Montana State Budget: Black To Red?

Depending on who you ask, the state of Montana may be headed for a June 2011 $62 million general fund budget deficit, or can still boast that we are only one of two states in the black.

Red ink predicted for state budget Feb 8, 2010

'The state’s general-fund budget will be in the red by mid-2011, a new revenue forecast predicted Monday.

The Legislature’s chief revenue forecaster, Terry Johnson, projected that the state would encounter a $62.5 million general-fund budget deficit by June 30, 2011, as tax collections continue to fall.'Read the entire story here.
-
Perhaps the most interesting part of the article ...
'On Jan. 29, Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s budget director, David Ewer, forecast a $5.6 million general-fund budget balance as of mid-2011.

On Monday, Ewer dismissed Johnson’s latest numbers as meaningless at this time.

“These numbers are not relevant because they rapidly change,” Ewer said.

“We will use November 2010 numbers — the best we will have — in preparing the governor’s budget (for the 2011 Legislature). We have $330 million in cash today.”'-
Hmmm, who to believe.

Wafting Stench At Chicago City Hall, "Green" Urinals Being Replaced

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Mayor Daley's chief environmental officer had an idea several years ago to put donated waterless urinals in City Hall. And he did ...

'Green' experiment at City Hall stinks Feb 6, 2010

'There's been a stench coming from the second floor of City Hall -- and it has nothing to do with the steady stream of Chicago aldermen convicted on corruption charges.

Waterless urinals installed to promote water conservation in the public men's room outside the City Council chambers have turned into a stinky mess. The odor got so bad that the "green" urinals are now being ripped out and replaced with the old-fashioned kind at a cost City Hall has refused to disclose.

The problem is that Chicago's building code requires commercial buildings to use copper pipes in indoor plumbing. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers specifically states that drainpipes for waterless urinals "cannot be made of copper pipe, which corrodes."'
...-

So according to this article, the Army Corps of Engineers specifically stated that the waterless urinal drainpipes "cannot be made of copper pipe", the Chicago building code requires copper pipe, but they installed waterless urinals anyway.

Sounds about right.

h/t PG

Jim Tester's Ear

As I pointed out last night, a February 3 post at Business Insider highlighted a staffer of Montana Senator Jon Tester that is defecting to The Glover Park Group, which evidently does lobbying for certain banking clients.

A 'spokesman' for the Senator has today cleared the air, much like it was done in the Helena IR report ...

Senator Jim Tester: There Is No Revolving Door In My Office! Feb 5, 2010

'Earlier this week, we broke the news that a high level economics policy staffer from Senator Jim Tester's office had taken a position with a Democratic lobbying firm that does a lot of work for banks.'
...
'Well, a spokesman for Tester says that the phrase "revolving door" is misleading. Tester has a strict policy that staffers who go to work for lobbying firms can never come back to work for him. What's more, they are not allowed to lobby him directly.

"As far as we're concerned the door to lobbying only goes one way: out," the spokesman said.

Of course, this is largely irrelevant. Of course former staffers don't come back to work as Hill staffers again. The money is too good as a banker or lobbyist. We cannot imagine why anyone would move in that direction.

It's also irrelevant whether former staffers can lobby Tester. Their real point of influence is not the connection to a single Senator but to the staffs of numerous Senators who sit on the banking committee. No one is paying the lobbyists big bucks just because they have Tester's ear.'{emphasis added}
-
Jim?
-
I don't believe anyone should hold Senator Tester responsible for where his staff goes after they leave his office. However, how are Montanans to know whether the Senator has met with and been influenced by his departed staffer "directly"?

A press release? The Helena Independent Record?

It's an unrealistic political promise that I believe assumes we constituents are stupid.

One more thing about political promises that don't ever seem to get realistically covered by the local media, can anyone say earmarks? How about: I don't support earmarks, period?
-
Thanks very much to Mr. Carney for his posts.

The IPCC Gets Some Competition

Given that the head of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, is very well known in his native India, today's announcement by his government to form its own group to study global warming is particularly poignant. The U.K. Telegraph reports ...

India forms new climate change body Feb 4, 2010

'India has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri.'

'The Indian government's move is a significant snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear.'
...... and also today, the head of Greenpeace U.K. calls for Dr. Pachauri to resign over not reporting the Himalayan glacier gaffe before Copenhagen ...

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri under pressure to go over glacier error Feb 4, 2010 ...
'John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK , said that Dr Pachauri should have acted as soon as he had been informed of the error, even though issuing a correction would have embarrassed the IPCC on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit.

A journalist working for Science had told Dr Pachauri several times late last year that glaciologists had refuted the IPCC claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. Dr Pachauri refused to address the problem, saying: “I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.”'
...All is not lost for Dr. Pachauri, however, as it was most recently announced that he has been given $10,000 as part of a UN-HABITAT award.

Guess which one of the three articles above is likely to show up on your American doorstep tomorrow morning?

-
Big h/t to Richard at EUReferendum

A Tester Limerick

Most comments and comment threads for articles posted in online newspapers are generally tough to make it through. There are some exceptions though, which is why I even bother when time permits.

Montana's Capital City newspaper played defense once again in an online article today about a staff member of Senator Jon Tester taking a position as a lobbyist at The Glover Park Group. Not surprisingly, the Independent Record did not divulge the business that the staffer would lobby for, but instead passed along some reassurance that he 'will not be allowed to lobby Tester staff'. Thanks IR, I feel better; but why not tell us what type of business he'll be lobbying for?

John Carney, at Business Insider, does ...

Senate Staffer Is Walking Through The Capitol Hill-Lobbyist Revolving Door Right Now Feb 3, 2010

'The revolving door between banking lobbyists and the Senate's banking committee started spinning just moments ago.

At around 9:45 this morning, the senior economic policy advisor for Montana's Senator Jon Tester announced that he is leaving his position on Capitol Hill for a new job at The Glover Park Group, a Democrat-oriented lobbyist firm.

But don't get distracted by party affiliation here. This is not about progressive policy versus free markets. It's about banking.'
...Back at the IR site, article commenter CharlesFeney has a piece he's titled "Senator Shrek Hits the Deck" ... 'In Montana from a ranch around Chester
Came a jar headed politician named Tester
But since he's been elected
He hasn't performed as expected
Now this boil is beginning to fester

His first vote played like an angel with harp
'Cause he voted against the fraudulent TARP
But he showed his first party hackage
By voting for Obama's stimulus package
Showing Montanans that he wasn't too sharp

Again Montana's voters were betrayed
When their new junior senator got swayed
You see he began to adore
A flatulent fellow named Gore
And came out favoring the insane Cap and Trade

Even though Montana's biggest resource is coal
On which a carbon tax would take a great toll
You'd think that a farmer would know
That carbon dioxide makes the plants grow,
But his State's welfare was no longer his goal

When farmer Tester first went out to D.C.
Getting in touch with him was very easy
But now we call and we call
And we can't get through at all
It's an old Baucus trick, rather sleazy.'
...there's more.

Sustainable Systems: Another Brick In The Wall

The Montana Department of Labor and Industry today posted a conclusion in the Wage and Hour dispute between five ex-employees of the Culbertson Montola plant and Sustainable Systems, LLC.

According to the January 5th, 2010 decision, the Judge in the case ordered Sustainable Systems to pay a total of $9000 in vacation pay owed and $5000 in fines, less applicable withholding of course, to the claimants within 30 days. The conclusion was the result of a December 16, 2009 Wage and Hour claim hearing held via conference call that included the five claimants and Paul Miller of Sustainable Systems.

Sustainable Systems, as you may remember, took over the Culbertson plant and later had its assets seized by the Montana Department of Agriculture to pay farmers for delivered crops. Paul Miller, previous President of Sustainable, is currently head of Carbonics Capital Corp.

The official public record of the December 16, 2009 hearing was obtained, from the very kind Department of Labor and Industry (audio CD/$5.00), and contained some startling information.

During the 25 minute hearing, when asked if Sustainable Systems has resources to pay the accrued vacation pay and if they are still in operation "today", Mr. Miller replied "no" to both. At one point, Mr Miller appeared to blame the state for not being able to pay the gentlemen their vacation due. When asked to explain what happened as to why these gentlemen weren't originally sent their vacation pay, Mr. Miller stated "[T]he cash was taken under control by the State of Montana and we didn't have the resources to make the wage, vacation pay". The Department of Agriculture returned $65,000 to Sustainable System after paying back the farmers later in 2009.

-
I do hope by some chance that these five gentlemen get paid, there is evidently something going on at the plant and I think these folks deserve first dibs. Remember the $120,000 in GTA loans and the [snip]

-
Although this subject has been beat'n to death on this blog, I'm still going to post on it as I believe that this is an important story regarding state FOI, state government "intervention"(politics), and the green energy movement. Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of the December 16, 2009 hearing mentioned above, please let me know.

Posting has been light but that should change sometime soon. The queue keeps growing.

IPCC "Peer Reviewed" Science, Their Chief, And The EPA

To a large part of the world, the Himalayan glaciers have long been a front page poster-child for man-made global warming, much as polar bears are to us U.S. green consumers.

Some may have seen recently in local news circles that the United Nation's IPCC 2007 AR4 contained numerous errors clearly discrediting their "peer reviewed" process. Perhaps the most egregious error had to do with the AR4 statement that the likelihood of the glaciers in the Himalaya disappearing by 2035 was very high, which was sourced from a New Scientist interview.

The IPCC has now apparently been caught in another case of using non-"peer reviewed" data in AR4, this time concerning the Amazon Rain Forests and use of WWF studies. From the Times of India ...

Now, IPCC claims on Amazon fall flat Jan 27, 2010

'NEW DELHI: The hits to IPCC and R K Pachauri just don't seem to stop. In the latest embarrassment to the Nobel-winning body, British daily 'Telegraph' has published details on IPCC's dire prediction regarding the huge depletion of Amazon forests, which was based on unverified reports.

The daily said the IPCC forecast about the loss of Amazon forests because of "even a slight reduction in precipitation" came from a journal that was not peer-reviewed. Coming after the disclosure, and acknowledgement, that its warning of 'meltdown' of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was based on speculation, the latest expose will further undercut IPCC's credibility.

According to the article, Pachauri is under fire for setting a death-date for the Amazon forests. With this, Pachauri's "robust and solid" monitoring system for preparing the IPCC assessment report has been completely shorn of respectability.'
...{see related youtube video here}

-
Sticking with the IPCC, but regarding a different issue altogether, the U.S. major news outlets have mostly been sitting on a story that has been buzzing on some U.S. blogs, and the main stream media in India, the U.K., and parts of Europe. Given virtual protective status by the likes of the AP thus far, the story is of IPCC Chief Dr. Rajendra Pachauri's business dealings with companies that financially benefit from hyping and propagandizing catastrophic climate change "findings" just like the disappearing Himalayan glaciers and Amazon Rain Forests.

Update 1/28/10 840pm - ABC News has a good article regarding Dr. Pachauri here, glad to see their report.

Richard North from EU Referendum has done a stellar job uncovering the IPCC Chief's questionable financial connections, among many other things.

Of course, the New York Times poo poo's both Al Gore's and Dr. Pachauri's financial interests. This is what it has evidently come to, corruption is O.K., as long as the science is strong. Oh, never mind that there appears to be non-"peer reviewed" data making it into a document that policy makers, politicians, and bureaucrats happen to be basing trillions of dollars of wealth transfer on.


The reason that this far away battle regarding "peer reviewed" science should have important consequences here in the U.S. relates to the EPA's use of the IPCC document and their own internal guidelines. The EPA are supposed to follow strict adherence to policies outlining use of peer-reviewed data. Steve McIntyre smacks the nail on the head again in The WWF and the EPA Endangerment Finding.

-
As a side note to all of this, I find it interesting that a certain climategate email mentions the outing of the previous IPCC chief, Dr. Robert Watson, and subsequent replacement of Dr. Pachauri in 2002, claiming it was orchestrated by Big Oil and Bush. Related to this, Al Gore does blame ExxonMobil for Dr. Watson's demise and stated that Dr. Pachauri 'is known for his virulent anti-American statements' in a 2002 NYT opinion piece. And to think that these two won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Serious Weatherization Money, And Swat Teams

In an October 2009 Billings Gazette opinion piece, hailing the benefits and stimulus money spending on weatherization, discussions with Department of Energy official Cathy Zoi were reported ...

....
'On a stop at The Gazette newsroom, Zoi, who was appointed to the DOE post earlier this year, talked about her mandate for accountability. New rules have been instituted to ensure that spending mistakes made in recent years aren't repeated, Zoi said. More people have been hired to provide oversight of federal energy efficiency programs, and they are receiving better training for their jobs. ARRA projects also are subject to comprehensive monitoring systems in each state, she said.'
....{emphasis added}

According to an April 2009 DOE press release announcing President Obama's nomination of Cathy Zoi as the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy ...
'Zoi is the founding chief executive officer of the Alliance for Climate Protection, which was established and chaired by former Vice President Al Gore.'-
During the discussions about accountability in the Billings Gazette newsroom, I wonder if Ms. Zoi pointed out the position that her husband, Robin Roy, holds?

Robin Roy is the Vice President, Projects and Policy, of Serious Materials Inc. which manufactures energy efficient windows. Coincidentally, Serious Materials Inc. is the only window company identified to receive tax credits from the recent $2.3 billion clean energy manufacturing announcement by the Whitehouse.

John Stossel's recent report, 'Crony Capitalism' points out the connection and shows a clip of Ms. Zoi discussing swat teams (@ 2:39): ... 'where literally, swat teams go into neighborhoods and retrofit every single house and every single business on mainstreet' ...



Hat tip to Planet Gore for pointing out Paul Chesser's post, which contains much more information. John Stossel's full six video report on youtube here.

-
In my opinion, if conflicts of interest such as this are not called out and are tolerated when either party is in power, then the slippery slope to a very corrupt U.S. government just got steeper.

I commend Ms. Zoi's comments on spending money wisely and accountability of everyone involved, I'm not sure I agree with her on hiring more people and spending money fast. And before I'm accused of being a "swat team" frightened right-wingnut, I understand that "swat teams" probably doesn't really mean "swat teams" in the gun carrying sense. For anyone interested, getliberty.org has some interesting information about Cathy Zoi in pdf form here.

Finally, in five to ten years when this whole weatherization affair is winding down, I look forward to the Gazette's dissemination of honest energy savings data as well as cost analysis studies. If none appear because perhaps some of these programs don't actually save the environment or make sense monetarily, I'm guessing that feeling good about it all will outweigh everything else.

Gas Man, Pickens, Breaks Wind (Deal)

Big wind and natural gas tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who was in Helena last February "pushing" gas and wind power, has announced a massive cutback in the number of GE wind turbines ordered and has apparently temporarily cancelled the Texas wind farm where they would be placed. From the Wall Street Journal ...

Pickens Shelves Texas Wind Project Jan 14, 2009

'T. Boone Pickens, the oilman and clean-energy booster, shelved his massive wind-power project in Texas even as he stepped up his push to increase the use of natural gas for transportation.

Cheap natural gas, the lack of electricity-transmission lines and the lingering credit crunch have combined to take the shine off large-scale renewable-energy projects, and those factors led Mr. Pickens to halve his $2 billion wind-turbine order with General Electric Co., said a spokesman for Mr. Pickens's Mesa Power LP.

Mr. Pickens in May 2008 announced plans for the biggest wind farm in the U.S., by amount of installed megawatts, to be located in the Texas panhandle. But Tuesday he said he would cut his order with GE to 333 turbines from 667 machines and use them for wind farms in Canada and Minnesota.

That means the Pampa Wind Farm slated for north Texas—and postponed last summer until at least 2013—won't happen under current conditions.

"It's off the table," Mr. Pickens said Wednesday in a conference call.'
....-
... 'the lack of electricity-transmission lines' ...??

I would have thought that someone like Mr. Pickens and his crew would have done their homework on this project regarding the future availability of transmission lines before making an announcement to put up 667 wind turbines. But hey, that seems to be the MO of getting people on board these days.

Did Montana Miss Out On Massive Green Energy Handout?

Montana was not included in a map of project types and states announced on Friday by the Whitehouse to receive a portion of $2.3 billion worth of tax credits for clean energy manufacturing. Bloomberg reported ...

Obama Awards $2.3 Billion in Clean-Energy Tax Credits (Update1) Jan 8, 2009

'The Obama administration today announced that 183 companies, including PPG Industries Inc. and Itron Inc., will get a total of $2.3 billion worth of tax credits for clean-energy manufacturing projects in 43 states.

The tax credits are part of the $787 billion stimulus President Barack Obama pushed through Congress last year, and announcement of the companies that got the credit coincides with a Labor Department report that the U.S. lost 85,000 jobs in December.

The projects getting the tax credit are forecast by the administration to create more than 17,000 jobs.'
....
'The administration last month announced it will ask Congress for a $5 billion expansion of a tax credit which is intended to encourage manufacturing of alternative energy technology because the original was oversubscribed.'Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate, posted on the White House Blog last Friday regarding the announcement ... ....
'One hundred eighty three projects in 43 states will create tens of thousands of high quality clean energy jobs and the domestic manufacturing of advanced clean energy technologies including solar, wind and efficiency and energy management technologies.'
....Thus highlighting that 183 'projects', not 'companies' as Bloomberg reported, will receive the investment tax credits. Missing from Ms. Browner's post was a specific list of projects, only the map below which unfortunately doesn't have a blue circle designating a wind turbine plant in Butte.

But what of an official list of the 'projects' and companies?

7gen.com reported on Friday about the $2.3 billion announcement and included a list of 183 companies and amounts, with only 137 of them shown to have specific projects and locations. The number of locations, 137, conveniently coincides with the numbers on the map provided in Ms. Browner's blog post.

Included in the list of non-specific "Additional Projects" are the following ...

4503 Fuhrlaender USA - West LLC $2,719,500
4504 Fuhrlaender USA - Blade LLC $6,813,000

Those who know could tell us if these tax credit funds will go towards a wind turbine plant in Butte, Montana, or possibly a wind turbine plant in Nevada as at least one pundit suggests. Time will, once again, tell.

The list highlighted at 7gen.com can also be found in an xls spreadsheet available at whitehouse.gov here and is titled 'Selections For Section 48C Manufacturing Tax Credit'.

The 137 projects with details in the spreadsheet list the applicant name, the tax credit requested, the technology area (from the above map), the facility city and state, the HQ city and state, and an updated description. The big company winners include, of course, GE, Siemens, Dow Chemical, and others. The big technology winner appears to me to be solar (go Ken).

Regarding wind, thirty six projects were listed, and I've compiled the list into one PDF document available here.

Two projects not related to wind that caught my eye, the first is one of many for GE ... General Electric Gas Turbines (Greenville) LLC $26,862,000 Industrial
Greenville SC Greenville SC
GE will manufacture its 7FA heavy duty gas turbines that will deliver greater output and efficiency. The turbine will help reduce GHG emissions, while maintaining leadership in reliability, availability, and the operational flexibility that power generators need to achieve greater revenues in cyclic and peaking operation.Sounds to me like something GE should have been working on if the market warranted it anyway, but what do I know.

The second, for ice energy ... Ice Energy, Inc. $1,508,973 Smart Grid
Hammondsport NY Windsor CO
Ice Energy will expand a facility to design and manufacture energy storage modules for use with direct expansion air conditioners commonly found in commercial and small industrial applications. When deployed, the asset enables the storage of electricity from renewable energy resources in the form of ice.-
Update 1/28/10 - See also here.