Archive | December, 2011

Buffett Gets High Rates, U.S. Incentive in $2 Billion Solar Bet – Businessweek

7 Dec

By Christopher Martin

Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which agreed to buy a $2 billion solar farm in California may have picked the right time to invest in the industry.

The 550-megawatt Topaz project will qualify for a federal incentive because it began construction last month, and will sell power under a long-term contract that was completed before prices for solar panels fell 44 percent in the last year. Berkshire’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings utility unit and First Solar Inc., the project developer, announced the deal today.

Topaz, which will use First Solar panels, may be the last large solar farm to qualify for the U.S. Treasury Department incentive program, which is set to end this year. It will likely sell power at a higher price than projects that are seeking utility contracts now, said Paul Clegg, an analyst at Mizuho Securities USA in New York.

via Buffett Gets High Rates, U.S. Incentive in $2 Billion Solar Bet – Businessweek.

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Can Occupy and the Tea Party team up? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

7 Dec

RICHMOND, Va. — Members of the Occupy Richmond and local Tea Party movements found acres of common ground during an unlikely meeting held Tuesday at a police station-turned-art gallery in the city’s historic Jackson Ward neighborhood.

But first and foremost, the 12 men and women from seemingly polar spots on the political spectrum agreed on this: The meeting never happened.

“I think it’s all very, very important that we state very clearly that this was not a meeting between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement,” declared Donald Rallis, an Occupy Richmond member, as the meeting wound to a close. His sotto-voce assertion meets with a flurry of “up twinkle” hands — or vigorous head nods — depending on the individual’s political leanings.

via Can Occupy and the Tea Party team up? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

The Evolved Self-management System | Conversation | Edge

7 Dec

And then what about the messages we pick up from the natural world? I’ve become particularly interested in how nature itself may provide placebo information, by seeming to suggest that we’re in the presence of a great designer, a creator, God. Wherever we look, there’s no question the natural world shouts “intelligent design”, shouts of a great artist in the sky. And, admit it or not, I’m sure this can provide a powerful subconscious prime. It can make us believe that we’re in the presence of a loving father, or perhaps a loving partner, someone whom we should look up to and want to get closer to—but who gives us permission to be such selves as we wouldn’t be otherwise. If overt religious messages can act as placebos, then so too can the beauties of nature, so too can the sun and the moon and the stars.

via The Evolved Self-management System | Conversation | Edge.

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The evolution of a populist – Opening Shot – Salon.com

7 Dec

President Obama’s Tuesday speech in Osawatomie, Kan., essentially served as the kickoff of his reelection effort. He may make a more formal declaration over the next few months, but the hour-long address, which was designed to evoke the Bull Moose spirit of Teddy Roosevelt and featured a comprehensive defense of government’s role in combating income inequality and fortifying the middle class, provided a preview of the themes Obama will emphasize between now and next November.

His embrace of defiant, populist messaging also represents a final, definitive break with the bipartisan-friendly political style that defined Obama’s rise to power and the first two-and-a-half years of his presidency.

That’s all well and good, but is he still going to push for the right to detain US citizens without charges or evidence?

via The evolution of a populist – Opening Shot – Salon.com.

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Where I stand on the Occupy movement – Roger Ebert’s Journal

7 Dec

A clear majority of Americans should be in sympathy with the Occupy Movement. That they are not is a tribute to an effective right wing propaganda machine given voice by Fox News, radio talkers like Rush Limbaugh, and financed by the Koch brothers among many others. The machine’s audience is to oppose its own self-interest and support the interests of the rich….

There was a time in the not very distant American past when it was easier to support a family and buy a home. Now many college graduates find themselves moving back in with their parents. They’re living off prosperity that was built up when the economy wasn’t stacked against them.

President Obama went to Kansas on Tuesday to make the kind of speech I’ve been waiting and hoping for. It was billed as sort of a keynote for his campaign. He said, “This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share and when everyone plays by the same rules.” Isn’t that true? Does everyone get a fair shot? When the Republicans try to exempt the financial industry from regulation, is that playing by the same rules?

via Where I stand on the Occupy movement – Roger Ebert’s Journal.

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NPR’s domestic drone commercial – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

6 Dec

Coming to the sky near you:

Excitement over America’s use of drones in multiple Muslim countries is, predictably, causing those weapons to be imported onto U.S. soil. Federal law enforcement agencies and local police forces are buying more and more of them and putting them to increasingly diverse domestic uses, as well as patrolling the border, and even private corporations are now considering how to use them. One U.S. drone manufacturer advertises its product as ideal for “urban monitoring.”…

the use of drones for domestic surveillance raises all sorts of extremely serious privacy concerns and other issues of potential abuse. Their ability to hover in the air undetected for long periods of time along with their comparatively cheap cost enables a type of broad, sustained societal surveillance that is now impractical, while equipping them with infra-red or heat-seeking detectors and high-powered cameras can provide extremely invasive imagery. The holes eaten into the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protections by the Drug War and the War on Terror means there are few Constitutional limits on how this technology can be used, and there are no real statutory or regulatory restrictions limiting their use.

via NPR’s domestic drone commercial – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

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Live from Occupy East New York – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

6 Dec

OccupyYourHome:

Today, Occupy Wall Street activists are teaming up with existing progressive and community groups to launch Occupy Our Homes – a campaign on the foreclosure crisis – in cities around the country. One action will take place in East New York.

The campaign is expected to feature aggressive tactics such as eviction defenses, takeovers of vacant bank-owned properties, and disruptions at foreclosure auctions. The full story on the organizing of the new campaign is here. The background on current state of the foreclosure crisis is here.

via Live from Occupy East New York – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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A Guide to the Occupy Wall Street API, Or Why the Nerdiest Way to Think About OWS Is So Useful – Technology – The Atlantic

3 Dec

The Occupy movement explained as components of an application interface (API, a programming specification).

The most fascinating thing about Occupy Wall Street is the way that the protests have spread from Zuccotti Park to real and virtual spaces across the globe. Metastatic, the protests have an organizational coherence that’s surprising for a movement with few actual leaders and almost no official institutions. Much of that can be traced to how Occupy Wall Street has functioned in catalyzing other protests. Local organizers can choose from the menu of options modeled in Zuccotti, and adapt them for local use. Occupy Wall Street was designed to be mined and recombined, not simply copied.

via A Guide to the Occupy Wall Street API, Or Why the Nerdiest Way to Think About OWS Is So Useful – Technology – The Atlantic.

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The We-Are-At-War! mentality – Salon.com

3 Dec

So my question to defenders of Obama’s assassination powers is this: which of those four core Bush/Cheney War on Terror premises do you reject, if any? Given the theories used to justify Bush/Cheney powers — ones that were just repeated almost verbatim by Obama lawyers when asked about the Awlaki assassination — how can anyone coherently have objected to the Bush/Cheney Guantanamo detention system but support Obama’s assassination powers now? Indeed, if anything, the Obama assassination powers are more extremist than the Guantanamo detention system; that’s true for two reasons: (1) Bush/Cheney imprisoned foreign nationals at Guantanamo, whereas Obama has targeted U.S. citizens with death …; and (2) death-by-CIA-drone is obviously a more draconian deprivation than imprisonment at Guantanamo. In sum, how is it possible to support Obama’s assassination powers without embracing each of those four theories used to justify Guantanamo?

via The We-Are-At-War! mentality – Salon.com.

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Drilling Down – Fighting Over Oil and Gas Well Leases – NYTimes.com

2 Dec

Americans have signed millions of leases allowing companies to drill for oil and natural gas on their land in recent years. But some of these landowners — often in rural areas, and eager for quick payouts — are finding out too late what is, and what is not, in the fine print.

Energy company officials say that standard leases include language that protects landowners. But a review of more than 111,000 leases, addenda and related documents by The New York Times suggests otherwise…

via Drilling Down – Fighting Over Oil and Gas Well Leases – NYTimes.com.

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