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DOE announced a $737 million loan guarantee to help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve.Once again, the Regular Guy feels compelled to do some math and ask some questions. First, the math: at $737 million for 600 temporary jobs in construction and 45 "permanent" jobs (ask the folks at Solyndra how permanent jobs in the solar industry are), we're looking at -- I know this math might be difficult for the average government bureaucrat -- more than a million dollars per f***ing job! Putting aside the permanent jobs for the moment, let's say the construction of the facility takes two full years. We're still spending more than $500,000 a year per construction worker. If we're doing this just for stimulus purposes, why wouldn't just handing out, say $50,000 per year in cash to ten times as many people do the trick? Or $5,000 per year to a hundred times as many people (that would be 60,000 people getting $5k they could spend as consumers under the Keynesianism the administration believes so fervently in)?
The Energy Department said the project will result in 600 construction jobs and 45 permanent jobs.
Hydroelectric is the most cost effective at $0.03 per kWh. Hydroelectric production is naturally limited by the number of feasible geographic locations and the huge environmental infringement caused by the construction of a dam. Nuclear and coal are tied at $0.04 per kWh. This comes as a bit of a surprise because coal is typically regarded as the cheapest form of energy production. Another surprise is that wind power ($0.08 per kWh) came in slightly cheaper than natural gas ($0.10 per kWh). Solar power was by far the most expensive at $0.22 per kWh—and that only represents construction costs because I could not find reliable data on production costs. Also, there is a higher degree of uncertainty in cost with wind and solar energy due to poor and varying data regarding the useful life of the facilities and their capacity factors. For this analysis the average of the data points are used in the calculations.
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HH: Now in the Wall Street Journal op-ed, Mr. Ambassador, which I’ve got linked over at Hughhewitt.com, you wrote that, “Understanding the Palestinians’ decision requires a review not only of the past week’s events, but of one that occurred 64 years ago.” And I’d like to actually, in this segment and next, in fifteen minutes, try and review with you, given your status as an accomplished historian, what you mean by you have to go back 64 years to understand what happened yesterday.
MO: Well, to understand it, this is the not the first time we’ve seen this played out. It goes back to 1947 when the United Nations proposed a two-state solution – a Jewish state living side by side with an Arab state in perfect peace. There was even an economic union between the two states. And we, the Jews, the Israelis, we accepted that proposal, and the Palestinians rejected it. And they rejected it because the price of getting a Palestinian state was accepting a Jewish state. And they were unwilling to pay the price. And in fact, they were so unwilling, that they joined with the armies of five Arab states in attacking the new Israeli state and trying to destroy it. Fortunately, they failed. But the same thing happened in the Year 2000. In the Year 2000, then-Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, met with then-Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, at Camp David, under the auspices of President Bill Clinton, and once again, there was a two-state solution offered. Ehud Barak offered, basically met all of the Palestinian demands for a Palestinian state in Gaza, in virtually all of the West Bank, and even in East Jerusalem, the first Israeli, probably the first leader in the world to volunteer to divide his nation’s capitol with another country, with another people. And Yasser Arafat turned it down. They turned around and walked away, because the price of accepting the Palestinian state was accepting the Jewish state. Flash forward eight more years to 2008, you have and Israeli prime minister by the name of Ehud Olmert, meeting with Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. And Olmert went even a little further than Barak went in meeting the Palestinian demands – a Palestinian state in Gaza, and virtually all of the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and Abu Mazen simply ignored the offer. He never even got back to Ehud Olmert. And so now the same, Mahmoud Abbas, three years later, is turning around and going to the U.N. The reason he didn’t get back to Ehud Olmert in 2008 was not because of settlements, it wasn’t because of Jerusalem, it wasn’t because of borders. It was because the price of creating a Palestinian state was accepting a Jewish state. This is just what happened in the U.N. last week.What Western liberals in Europe and America don't understand is that the Palestinians are best understood, not as an "oppressed" people, but as anti-Semites. It's really that simple. And it's not like we don't have centuries of evidence of anti-Semitism, including, most obviously, the Holocaust, which is still within the living memory of millions. They will not accept peace with Israel because their main motivation is hatred and the desire to exterminate Jews. That's why real liberals ought to remain steadfast allies of Israel -- otherwise, and no matter what patina of race-class-gender left-liberal academic horseshit you paint it with -- you're siding with the Nazis and against the victims of the Holocaust.
HH: All right, in terms of the Australian newspaper, it reported yesterday that the International Atomic Energy Agency no concludes that Iran has stepped up its uranium enrichment, and one commentator said they are within less, you know, two months and six days of going critical. Your reaction to that? Is that, in fact, the opinion of the Israeli government as well?
MO: Well, I can’t go into the details of our assessments, but I will tell you that we do not have much time, and that yes, the Iranians have overcome virtually all of the technical difficulties they encountered the previous year. They are enriching uranium at a pace, at a very quick rate. They have now put in centrifuges that can quadruple the amount of uranium they can enrich, and they have also learned to enrich it at a much higher level, approaching the level you need for weapons-grade uranium. At the same time, they’ve developed a missile system that is capable of carrying nuclear warheads not only through the region, but now to Western Europe, and probably within the decade, to the Eastern Coast of the United States as well. So the uranium nuclear program is a threat not only to Israel and the Middle East, but to the entire world. And the day, if and when Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it will be a game-changer. It’s the end of non-proliferation globally, not just in the Middle East. That’s why we are determined to preventing it, and why the United States is determined to preventing that happening.
A pair of recent academic studies found that House members beat the market in their personal stock trading by about 6 percent, and Senators beat the market by about 10 percent.
In the 2011 study “Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives,” four university professors found that a portfolio that mimics the purchases of House Members beats the market by 55 basis points per month, or approximately 6 percent annually. That study looked at 16,000 common stock transactions made by approximately 300 House delegates from 1985 to 2001.
“Overall we find that the common stocks purchased by Members of the U.S. House of Representatives earn statistically significant positive abnormal returns. Our results indicate that Representatives, like Senators, also trade with a substantial information advantage,” wrote the study’s authors, Alan J. Ziobrowski of Georgia State University, James W. Boyd, of Lindenwood University, Ping Cheng of Florida Atlantic University and Brigitte J. Ziobrowski of Augusta State University.
The group also noted that stocks purchased by Democrats outperform stocks purchased by Republicans.
This ought to be a major, major scandal, if the media were doing it's job. And, from a legal perspective, while this may not be securities fraud, I have a hard time believing that trading on insider information you obtain as a Congressman isn't a crime. Information is valuable, and obtaining something of value in relation to issues you vote on is corruption by definition.
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