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Everyone Whines About the Ever-Growing Debt, but No One, Wants to Make any Sacrifices.

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Kelly McParland: OPP attack on Hudak relegates

the public interest to second place

Skyrocketing OPP costs have municipal councils worried.

DAN JANISSE/The Windsor StarSkyrocketing OPP costs have municipal councils worried.

In launching a direct attack on opposition leader Tim Hudak, the association representing 6,000 Ontario Provincial Police officers underlines just how hard it is for any government to make a serious effort to control public spending.

Wages and benefits consume more than half of Ontario government spending. Any attempt to reduce spending must therefore include some restriction on salaries. But public servants are heavily unionized, and unions ferociously oppose any plan to might impact on their members. Therefore any government that hopes to control spending faces fierce opposition from public sector unions.

The Ontario Provincial Police Association is the latest to join this cabal. On Monday the OPPA released two 15-second ads denouncing PC leader Tim Hudak, who is seeking election on June 12 on a pledge to control spending and eliminate the province’s annual $12 billion annual deficit.

“For the first time in the sixty year history of the OPPA, Tim Hudak has given us no choice but to engage in a publicity campaign during an election”, said OPPA presidentJim Christie.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jon Blacker

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jon BlackerOntario Conservative Party leader Tim Hudak speaks at the Abilities Centre in Whitby.

“A Tim Hudak led government would launch a direct assault on the Collective Agreements of Police Associations right across the Province. His positions on arbitration, public sector pensions and further wage freezes, among others issues, are unacceptable to our members who put their lives on the line for their communities every day.”

Absurdly, the association maintains it is not taking sides in the election, despite the ads. “Let me be clear,” said Christie. “These ads do not serve as an endorsement for the Liberals or the NDP. This also does not mean that we don’t respect and work well with many in the Conservative caucus. We just don’t want this Conservative as Premier.”

Ontario’s unions are already heavily arrayed against the Conservatives. Working Families Ontario, a union group financed by an array of public and private sector labour organizations, spends millions on TV and web advertisements attacking Conservative candidates. The PCs launched a legal challenge charging the group is a front for the governing Liberals, but lost when the court ruled there are no formal ties to the party.

It’s unfortunate that the OPP have seen fit to put their own interests ahead of a province that badly needs to get its finances in order.

The  OPP is thus joining teachers and nurses in seeking to block any legislation that might help get provincial spending back into balance. Not that it’s suffering. The OPP web site notes that it “prides itself on how it treats its employees.” A beginner recruit starts at $49,751 a year, and can work up to more than $90,000 after just three years. The annual Ontario “Sunshine List” of public employees earning above $100,000 a year shows hundreds of OPP staff and officers earning above that level. And while promising to cut public employment by 100,000 jobs, Mr. Hudak has expressly exempted police from being affected.

Ontario municipalities have been increasingly vocal about the difficulty of meeting regular rises in  policing costs, and fear a further increase will follow a new OPP billing model they say could add millions of dollars to local budgets.  But getting control over costs is aggravated by the natural reluctance to engage in a high-profile confrontation with police, and by the peculiarities of the provincial arbitration system. Ontario arbitrators often settle pay disputes by comparing local pay to other regions, without taking into account a municipality’s ability to pay. So if one town gives in to higher pay demands, it sets off a cycle of increases across the province as each force in turn demands similar treatment. In addition, larger forces vie to be the highest paid, ensuring a second domino effect. Similar pressures in the U.S. have led to a number of  cities declaring bankruptcy, especially over policing costs.

The easiest way to deal with the problem is simply to give in to the unions, as the Liberals have done throughout most of their 11 years in power. The Liberal practice of buying labour peace has contributed heavily to the doubling of Ontario’s debt since the Liberals took office. The toughest approach is to challenge the unions and risk the kind of attacks now being aimed at the Conservatives.

The result is that political parties find themselves in a paradox. If they do the responsible thing and make a serious effort  to oppose ruinous spending increases, they risk a public battle they could easily lose. If they give in to union pressure they may find it easier to get re-elected, but at the cost of forsaking the best interests of the province. It’s a Catch-22: What’s best for the party is what’s worst for the province. For 11 years the Liberals have consistently opted to do what’s good for themselves, amassing a debt that will be left for another generation to confront. Mr. Hudak, in pledging to pursue what’s good for the province,  has made himself deeply unpopular with union groups and the subject of virulent attacks.

It’s unfortunate that the OPP have seen fit to put their own interests ahead of a province that badly needs to get its finances in order. Police occupy a special place in society and enjoy a number of privileges as a result. Using that status to wage a partisan political battle is both unseemly and  inappropriate. The familiar police motto, “to serve and protect” is generally taken to refer to the public interest, not their own pocketbooks. They’d have been better off staying silent and leaving the politicking to politicians.

National Post

Susan Smith talks about the Pre-Screening of DownWind! It was wonderful!!

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Tonight I had the opportunity to watch a pre-screening of “Down Wind”….a documentary thoroughly explaining the influx of industrial wind turbines throughout Ontario during the Liberal regime. It was an amazing revelation!!! A brilliant production!!!
I was so excited to attend this show in Toronto produced by Canada’s Sun News.
I was invited to go because I have been involved with the fantastic work initiated by Shellie Correia (the original Mothers Against Wind Turbines TM.). Her persistent goal, as many of you are aware, has been to protect her son against 3MW Industrial Wind Turbines proposed around 550 meters from her home in West Lincoln. In protecting her own son, Shellie has extended her concern to protect all children within Ontario against the negative impact from IWTs. Her influence has been acknowledged worldwide and is now of significant interest to all levels of government.
Needless to say, the opportunity to support the production of “Down Wind” was significant to Shellie and all of us who have joined her work for the original Mothers Against Wind Turbines TM group.
The show itself describes the negative impact of IWTs on many communities across Ontario where over 6736 IWTs have been installed, approved or proposed and 1915 are along beautiful Lake Huron alone. www.windpower.ca.
Many of the people we have met at rallies were involved in the movie…..everything was mentioned…Mike Crawley’s influence,  how animals react, the loss of municipal control, the depreciation of real estate, illnesses that prevail,  including cancer which comes from lack of sleep, and impaired immune systems, due to infra sound and low frequency emissions. So much was included in the movie…even the plight of the tundra swans and the disappearance of earth worms, from around the wind turbines!
DownWind will be shown on Wednesday at 8 pm, on Sun News (channel 506 on Bell Expressview.)  There will be a second showing at 11 pm.
We have been invited to attend the leadership debate in Toronto tomorrow evening. It’s a busy time for all conscientious voters to get the facts.  We’ll keep you posted!    Susan

 

Spain Dumps the Renewable Energy Scam, Before it Destroys Their Economy, Completely!

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Spain’s Renewable Energy Disaster Draws to a Close

June 2, 2014 by  Leave a Comment

spain unemployment

Spain has been held up by the gullible and naïve (some might say, cynical and malign) hard-green-left as the model for our “new” energy future. Some “model”!!

The Spaniards have thrown 100s of billions of euros in subsidies at solar and wind power, and have achieved nothing but economic punishment in return.

The power generated is delivered at chaotic, random intervals: the sun sets every day and the wind stops blowing, just like everywhere else in the world; requiring 100% of wind and solar capacity to be matched by fossil fuel generation sources.

As a result, in the last decade, the true cost of power has spiralled out of control. However, the Spanish government used price caps in an effort to keep prices artificially low. But that simply left taxpayers with an even greater burden to cover the massive cost of renewables subsidies (which represent a state-mandated transfer from the poorest to the richest) – add mounting government debt used to keep the subsidy stream flowing – and it can be fairly said that Spain’s energy policy is nothing short of an economic disaster.

The much touted promise of thousands of so-called “green” jobs never materialized. No surprises there. Instead, the insane cost of subsidising wind and solar power has killed productive industries, with the general unemployment rate rocketing from 8% to 26% (and still rising) – youth unemployment is nearer to 50% in many regions.

spanish-unemployment-rate-2

The Spanish government is faced with a choice between salvaging what’s left of a moribund (and shrinking) economy and keeping the renewables gravy train rolling.

Here are two reports on Spain’s belated efforts to bring its renewable energy disaster to a close.

Spain close to approving new renewable energy rules: minister
Reuters
29 May 2014

MADRID (Reuters) – The Spanish cabinet could approve on Friday a law that will cut renewable energy subsidies as part of a drive to reduce a 30 billion euro ($41 billion) power tariff deficit, built up during years of keeping prices below regulated costs.

The new law, the thrust of which was announced by the government in July last year, set the rate of return for existing renewable energy facilities at 7.4 percent and at 7.5 percent for future operations.

Many renewable energy companies have made double-digit returns on investment under hefty subsidies. Spain has passed a series of measures over the past two years cutting, and in some cases eliminating, renewable energy subsidies and a number of investors have filed international legal complaints.

“(The decree) is ready to go,” Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria told reporters on Thursday, adding that the decision to approve it at Friday’s weekly cabinet meeting would be taken later on Thursday.

The minister acknowledged the reform was bad news for companies that invested expecting higher returns.

According to documents annexed to the reform, to which Reuters had access last week, the government plans to cut renewable energy subsidies by 15 percent this year to 7.63 billion euros.

The new rules will be retroactive to July 2013 and many companies have already made massive provisions and writedowns in their 2013 financial results, anticipating the impact of the decree.

The regulation includes variations for a range of technologies – including wind, thermosolar, photovoltaic and biomass – and the year the assets were installed.

For example, assets installed before 2005 will receive no subsidy and will only be awarded with the wholesale power price, while newer assets will receive the wholesale price plus a separate remuneration.

(Reporting by Jose Elias Rodriguez, writing by Tracy Rucinski; editing by Julien Toyer and Keiron Henderson)
Reuters

Jose-Manuel-Soria--en-una-imagen-de-archivo-

Spanish Lesson For Obama: Green Energy Transition Unaffordable, May Soon Crash
Die Welt
Ute Müller
31 May 2014

Lawsuits may force Spain to bring its renewable energy experiment to an end, a green policy fiasco that has gone terribly wrong due to astronomical costs. It’s a powerful lesson for the White House that has often cited the Spanish model as one to emulate.

Only recently, Spain was widely praised as the champion of wind energy in Europe. What is more, all over the country new solar parks were built and renewable energy had become the main source of energy supply on the Iberian Peninsula. Those days, however, may soon be over. That’s because Spain’s industry ministry intends to drastically cut back on subsidies for “clean energy.” The whole country has to cut back, the industry ministry argues drily, and energy producers have to do too.

This argument seems irrefutable since the figures that are now assessed by the government are astronomical indeed. The subsidies that are going to flow into green energy projects on the Iberian Peninsula amount to a staggering 200 billion euros. Approximately 56 billion euros have already been paid out. The lion’s share of this sum went into rather generous feed-in tariffs for wind and solar energy which, since 1995, have attracted numerous investors from both home and abroad.

The remaining 143 billion euros are due to be paid out in the next 20 years for green energy projects that have already been connected to the grid, foremost for solar farms.

Given these sums, it would appear that industry minister Jose Manuel Soria has come to the conclusion that the only option left is to put his foot down. He now plans to cut green subsidies for the energy sector by about 20 percent, to 7.5 billion euros per annum. The minister, however, has not reckoned with affected green investors who are up in arms and fighting the planned subsidy cuts.

Moratorium on new solar farms 

This is not the first time that Spain intends to take advantage of solar investors retrospectively. Numerous foreign investment funds, especially from the US, have invested heavily in Spain’s renewable energy in recent years, expanding solar energy production significantly. They were lured by promises by the then socialist industry minister who had agreed a fixed rate of return of 14 percent per annum for solar park investments.

“The sun can be yours,” huge billboards claimed. Thousands of Spanish investors were keen not to miss this golden opportunity either. As a result, solar power production on the sun-drenched Iberian Peninsula increased from 53 to 313 gigawatt hours (GWh) between 2007 and 2010.

Surprised by the huge demand, the government of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero introduced a moratorium for new solar farms, guaranteed feed-in tariff were reduced to 25 years and the premiums were paid only for a certain number of hours of sunshine per year. After a change of government at the end of 2012, the new conservative administration upped the ante and introduced a new electricity tax of 7.5 percent, causing the profits for the solar industry to fall by around 30 percent.

A good opportunity for nuclear power? 

This week, U.S. energy company Nextera Energy has summoned Spain before the International Centre for Settlement for Investment Disputes (ICSID) to demand redress. The U.S. company regards the new rules as a retroactive change to the original guarantees. Nextera Energy has invested heavily in the Spanish solar power plant Termosol.

Other large investors, such as a Deutsche Bank investment fund, involved in the Andalusian power plant Andasol, and French bank BNP have asked ICSID, a World Bank organization, for arbitration. Another group of foreign investors issued first lawsuits in 2011, based on the European Energy Charter which promises investment protection and prohibits expropriation.

If the investors win their case, Spain can expect claims for damages amounting to billions of euros. In such a case, the further expansion of renewable energy in Spain would then come to end end at once. The industry minister is not the only one who is aware of the potential consequences. Two traditional power generators, Endesa and Iberdrola, even see a good chance for new deals with nuclear power. They have requested an extension of the operating license for the Garoña nuclear power plant which had already been taken off the grid. Garoña is now expected to provide electricity until 2031. The investors believe that despite new security investments the nuclear power plant will be profitable. They expect that after the boom and bust of recent years the share of renewable energy will decline.
Die Welt (translation by Global Warming Policy Foundation)

Spain provides the perfect “model” for any Country looking to destroy itself in blind pursuit of “green” energy ideology.

Trying to power a (notionally) first world economy with intermittent and unreliable wind and solar power is nothing more than an infantile delusion. When the cost of the insanity is borne by millions of struggling (and probably unemployed) power consumers and 100s of thousands thrown on the unemployment scrap heap, it borders on the criminal.

Spaniards can only hope that their political betters’ efforts to unwind the mess haven’t come too late.

spain_bullfighting_2

The Lying Liberals are Slandering the Conservatives. Here’s the Truth!

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Creating Jobs while Rightsizing the Public Service 

LIES ARE LIES – It’s been said by Liberals that we will be firing a hundred thousand people and this is not true.

– It has been said by Liberals that we will get rid of nurses and doctors and this is not true.
FACTS ARE FACTS – The public service has grown by 300,000 positions since the Liberals came to power, jobs that we have to borrow money to pay for.

– About 50,000 public sector workers retire or quit each year. All we need to do is hire one person for every two who leave so we can reduce 100,000 positions in four years.

– We’re not going to cut anything in public safety.

– We’re going to hire more nurses and more doctors and invest $2 Billion more into healthcare than the Liberals will.

– In fact, we will hire more front-line workers to improve services we all rely on.

– We will treat taxpayers and tax dollars with respect.
THE BOTTOM LINE – A PC government will hire more doctors and nurses.

– We will invest in education, improving math and science programs, keep all-day kindergarten and provide more assistance for students with special needs.

– We will replace one public servant for every two who retire and focus this hiring on front-line services.

– Jobs will be created by attracting businesses through lower taxes, affordable hydro, and a balanced budget.

– This is all good for your pocketbook too!

Please share this page with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter. Let’s all work with Matt for a better Ontario.

Together we can bring change Ontario. 

An Impassioned Plea from a Citizen of Rural Ontario, to Tim Hudak!

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(GOOD READING FOR ANYONE PLANNING ON VOTING)

Paul Kuster — June 1, 2014

I’ve decided that given the priviledge to offer my opinions through the miracle of the internet and blog Quixotes last Stand, I feel I can offer up some friendly advice to the Conservative party of Ontario and it’s leader Tim Hudak. Before I start, I want to acknowledge that Paul Burling has also penned a fantastic letter as well and touches on many items that illustrate what conservatism involves. His letter can be found here:

Follow him on Twitter as well @PaulinAjax. You won’t be disappointed.

Paul has outlined some very practical strategies for the conservatives to take back the province and rid ourselves of the scourge that are the Liberals and their wanna-be cousins the NDP. The advice I’d like to offer is the way we should be selling this to the Ontario electorate.

Many times I’ve listened to policy initiatives and statements that sound good, but are incomplete. The greatest example is the downsizing of the public service by 100,000. what you failed to do was to qualify it by saying how.  What happened was you allowed the Liberals to fill that void by saying you’d fire, FIRE, them all and they even decided for you who —  be it teachers or health care workers — all the sacred stuff. Next time , please qualify how you’ll do something, on your terms, before it’s announced.

Another example is the Million jobs plan. Always remember that the “Parties of the Left” are the party’s of misery.   Only they could poo-poo about the ambitious plan to create jobs in Ont.  They have the intellectual bankruptcy of complaining that the PC’s would have lied to us if only 850,000 jobs had been created.   Further to this is the statement that  “Every Monday morning 1 million wake up to not having a job.”  Why not take it that one step more by saying that:

 “It’s our intention that we want to have as many waking up to a job on a Monday morning as possible.”

“Remember what it’s like when you got that phone-call that said ‘You’re hired.’?  I do.  I felt great about myself that someone wanted me.   Or at that job interview when the hiring manager asks  ‘When can you start?’   Now you can look forward to providing for your family in a meaningful way.  Now you can afford to put your son/daughter into the organized sports they want. Maybe now you can qualify for that house. Perhaps now you can afford that vacation.

For too long this province has been in a funk, no thanks to the Liberals and NDP.  Not only are we a “have-not” province, but we must lead all provinces and territories in malaise and anxiety. We want Ontarians to be able to relax, live their lives and be happy and not to have a sickening knot in your gut every time you open a Hydro bill.”

To you the PC’s , get us out of our funk. Make our province proud again. Make every policy statement one that shines with optimism and leave the other parties grumbling. It’s what they do best.

There’s a conservative commentator in the US (Bill Whittle)who does a splendid job in what it should mean to be a conservative and has many sound strategies to convey that message.  One of the lessons he learned after the 2012 presidential election was
that in many of the exit polls, Romney won on just about everything the economy, foreign policy, domestic policy, everything.

All except on one question. “Who cares about you more”, and this is how Obama won it.
Learn from this lesson. Frame everything into a positive message that explains that PC’s aren’t out to eat your children or to send women into slave camps or you’ll toss welfare recipients over Niagara Falls.    Get that message through to them that PC’s do care.

Finally, here is a link to a Youtube video by Bill Whittle outlining the game plan for conservatism. It’s brilliant and although it has US examples, the theory translates well to our situation in Ontario.  To me the most important strategy comes at 5:50 of part 2. but listen to it all!

DownWind….The story of the Failed Green Energy Experiment, in Ontario

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Sun News Network documentary Down Wind exposes

the Wynne-McGuinty green energy disaster

BY  ,TORONTO SUN

FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, MAY 31, 2014 07:00 PM EDT | UPDATED: SATURDAY, MAY 31, 2014 04:36 PM EDT

wind-turbines
Wind turbines near Watford Ontario, February 7, 2013. (HEATHER WRIGHT/QMI Agency)

How billions of taxpayers’ and hydro customers’ dollars are being wasted, and will continue to be wasted for decades to come, because of former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty’s naive blunder into wind energy, now fully supported by Premier Kathleen Wynne.

How it has contributed to skyrocketing hydro bills and to the loss of 300,000 manufacturing jobs in Ontario.

A 2011 report by then auditor general Jim McCarter documented how the government rushed into wind energy without any business plan, ignoring even the advice of its own experts that could have substantially reduced costs.

As a result, Ontarians are now locked into 20 years of paying absurdly inflated prices for inefficient and unreliable wind power, which, ironically, still has to be backed up by fossil fuel energy, meaning natural gas.

That means the Liberals’ gas plants scandal, costing taxpayers and hydro ratepayers up to $1.1 billion — according to reports by McCarter and current Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk — is also part of the Liberals’ legacy of wind power waste.

Indeed, while the Liberals were telling us they were replacing coal power with wind and solar energy, they were actually doing it with nuclear power and natural gas.

Wind can’t replace coal because it can’t provide base load power to the electricity grid on demand.

That’s why the Liberals were frantically building new natural gas plants, even as they were imposing, and continue to impose, unwanted wind turbines on rural communities across Ontario.

McGuinty cancelled the locally unpopular Mississauga and Oakville gas plants to save five Liberal seats in the 2011 election, which we now know could cost up to $220 million per bought riding in public money.

A new documentary, Down Wind: How Ontario’s Green Dream Turned into a Nightmare, by Sun News Network’s Rebecca Thompson — airing Wednesday, June 4 at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. — powerfully and succinctly explains the enormity of the Liberals’ wind power catastrophe.

The Surge Media production explains we are wasting and will continue to waste, billions of public dollars for a non-existent environmental benefit — the Liberal myth that wind and solar power replaced polluting coal-fired electricity in Ontario.

Nonsense. As one of Thompson’s interviewees accurately puts it in Down Wind, turbines “don’t run on wind, they run on subsidies.”

Thompson compellingly tells the story of how an unholy alliance of Liberal government insiders, wind industry developers, so-called environmentalists and Bay Street investors worked hand-in-glove to impose wind turbines on unsuspecting farming and rural communities across Ontario.

How those who tried to fight back were and are being crushed by the Liberals’ dictatorial Green Energy Act, which took away the planning rights of local municipalities.

How we don’t need the tiny amount of expensive and unreliable power wind supplies, both because Ontario has a huge energy surplus and because wind developers have to be paid for their energy first, while we dump or export inexpensive and green hydro power at a loss.

How the reported health concerns hundreds of affected residents have experienced because of the sound, vibration, low-frequency noise and shadow flicker from wind turbines — up to 50-storeys high, many located just 550 metres from homes — have been suppressed by the government.

Those symptoms include sleeplessness, nausea, migraines, heart palpitations, all dismissed by the Ontario government, even as Ottawa conducts a major study into what has become known as “wind turbine syndrome.”

The most powerful footage in Down Wind comes from ordinary Ontarians — some forced to leave their homes — telling their stories, often reduced to tears, bitterness and anger.

How on one day they were living peaceful lives in rural Ontario and how, almost overnight, were plunged into a nightmare, as wind companies turned neighbour against neighbour by leasing the land of some property owners to erect turbines, while running roughshod over the concerns of everyone else.

To me, Ontario’s wind power disaster has always been a story of urban greed, ignorance, arrogance and phony environmentalism overpowering rural interests.

Of smug, trendy, hypocritical Toronto downtowners — Wynne’s core constituency — whose experience with wind turbines is limited to one at the CNE — ignorantly accusing rural communities of NIMBYISM (as did McGuinty).

Down Wind exposes all this along with the scariest reality of all.

That the Liberals have gone too far to ever admit they were wrong, and that if we re-elect them, they’ll double down on their wind energy disaster.

 

 

The Wind Scam is Sucking Billions of Dollars out of our Economies…..All for Naught!

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Big Wind’s Totally Bogus Subsidy Adventure

May 29, 2014 by 

bill and ted

If time-travelling teens from the future (a world where wind farms had long since been cut up for scrap) lobbed into 2014, they’d be “totally bummed out” at what must have happened to our collective intelligence to end up with giant fans at centre-stage of today’s “modern” energy policy.

They’d think the idea of trying to run first world economies on wind power “a most heinous error”.

And they would, quite rightly, regard the idea of pouring $billions of tax payers’ and power consumers’ money at these things to be “totally bogus, dude”.

Here’s the US News on “Big Wind’s Totally Bogus Subsidy Adventure”.

Big Wind’s Bogus Subsidies
US News
Nancy Pfotenhauer
12 May 2014

Giving tax credits to the wind energy industry is a waste of time and money.

Despite being famous for touting the idea that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, investor Warren Buffet seems to be perfectly fine with receiving tax breaks for making investments in Big Wind. “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

But while the wind production tax credit may be great for Buffet’s bottom line, it’s harmful for American taxpayers and energy consumers.

The credit’s proponents say that tax breaks for green energy technologies will encourage innovation, but they fail to acknowledge that Washington’s history on these handouts and tax breaks for green energy have consistently failed. For example, we cannot control when or how much the wind blows, and it just so happens that it tends to blow when we need it least. On average, wind energy facilities operate at just 30 percent of their capacity and must be backed up by more reliable forms of energy such as natural gas. Instead of producing energy solutions that can survive and thrive in the marketplace, we’re left with botched green energy projects that have brought us no closer to our energy goals.

If private companies like Berkshire Hathaway are not willing to jump in without government incentives, it is a sign that the energy technology is a bad investment. It simply does not make sense for the government to subsidize energy technologies that are economically unviable, while attempting to restrict other options that provide reliable and affordable energy for everyday Americans.

We’ve all heard the saying, “there is no such thing as a free lunch,” and the very same adage applies to government subsidies. By arguing that that tax credits are needed to create jobs, proponents overlook what the rest of the economy gives up in exchange.

When lawmakers give special tax breaks to their friends and favorite industries, they shift the burden onto everybody left in the tax base. While subsidies may allow wind turbine makers to pump up their payrolls, the rest of the economy suffers as a result. The subsidy diverts labor and capital away from productive areas of the economy, which slows overall economic growth. With only a 0.1 percent GDP growth rate in the first quarter of 2014, slowing down is not a viable option.

Despite the statements of subsidy supporters, artificially propping up industries has a very real cost.

Not only are federal wind subsidies a colossal waste of money and detrimental to the economy, but they subsidize an industry that is actually harmful to the environment. The alleged goal of incentivizing “green energy” industries is to help protect the environment, but with wind energy comes a slew of environmental problems. For example, it is estimated that wind turbines in the U.S. kill up to 328,000 birds annually, and, last year alone, wind turbines killed 600,000 bats. What’s more, the amount of land needed for wind farms to be effective is staggering. For New York City to be powered by wind alone, every square meter of Connecticut would need to become a wind farm.

After expiring at the end of last year, Big Wind’s bread and butter subsidy – the production tax credit – is moving through Congress again. The Senate Finance Committee recently agreed to a measure that would retroactively extend it, which is likely to pass on the Senate floor. On the other side of Capitol Hill, the House Ways and Means Committee is poised to consider similar legislation later this summer – a package that extends the expired tax breaks. Unlike their colleagues in the Senate, representatives on the committee should hold firm and ensure that this handout for the wind energy industry stays out of the package.

Outside the Beltway, people are starting to notice the tax credit’s negative effects. Led by groups like Americans for Prosperity and the American Energy Alliance, there is an overwhelming opposition to wind subsidies at the grassroots level. (Full disclosure: I sit on AFP’s Board of Directors.) Leading up to the tax credit’s scheduled expiration last November, a diverse coalition of more than 100 organizations sent a letter to Congress, asking them to let the credit expire. American families are increasingly upset that subsidies for wind energy make them pay more and more when their energy bills come due each month.

Congress should stand up to special interests in the wind energy industry and oppose efforts to resurrect expired wind subsidies. Their constituents didn’t send them to Washington to enact policies that cost jobs, distort the energy market, and drive up energy bills – but by repeatedly extending the tax credit, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

At the end of the day, competition and free markets should shape U.S. energy policy, not handouts or favors for special interests like Big Wind.

Despite being famous for touting the idea that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, investor Warren Buffet seems to be perfectly fine with receiving tax breaks for making investments in Big Wind. “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

But while the wind production tax credit may be great for Buffet’s bottom line, it’s harmful for American taxpayers and energy consumers.
US News

Bill and Ted_3_bogus

DownWind is an Amazing Opportunity, to Educate the Public! Don’t Miss It!

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Canadians Fight Back Against Ontario’s Wind Farm Onslaught

May 30, 2014 by 

Ezra Levant_jpg_1274831cl-8

Canada’s Sun News was among the first news outfits worldwide to grasp the scale and scope of the great wind power fraud; and the associated harm inflicted on hard-working rural people. And Sun’s Ezra Levant led the charge, doing what real journalists do: getting the truth out, despite the efforts of those who seek to profit from burying it (check out this broadcast).

Exposing the wind industry for what it is, Sun has produced a truly ground-breaking documentary on how wind power outfits have fleeced power consumers for $billions, while happily destroying the lives hundreds of farming families across Ontario.

The documentary, “Down Wind” will screen on Wednesday, on 4th June; and will be available online, thereafter. Here’s the trailer:

Meanwhile, Kevin Marriott, Mayor of Enniskillen has reminded residents of their right to remain silent, in a clever effort to stymie a developer’s ability to subsequently claim that it had “consulted” with those whose lives it is hell-bent on destroying. Fair call, Kevin.

The “community consultations” run by developers are nothing more than occasions for baseless wind industry propaganda delivered by a pack of lying, sociopaths (see our post here).

These are the people that publicly feign genuine interest in community “concerns”, but are quick to ridicule, bully and berate anyone who has the temerity to point out that losing the ability to sleep in one’s own home due to the incessant low-frequency noise generated by giant fans isn’t a “concern”, it’s a State sponsored and funded crime (see our post here).

Here’s the Sarnia Observer on the Ontario community back lash.

Mayor urging township residents to not speak to wind developers
Sarnia Observer
Paul Morden
15 May 2014

Enniskillen Township residents should feel free to exercise their right to remain silent when wind energy companies come calling, says Mayor Kevin Marriott.

EDF EN Canada has reportedly been approaching residents and groups about its Churchill Wind Project proposal, a 100 to 150-MW wind farm it wants to build in Enniskillen and neighbouring Plympton-Wyoming.

Marriott said he turned down a request from the company to meet with township council, and urged others in the community to do the same.

“We’re unwilling hosts,” Marriott said. “We’re not interested, end of discussion.”

Enniskillen was among approximately 80 Ontario municipalities declaring themselves unwilling hosts for wind turbines after the provincial government said it was changing how it awards renewable energy contracts.

The 2009 Green Energy Act took away municipalities’ planning powers for wind projects, leading to an outcry from many rural communities and municipal councils. Last year, the province said a new system of awarding renewable energy projects will require companies to work with municipalities.

“It will be very, very difficult for a developer to be approved without municipal engagement, in some significant way,” Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli said last June.

But, Marriott said that until the province clarifies what it means by municipal engagement, “We’re being vigilant.”

He advised the anti-wind turbine group, Conservation of Rural Enniskillen (CORE), against meeting with the company.

“I said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t consult with them because they may be able to use that as a check mark,’” Marriott said.

“Who knows what could be construed as public consultation.”

CORE also ran newspaper ads urging township residents to not speak with wind company representatives.

Lambton County has 14 wind turbines in Lambton Shores and Brooke-Alvinston Township, but construction has begun on the 92-turbine Jericho wind project, and Suncor Energy is awaiting provincial approval for its 46-turbine Cedar Point project. Both new projects sit north of Highway 402 in Lambton.

Brooke Leystra, president of the Lambton Federation of Agriculture, said it also turned down the wind company’s request to meet because the group represents farmers on both sides of the turbine debate.

“We didn’t want it to be misconstrued as us working with them, in any way,” Leystra said.

By early June, Ontario is expected to finalize its plan for awarding contracts for up to 300 megawatts of new wind-generated electricity this year, and a similar amount in 2015.

“The government has been really wishy-washy on what this new process does consist of,” Marriott said.
Sarnia Observer

And here’s a fantastic letter from Martina Hayward that captures the seething rage that’s building across Ontario.

Letter to southwesternontario.ca
14 May 2014

We are not willing hosts
Dear Editor:

Influenced to write yet another article overflowing with concerns related to the Goliath that is Industrial Wind, I feel burdened yet galvanized to transcribe the Whole Truth.

The article in the Regional Country News appears to praise the encroachment of these industrial skyscrapers as a “new crop” that must be “liked or lumped.” I, for one, decline the offer to endure these monuments of destruction.

Apparently “owners of the land eventually will share in a harvest of the wind.” The yield we will be forced to consume is the serious, irreversible harm to human health, animal health and the natural environment.

The repercussions of these mechanized tempest power plants seems untold as of late. Perhaps the season of Truth harvest has also arrived.

Communities worldwide are sadly experiencing the environmental, social and economic impacts of wind projects. These towers are merely a tool for energy companies and investment banks to make billions of dollars in subsidies that are subsequently added to the existing debt.

Industrial wind turbines do not reduce greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use. They can reduce your property values by 40 per cent or more.

The Green Energy Act overrides ALL local laws and grants foreign corporations unrestricted power to DO whatever they want, WHEREVER they want. The Canadian Wind Energy Association requested the Ministry of the Environment EXCLUDE the measurement of Low Frequency Noise at wind development sites. Low Frequency Noise has been found to cause nausea, headaches, dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus, memory and concentration problems, fatigue, sleep disturbances in humans. In animals such as goats, it just kills them dead. Sheep, horses, cattle are all afflicted similarly.

According to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 7, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person, and the right not to be deprived thereof, except in accordance with the principle of fundamental justice.” Section 7 also “guarantees life, liberty and personal security of all Canadians.” It also “demands that governments respect the basic principles of justice whenever it intrudes on those rights.”

Finally, the article in Regional Country News quotes NextEra’s site safety manager, Tim Cole: “We have to win the hearts and minds of the community by being nice.”

Well, Mr. Cole, is it nice to break the hearts and beleaguer the minds of hard-working people in our communities?

I conclude, absolutely not. We are NOT WILLING HOSTS. No still means no.

Please take the time to read Wind Turbine Syndrome (Dr. Nina Pierpont) and The Constitution Act of 1982 (The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms), and Acoustics Today Winter 2014, and go towww.howgreenisthis.org. Educate yourselves.

Martina Hayward,
Priceville

Mandated subsidies for wind power is a policy that is inherently unsustainable. Any policy that is unsustainable will be scrapped or surely fail: it’s only a matter of time.

In the meantime, keep fighting, Martina: justice and sanity will soon prevail.

churchill hell

Liberals Desperate to Deflect Blame!  

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EXPOSING LIBERAL HALF-TRUTHS —

THE HARRIS HOSPITAL CLOSURE MYTH

Burlington Post — September 2009

The Ontario Liberals have quietly pushed their tall tales, saying the PC government under Mike Harris gutted Ontario’s health-care system.

Their tales go beyond spin and enter the realm of self-serving lie. It is most telling that the Liberals never bring this lie into public debate, they merely use it as part of a whisper campaign, repeating it until it begins to take hold among the general populace.

For example, references to hospital closures that I’ve found suggest that in total the Liberals claim that the PC government closed 39 hospitals in Ontario. They arrive at this number in two ways. Several places in Ontario, including Thunder Bay, Cobourg, Peterborough and Sault Ste. Marie, had two aging hospital facilities. The PCs closed these old, outdated hospitals and built new ones.

The Liberals have lied by omission, in failing to account for the new hospitals that were built in Ontario, some to replace aging buildings and several entirely new hospitals to serve growing populations. By my count we closed 12 hospitals in this manner and opened 17 new ones.

In addition, several hospitals located in close proximity were amalgamated to save on administrative costs. For example, Oakville Trafalgar, Milton District and Georgetown hospitals were amalgamated into Halton Healthcare Services. Liberal Party math says we closed three hospitals. The truth is we simply streamlined the costs — the facilities never closed. We repeated this in major urban centres across Ontario.

The truth is we streamlined costs, opened new facilities to replace aging buildings, significantly grew health-care facilities and increased services in Ontario.

The Liberals conveniently forget the PC government opened new facilities across the province to house 20,000 long-term care patients, people who were taking spaces in acute-care hospitals. In addition, we upgraded existing long-term care facilities for 16,000 Ontarians.

This isn’t only about hospitals. If the PCs gutted health care, how do they explain the expansion of nursing positions? How do they explain our creation of home-care services? How do they explain our substantially-increased funding for cardiac and cancer care and expanded cancer care centres across Ontario? How do they explain 52 new MRIs the PCs brought to Ontario where only 12 existed and the addition of 55 CT scanners? At what point does partisan political spin damage our society? At what point do lies like this get punished by voters?

Ted Chudleigh is the Conservative MPP for Halton.

To read a detailed listing of the exact names and locations of the hospitals, see our previous post here…..

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