This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: “The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves”

  • More Green Energy “Good News” for US Taxpayers

    Recently, Spanish “green” energy giant Abengoa went bankrupt.  For Abengoa’s stockholders, that’s unfortunate.

    It’s also unfortunate for US taxpayers.

    Why, you ask?  After all, isn’t Abengoa a foreign corporation?

    Well, yes it is.  But it also seems that Abengoa was a major recipient of the current US Administration’s “green energy”      irresponsible and wasteful giveaways      financial incentives.  Since 2010, they received approximately $2.7 billion in US subsidies – in the form of DoE loan guarantees.

    In fact, Abengoa is presently the single largest creditor of the Treasury Department’s Federal Financing Bank (FFB).  They currently owe the FFB $2.34 billion.  No word on who loaned them the other $360 million.

    That’s not all.  Abengoa also appears to have received an additional $605 million in tax credits and “green energy” grants – over and above their loan guarantees.

    Abengoa took the money, all right – while running up a total corporate debt of around $17 billion.  But their production – financial or actual – doesn’t seem to have exactly been stellar.  One of their star projects was a massive biofuel plant in the US that has yet to announce production levels or sell any products.  In fairness, Abengoa did indeed pay off the loan associated with that project – a loan that had been guaranteed by the US government.  But they elected to do so “from other revenues”, not from the proceeds of biofuel sales.  In fact, they paid of the loan before ever selling a drop of biofuel produced by the facility.  Any biofuels produced at that facility are apparently still all stored at the facility – or were at the time the loan was repaid.

    But hey – what’s $3.305 billion between friends, eh?  It’s all “for the cause”.  Its “saving the planet”!

    Yeah, right.  “Scam designed to enrich a select few” sounds far more like what’s going on here.

    Don’t get me wrong; I’m in favor of basic research on how to make energy production cleaner and more efficient.  “Cleaner” is definitely good; add “more efficient” and eventually that translates into “economically viable clean energy sources”.  Mankind does have the responsibility to be a good caretaker for planet Earth – if for no other reason than self-preservation.

    But regarding economically-viable “green” energy:  in general we’re simply not there today.  I do have a problem with a group of conceited fools in DC thinking that they can order the laws of physics, engineering, and economics to change overnight simply because they say so.  And I have a huge problem with those same arrogant fools p!ssing away literally billions of the US taxpayer’s money in a Quixotic effort to do just that.

    Oh, and it turns out that Abengoa might not be the only “hit” the taxpayer takes on the “green energy company goes belly-up” ledger this year.

    Another huge player in the current Administration’s “green energy subsidy giveaway      scams      games” may well declare bankruptcy soon.  That would be SunEdison – which has received nearly $650 million in Federal “green energy” subsidies and tax credits.  They’re the 13th most heavily subsidized corporation in the US.  And they are facing a serious liquidity crisis that many experts expect will force them to declare bankruptcy.

    Hmm.  First Solyndra.  Then Abound Solar.  Then Abengoa.  Now, possibly, SunEdison.

    I’m seeing a couple of trends here.  The first trend isn’t any indication that economically viable green energy is “just around the corner”.  And the second indication isn’t that the Administration’s officials managing the Administration’s solar giveaway sweepstakes seem to know their butts from a hole in the ground.

  • Russia’s Military Gets “Frisky”, Part 2

    We’ve now seen what the current         group of spineless, fearful naifs screwing up by-the-numbers in DC        Administration elected to do regarding the recent buzzing of a US warship in international waters by Russian military aircraft.  Specifically, they told Russia, “That wasn’t very nice!” – by sending a diplomatic protest – along with publicly saying, in effect, “Please don’t do it again. That could have ended badly.”

    Well, it appears Russia has given us their reply.  Last Thursday, a Russian SU-27 “barrel-rolled” a US RC-135 operating in international airspace over the Baltic Sea.  The Russian aircraft reportedly came within 50 feet of the US aircraft while doing so.

    OK, Mr. President – this time, Putin has not only given the US the finger with both hands.  He’s also mooned the Statue of Liberty, too.  And he did both while shouting Russian insults.  Your move.

    Here’s my prediction, based on past examples of “leadership” from this       gaggle of feckless fools      Administration.  Look for another “strongly worded diplomatic protest” tomorrow or the next day, along with another meaningless public platitude or two from the SECSTATE.

    Sheesh.  Putin and his cronies must be about to p!ss their pants from laughing at us so hard.  And from my perspective, that’s not terribly funny at all.

     

  • More ObamaPhone “Good News”

    I’ve previously written about the “Lifeline” program here at TAH, now commonly referred to as “ObamaPhones”.  Well, the program is back in the news.  And as was the case previously . . . it’s not exactly in the news for the right reasons.

    When I last wrote about the program around 2 1/2 years ago, it was riddled with fraud.  Indicators at the time were that the program’s fraud rate appeared to be about 40%.

    As you might recall:  the program is funded by fees collected by the FCC on telecommunications services.  Yeah, you’re reading that correctly:  that means you and I pay for it whenever we pay our phone or Internet service bill.  And since it’s effectively funded by a revolving “slush fund” collected from paying telecommunications users, the program doesn’t get that much visibility – or Congressional oversight.

    So, how are things 2 1/2 years later?

    BLUF:  the program still appears to be rife with fraud and abuse.  The FCC recently caught one of the program’s service providers – Total Call – internally duplicating sign-up records and collecting excess funds based on those duplicated records (as well as bypassing other program rules).  The FCC is asking Total Call to return around $9.7M worth of those improper fees, plus has assessed them a whopping fine.

    Gee, great!  That means the FCC is really “raking them over the coals”– right?

    Well, not really.  The FCC is indeed hitting Total Call for $51M – $9.7M to recover fees paid for duplicate claims, plus around $41.3M in fines.  But even including the fines, it appears the FCC will only recover a fraction of the total fees paid to Total Call for their duplicative and bogus claims.

    The nearly $10M in bogus fees referenced above represents what Total Call collected from the FCC for 2,587 duplicate claims.  The actual total of duplicate claims paid was 32,498.  The FCC apparently is simply going to ignore the other almost 30,000 bogus duplicate submissions – and recover nothing for those.

    Estimates are that the actual loss to the government due to all of those bogus claims was over $84M – not $9.7M.  That means the government is collecting less than 12% or so of what was wrongfully paid to Total Call.  Even including the fines, the FCC is only recovering around 60% or so of the actual loss.

    Gee – collect $84+M in bogus fees, then return $9.7M and pay $41.3M in fines.  Doing the math, that means Total Call is somewhere around $39M ahead.  Sounds like a real deterrent to future similar schemes, doesn’t it?

    But as bad as that is, that’s not the worst “stinker” here.

    The FCC recently voted to expand the “ObanaPhone” program (Lifeline) yet again.  On 1 April 2016, the FCC – in a 3-2 vote – approved expansion of the program to include 3G wireless broadband.

    Yeah, you read that right.  Now, not only with ObamaPhone users be able to “phone home” on the taxpayer’s dime – they’ll also have subsidized data services, too.  Can you say “web surfing”?

    But wait – I haven’t even told you the best part yet.  The issues with Total Call described above were known to the FCC in late March.  However, information concerning that apparent scam was not released to the public until after the FCC vote on whether to approve the broadband expansion on 1 April.  Further, FCC personnel – including the 5 FCC commission members – were told not to discuss the matter publicly until after the vote.

    Now, why might the FCC want to keep this under wraps until after they voted on the program’s expansion?  Well, “Avoiding public outcry and complaints” sounds like one rather obvious answer to me.  “Trying to ‘fly under the radar’ ” regarding the program’s expansion to include wireless broadband also comes to mind.

    However, we should be used to crap like this by now.  I mean, really:  based on the past 7+ years we should know to expect stuff like this from “the most transparent Administration in history”.

    The Washington Free Beacon has an excellent article that discusses the above.  Their article has more details on the about the FCC’s investigation; about Total Call and it’s checkered past history with the ObamaPhone (formally “Lifeline”) program; and the intentional hiding of the incident until after the recent FCC vote.  It’s IMO definitely worth a read.

    Sheesh.  This kind of crap simply needs to stop.  Yesterday.

  • “Today, the vast majority of Marine Corps aircraft can’t fly.”

    Fox News today has an article discussing USMC aviation readiness.  Bottom line:  not so good.  The article’s “money quote”:

    Out of 276 F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters in the Marine Corps inventory, only about 30% are ready to fly, according to statistics provided by the Corps. Similarly, only 42 of 147 heavy-lift CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters are airworthy.

    No, that’s not 100% of USMC aviation assets.  But it’s a big portion of them.  And if the article is accurate, well, . . . .

    Why?  Well, for pretty much the same reason as during the Carter Administration.  Then, we were just a few years post-Vietnam – and Carter cut the defense budget radically.  (To be fair, that began under Nixon and Ford – but continued bigtime under Carter).  Regarding similarities to the last 5 years or so . . . well, you do the math.

    I wasn’t USAF, nor was I in Army aviation.  However, I seem to remember folks in the late 1970s and 1980/81 making similar statements about USAF and Army aircraft readiness then.  And “hanger queens” weren’t exactly unknown among other types of military vehicles and/or weapons systems during that time frame, either.

    Looks like it’s, “Welcome back, my friends” – to the Carter Administration. But anyone with 3 or more working brain cells who isn’t a libidiot political apologist (and who hasn’t been living in a cave or on the moon) already knew that.

    A second quote from the linked Fox News article provided the title above.  That linked article is IMO definitely worth a read.

    Just maybe wait to read it if your blood pressure is high today.

     

  • Yeah, That’s Gonna Work Just Great

    I guess everyone has heard by now that we have a cease-fire in the Syrian civil war, albeit a rather shaky one.  And it also looks like       that gang of naive fools and clueless tools currently running the show in DC       the current Administration has a plan for what to do if that cease-fire doesn’t hold.

    Their “Plan B”?  Arm the “moderate” Syrian rebels, of course.

    Seriously.

    Gee.  Seems to me we already “saw that movie”.  We already tried one  program to train and arm those “moderate” Syrian rebels – a program with a $500M budget.  We also had other programs which provided alleged “moderate” Syrian rebel groups weapons and equipment.  Under the first program, we managed to train a huge army of those “moderate” Syrians.  I believe the total number trained was 5 or so – before we terminated the program because it was ineffective.

    Oh, and did I mention that at least some of the weapons and equipment we provided to those “moderate” Syrian rebels in the past were in turn later transferred by those “moderate” rebels to radical Jihadist organizations allied with al Qaeda?

    But fear not, Americans; it will be different this time around.  The plan will most assuredly work this time.  Our Fearless Leader’s and his minions say so!

    One description of insanity is repetitively doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome.  Perhaps someone should explain that to this      DC Clown krewe       Administration.

    Sheesh.  I will be so freaking glad when this nation again has adult leadership that knows the difference between its butt and a hole in the ground.

  • Tell Me Again Why We’re Involved?

    During the last two months, there have been armed clashes between two Syrian rebel factions on the northern outskirts of Aleppo.  The area is contested territory, and apparently both factions want to possess it.

    One of the groups is called Fursan al Haq, or “Knights of Righteousness”. They previously controlled the territory, but in February were displaced by “Syrian Democratic Forces” that moved into the area from the east.

    This wasn’t an isolated occurrence, either.  Similar clashes have been reported earlier this month in the town of Azaz, and in Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood.

    Here’s the “punch line”:  Fursan al Haq is backed – an armed – by the CIA.  The Syrian Democratic Forces?  They’re backed and armed by the Pentagon.

    Yeah, you read that correctly.  Two of the Syrian rebel groups the US has backed to oppose Assad are currently fighting each other instead.

    Sheesh.  When the factions we back start fighting each other, you really have to wonder if we’re backing the right groups – or if we even have a freaking clue about what’s really going on in Syria.

    As I’ve said repeatedly:  perhaps Syria is indeed a case of, “Better the Devil you know . . . than the Devil you don’t.”  IMO, other than countering Da’esh and its allies we have “no dog in the fight” in the Syrian Civil War.  And had we not involved ourselves in Syria, I suspect Assad’s regime would have done a much better job taking care of Da’esh and its allies than we’ve done so far – at least in Syrian territory.

    This article from The Virginian-Pilot gives more details.  IMO it’s worth a read.

  • Yet More Idiocy at DHS

    Remember the San Bernardino shootings? You know, that cold-blooded terrorist massacre perpetrated by a US citizen and his foreign-born spouse?  The spouse who DHS allowed to enter the country in in spite of the fact that she’d made social media postings supporting violent jihad; where DHS didn’t bother even to check her social media posts because it was against DHS policy to do so; and who DHS never interviewed in person as required under Federal law before allowing them to immigrate?

    Well, looks like this one gets “curiouser and curiouser” still with respect to DHS’s actions.

    The two dead terrorists who perpetrated that attack got their weapons from a straw buyer – Enrique Martinez – who was a friend of the husband. The FBI determined this shortly after the attack.

    Martinez had a scheduled interview at the San Bernardino US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office the day after the attack. FBI officials found out about that interview; they requested that their LE counterparts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detain Martinez as a person of interest so that they could interview him about the matter.

    Unfortunately, that didn’t go too well.

    When the ICE agents went to the San Bernardino USICS office as requested by the FBI, they were refused entry. They were unable to detain Martinez.

    Yeah, you read that right.  The Federal personnel running that ICS office refused to allow Federal LE personnel acting at the request of the FBI to enter their facility and detain a person of interest in a terrorism case.

    Tell me that isn’t evidence of a seriously out-of-whack set of priorities.  In my book, when Federal immigration services personnel start ignoring requests from Federal LE to detain persons of interest in terrorist attacks something is seriously effed up.

    Fox News has an article with more details.  It’s worth reading.

    Sounds like “you got some ‘splainin’ to do”, Secretary Johnson.  Or maybe that should read “you got lots more ‘splainin’ to do”.

  • And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’ . . .

    . . . for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    By now, we all have heard about the problems at the VA with respect to “secret waiting lists” and retaliation against whistleblowers.  And we all know that the VA’s OIG has “thoroughly” investigated the problem.

    These problems were so bad and so widespread that they claimed one VA Secretary – Shinseki.  They’ve also been an albatross around his successor’s neck.

    Well, it appears that the US Office of Special Counsel has also looked into the matters of secret waiting lists and whistleblower retaliation – and at how well the VA is doing at finding the underlying problems and “cleaning up it’s act.”  The OSC is an investigative agency outside of the VA, and it reports to the POTUS.

    What did it find?  Well, let’s just cut to the chase:

    “The OIG investigations that the VA submitted in response to both referrals are incomplete.  They do not respond to the issues that the whistleblowers raised,” Lerner wrote to President Obama.

    Fox News has an article today with more details.  The OSC letter and report can be found here.

    Yeah, I think the VA Secretary has “some ‘splainin’ to do.”  Yet again.