If he ends up being remembered as anything other than a human pile of garbage then my personal sense of morality and conscientiousness no longer have a place in this world.
We have gone from a $200 million ballroom funded by donations, to one for which Congress just requested $1 billion from taxpayers.
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Trumpâs ballroom is becoming a political boondoggle
Boondoggle 
. I learned a new word today.
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Is it satire? Is it from The Onion? No, it is from the BBC:
The Entitled European Tourist Sun Lounger Wars are real, yâall.
The irony here is that Germans are by far the most aggressive in battle.
I once went to Ibiza with a German girlfriend and her family in the late 90s. Every one of them woke up at an ungodly hour to put towels on pool sun chairs then return to sleep for another few hours.
Itâs a funny old world.
I think this is worth a watch:
Your tax dollars at workâŚ
Donald Trump is seeking to have the U.S. government pay or assume liability for the $83.3 million defamation judgment to E. Jean Carroll. His legal team is attempting to use the Westfall Act to replace himself with the U.S. as the defendant, arguing his comments were made while acting as a government employee.
NBC News
You really canât make this shit upâŚ
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It took about 24 hours (in Florida, mind you!) after the blessing of this statue by the maga preachers for this:
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Itâs a witch hunt!
A fake news photo!
The libs arenât being properly owned!
The swamp still needs the dregs drained!
Etc., etc.
In a hearing, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum said, âWhen the sun goes down, solar panels produce zero electricity. The whole machine doesnât work.â
Rep. Jared Huffman literally held a battery up and said, âI request to enter into the record this amazing new technology that apparently the Secretary is unaware of. Itâs a battery.â
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This is an issue with most renewable energy projects. They rely on existing generation to essentially siphon the situational power generated from these facilities. Without the siphon effect, the generation is so inconsistent to cause more loss on a transmission line prior to distribution then they generate.
Batteries have been suggested to allow regulated transmission without the siphon effect, but this is never included in these projects. Neither is any funding or bond issues to pay for removal of these facilities when they go end of life. They are future EPA clean up sights.
The focus is two fold. The power companies build the renewable facility to grab the subsides and accelerated depreciation for 7 years. They can also initiate customer schemes to charge them more for ârenewable powerâ. While this has a very nice marketing ring, I would be interested to see how the separate the renewable electrons from the nasty old coal fired electrons.
The real gem is this, when selling to another power utility the cost is determined by the selling utilities highest cost of generation. If you remove the benefit of the subsidies, renewables now becomes their highest cost generation. Fire up the nuclear plant or hydro and rake it in.
Renewable make much more economic sense in individual installation. However, the big utilities have skewed the legislative landscape to keep things working in their favor.
Proving once again that when corporate interests appear to embrace renewables (or any good or better thing, really), it is often the kiss of death. Itâs always about extraction, not sustainability.
My utility (PG&E) is particularly bad in this respect. They pay about 1/4 of what they charge for electricity when they are on the receiving end of excess solar, plus they impose limits on the size of a solar installation (which indicates they donât really want to accept excess solar on their grid, and probably wouldnât if they had complete regulatory capture).
Theyâve also been racking up an impressive body count with their poorly maintained infrastructure (85 dead in the Camp Fire sparked by PG&E power lines and 8 dead in the San Bruno gas line explosions). Since corporations are now considered âpeopleâ, perhaps PG&E should get the corporate equivalent of life in prison for their misdeeds.
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