Category: Alternative Subsidy

Trucking blues

entitlement generation Great Moments In Socialism Subsidy Fraud Boy 9 Comments

Buried in the stories about the collapse of Yellow Trucking is an even bigger, but unfortunately commonplace story, about how taxpayers poured billions into an organization and received a 100% loss for their efforts.

If you are a taxpayer, you know all this, your government being a 29.6 percent shareholder of Yellow and all. The Trump administration’s Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act dished out $500 billion to businesses, states and municipalities as a result of the coronavirus. Yellow Corporation received $700 million of the $735.9 million set aside for national security loans.

Once the loan was funded, Yellow executive officers and directors received stock options and Yellow stock went up ten times in price from the bailout to the end of 2021.

We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy Roadkill 56 Comments

All in all*, they’re just another brick on the road.

The owner of a 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat with an extended-range battery regrets buying the electric truck after attempting a road trip, only to abandon it and finish the drive with a gas-powered rental vehicle.

Dalbir Bala of La Salle, Man., left the truck in Minnesota last month after he said he tried unsuccessfully to charge the battery at two different charging stations.

“It was really a nightmare frustration for us,” Bala said.

He bought the truck — which is advertised as having a range of 515 kilometres — for $115,000 in January. He spent an additional $16,000 installing chargers at his home and his trucking business, and upgrading his residential electrical panel.

Bala, his wife and three kids left on a trip to visit Wisconsin Dells, Wis., and Chicago for business, on July 27. The truck was fully charged when they left their home just south of Winnipeg, and Bala had plans to stop at level 3 charging stations, which provide faster charges, located along the planned route.

China Recruits BLM to Protest for Slavery

Alternative Subsidy Claws of the Panda Khmer Noir 7 Comments

Remember how Russia supposedly elected Trump using only the television ad budget of a failed congressional race in Amish country?

The Senate intelligence report actually found that “most of the videos” put up by Moscow “pertained to police brutality and the activist efforts of the Black Lives Matter organization”.

The Russians had created their own Black Lives Matter groups, activists and protests. Their favorite ‘Black Russian’ hate groups included Marxists who under their “gender non-conforming” leader marched through Atlanta shouting, “Kill the police! To get free, you’ve got to kill the pigs.”

Not to be outdone, the People’s Republic of China decided to join the fun by paying black nationalists to organize rallies against a ban on solar panels produced by its slave laborers.

In a historical irony, black nationalists went out to protest in defense of slavery.

h/t Reader

Y2Kyoto: The Tides Turn

Alternative Subsidy 8 Comments

Orkney Council to spend £150k to dispose of £1 wave device

A wave energy converter bought by Orkney Islands[Scotland] council for £1 is expected to cost £150k to decommission.

The council purchased the Pelamis wave device in 2017 for a nominal sum in the hope of saving it from destruction, given its heritage value to the island.

But it has failed to find a use for the 180m (591ft) long wave machine and is now looking to dispose of it.

The council received £45,000 at the time for any disposal costs, but has spent almost all of it on maintenance.

The power to waste money knows no bounds.

Socialisme pour les Quebecois

Alternative Subsidy Great Moments In Socialism nannystate Protected Class 14 Comments

Central planning is like a washing machine cycle that never ends:

Step 1: Subsidize production.

Step 2: When production exceeds consumer demand, subsidize the losses.

Step 3: When the losses become terminal, pay producers to exit the industry.

Step 4: When prices rise, go back to Step 1.

The first stage of the production-cut program is voluntary. Those that agree to participate must leave the industry for a minimum of five years. Two-thirds of the cost will be covered by Farm Income Stabilization Insurance, a taxpayer-funded provincial program that, when market prices are low, covers the costs of production. One-third will be paid by Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec.

This will mean that every producer who remains in the sector must pay $2.86 to the union for every hog they sell, to cover producers’ share of the expense, according to reporting by La Presse. The pool of cash will be used to pay producers who leave.

“We understand we need the taxpayer helping us‚ but at the same time we bring lots of money, too,” Mr. Roy said.

We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy Roadkill 22 Comments

“It’s dead, Jim”.

Running out of battery is as easy as running out of gas. The trick here would be to run out in a safe location. We planned to keep driving until the truck stopped moving, but we didn’t know exactly where that would be. Like gas-powered cars, some EVs have a little extra emergency range left after the gauge reaches zero.

That in mind, we struck out for the Santa Clarita River Valley north of Los Angeles, an agricultural community with only a pair of slow Level 2 wall chargers available for EV drivers and no Level 3 DC Fast chargers for 25 miles in any direction. Once we’d worn out the battery, we’d call Rivian Roadside Assistance and see what happened. Where would they tow us? How much would it cost? How long would it take to charge up enough to get home? We were going to find out.

We Don’t Need No Flaming Rings Of Fire

Alternative Subsidy Roadkill 6 Comments

Two people were injured Monday morning, one of them seriously, when an e-bike burst into flames in a Bronx apartment building, the FDNY said.

The e-bike caught fire just before 6 a.m. in the basement of 768 E. 187th St., a four-story building in Belmont.

Twelve FDNY units and 60 firefighters responded to the fire and were able to bring it under control around 6:30 a.m.

One civilian was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital in serious condition but is expected to survive.

Y2Kyoto: Schadenfrozen

Alternative Subsidy Climate Cult Y2Kyoto 25 Comments

Not a bug, but a feature;

Germany is facing several tough years due to a combination of transitioning to sustainable energy sources and the rising costs of energy, warned Germany’s Green Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck.

The federal minister, who has long called for a radical energy policy change, said that Germany faces “five tough years ahead” and revealed the country will have to borrow to support companies’ energy costs or lose their industry.

We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy Roadkill 18 Comments

Toronto Sun;

Ford Motor Co.’s is throttling back on plans to ramp-up electric vehicle production, pointing the finger at a price war for battery-powered vehicles.

The automaker on Thursday said it would need another year to meet a year-end target to reach an annual production rate of 600,000 EVs, which it now expects to reach in 2024. Ford also abandoned plans to be making 2 million EVs a year by the end of 2026.

It now expects to see losses from EVs hit $4.5 billion this year, up from an earlier estimate of $3 billion. That’s more than double the $2.1 billion the company lost on EVs last year.

End Of Oil

Alternative Subsidy Drill, Baby, Drill 18 Comments

1) Data indicates that future demand for oil and gas is UNDERESTIMATED, while demand destruction is HYPED.

2) Global energy demand is increasing, making decarbonization more difficult to achieve, and the process of replacing fossil fuels slower.

3) Despite massive spending on renewables in the last two decades, fossil fuels remain the dominant source of energy in the world, even in Europe.

4) Coal remains the dominant source of electricity in India and China.

5) Oil is rarely used in power generation in the OECD, China, and India. Doubling or tripling solar and wind energy sources will have a very limited impact on oil demand. However, the failure of renewable energy, and consequent power shortages, will have a significant impact on oil demand.

6) As LNG prices reached a record high in 2022, oil use in power generation increased. The level of substitution among various energy sources last year was unprecedented.

Other than that, the fossil fuel industry is finished.

Ban All The Things!

Alternative Subsidy 18 Comments

Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won’t Let Them Dig It Up

Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres. There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017. As more companies begin prospecting in Maine and searching for sizable nickel, copper, and silver deposits, towns are beginning to pass their own bans on industrial mining.

We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy Roadkill 55 Comments

It couldn’t possibly be its complete and utter uselessness, no not that: Ford Slashes Price of Electric F-150 as Demand Weakens

Ford Motor on Monday reduced prices of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck by between $6,000 and nearly $10,000, the latest sign of sluggish demand for electric vehicles.

The price cuts come as inventories of unsold electric vehicles are rising on dealer lots, and follow several rounds of discounting by Tesla, the dominant seller of electric cars.

Ford is lowering prices after it temporarily halted production of the truck this year to upgrade its assembly line and increase output. By the fall, the company expects its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center near Detroit to be able to churn out 150,000 Lightnings a year, triple its current production capacity.

Competition in the electric vehicle business is growing more intense. Tesla said on Saturday that it had started producing its much delayed Cybertruck pickup, and General Motors is expected to soon begin delivering an electric version of the Chevrolet Silverado truck.

Ford began making the Lightning in the spring of 2022 and raised prices several times by a total of around $20,000, citing increasing cost of raw materials for its batteries.

It Was My Understanding There Would Be No Math

Alternative Subsidy Great Reset Y2Kyoto 31 Comments

Spiked;

In 2021, Jeremiah Thoronka was making a name for himself in clean-energy technology. The then 21-year-old Durham University masters student had invented a device that uses kinetic energy from traffic and pedestrians to generate electricity. It certainly sounded groundbreaking. In a pilot project in Thoronka’s native Sierra Leone, two devices had apparently provided free electricity to 150 households and 15 schools.

Thoronka’s work clearly impressed awards panel judges. In 2021, he picked up the Commonwealth Youth Award and the Global Student Prize, which was presented to him by filmstar Hugh Jackman at a virtual ceremony, broadcast from the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Thoronka was the man of the moment. There was a profile by the BBC, an invitation to give TED talks and, in May 2022, an audience with the pope. He was celebrated as a green-tech innovator, someone setting a clean-energy example for the world to follow.

The accolades have continued to flow. Last month, at the Green Tech Festival in Berlin, he won the Youngster Green Award for 2023. It was this that prompted German journalists to ask if it might all be a little too good to be true. They contacted the organisers of the Youngster Green Award and Greentech Festival to find out a bit more about Thoronka’s pilot project. After all, it sounded incredible. But the organisers said that wouldn’t be possible because the pilot had since been dismantled. They asked if the device was being used anywhere else, and were told that it wasn’t. One journalist even asked if there were any videos, blueprints or other documentation of this unprecedented breakthrough. Again, nothing was forthcoming. In fact, no one could tell journalists much about the device or the pilot project at all.

It seems the Youngster Green Award and Greentech festival organisers, and potentially others, have been willing to take Thoronka’s achievement entirely at face value. Perhaps the pilot was a success; perhaps it wasn’t.

That no one really knows – or cares to know – is telling.

h/t

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation