Communism outperforms Capitalism

U.S. Sets Tariffs On Chinese Solar Panels:

 

The U.S. Commerce Department has imposed new import fees on solar panels made in China, finding that the Chinese government is improperly giving subsidies to manufacturers of the panels there.  The department said Tuesday it has found on a preliminary basis that Chinese solar panel makers have received government subsidies of 2.9 percent to 4.73 percent. Therefore the department said tariffs in the same proportions will be charged on Chinese panels imported into the U.S., depending on which company makes them.  The tariff amounts are considered small, but the decision could ratchet up trade tensions between the U.S. and China. Several U.S. solar panel makers had asked the government to impose steep tariffs on Chinese imports. They are struggling against stiff competition from China as well as weakening demand in Europe and other key markets, just as President Barack Obama is working to promote renewable energy.  "Today's announcement affirms what U.S. manufacturers have long known: Chinese manufacturers have received unfair ... subsidies," Steve Ostrenga, CEO of Helios Solar Works in Milwaukee, Wis., said in a statement. The company is a member of a group called the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing.  On the other side, some U.S. companies argue that low-priced Chinese imports have helped consumers and promote rapid growth of the industry.  The new tariffs are low, making the Commerce Department decision "a relatively positive outcome for the U.S. solar industry and its 100,000 employees," said Jigar Shah, president of the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy. "However, tariffs large or small will hurt American jobs and prolong our world's reliance on fossil fuels. Fortunately, this decision will not significantly raise solar prices in the United States."  Members of CASE include California-based SunEdison, Recurrent Energy, SolarCity and Westinghouse Solar, as well as China-based Suntech Power Holdings Co.  Commerce said it was putting off until May 17 a decision on whether Chinese companies are dumping the solar panels on world markets, selling them below cost.  Trade tensions with China are especially sensitive at a time when the U.S. and other Western economies want to boost technology exports to revive economic growth and reduce high unemployment.  The U.S. and China are two of the world's biggest markets for solar, wind and other renewable energy technology. Both governments are promoting their own suppliers in hopes of generating higher-paid technology jobs.  The U.S. manufacturers' complaints have been amplified by the controversy surrounding Solyndra Inc. a California-based solar panel maker that filed for bankruptcy protection after winning a $500 million federal loan from the Obama administration.  Solyndra's failure embarrassed the administration and prompted a lengthy review by congressional Republicans who are critical of Obama's green energy policies. Solyndra has cited Chinese competition as a key reason for its failure.  U.S. energy officials say China spent more than $30 billion last year to subsidize its solar industry. Obama said in November that China has "questionable competitive practices" in clean energy and that his administration has fought "these kinds of dumping activities." The administration will act to enforce trade laws where appropriate, Obama said.  SolarWorld Industries America Inc., the largest U.S. maker of silicon solar cells and panels and a subsidiary of Germany-based SolarWorld, has led the U.S. manufacturers' complaints.  China announced its own probe in November, saying it will investigate whether U.S. support for renewable energy companies improperly hurts foreign suppliers.

Australian Carbon Cult

Carbon Cult: Ban flushing toilets, Pay per dump:

Australians could face 'pay as you dump' charges as part of a Toilet Tax. It's all in the name of "sustainability" - and part of a growing eco-movement to replace flushing conveniences with smelly and unhealthy inconvenience.  Water use experts Mike Young and Jim McColl, of Adelaide University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, respectively, presented new proposals to South Australia state parliament last week. The two renewed their call to create a market in sewerage, with the pricing element controlling scarcity. Such ideas aren't new, but they've been given a boost in recent years by a parallel movement. Sanitation saves lives, but UN-funded quangos which were once dedicated to improving human health now have mixed priorities. Take this example from the "Sustainable Sanitation Alliance":  "In order to be sustainable, a sanitation system has to be not only economically viable, socially acceptable, and technically and institutionally appropriate, it should also protect the environment and the natural resources."  The quango concludes, somewhat ruefully, that "there is probably no system which is absolutely sustainable".  It's a subtle difference in emphasis: from an optimistic vision in which simple technological innovation was used to reshape the planet for human happiness, innovation is now qualified in terms of environmental damage. It becomes a question of "balance", with human health now a factor in a trade-off.  Non-flushing are a feature of Britain's "Eco Towns", the harshly regulated and monitored new settlements proposed by the government. Here, where water is in abundance, they're needed to raise "awareness" of resource consumption. But the argument has now become entrenched in development.

Chinese kids rescued from Human Traffickers

14 Chinese kids rescued from human traffickers:

At least 14 children were rescued and 38 suspects arrested when police busted two human trafficking rings in China, police said Saturday.  The rings were busted in southwest China’s Guizhou province, Xinhua reported.  A joint operation was carried out by police of Guizhou, Henan, Chongqing, and Zhejiang, police said.  The rings were identified after police seized two suspects, surnamed Wang and Xiao, on a train along with two babies in December last year.  Wang and Xiao purchased children in Guizhou and transferred them by train to Henan province for sale, police said.  DNA tests would be carried on the rescued children to find their families. Over 3,000 gangs involved in human trafficking were busted across China last year, and more than 15,000 women and 8,000 children rescued by police.

F.B.I. manufactors Terrorists to Hunt

U.S. Government Now Creating Terrorists So It Can Arrest Them:

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, was arrested this weekend for plotting to detonate a bombat a downtown Portland, Oregon tree-lighting celebration. So that’s good, right? Americans appreciate not getting blown up. But the thing is, Mohamud was never a member of a terrorist group. The FBI provided him a fake bomb and worked with him in the planning of the attack. But that’s not unusual these days, because the government no longer just tries to find and arrest actual terrorists; it also tries to create terrorists it can then arrest. In fact, informants now like to stand in the parking lots of American mosques, offering hundreds of thousands of dollars and fancy cars to anyone who will sign up for jihad. It’s a brave new world for thoughtcrime.  Mohamud was a student at Oregon State, and as far as we can tell from this AP story, was not promised to get rich quickly by becoming a terrorist. He, at least, did have an actual interest in becoming one, because the FBI saw his e-mails to a friend in Pakistan, asking if he knew Osama bin Laden’s AIM handle or whatever. When Mohamud had no luck getting this contact info (WHAT? HIS FRIEND WAS IN PAKISTAN! HE MUST HAVE KNOWN TERRORISTS!), the government swooped in and told him they were hip terrorist guys with a bomb and a terrorist letterman’s-jacket with his name stitched on it.  Oh, why was the FBI reading this Mohamud guy’s e-mails in the first place? It’s never explained in this AP story. But c’mon, the kid’s name is Mohamud. He shouldn’t have let his parents name him that if he didn’t want to be a terrorist. So obviously the answer to this problem was not continued surveillance but rather to entice this kid into dropping out of college to become the ULTIMATE TERRORIST.  It was also very difficult to decipher that this kid is an American citizen, because the AP story was so busy telling us he is a “Somali-born teenager” and PRECIOUS SMALL WHITE CHILDREN were at this Portland Christmas event (at which they were never in danger of exploding).  But here’s an even more fun account in Slate about “four African-American ex-cons from Newburgh, N.Y.” who were enticed into saying they would blow up two synagogues:

Hussain bought meals for the group of four men he assembled because none of them had jobs or money. The owner of a Newburgh restaurant where they occasionally ate considered him “the boss,” because he would pick up the tab. Among his other inducements were the offer of $250,000 and a BMW to the most volubly anti-Semitic plotter, the man the government says was the ringleader, James Cromitie. To drive that car, Cromitie would have needed a driver’s license—which he didn’t have. Another supposed plotter, a Haitian, was a paranoid schizophrenic (according to his imam), which was the reason his deportation had been deferred (according to The Nation’s TomDispatch.com), and who kept bottles of urine in his squalid apartment (according to the New York Times). The last two, both surnamed Williams, have histories of drug busts and minimum-wage jobs in Newburgh. At trial the government asserted that the plot was driven by anti-American hatred. But in papers filed in court by defense lawyers before the trial began, Cromitie is quoted in government transcripts explaining to Hussain that the men “will do it for the money. … They’re not even thinking about the cause.”

One of these guys tried to back out, “saying he didn’t want to hurt any women or children,” but the informant pressured him into staying with the group.  This is just perverse. Perhaps the government will one day figure out how to wind down bureaucracies and bureaucratic divisions once they’re proved no longer necessary. But until then, the FBI will create terrorists for itself to bust because it doesn’t have enough actual, group-aligned terrorists to hunt. And, perhaps, a fake bomb for you to assemble will suddenly arrive on your doorstep one day after you criticize the government or American society. But anti-terrorism efforts have to adjust to the actual threat eventually, right? It’s not like archaic bureaucracies like the Tennessee Valley Authority are still around.

Mohamud was known at the Salman Al-Farisi Center in Corvallis, said Yosof Wanly, imam at the mosque. He said Mohamud was “an average university boy,” drinking the occasional beer with friends in fraternities.

“He had some fraternity friends,” Wanly said. “He would attend athletic (events), basketball games, whatever they are.”

By the way, you know who coaches that basketball team? Known terrorist Barack Obama’s brother-in-law. DUN DUN DUN

Ignorance is Happyness

Study Finds Ignorance Is Bliss, and Then Some

Troubling new research suggests that the less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed.  Researchers also determined that the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware.  “These studies were designed to help understand the so-called ‘ignorance is bliss’ approach to social issues,” said author Steven Shepherd, a graduate student with the University of Waterloo in Ontario. “The findings can assist educators in addressing significant barriers to getting people involved and engaged in social issues.”  Researchers conducted a series of five studies in 2010 and 2011 studying 511 adults in the United States and Canada.  After the interviews, researchers described “a chain reaction from ignorance about a subject to dependence on and trust in the government to deal with the issue.”  In one study, comprised of 197 Americans with a mean age of 35 (111 women and 89 men) participants who felt most affected by the economic recession avoided information challenging the government’s ability to manage the economy.  Researchers tested the relationship among dependence, trust and avoidance, by providing either a complex or simple description of the economy to a group of 58 Canadians, mean age 42, composed of 20 men and 38 women.  The participants who received the complex description indicated higher levels of perceived helplessness in getting through the economic downturn, more dependence on and trust in the government to manage the economy, and less desire to learn more about the issue.  “This is despite the fact that, all else equal, one should have less trust in someone to effectively manage something that is more complex,” said co-author Aaron C. Kay, Ph.D., of Duke University. “Instead, people tend to respond by psychologically ‘outsourcing’ the issue to the government, which in turn causes them to trust and feel more dependent on the government.  “Ultimately, they avoid learning about the issue because that could shatter their faith in the government.”  Participants who felt unknowledgeable about oil supplies not only avoided negative information about the issue, they became even more reluctant to know more when the issue was urgent, as in an imminent oil shortage in the United States, according to the authors.  The findings suggest that educators need to explain complex issues in ways that make them easily digestible and understandable, with a clear emphasis on local, individual-level causes.  The authors recommended further research to determine how people would react when faced with other important issues such as food safety, national security, health, social inequality, poverty and moral and ethical conflict, as well as under what conditions people tend to respond with increased rather than decreased engagement.