code, in which higher earners generally pay higher rates. The one percenters' share of taxes is 2.7 times their share of income in taxes.

There is no comparable historical data for the one-percenter tax payments prior to 2012. Yet the Congressional Budget Office, using a different calculation than the Tax Policy Center, found that the share of federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent of earners has increased dramatically since 1979 as the one-percenter's share of earnings has also gone up.
In 1979, the top one percenters earned 8.9 percent of pretax income and paid 18 percent of federal income taxes. In 2011, the top 1 percent earned 14.6 percent of income and paid 25.4 percent in 2011 of federal income taxes.
The CBO said that the average federal income tax rate paid by the top 1 percent has also dropped since 1979—falling from 22.7 percent in 1979 to 20.3 percent in 2011.

Chinese rich under pressure   Wednesday, 8 Apr 2015 | 6:51 AM ET | 03:46

Whatever the measure, the numbers show just how dependent the U.S. has become on the earnings of the wealthy. The U.S. is more dependent on the income tax than other countries, with 37 percent of total government revenue coming from the income tax, compared with 24 percent in other countries. Those countries depend more on consumption taxes and other sources of revenue.
With U.S. income taxes more dependent on the wealthy—and those incomes more dependent on the stock market—the U.S. government should hope for a continued rise in stocks to keep its coffers full.

Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist Drops Major TRUTH BOMB About Transgenders… Liberals Are FURIOUS

Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist Drops Major TRUTH BOMB About Transgenders… Liberals Are FURIOUS

Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and former psychiatrist–in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital has just dropped a bomb on Obama, liberals and transgenders.

Dr. McHugh, who has studied transgendered people for 40 years, said it is a scientific fact that “transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men.”
Michael W. Chapman at CNS News has more:

All such people, Dr. McHugh explained in an article for The Witherspoon Institute,  “become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they ‘identify.’”
Dr. McHugh, who was psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital for 26 years, the medical institute that had initially pioneered sex-change surgery – and later ceased the practice – stressed that the cultural meme, or idea that “one’s sex is fluid and a matter of choice” is extremely damaging, especially to young people.

The idea that one’s sexuality is a feeling and not a biological fact “is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges,” said Dr. McHugh in his article.
“Both the state and federal governments are actively seeking to block any treatments that can be construed as challenging the assumptions and choices of transgendered youngsters.”
He points out what senior adviser to President Obama, Valerie Jarrett said- “As part of our dedication to protecting America’s youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors.”
Think about that for a second. Obama doesn’t want these kids to get the help they need and wants the government to control what happens. It’s insane.
Dr. McHugh says those who want to change their gender suffer from a psychological condition rather than a biological matter.
“In fact, gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder,” said McHugh.
“Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction,” he said.
Michele Hickford at Allen B. West has more:
Perhaps the most tragic part of this new trend is the consequence. After the immense pain and hardship of transitioning, a high percentage of transgendered individuals eventually take their own lives.
When “the tumult and shouting dies,” McHugh continued, “it proves not easy nor wise to live in a counterfeit sexual garb. The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over 30 years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest.”
“Ten to 15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers,” said McHugh.
I will probably get hammered by our liberal readers for apparently “trivializing” this issue, but here I go anyway…
When I was growing up in the ‘70’s there was a TV commercial for Chiffon margarine, which apparently tasted just like butter…but it’s not. The very last (and very famous) line from the commercial was “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”
Apparently that is still the case.
Spot on.
Folks, Obama has done so much damage to our nation that it’s going to take one hell of a strong president to get our country back on track.
The only person that can pull us out of this is Donald Trump.
God Bless.

Huckabee calls for repeal of 17th Amendment after healthcare failure

Huckabee calls for repeal of 17th Amendment after healthcare failure

By John Bowden - 07/28/17 07:26 AM EDT 

 

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Friday called for the repeal of the 17th Amendment and the return to senators selected by state legislatures after the Senate GOP's effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare died in a late-night vote.

The 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913 and established the popular election of senators. Previously, senators were elected by state legislatures.
The Senate's "skinny repeal" of ObamaCare failed late Thursday night by a vote of 51-49. The bill would have repealed major parts of the Affordable Care Act, including the individual mandate and would have defunded Planned Parenthood. The vote failed after three Republican senators, John McCain (Ariz.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine), defected and voted against the bill.
“We must now return to the correct way of legislating and send the bill back to committee, hold hearings, receive input from both sides of the aisle, heed the recommendations of nation’s governors, and produce a bill that finally delivers affordable health care for the American people,” McCain said in a statement after the vote.
With the latest vote's failure, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said said "it is time to move on" for the GOP.
"What we tried to accomplish for the American people was the right thing for the country," McConnell said early Friday. "I think the American people are going to regret that we couldn't find another way forward."
Huckabee slammed on Twitter the Republicans who sunk the repeal plans:

Articles: Why Replace Obamacare with Anything?

Articles: Why Replace Obamacare with Anything?

Why Replace Obamacare with Anything?

By Claire Hawks

Obamacare, like almost everything the government is in charge of, is undoubtedly a disaster and needs to be repealed.  Why should it be replaced with anything?  We already have an extensive Medicaid program, which was supposedly designed to provide a safety net for those unable to afford insurance.  Like most if not all government programs, it is rife with fraud and abuses. 
Medicare is another disaster.  The majority of people think this is a free government program that pays 80% of everything.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Seniors pay for Medicare, and Medicare pays for 80% of what Medicare thinks you should have been billed.  For example, if your doctor charges you $200 for an annual exam, Medicare might decide that you should have been charged only $100, and it will pay 80%, or $80, of that amount.  The Medicare enrollee is left with a bill for $120.  That's why almost all seniors have what is called "gap" insurance, a secondary insurance, which can be costly but pays most or all of the gap left between what you are billed and what Medicare pays.  The same holds true for all medical testing and hospitalizations. 
One of the popular narratives for replacing Obamacare is that so many people were uninsured before its passage and need to be insured.  What I haven't heard is who these people are.  I know that a good portion of them are young people who choose not to have health insurance.  Since when did the government decide how a person should live his life?  And should it?
Another portion are those with pre-existing conditions.  Unless someone was born with congenital defects, these people are also mostly those who chose not to have insurance until they acquired a medical problem; were without insurance; and found that insurance, once they had this problem, was very costly.  There may be some companies, if you are going from job to job, who will not cover you if you have a pre-existing condition, but I'm not aware of any.
Compare health insurance with car insurance.  If you feel you are an incredibly safe driver and choose not to have any, or adequate, insurance, what happens if you are in a serious and costly collision?  It certainly isn't the responsibility of the government to bail you out for your poor choice.  And if you try, after this costly collision, to increase your auto insurance or get insurance, you will probably find yourself in a high-risk pool paying incredible amounts of money.  No one expects the American taxpayers to pay for your poor decisions. 
So why should the American taxpayers pay for your poor medical decisions?  They shouldn't. 
Another thing touted as popular is keeping children on their parents' policy until they are 26 years old.  This sounds good, but 26-year-olds are not children.  By all indices, they are adults.  Yes, a lot of them are still living at home – but why?  What are they doing with their money?  Looking at the adult children of people I know, they are having a wonderful time, spending their money on cars I can't afford at 72 because I realize that Medicare pays very little of hospital bills and I need a good secondary insurance, clothes, and miscellaneous other things.  These young people are the ones who probably, when they turn 26, won't get their own insurance.  Again, should the taxpayers be responsible for their poor decisions and priorities?
It seems to be all about priorities.  There are certain things in life that should be a priority.  Medical insurance should be one of those.  There's an idea for a mandatory high school class – what is a priority and how to establish those priorities.  But that would be a sensible, worthwhile class and definitely not part of the liberal agenda.
Another reason against government health care is that, legally, no one is ever turned away from a hospital based on ability to pay.  I spent years working in information technology with hospital accounting.  I know not only how many millions of dollars in only free care were provided by the hospital, but how many millions of dollars were written off as bad debts and how many debts were worked out with patients for a nominal monthly charge – with no late fees or charges.  If a hospital accepts Medicare and Medicaid, it is required to provide a certain amount of "charitable" care or risk losing its funding from these sources.  Not only that, but every hospital I have been associated with has staff who specifically assist people who are uninsured to apply for Medicaid.
There is no magic formula for deciding what any individual needs in health insurance, just as there isn't a magic formula for deciding what type of auto insurance an individual needs.  This is a personal decision and should be made by the persons directly involved – not the government and definitely not by Congress, whose members live in their elitist bubble and have a wonderful health care program and know almost nothing about medical insurance.
Government insurance is just another step toward socialized medicine, where the government will be deciding not only what type and amount of insurance you need, but how you should be cared for.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/07/why_replace_obamacare_with_anything.html#ixzz4o9ptAfIR
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Town of Greece v. Galloway :: 572 US __

Town of Greece v. Galloway :: 572 US _

Town of Greece v. Galloway
572 US ___ (2014)

 

Since 1999, Greece, New York has opened monthly town board meetings with a roll call, recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, and a prayer by a local clergy member. While the prayer program is open to all creeds, nearly all local congregations are Christian. Citizens alleged violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by preferring Christians over other prayer givers and by sponsoring sectarian prayers and sought to limit the town to “inclusive and ecumenical” prayers that referred only to a “generic God.” The district court entered summary judgment upholding the prayer practice. The Second Circuit reversed, holding that some aspects of the prayer program, viewed in their totality by a reasonable observer, conveyed the message that the town endorsed Christianity.  A divided Supreme Court reversed, upholding the town’s practice. Legislative prayer, while religious in nature, has long been understood as compatible with the Establishment Clause. Most states have also had a practice of legislative prayer and there is historical precedent for opening local legislative meetings with prayer. Any test of such a practice must acknowledge that it was accepted by the Framers and has withstood the scrutiny of time and political change. The inquiry is whether the town of Greece's practice fits within that tradition. To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force legislatures sponsoring prayers and courts deciding these cases to act as censors of religious speech, thus involving government in religious matters to a greater degree than under the town’s current practice of neither editing nor approving prayers in advance nor criticizing their content after the fact. It is doubtful that consensus could be reached as to what qualifies as a generic or nonsectarian prayer. The First Amendment is not a “majority rule” and government may not seek to define permissible categories of religious speech. The relevant constraint derives from the prayer’s place at the opening of legislative sessions, where it is meant to lend gravity  and reflect values long part of the Nation’s heritage. Absent a pattern of prayers that over time denigrate, proselytize, or betray an impermissible government purpose, a challenge based only on the content of a particular prayer will not likely establish a constitutional violation. If the town maintains a policy of nondiscrimination, the Constitution does not require it to search beyond its borders for non-Christian prayer givers to achieve religious balance. 

Read more

Opinion PDF Annotation

• Syllabus  | 
• Opinion  | 
• Concurrence (Clarence Thomas)  | 
• Concurrence (Samuel A. Alito, Jr.)  | 
• Dissent (Stephen G. Breyer)  | 
• Dissent (Elena Kagan)

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321 .
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
TOWN OF GREECE, NEW YORK v. GALLOWAY et al.
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the second circuit
No. 12–696. Argued November 6, 2013—Decided May 5, 2014
Since 1999, the monthly town board meetings in Greece, New York, have opened with a roll call, a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, and a prayer given by clergy selected from the congregations listed in a local directory. While the prayer program is open to all creeds, nearly all of the local congregations are Christian; thus, nearly all of the participating prayer givers have been too. Respondents, citizens who attend meetings to speak on local issues, filed suit, alleging that the town violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by preferring Christians over other prayer givers and by sponsoring sectarian prayers. They sought to limit the town to “inclusive and ecumenical” prayers that referred only to a “generic God.” The District Court upheld the prayer practice on summary judgment, finding no impermissible preference for Christianity; concluding that the Christian identity of most of the prayer givers reflected the predominantly Christian character of the town’s congregations, not an official policy or practice of discriminating against minority faiths; finding that the First Amendment did not require Greece to invite clergy from congregations beyond its borders to achieve religious diversity; and rejecting the theory that legislative prayer must be nonsectarian. The Second Circuit reversed, holding that some aspects of the prayer program, viewed in their totality by a reasonable observer, conveyed the message that Greece was endorsing Christianity.
Held: The judgment is reversed.
681 F. 3d 20, reversed.
     Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part II–B, concluding that the town’s prayer practice does not violate the Establishment Clause. Pp. 6–18.
     (a) Legislative prayer, while religious in nature, has long been understood as compatible with the Establishment Clause. Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S. 783 . In Marsh, the Court concluded that it was not necessary to define the Establishment Clause’s precise boundary in order to uphold Nebraska’s practice of employing a legislative chaplain because history supported the conclusion that the specific practice was permitted. The First Congress voted to appoint and pay official chaplains shortly after approving language for the First Amendment, and both Houses have maintained the office virtually uninterrupted since then. See id., at 787–789, and n. 10. A majority of the States have also had a consistent practice of legislative prayer. Id., at 788–790, and n. 11. There is historical precedent for the practice of opening local legislative meetings with prayer as well. Marsh teaches that the Establishment Clause must be interpreted “by reference to historical practices and understandings.” County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U. S. 573 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). Thus, any test must acknowledge a practice that was accepted by the Framers and has withstood the critical scrutiny of time and political change. The Court’s inquiry, then, must be to determine whether the prayer practice in the town of Greece fits within the tradition long followed in Congress and the state legislatures. Pp. 6–9.
     (b) Respondents’ insistence on nonsectarian prayer is not consistent with this tradition. The prayers in Marsh were consistent with the First Amendment not because they espoused only a generic theism but because the Nation’s history and tradition have shown that prayer in this limited context could “coexis[t] with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.” 463 U. S., at 786. Dictum in County of Allegheny suggesting that Marsh permitted only prayer with no overtly Christian references is irreconcilable with the facts, holding, and reasoning of Marsh, which instructed that the “content of the prayer is not of concern to judges,” provided “there is no indication that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief.” 463 U. S., at 794–795. To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures sponsoring prayers and the courts deciding these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech, thus involving government in religious matters to a far greater degree than is the case under the town’s current practice of neither editing nor approving prayers in advance nor criticizing their content after the fact. Respondents’ contrary arguments are unpersuasive. It is doubtful that consensus could be reached as to what qualifies as a generic or nonsectarian prayer. It would also be unwise to conclude that only those religious words acceptable to the majority are permis-sible, for the First Amendment is not a majority rule and government may not seek to define permissible categories of religious speech. In rejecting the suggestion that legislative prayer must be nonsectarian, the Court does not imply that no constraints remain on its content. The relevant constraint derives from the prayer’s place at the opening of legislative sessions, where it is meant to lend gravity to the occasion and reflect values long part of the Nation’s heritage. From the Nation’s earliest days, invocations have been addressed to assemblies comprising many different creeds, striving for the idea that people of many faiths may be united in a community of tolerance and devotion, even if they disagree as to religious doctrine. The prayers delivered in Greece do not fall outside this tradition. They may have invoked, e.g., the name of Jesus, but they also invoked universal themes, e.g., by calling for a “spirit of cooperation.” Absent a pattern of prayers that over time denigrate, proselytize, or betray an impermissible government purpose, a challenge based solely on the content of a particular prayer will not likely establish a constitutional violation. See 463 U. S., at 794–795. Finally, so long as the town maintains a policy of nondiscrimination, the Constitution does not require it to search beyond its borders for non-Christian prayer givers in an effort to achieve religious balancing. Pp. 9–18.
     Justice Kennedy, joined by The Chief Justice and Justice Alito, concluded in Part II–B that a fact-sensitive inquiry that considers both the setting in which the prayer arises and the audience to whom it is directed shows that the town is not coercing its citizens to engage in a religious observance. The prayer opportunity is evaluated against the backdrop of a historical practice showing that prayer has become part of the Nation’s heritage and tradition. It is presumed that the reasonable observer is acquainted with this tradition and understands that its purposes are to lend gravity to public proceedings and to acknowledge the place religion holds in the lives of many private citizens. Furthermore, the principal audience for these invocations is not the public, but the lawmakers themselves. And those lawmakers did not direct the public to participate, single out dissidents for opprobrium, or indicate that their decisions might be influenced by a person’s acquiescence in the prayer opportunity. Respondents claim that the prayers gave them offense and made them feel excluded and disrespected, but offense does not equate to coercion. In contrast to Lee v. Weisman, 505 U. S. 577 , where the Court found coercive a religious invocation at a high school graduation, id., at 592–594, the record here does not suggest that citizens are dissuaded from leaving the meeting room during the prayer, arriving late, or making a later protest. That the prayer in Greece is delivered during the opening ceremonial portion of the town’s meeting, not the policymaking portion, also suggests that its purpose and effect are to acknowledge religious leaders and their institutions, not to exclude or coerce nonbelievers. Pp. 18–23.
     Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia as to Part II, agreed that the town’s prayer practice does not violate the Establishment Clause, but concluded that, even if the Establishment Clause were properly incorporated against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, the Clause is not violated by the kind of subtle pressures respondents allegedly suffered, which do not amount to actual legal coercion. The municipal prayers in this case bear no resemblance to the coercive state establishments that existed at the founding, which exercised government power in order to exact financial support of the church, compel religious observance, or control religious doctrine. Pp. 1–8.
     Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part II–B. Roberts, C. J., and Alito, J., joined the opinion in full, and Scalia and Thomas, JJ., joined except as to Part II–B. Alito, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Scalia, J., joined. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Scalia, J., joined as to Part II. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined.

News - The Left’s Misleading Green Jobs Claims

News - The Left’s Misleading Green Jobs Claims

The Left’s Misleading Green Jobs Claims

July 12, 2017

By H. Sterling Burnett

 

Renewable energy workers produce relatively little power.

One of the main reasons President Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement is the treaty is a “bad deal for America.” Among many other problems, it would cost a significant number of jobs. In support of his claim, Mr. Trump cited a study by NERA Economic Consulting that estimates if the United States were to meet its carbon-dioxide emissions reduction obligations under the Paris climate agreement, it would cost the economy nearly $3 trillion and the United States would lose 6.5 million industrial jobs by 2040, including 3.1 million in the manufacturing sector.
Since Mr. Trump’s announcement, many advocates for staying in the treaty have either questioned the president’s claim about job losses or said green-energy technologies, especially solar, are engines of job creation that would benefit if the United States were to stay in the Paris agreement. They have argued there are now more jobs in the solar segments of the electric power industry than in the coal, natural gas and oil segments combined.
This claim is true — at least, in a limited sense. In absolute numbers, the U.S. Department of Energy reports solar power employed 43 percent of the electric power generation sector’s workforce in 2016, employing more than 374,000 workers who construct, assemble, sell or install solar panels. Fossil fuels combined accounted for just 22 percent (187,000) of the jobs directly tied to generating electric power.
Although there are a significant number of solar-related jobs, the often-repeated figures above are very misleading for numerous reasons, of which I’ll name a few.
First, these numbers leave out the mining jobs associated with coal production and the jobs related to the production of oil and gas. The Energy Department report notes fuel production and electricity generation combined directly employed 1.9 million workers in 2016, with 55 percent, or 1.1 million jobs, related to fossil fuels. This also ignores the thousands of jobs tied to the transportation of fossil fuels and the jobs provided by oil and gas refineries and chemical plants. Similarly, the numbers ignore the numerous coal-related jobs at steel mills.
Second, many of the jobs created in the solar and wind industries — from construction to power generation — are artifacts of various government interventions in the market. Consumer demand in the marketplace did not create these jobs; billions of dollars in federal government subsidies, tax breaks and loan guarantees were provided to build the factories that churn out wind towers, turbines and solar panels. Billions more were diverted to installing and partially paying for the electricity generated by wind turbines and solar panels.
Solar- and wind-generated power, being much more expensive than conventional fossil-fuel-generated electricity, would only be used sparingly if it weren’t for government support. And while fossil-fuel producers and users pay billions of dollars of taxes and fees to the government, renewable-energy sources are net tax sinks, even when the billions of dollars given through various state governments to the wind and solar industries are ignored.
Renewable-energy producers are also greatly aided by laws imposed by many states forcing utilities within their borders to provide a portion of the electricity they deliver from wind or solar generators, despite the high cost and reliability problems inherent to the technologies.
A third issue ignored by Paris promoters is jobs in the solar industry pay relatively poorly compared to jobs in the coal industry or oil and gas industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average solar installer makes between $12 and $15 per hour. By comparison, the average coal miner makes more than $23 per hour, not counting overtime. The average pipe fitter, driller or extraction worker makes between $25 and $31 per hour before overtime.
The most glaring problem for green-energy proponents is the jobs created by the wind- and solar-generated energy industries are relatively wasteful and inefficient compared to traditional energy jobs. As my friend and colleague Paul Driessen pointed out in recent paper, 398,000 natural-gas workers produced 33.8 percent of all electricity generated in the United States in 2016. More than 160,000 coal employees produced 30.4 percent of all electricity generated. In the same year, it took an astounding 374,000 solar workers to produce just 0.9 percent of the nation’s total electricity generation and 100,000 wind employees to produce 5.6 percent of total electricity.
That means while coal generates 7,745 megawatt-hours (MWH) of electricity per worker and natural gas generates 3,812 MWH of electricity per worker, wind generates just 836 MWH per worker and solar delivers a dismal 98 MWH per worker. “In other words, producing the same amount of electricity requires one coal worker, two natural gas workers, 12 wind industry employees or 79 solar workers,” Mr. Driessen wrote.
Keep these facts in mind the next time someone tells you about the wonderful “green economy” Mr. Trump allegedly abandoned when he walked away from the Paris climate agreement.

News - The Left’s Misleading Green Jobs Claims

News - The Left’s Misleading Green Jobs Claims

The Left’s Misleading Green Jobs Claims

July 12, 2017

By H. Sterling Burnett

 

Renewable energy workers produce relatively little power.

One of the main reasons President Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement is the treaty is a “bad deal for America.” Among many other problems, it would cost a significant number of jobs. In support of his claim, Mr. Trump cited a study by NERA Economic Consulting that estimates if the United States were to meet its carbon-dioxide emissions reduction obligations under the Paris climate agreement, it would cost the economy nearly $3 trillion and the United States would lose 6.5 million industrial jobs by 2040, including 3.1 million in the manufacturing sector.
Since Mr. Trump’s announcement, many advocates for staying in the treaty have either questioned the president’s claim about job losses or said green-energy technologies, especially solar, are engines of job creation that would benefit if the United States were to stay in the Paris agreement. They have argued there are now more jobs in the solar segments of the electric power industry than in the coal, natural gas and oil segments combined.
This claim is true — at least, in a limited sense. In absolute numbers, the U.S. Department of Energy reports solar power employed 43 percent of the electric power generation sector’s workforce in 2016, employing more than 374,000 workers who construct, assemble, sell or install solar panels. Fossil fuels combined accounted for just 22 percent (187,000) of the jobs directly tied to generating electric power.
Although there are a significant number of solar-related jobs, the often-repeated figures above are very misleading for numerous reasons, of which I’ll name a few.
First, these numbers leave out the mining jobs associated with coal production and the jobs related to the production of oil and gas. The Energy Department report notes fuel production and electricity generation combined directly employed 1.9 million workers in 2016, with 55 percent, or 1.1 million jobs, related to fossil fuels. This also ignores the thousands of jobs tied to the transportation of fossil fuels and the jobs provided by oil and gas refineries and chemical plants. Similarly, the numbers ignore the numerous coal-related jobs at steel mills.
Second, many of the jobs created in the solar and wind industries — from construction to power generation — are artifacts of various government interventions in the market. Consumer demand in the marketplace did not create these jobs; billions of dollars in federal government subsidies, tax breaks and loan guarantees were provided to build the factories that churn out wind towers, turbines and solar panels. Billions more were diverted to installing and partially paying for the electricity generated by wind turbines and solar panels.
Solar- and wind-generated power, being much more expensive than conventional fossil-fuel-generated electricity, would only be used sparingly if it weren’t for government support. And while fossil-fuel producers and users pay billions of dollars of taxes and fees to the government, renewable-energy sources are net tax sinks, even when the billions of dollars given through various state governments to the wind and solar industries are ignored.
Renewable-energy producers are also greatly aided by laws imposed by many states forcing utilities within their borders to provide a portion of the electricity they deliver from wind or solar generators, despite the high cost and reliability problems inherent to the technologies.
A third issue ignored by Paris promoters is jobs in the solar industry pay relatively poorly compared to jobs in the coal industry or oil and gas industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average solar installer makes between $12 and $15 per hour. By comparison, the average coal miner makes more than $23 per hour, not counting overtime. The average pipe fitter, driller or extraction worker makes between $25 and $31 per hour before overtime.
The most glaring problem for green-energy proponents is the jobs created by the wind- and solar-generated energy industries are relatively wasteful and inefficient compared to traditional energy jobs. As my friend and colleague Paul Driessen pointed out in recent paper, 398,000 natural-gas workers produced 33.8 percent of all electricity generated in the United States in 2016. More than 160,000 coal employees produced 30.4 percent of all electricity generated. In the same year, it took an astounding 374,000 solar workers to produce just 0.9 percent of the nation’s total electricity generation and 100,000 wind employees to produce 5.6 percent of total electricity.
That means while coal generates 7,745 megawatt-hours (MWH) of electricity per worker and natural gas generates 3,812 MWH of electricity per worker, wind generates just 836 MWH per worker and solar delivers a dismal 98 MWH per worker. “In other words, producing the same amount of electricity requires one coal worker, two natural gas workers, 12 wind industry employees or 79 solar workers,” Mr. Driessen wrote.
Keep these facts in mind the next time someone tells you about the wonderful “green economy” Mr. Trump allegedly abandoned when he walked away from the Paris climate agreement.