"The U.S. economy has grown just 1.5 percent in the 2014 fiscal year --
far slower than White House projections -- while more than $500 billion
of deficit spending was added to the national debt, according to
projections released Wednesday by the non-partisan Congressional Budget
Office.
Just last month the Obama administration forecast 2.6 percent GDP growth in 2014....
In its report released Wednesday, the CBO said growth was stymied partly by “bad weather” during the cold months of spring. The
report said that $506 billion was added to the national debt this year,
but that was almost $170 billion less than last year. The CBO also
estimated the annual deficit will shrink to $459 billion in 2015 if
taxes and spending law remains the same. But the deficit would rapidly
grow in years to follow, hitting a ceiling of $960 billion by 2024
unless Congress enacts changes to alter the trajectory.
In total, CBO says current law would create $7.2 trillion in unfunded liabilities over the next 10 years....
The
CBO had some good economic news, predicting that the GDP will rebound
and expand by 3.4 percent over the next two years due to increased
demand for goods and services, businesses investments in new structures
and equipment, improved consumer spending and improving on the housing
front.... CBO’s latest data also predicts the national unemployment rate will average 5.6 percent from 2018 through 2024."via Lucianne
"Take this report with a grain of salt," said Brett Ryan, U.S.
economist for Deutsche Bank. "It's certainly not a good report, but
there'splenty of evidence of a weather impact.""...
The 1998 global average precipitation anomaly
for the land surface was less than 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) above
the 1900-1997 mean. However, considerable differences were evident
in precipitation departures across latitude bands with an average
surplus of precipitation in the majority of the Northern Hemisphere,
and a deficit elsewhere."...
Steyer, 57, of San Francisco, was unavailable for an interview
this week. But Bobby Whithorne, spokesman for Steyer's NextGen Climate
Action super PAC, said: "We stand by our ads."
The ad "relies on speculation, not facts, to make insinuations and assertions not justified by the reality," the Post said. Last October, PolitiFact -- a renowned fact-checking project run
by the Tampa Bay Times -- gave its "pants on fire" rating to a NextGen
ad claiming Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, then running for
governor, wanted to "eliminate all forms of birth control." Cuccinelli
has repeatedly said he has no interest in restricting contraception,
PolitiFact noted.
But Whithorne, Steyer's spokesman, noted that an Iowa television station had determined that the ad was "mostly true."
And
he is quick to defend all of NextGen's ads: "The facts are there, and
we provide extensive backup to substantiate the claims. With less than
80 days until the midterms, we'll continue to keep the pressure on the
anti-science candidates and highlight their extreme positions."
Steyer
is used to political battles. He took lead roles in
California ballot-measure campaigns to defend the state's landmark
greenhouse-gas emissions law and to close a $1-billion-per-year
corporate tax loophole.
Two
years ago, he announced he would step down from his business and turn
to public policy. He founded NextGen and said he hoped to spend $100
million -- half from his own pocket, half raised from others -- to
challenge candidates across the nation on climate-change issues. Steyer
says the Koch brothers are out to enrich themselves, while he's putting
the planet first.
"It just goes to show that if the public
understands the truth about his policies, they're not going to support
it because it's going to drive up their cost of living," spokeswoman
Sabrina Lockhart said.
"So it seems he's pivoted to lies and distortions
of the truth to sell the public on something they're not buying."
(Larry) Sabato,
however, said the ads are meant more to mobilize already-sympathetic
voters than to change minds. And Tom Hollihan, a University of Southern
California political communications expert, agreed.
Steyer doesn't seem to have raised enough money to
reach his $100 million spending goal but has spent more than $20 million
so far in this election cycle.
"Until someone decides to spend just
as much money in opposition to these messages as NextGen has spent
broadcasting them," he said, "most voters will never hear a doubting
word."
FLORIDA-- Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who is being challenged by Democrat Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor.
COLORADO -- U.S. Senate candidate Corey Gardner, a Republican congressman challenging incumbent Democrat Mark Udall.
IOWA -- U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst, a Republican state senator running against Democratic Congressman Bruce Braley.
PENNSYLVANIA -- Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, who is being challenged by Democratic businessman Tom Wolf.
NEW
HAMPSHIRE -- U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown, a Republican and former
Massachusetts senator (one of two Republicans vying to challenge
incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen).
MAINE -- Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who is being challenged by Democratic Congressman Mike Michaud.
MICHIGAN
-- U.S. Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land, a Republican former secretary
of state running against Democratic Congressman Gary Peters." via Free Rep.
It
is telling that neither Lizza nor his editors felt it necessary to
point out that Steyer is a major investor in renewables and stands to
profit from his political advocacy as well. Clearly, Steyer is also motivated by green ideology.But
it is hard to argue that the Koch brothers haven’t been equally
motivated by their libertarian ideology. The two have funded libertarian
causes since the 1970s and, notably, were among the minority of major
energy interests who opposed cap and trade. Fossil energy interests
concerned about protecting their profits, including the country'stwo
largest coal utilities, mostly chose to game the proposed emissions
trading systemrather than oppose it as the Koch brothers did."....
================================
Unelected billionaires have made elections superfluous:
"Steyer’sNextGen Climate Action
started the fracas with an ad that first aired Aug. 11. It claims Scott
received a “fountain” of campaign cash from “the company that profited
off pollution” by using a “dangerous” type of oil drilling near the
Everglades.
According to the court papers filed by the state,
environmental officials last December notified the company verbally
that it would not approve use of an “enhanced acid stimulation” method
(which has been called a “fracking-like”
procedure) to stimulate oil flow from the well, a method not previously
used in Florida. But the company conducted the operation anyway,
starting last Dec. 30 and ending Jan. 1. The state filed a formal,
written “cease and desist” order on Dec. 31, after the operation had
started, but the company ignored the order and completed the operation,
the DEP stated. The state then extracted a $25,000 fine, and got the
company to sign a formal consent order on April 7 in which the company
also agreed to monitor groundwater for possible pollution violations.
The
state made no public announcement of all this until May 2, after it
says the company failed to come up with an acceptable independent expert
to conduct the groundwater monitoring, as it had agreed to do. The
company’s relations with the Scott administration have only gone
downhill since then, culminating in the state’s lawsuit alleging that
the company wasn’t living up to the terms of the original $25,000
settlement.
And in any case, the driller is not even the
sourceof the $200,000 that the ad says came from “oil interests.”
Though one would never know this by simply watching the ad, the money
actually came in last year from four members of the wealthy Collier
family, whose interests include Collier Resources.
The reporter refers to a personal investment by Scott in Schlumberger Ltd.,
the international oilfield technology supplier. The investment was
valued at $135,000 in 2010 when Scott put it into a blind trust. But
when Scott recently ended the trust and publicly listed all the assets he owned at the end of last year, there was no sign of the Schlumberger stock he once held.
The
connection would have been a thin one even if it still existed.
The
station quoted a Schlumberger spokesman as saying the company’s role was
assisting Hughes in getting permits for saltwater injection wells and
providing information to a consultant who put the Hughes permit
application together. It’s hard to imagine that this would have a
significant impact on Schlumberger’s global profits, one way or the
other, much less on the financial well-being of its stockholders, even
if Scott were still among them.
The
Journal News filed an appeal in June and officials acknowledged it June
10. A public agency has to answer an appeal within 20 business days,
according to law.
The
delay has prompted The Journal News to seek help from the Office of
Government Information Services, a federal agency that oversees Freedom
of Information Act policies and compliance. Nikki Gramian, deputy director of OGIS, said she is looking into the matter.
The
Journal News is not the only organization seeking financial details on
the Tappan Zee project. Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a
mass-transit advocacy group, recently received a single blacked-out page
in response to its request for the same documents.
"We've been
asking for the financial plan, and we think they should make it public,"
said Vincent Pellecchia, general counsel for Tri-State. "Not being able
to see it is frustrating.""
The festival, which began in 2006, has seen severe police obstruction
over the past few years,but this year's crackdown is far more serious,
Wang said earlier Saturday.
"In the past few years when they forced us to cancel the festival, we
just moved it to other places, or delayed the screenings," he said.
Over the past week, Mr Li posted memos saying government security
personnel were pressuring him to cancel the festival, and that he had
come under police surveillance.
The shutdown is a sign that Beijing is tightening ideological
controls under President Xi Jinping, said Chris Berry, professor of film
studies at King's College London in England.
"It's very clear that the Xi Jinping regime is determined to control
the ideological realm, which has not been emphasized so much for a long
time," he said....
Hu Jie, a movie director who traveled from the eastern city of Nanjing to attend the festival, was upset at the cancellation.
"The audience for my films is already quite small, perhaps because I
make documentaries that talk about history," Mr Hu said. "If one of the
rare film festivals, like the Beijing Independent Film festival, is shot
down, then it will be very difficult for us to survive as filmmakers."...
In the memos that he posted, Mr Li said police put him and the fund's
office under surveillance Aug. 18, when this year's festival's poster
and schedule were released online.
He said local authorities initially agreed to a compromise that the
festival be moved to a town farther out in neighboring Hebei province,
but that the management of the hotel where reservations had been made
informed the fund on Friday that police were not allowing it to host the
festival.
President Xi Jinping has stepped up repression of government
critics since coming to office, our correspondent says, with the arrest
of hundreds of bloggers."...(end of article)
The killings came after an Israeli airstrike left three senior Hamas leaders dead on Thursday.
Officials in Gaza say at least two more Palestinians were
killed in Israeli airstrikes overnight, and Israel said more rockets
were fired from Gaza. More than 2,070 Palestinians, mostly civilians,
and 66 Israelis, mostly troops, have been killed in six weeks.
A Thai national in Israel was also killed by rocket fire
early on in the conflict. No-one was injured by the rockets which hit
Israel on Friday morning.
It added that "the current circumstances forced us to take
such decisions", suggesting a link between the executions and the
killing of the three senior Hamas leaders.
"Faced
with severe air pollution from coal and a rising dependence on energy
imports, China has been eager to follow the United States by rapidly
increasing natural gas output. Replacing coal with natural gas has also
been central to Beijing’s hopes to limit emissions of global warming
gases in China, the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide by a wide
margin.
But
China’s ability to extract sufficient natural gas is in serious doubt.
Despite heavy investment and strong government support, China’s natural
gas production is growing at a slower pace than its decelerating
economy. China’s production of natural gas increased just 6 percent last
year and 4.4 percent in 2012.
China’s
main problem is that shale gas production has fallen far short of
expectations. That has left the country relying on alternative methods
considered also-rans by American standards, like pumping natural gas
from coal fields.
Now,
the Chinese government appears to be acknowledging the shortfall. Wu
Xinxiong, the director of the National Energy Administration of China,
unexpectedly said in a speech this summer that China’s target for
domestic natural gas production in 2020 was only 30 billion cubic meters
for shale gas and another 30 billion cubic meters for coal seam gas.
Just two years ago, the National Energy Administration estimated that
China would produce 60 billion to 100 billion cubic meters of shale gas
alone by 2020.
If
Mr. Wu’s forecast comes true, shale gas and coal field gas would each
supply only 1 percent of China’s electricity generation needs in 2020.
“If
the population and economy keep growing, and extensive energy use
continues, sustaining China’s energy supply will be hard,” Mr. Wu
warned.
Gas
production has been slow to rise despite energetic efforts by Beijing
to make it financially attractive for energy companies, including direct
subsidies for shale gas production. The Chinese government also
announced on Aug. 13 that it would raise urban wholesale prices for
natural gas at the end of the month by roughly 18 percent for industrial
users.
With
domestic supplies increasing slowly, China has been looking elsewhere.
It agreed in May to buy gas from Russia under a 30-year, $400 billion
deal. And it has begun importing liquefied natural gas from Qatar,
Australia and Yemen.
The
natural gas is sorely needed. Beijing plans to retire four coal-fired
power plants by the end of this year and replace them with gas-fired
plants in an effort to reduce air pollution.
Gas
had looked like one of the few remaining ways for China to reduce its
addiction to coal. China’s nuclear power program slowed after Japan’s
triple meltdown in Fukushima. Efforts to expand hydroelectric power have
run into environmental concerns as well as the huge cost of resettling
people from areas flooded when dams are built to make artificial lakes.
Solar power and wind power are growing rapidly, but from small bases.
The
revised figures from Mr. Wu represented China’s first official
acknowledgment of what Western experts have been saying for many months:
The country will not approach the success of the United States in shale
gas anytime soon.
Shale
gas deposits lie much deeper in China than in the United States, which
greatly increases drilling costs. Chinese shale also tends to be laden
with clay and is much wetter than American shale, making it harder to
crack the shale and release the gas through pumping liquids and sand
underground, the process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
After
40 million years of powerful earthquakes as the Indian subcontinent
plowed into southern Asia, the main shale gas seams in western China are
jumbled underground, instead of lying flat like a stack of pancakes, as
in the United States, said Jeff Layman, a partner in the Beijing office
of Baker Botts, the big Houston energy law firm.
In
March, Sinopec, a Chinese oil giant, announced the country’s first
commercially viable shale gas deposit, located outside Chongqing, and
predicted annual production would reach a hefty 10 billion cubic meters
by 2017. But the company has released few details, prompting foreign
energy experts to begin asking whether all of the seams are truly shale,
although Sinopec insists they are.
Neither
Sinopec nor its rival, PetroChina, has announced any other large fields
despite extensive drilling. Both of these state-controlled companies
said in March that they were still drilling actively for shale gas in
China even as they cut their worldwide exploration budgets for oil and
gas after weak results.
Sinopec
and PetroChina, which will hold earnings conferences on Monday and
Thursday, respectively, are targets of broad government inquiries into
possible corruption, including in their contracts with outside vendors.
This has made their executives reluctant to approve further shale
drilling contracts, said a Chinese oil industry executive who insisted
on anonymity because of the legal issues involved.
China
needs to develop better technology before tackling many of its shale
deposits, said another executive, Yin Shenping, the chairman and chief
executive of Recon Technology, a shale gas services company based in
Beijing. “It’s obvious that the country has now decided to slow down the drilling process,” he said.
Lower
expectations for shale gas have resulted in greater interest in another
category of unconventional gas, so-called coal bed methane. In this
process, natural gas is gathered by drilling into underground coal
seams.
The
United States, Australia and other countries have used this method for
several decades. But they often tap the natural gas before coal
extraction begins, to reduce the risk that gas will explode in coal
mines.
China’s
problem is that many of its coal fields already have working mines.
China has 13 percent of the world’s coal reserves but 47 percent of the
world’s production. Many Chinese coal mine operators have opposed nearby
coal bed methane production, fearing that pumping sand and chemicals
into wells to liberate gas might have the unintended effect of driving
gas into their mines.
The
Chinese government has negotiated with mine operators and villages here
in Shouyang, 220 miles southwest of Beijing, to authorize a large coal
bed methane project, led by Far East Energy Corporation, based in
Houston. Michael R. McElwrath, chief executive of Far East Energy, said
he believed the project would improve coal field safety by removing
explosive gas from subterranean seams.
But
the Shouyang coal field is unusual within China because the coal is
fairly permeable, allowing gas to flow underground. If there are no more
discoveries of permeable coal, Mr. McElwrath said, “we will have a nice
little project but the industry will not take off.”
Far
East Energy faces its own issues. In June, the company announced that
it had shut a quarter of its 160 wells for various reasons, such as
gummy gels or a lack of gas-gathering pipelines; it plans to restart
most of those wells later. “We are considering a variety of strategic
transactions to fund the coming year’s drilling activities,” Mr.
McElwrath said, declining to elaborate.
Crews
have been working here over the last several years, laboring in a
countryside of yellow dirt so soft that even small streams cut
steep-flanked gorges 50 feet deep or more. Some of the locally rented
equipment uses designs seldom seen in the United States since World War
II, an indication that China still lags in drilling rig technology. At
each location, workers struggle with the many idiosyncrasies.
“In
the United States, it comes to the surface easier,” said Robert
Hockert, a longtime Wyoming shale gas and coal bed methane drilling
manager who is now the China country manager for Far East Energy. “Here,
you’ve got to work at it.”"
Officials are required to respond within 20 business days. Appeal was filed in June."
