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Guess who went to dinner in Brazil?

August 23, 2011 By Carol Greenberg

Recap: Last March President Obama paid a visit to Brazil to meet with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. He paid visits to Brazil’s capital of Brasilia and then went on to a rally in Rio. The White House press release “meet-up” was advertised as:

Noting the interdependence among peace, security and development, President Rousseff and President Obama reaffirmed their desire to build a just and inclusive world order, which promotes democracy, human rights and social justice.

That first paragraph sounds scary enough, but when I learned that Dept. of Energy Steven Chu was tagging along my eyes and ears really perked up. I knew that Brazil’s mega-oil giant Petrobras had just discovered two huge oil fields off the coast of Rio. And my suspicions turned out to be correct: one of Obama’s main purposes of that visit was to buy oil from Brazil. When we have plenty of our own. And when Americans are out of work because of the Gulf moratorium. In my article on this I considered this to be an out-and-out betrayal of the American people. But listen to Obama in his own words for evidence right from the horse’s mouth:

We wanna work with you. We wanna help. The technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you wanna start selling, we wanna be one of your best customers.

The two presidents vowed to continue their collaboration on energy and other issues. And so they did, this past week. Not as a personal meet-up as before, but through their emissaries and delegations. The U.S. “alphabet soup group.”

EPA’s head honcho Lisa Jackson led a week-long delegation to Rio (h/t Pilgrim). This is what Jackson’s EPA website says about the meetup which is called the Joint Initiative on Urban Sustainability or JIUS:

On August 15-17, 2011, EPA Administrator Jackson will establish the Joint Initiative on Urban Sustainability (JIUS) in Brazil, with representatives from Brazil’s Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State of Rio de Janeiro, the City of Rio de Janeiro, the City of Philadelphia, and representatives from the US and Brazilian private, academic and civil society sectors.

The JIUS will create a broad policy framework for projects, highlighting projects for visibility and investment, and making policy recommendations to leaders around the world to support investments in sustainable cities.

The JIUS aims to:

  • Increase the visibility and expanding opportunities for the implementation of current niche market technologies
  • Identify emerging public and private sector opportunities to improve the urban environment.
  • Mobilize innovative financing based on sustainable design principles to capture untapped economic, environmental, climate, and health benefits

The JIUS may also engage the international financial sector to shift investment practices to spur more strategic innovative urban investments around the world.

No followup as of today from Jackson. According to one Brazilian paper, Jackson also took with her the Mayor of Philadelphia, Microsoft, Alcoa, Morgan Stanley, representatives from The Rockefeller Foundation and Harvard, as well as the C40 cities and CH2MHILL. According to their website, also announcing the visit, CH2MHILL is a company which does the following:

Headquartered near Denver, Colorado, USA, employee-owned CH2M HILL is a global leader in consulting, design, design-build, operations, and program management for government, civil, industrial and energy clients. With Brazilian operations based in Sao Paulo, CH2M HILL has been supporting the oil and gas, industrial, transportation, environmental, and water markets since 1996 [emphasis mine].

The C40 cities, including the U.S. ones of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago, NYC, New Orleans and several more, and other worldwide cities purpose is:

The Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, also known as the C40 Cities (and originally as the C20 Cities) is a group of cities working to reduce urban carbon emissions and to adapt to climate change. It believes it has an important role to play as cities contain around 50% of the world population, consume 75% of the world’s energy, and produce 80% of its greenhouse gases.[1] The group’s secretariat is based in London.

And from another Brazilian paper:

The intention of the visit was to prospect with several investors to build sustainable enterprises in Brazil encouraged by the initiative of President Barack Obama and Rousseff released in March this year with the intention of creating a market between the two countries focused on preserving the environment.

The two countries signed an agreement to develop sustainability programs to promote job growth and investments in Brazil. With the coming World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016, the country will have a budget of approximately $ 200 billion that will ensure the generation of large projects for sustainability.

So now we know why Jackson’s delegation was down there. Promoting and advocating “green energy” just like back here in the states. However, through my meanderings of the Brazilian papers I discovered there were other U.S. alphabet soup agencies in Rio at the same time: Department of Energy, or DOE,  DHS and Commerce.

DOE head Chu sent his second-in-command Daniel Poneman this time. According to Energy Brasil Today Poneman was down there to:

address the mutual interest of countries in the development of secure, safe and accessible in an environmentally healthy, including oil, natural gas, biofuels, clean energy and nuclear energy.

I checked DOE Chu’s website and this is what he has to say about the *visit,* which FYI is all in government double-speak-code-talk to disguise the real purpose. But check out the last paragraph:

The Strategic Energy Dialogue will also include private sector cooperation between U.S. and Brazilian businesses to further advance the energy goals laid out by Presidents Obama and Rousseff. As part of the preparation for the Strategic Energy Dialogue, Deputy Secretary Poneman met with representatives from the business community, along with leaders from the U.S.-Brazil Business Council, to gain their perspective on future energy collaboration.

I could be wrong of course, but this writer interprets the above to mean “we still wanna buy your oil.” Louisiana U.S. Senator David Vitter had this to say last week:

Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter called the US-Brazil partnership, particularly the part on offshore drilling, an affront to the US oil and gas industry, which he said has the potential to create thousands of jobs and revenue, if only it were allowed to more easily drill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nothing on the White House blog, nothing on DHS site that I could find. Nothing on Commerce either, and barely a peep from the MSM either.

No definitive conclusion here, but whenever these agencies travel outside of the U.S. en masse at the same time, it’s fairly certain they are up to no good.

Fasten your seat belts, folks. I predict a long, bumpy ride.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots

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Filed Under energy, green jobs Tagged With Brazil, C40 Cities, CH2MHill, Daniel Poneman, DHS, Dilma Roussef, DOE, energy, EPA, JUIS, Lisa Jackson, Obama, oil, Sen. David Vitter, Steven Chu

ExxonMobil sues Feds over lost oil leases in Gulf: a tale of 2 articles

August 22, 2011 By Carol Greenberg

A couple days ago I saw an article about ExxonMobil suing the Department of Interior (DOI)  herein known as The Feds, i.e. Ken Salazar, Obama, BOEMRE, EPA etc. All the alphabet soup of federal agencies that impede capitalism and the road to the U.S. becoming energy independent.

ExxonMobil’s suit swirls around some lucrative leases in the Julia Field, off the coast of New Orleans. DOI head Salazar cancelled the leases which may yield billions of dollars in oil as well as billions of barrels of oil. One of ExxonMobil’s partner in the leases, StatOil, is also suing the Feds for the same reason.

“The Interior decision is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise contrary to law,” and “deprives Exxon Mobil of property without due process of law,” the Irving, Texas-based company said in its complaint.

We’ve come to expect this kind of behavior from the Feds and Obama. He travels to Brasil with the intent of the U.S. “being one of their best customers” for oil. Salazar and the EPA are giving fits to Shell in the Beaufort Sea about their air permits. Obama has Salazar and BOEMRE put a permatorium in the GOM after the BP DeepWater Horizon accident. Salazar has been ruled in civil contempt of court twice for failing to lift said permatorium. . But do you see him in jail like everyone else would be? As far as I know he is still out in the streets because he and his DOI is now causing problems for EM.

But let’s take a look at how this is being reported by the media. The first article from Bloomberg I ran across is titled:

Exxon Sues Interior Dept. over cancelled oil leases

Factual, unbiased. Both in the title and the content of the article. Now h/t to Bob Montgomery, who emailed me with a few choice words when HE found the same info on the AP. Look at the title of their article:

Exxon Fights US over major oil discovery

Yep, as usual. The leftist, biased AP makes EM look like the bad guy here. Anyone without a basic knowledge of how the MSM operates would think that EM is the evil-doer when it appears they have done everything correctly.

It’s not enough that the Obama administration is deliberating impeding under a concerted effort to stop all fossil fuel energy use in the U.S. and costing thousands of jobs in the industry, but then his partners in crime, one of them being the left-leaning AP comes along and throws out a title like this.

According to the Denver Post DOI must respond within 60 days.

I’m gonna take a wild guess at this: betcha they snub their noses at the court like they snubbed that judge in Louisiana.

Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Rep. Doc Hastings, chairman of the House Natural Resources Dept. should be out in front of the cameras telling Salazar he’s going to be hauled in front of Congress for hearings. But I forgot: Congress is out of session until after Labor Day.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots

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Lib FireBagger Jane Hamsher’s recount of her night in a D.C. jail *smile*

August 21, 2011 By Carol Greenberg

No, I did not coin the term “FireBagger.” This is how they refer to themselves.

For any of you who don’t know who Jane Hamsher is, she’s a radical lib and the Mistress-in-Chief of FireDogLake.

Jane doesn’t just hang out at her website like Arianna Huffington does: she believes in getting down-and-dirty and “where the action is.”

Jane and a bunch of others were protesting at A Casa Branca yesterday. Yep, that big white house at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The “protest du jour” was against the proposed Keystone Pipeline project which would bring oil from Canada to the lower United States.

I am not going to focus on Keystone right now, (which by the way is a wonderful project and should be embraced to make the U.S. more energy independent) but on the trials and travails of Ms. Hamsher’s descent into Hell in a DC jail.

Jane Hamsher arrested at WH

Here is her recount from her website. Among her *complaints* were: the room was too small, their was no privacy, it was too cold:

All 65 of us were crammed into four 6 x 8 holding cells (we measured) with a toilet at the end. I was held with other women who took part in the demonstration. There were more men than women, so some of the men were held in the sally port because of the overcrowding. But that meant there were about 14 women in my room, with a few rotating out periodically for booking, making phone calls, etc.

She goes into a little more graphic detail on her article, but I’m not going to get into that here. But:

Hey JANE!! What da ya expect? You were *told* if you didn’t obey the rules, you would be tossed in the slammer. You didn’t abide by those *rules* and now you are complaining about the lack of comfort and facilities? And yep JANE: I recognized your face in that protest against the Bank of America in St. Louis last Monday where all those protesters were arrested, so you knew what to expect.  So quit yer b*tching!

The only gratifying part of her tirade is this salient quote:

When Barack Obama was elected, he said that the earth would now begin to heal. Yet last week, he and Michelle took separate jets only a few hours apart to Martha’s Vineyard.

Kind of makes a Conservative grin from ear to ear, don’t it?

Oh, by the way. They have a new name for their cabal: the Flaming Firebaggers.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots


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Filed Under Uncategorized Tagged With D.C. protest, FireDogLake, Flaming Fire Baggers, Jane Hamsher, Keystone Pipeline Project

Children’s book *Freedom Bee* a real winner

August 19, 2011 By Carol Greenberg

I was approached by Nicole Haas, a mother of 2 who has written a children’s book called “Freedom Bee.” She sent me a copy and asked me to review it.

Freedom Bee coverFreedom Bee is a colorful, 22 page children’s book which tells the story about the struggle between a controlling government and “we the people” in rhyming verse which young children can understand.

Ms. Haas, a conservative, had the idea of instilling in children at a young age the concept of freedom, liberty and capitalism and why these concepts, which our country was built upon, are so important.

Freedom Bee is the metaphorical story of Scout, a worker bee who works very hard for the hive gathering pollen to make honey, only to have the evil Queen Bee take away all his pollen and the pollen of all the other worker bees and “redistribute it.”

All the worker bees were nervous about this but the Queen Bee assures them that “all your needs will be met.” After the worker bees deserted the hive in frustration the hive became so decrepit it crashed to the ground. That is when Scout decided to start his own “hive” with the other worker bees and turned his hive into a smashing success. Then of course the evil Queen Bee came a calling and wanted a piece of the action. This is what Scout said to her:

Pay attention, Queen Bee, because I don’t work for you, but you work for me.

Don’t ever forget, you work for us all. The strong and the weak, even the tired and small.

We are the workers and we make the hive hum. For those willing to work, it’s here they will come.

You have your place, and in your place you must stay, or be prepared to be sent on your way.

Ms. Haas tells me this book is geared toward children ages 4-8. I asked the 10-year old daughter of a friend of mine to read it. She didn’t really “get it” but I blame that on the apparent lack of education by both parents and schools for not teaching our children at this age and below even a modicum of civics and how the U.S. government should operate.

For children 10 and under, I believe this book is best read with a parent, friend or other family member who can explain to the child the rewards of freedom, independence and hard work. Ms. Haas had this to say:

As so many of us are working hard to hang on to our Country, I believe we need to instill in our children the principles of self-reliance and individual liberty. Everything we do today will be for nothing if our children aren’t purposefully taught these American values. It is my hope that “Freedom Bee” will help parents to do that in a fun and creative way.

For those of us who don’t believe in a socialist, non-capitalist society Freedom Bee would be a wonderful addition to any children’s library.

“Freedom Bee ” sells for around $8.99 and can be purchased at Tate Publishing, Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

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Filed Under book review Tagged With "Freedom Bee", children's book review, Nicole Haas

The shooting of a Toledo non-union businessman: what you *didn’t* hear

August 18, 2011 By Carol Greenberg

H/t to Pilgrim. Without him knowing I live in Toledo, I never would have known about this story.

By now most of you have probably heard the story of a Toledo, Ohio businessman who was shot in his home last week. Presumably in retaliation for him operating, and continuing to operate, a non-union business. Below is a reminder of what awaited Mr. King outside his home last Wednesday evening:

Scab1

LaborUnionReport ironically was the first in the country to break the story, NOT Toledo News.

I was born and raised in Toledo and have lived here my entire life so I am familiar with the area, dynamics and the politics of this Democratic, ultra-liberal city which is the home to a Chrysler plant and many other union-controlled businesses.

Much of the auto industry and accompanying suppliers have left the area to move to sunnier shores: GM is gone, Ford is gone, AP Parts is gone, Delphi is gone;  just to name a few, leaving much of Toledo looking as decrepit as Detroit.

About the only thing that hasn’t left are the unions. And they have a lot of power and influence here.

John King is the owner of King Electrical Services in Toledo and has kept at horrific expense to himself and his business, a non-union shop. Over the past 40 years his company has endured vandalism and threats and has been on the radar of the IBEW, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Mr. King has maintained over the years a perfect A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and his business has received only one complaint in the last 3 years, a billing dispute that was resolved amicably.

King may have his business in Toledo, but he lives just over the Ohio border in the small town of Lambertville, Michigan. I’ve been to Lambertville many times, I have friends there. It’s a humble middle-class town which is on the Toledo-Detroit corridor. Many Toledoans drive to Detroit and its environs every day to work.

Last week Mr. King confronted a trespasser late in the evening after hearing noises in the front yard. He found his SUV vandalized with the word “SCAB” written on the side of it. It wasn’t until after calling the police did he realize he had been shot in the arm. He was treated at the scene and didn’t need further medical attention.

But the gist of this article, is not what you’ve seen, but what you haven’t seen: and that is the almost total lack of coverage of this incident by the media. Yep. After LUR picked it up so did all the blogs, but news stations? Only one that I could find: WTOL-TV in Toledo. And that was not until almost a week later. Link to the video is here. Sorry, it won’t embed for me.

I checked Toledo ABC-WTVG and  Toledo NBC-WNWO. Nada. I also checked that ultra-liberal monopolistic newspaper Toledo Blade: nada.

A Bedford-Temperance Michigan small newspaper picked up a small blurb and gave a description of the assailant as a white male, 6 foot tall, medium build in his 20s or 30s. The suspect was last seen wearing a dark colored t-shirt, jeans and a dark colored baseball cap. FYI the towns of Bedford and Temperance are within just a few miles of Lambertville.

The Lambertville News picked up just a sentence, linking the story back to Toledo 11 News. I also checked with one of my friends in Lambertville today who told me she heard the original story from Toledo 11 and has heard nothing since or anywhere else.

Mr. King  now has some celebrity, since he was interviewed by Glenn Beck on his radio show.

Although the Monroe County Michigan Sheriff’s Dept is still investigating, if initial visual evidence is correct, this certainly does appear to be a union *hit* as they see their rosy lifestyle slipping away before their eyes.

And if so, they’ve graduated from pushing, shoving and face-punching to attempted murder.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots

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Filed Under unions Tagged With Glenn Beck, IBEW, John King, King Electrical Services, union violence, WTOL11 Toledo