Archduke Russell John wrote:

danivon wrote:You question it based on tu quoque?

Yes but in the legitmate form of
A makes criticism P.
A is also guilty of P.
Therefore, A is dismissed

But thank you for giving me a new term.

danivon wrote:That's a description of hypocrisy. However, it's not sufficient basis on which to reject evidence.

Neither is it quite what I meant. I understand that often the 'generic' anti-oil crowd will point to how oil-backed money is linked to studies that defend oil or seek to attack climate change, or whatever. It is a logical fallacy, however, for them to reject such studies on that basis. The rigorous thing to do would be to look at the content: assumptions, methodology, data etc.

To suggest that it's therefore ok to do pretty much the same thing yourself for a study coming from some anti-oil people is, on the basis that others would do it (and by implication, that all on the 'generic' left/environmental would all do it), pretty much tu quoque.

danivon wrote:Them Frenchies are great, huh?

rickyp wrote:I counter by pointing to page 14 of the report, which you skimmed.
And their source is Sean Patrick Adams The Journal of Policy History Volume 18 # 1, The Political Capital of Coal.

I am for a government rigorouslyfrugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revvenue to the discharge of the national debt.

So I post the actual law and you refer to a study by couple of people with a bias that sources not from the actual law itself but from another study? Wow, which one of those is more influnential.

rickyp wrote:Are you certain that the 4 paragraph treatment by Wikipedia is as authoratative as the 18 volume study by Adams...

Archduke Russell John wrote:Well considering my 4 paragraphs from Wikipedia isn't a treatment but the text of the actual law, yes I would. Your original comment, supported by the study, says there was a specific tariff on coal since 1789 until 1842. I provide the text of the 1790 tariff that lists all excisable duties of which coal is not listed.

So our choices are

the actual text of the actual law

v. a study referencing another seperate study.

Wikipedia wrote:SEC. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the last day of December next, the duties specified and laid in and by the act aforesaid, shall cease and determine; and that upon all goods, wares, and merchandise (not herein particularly excepted) which after the said day shall be brought into the United States, from any foreign port or place, there shall be levied, collected and paid the several and respective duties following, that is to say: Madeira wine of the quality of London particular, per gallon, thirty-five cents; other Madeira wine, per gallon, thirty cents; Sherry wine, per gallon, twenty-five cents; other wines, per gallon, twenty cents; distilled spirits, if more than ten per cent below proof, according to Dycas's hydrometer, per gallon, twelve cents; if more than five, and not more than ten per cent below proof, according to the same hydrometer, per gallon, twelve and a half cents; if of proof, and not more than five per cent below proof, according to the same hydrometer, per gallon, thirteen cents; if above proof, but not exceeding twenty per cent, according to the same hydrometer, per gallon, twenty cents; if more than forty per cent above proof, according to the same hydrometer, per gallon, twenty-five cents; molasses, per gallon, three cents; beer, ale and porter in casks, per gallon, five cents; beer, ale and porter in bottles, per dozen, twenty cents. Teas from China and India, in ships or vessels of the United States, bohea, per pound, ten cents; souchong and other black teas, per pound eighteen cents, hyson, per pound, thirty-two cents; other green teas, per pound, twenty cents. Teas from Europe, in ships or vessels of the United States, bohea, per pound, twelve cents; souchong and other black teas, per pound, twenty-one cents; hyson, per pound, forty cents; other green teas, per pound, twenty-four cents. Teas from any other place, or in any other ships or vessel, bohea, per pound, fifteen cents; souchong and other black teas, per pound, twenty-seven cents; hyson, per pound, fifty cents; other green teas, per pound, thirty cents; coffee, per pound, four cents; cocoa, per pound, one cent; loaf sugar, per pound, five cents; brown sugar, per pound, one and a half cent; other sugar, per pound, two and a half cents; candles of tallow, per pound, two cents; candles of wax or spermaceti, per pound, six cents; cheese, per pound, four cents; soap, per pound, two cents; pepper per pound, six cents; pimento, per pound, four cents; manufactured tobacco, per pound, six cents; snuff, per pound, ten cents; indigo, per pound, twenty-five cents; cotton, per pound, three cents; nails and spikes, per pound, one cent; bar and other lead, per pound, one cent; steel unwrought, per one hundred and twelve pounds, seventy-five cents; hemp, per one hundred and twelve pounds, fifty-four cents; cables, per one hundred and twelve pounds, one hundred cents; untarred cordage and yarn, per one hundred and twelve pounds, one hundred and fifty cents; twine and pack thread, per one hundred and twelve pounds, three hundred cents; salt, per bushel, twelve cents; malt, per bushel, ten cents; coal, per bushel, three cents; boots, per pair, fifty cents; shoes, slippers and goloshoes, made of leather, per pair, seven cents; shoes and slippers, made of silk or stuff, per pair, ten cents; wool and cotton cards, per dozen, fifty cents; playing cards, per pack, ten cents; all China ware, looking glasses, window and other glass, and all manufactures of glass (black quart bottles excepted) twelve and a half per centum ad valorem; marble, slate, and other stones, bricks, tiles, tables, mortars and other utensils of marble or slate, and generally all stone and earthen ware, blank books, writing paper, and wrapping paper, paper hangings, pasteboards, parchment and vellum, pictures and prints, painter's colors, including lampblack, except those commonly used in dyeing, gold, silver, and plated ware, gold and silver lace, jewellery and paste work, clocks and watches, shoe and knee buckles, grocery, (except the articles before enumerated) namely, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmegs, ginger, anniseed, currants, dates, figs, plums, prunes, raisins, sugar candy, oranges, lemons, limes, and generally all fruits and comfits, olives, capers, and pickles of every sort, oil, gun-powder, mustard in flour, ten per centum ad valorem; cabinet wares, buttons, saddles, gloves of leather, hats of beaver, felt, wool, or a mixture of any of them, military ready made, castings of iron, and slit and rolled iron, leather tanned or tawed, and all manufactures of which leather is the chief value, except such as herein otherwise rated, canes, walking sticks and whips, clothing ready made, brushes, anchors, all wares of tin, pewter, or copper, all or any of them, medicinal drugs, except those commonly used in dyeing, carpets and carpeting, all velvets, velverets, satins, and other wrought silks, cumbrics, muslins, muslincts, lawns, laces, gauzes, chintzes, and colored calicoes, and nankeens, seven and a half per centum ad valorem. All goods, wares and merchandise imported directly from China or India in ships or vessels not of the United States, teas excepted, twelve and a half per centum ad valorem. All coaches, chariots, phaetons, chaises, chairs, solos or other carriages, or parts of carriages, fifteen and a half per centum ad valorem; and five per centum ad valorem upon all other goods, wares, and merchandise, except bullion, tin in pigs, tin plates, old pewter, brass teutenague, iron and brass wire, copper in plates, saltpetre, plaster of Paris, wool, dyeing woods, and dyeing drugs, raw hides and skins, undressed furs of every kind, the sea stores of ships and vessels, the clothes, books, household furniture, and the tools or implements of the trade or profession of persons who come to reside in the United States, philosophical apparatus, specially imported for any seminary of learning, all goods intended to be re-exported to a foreign port or place, in the same ship or vessel in which they shall be imported, and generally, all articles of the growth, product or manufactures of the United States.

danivon wrote:Still, I find it interesting to note that during Jefferson's 8 year tenure, the House was always majority controlled by the DR party (dominated in fact, for most of the time), and the Senate was only Federalist for a short time at the beginning. Perhaps Jefferson could not carry enough of his party to support a removal of the tariffs. Perhaps the fact that they were aimed to produce revenue rather than to be protective (that may have been Hamilton's aim, but it was not until 1816 and later Acts that protective rates were imposed.

If he had to do it over again, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that he wouldn’t give Solyndra a $535 million loan guarantee.

“Certainly knowing what I know now, we’d say no,” Chu said during a hearing in the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. “But you don’t make decisions [by] fast-forwarding two years in the future and then go back. I wish I could do that.”

Chu was responding to Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.), who had asked, “Knowing what you know today, would you approve that loan?”

Earlier, Chu declined to apologize for the failure of the California solar company.

“Based on what you know and what’s happened, who has to apologize” for Solyndra? Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) asked Chu.

“It is extremely unfortunate what has happened to Solyndra,” Chu replied, adding, “Was there incompetence? Was there any undue influence? I’d have to say no.”

“So no apology?” Upton followed up.

“It’s extremely unfortunate what has happened to Solyndra. You and I both feel the same,” Chu said, adding that the price drops for solar panels caught DOE and others off guard. “This company and several others got caught in a very, very bad tsunami,” he said.

The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections that imperiled Democratic control of Congress, newly released e-mails show.

The announcement could have been politically damaging because President Obama and others in the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative, saying the company’s new factory, built with the help of stimulus money, could create 1,000 jobs. Six months before the midterm elections, Obama visited Solyndra’s California plant to praise its success, even though outside auditors had questioned whether the operation might collapse in debt.

As the contentious 2010 elections approached, Solyndra found itself foundering, and it warned the Energy Department that it would need an emergency cash infusion. A Solyndra investment adviser wrote in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail — without explaining the reason — that Energy Department officials were pushing “very hard” to delay making the layoffs public until the day after the elections.

The announcement ultimately was made on Nov. 3, 2010 — immediately following the Nov. 2 vote.

Lots of "change." We haven't seen such a criminal enterprise since Nixon.

rickyp wrote:steve

Lots of "change." We haven't seen such a criminal enterprise since Nixon.

What crime has been committed? Who has been charged?

One of the many questions Republican lawmakers have sought to answer in their ongoing investigation into the Solyndra loan scandal is whether or not the Department of Energy broke the law when it approved a loan restructuring agreement giving private investors priority — over taxpayers — with respect to the first $75 million recovered in the even of Solyndra’s collapse.

As it turns out, the answer to that question depends in part (to borrow a phrase) on what the meaning of the words “is” is.

It seems to me that Solydras management both misforecast the competitive marketplace but also missed establishing a production process that could provide the efficiencies found in China.

The 2009 loan to the California solar panel maker was touted by Obama and Chu as a worthwhile effort to develop alternative energy resources such as solar power. In fact, it was a rigged deal put together in haste to garner quick headlines and to benefit political friends and donors to Obama, such as billionaire George Kaiser, whose private equity firm arranged the Solyndra largesse.

To be sure, some developments were out of the administration's control. Market forces created a decline in the price of silicon, the European debt crisis reduced demand for solar panels and China entered the solar energy market with lower costs. Solyndra's prospects quickly dimmed. But Obama and Chu could have been honest with taxpayers, acknowledged that Solyndra was a bad investment and limited the risk. Instead, the administration attempted to stage-manage the crisis through disinformation, misdirection and denial, making a bad situation worse.

For its lack of due diligence in rushing the Solyndra deal to its disastrous conclusion, the Obama administration is saddled with a classic Washington scandal of its own making. Chu, a respected 1997 Nobel Prize laureate in physics, has seen his stellar reputation tarnished and should resign.

This is the sort of Washington debacle that fuels distrust of government in groups as diverse as tea party followers and "occupy" protesters. It reinforces the notion that the fix is always in for deep-pocketed corporate insiders. Neither political party is immune to such insider dealing — or the urge to deny and obfuscate when the excesses are exposed.

The only question is, is there real beenfit to having domestic manufacture in this area?
Were jobs enough, or was there something else that made a strategic investment worthwhile?

President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official.

It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out.

The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle.

Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. When Obama won the White House, Wagle was installed at the Department of Energy (DOE), advising on energy grants.

From an objective vantage point, investing taxpayer monies in BrightSource was a risky proposition at the time. In 2010, BrightSource, whose largest shareholder is Kennedy’s VantagePoint Partners, was up to its eyes in $1.8 billion of debt obligations and had lost $71.6 million on its paltry $13.5 million of revenue.

Even before BrightSource rattled its tin cup in front of Obama’s DOE, the company made it known publicly that its survival hinged on successfully completing the Ivanpah Solar Electrical System, which would become the largest solar plant in the world, on federal lands in California.

In its Securities and Exchange Commission filings, BrightSource further underscored the risky nature of the Ivanpah venture and, more broadly, the company’s viability:

Our future success depends on our ability to construct Ivanpah, our first utility-scale solar thermal power project, in a cost-effective and timely manner… Our ability to complete Ivanpah and the planning, development and construction of all three phases are subject to significant risk and uncertainty.

Ironically, in 2008, Kennedy wrote a CNN article praising Obama as reminiscent of his famous father and uncle. The article, titled “Obama’s Energy Plan Would Create a Green Gold Rush,” proved prophetic. However, the “green gold rush” came in the form of $1.4 billion of taxpayers’ money flowing into the pet projects of rich venture capital investors like Kennedy, not average citizens.

What’s more, BrightSource touted the Ivanpah project as a green jobs creator. Yet as its own website reveals, the thermal solar plant will only create 1,400 jobs at its peak construction and 650 jobs annually thereafter. Even using the peak estimate of 1,400 jobs, that works out to a cost to taxpayers of $1 million per job created.

With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.

Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the company's manufacturing jobs are still limited to the assembly of the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car in Finland.

"There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle," the car company's founder and namesake told ABC News. "They don't exist here."

Henrik Fisker said the U.S. money has been spent on engineering and design work that stayed in the U.S., not on the 500 manufacturing jobs that went to a rural Finnish firm, Valmet Automotive.

"We're not in the business of failing; we're in the business of winning. So we make the right decision for the business," Fisker said. "That's why we went to Finland."

The loan to Fisker is part of a $1 billion bet the Energy Department has made in two politically connected California-based electric carmakers producing sporty -- and pricey -- cutting-edge autos. Fisker Automotive, backed by a powerhouse venture capital firm whose partners include former Vice President Al Gore, predicts it will eventually be churning out tens of thousands of electric sports sedans at the shuttered GM factory it bought in Delaware. And Tesla Motors, whose prime backers include PayPal mogul Elon Musk and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, says it will do the same in a massive facility tooling up in Silicon Valley.

An investigation by ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News found that the DOE's bet carries risks for taxpayers, has raised concern among industry observers and government auditors, and adds to questions about the way billions of dollars in loans for smart cars and green energy companies have been awarded. Fisker is more than a year behind rolling out its $97,000 luxury vehicle bankrolled in part with DOE money. While more are promised soon, just 40 of its Karma cars (below) have been manufactured and only two delivered to customers' driveways, including one to movie star Leonardo DiCaprio. Tesla's SEC filings reveal the start-up has lost money every quarter. And while its federal funding is intended to help it mass produce a new $57,400 Model S sedan, the company has no experience in a project so vast.

Second, the violation of the law is somewhat murky