Well here’s the thing that’s been on my mind.  Our property is totally solar powered – we are too far to connect to the grid, so this is something I live with everyday.  Unlike the ideological rantings of some City Yuppie, we actually walk our talk.

We have 28 panels – enough to run a normal household, albeit with caution. Having moved from the city it was a steep learning curve but one that showed us the enormous waste that most people are not even aware of.  However, that said, when the sun doesn’t shine, guess what we need to do?  Run the generator of course, and of course that takes fuel – fossile fuel!  And around our way, it rains and it rains a lot.  That can mean up to 6 hours of generator a day.  Now we are also in a very lucky position in that we have a creek running around our property and when it is raining the creek can get up some current, so our next step will be to put a water turbine in so that when the sun doesn’t shine we have an alternative.

So what is this ramble about?  Well, simply put when everyone in Australia is on Solar power or Wind Turbines and the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, how exactly are we going to keep the lights on?  What are businesses and industry going to do when we no longer have power stations?  Do they just stop manufacturing when the sun goes down?

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The Heretic came across this brilliant (and very humorous treatment of the Carbon Tax debate) and just had to share:

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

Show your disgust for the broken promises of the Labor  Government and

Join the “Revolt against Carbon Tax”  here

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“Inconvenient nonsense infiltrates the classroom ...

An excellent article by Bob Carter prompted the Heretic to post this information about Al Gore, Obama and his band of thieves …

So  you think you know quite a bit about Climate change and who will benefit …  Read on and see just how little we all  know.

This is an interesting story put together from various articles and TV shows by the British Times paper. It shows what Obama and his friends are really all about.

Climate Change … It’s not about hope and change, it is about money.

I warn you, the first part is a little boring, but stick with it. The second part connects all the dots for you (it will open your eyes). The end explains how Obama and all his cronies were hoping to end up as multi-billionaires. (It’s definitely worth the read. You will not be disappointed).

A small bank in Chicago called SHOREBANK almost went bankrupt during the recession. The bank made a profit on its foreign micro-loans  but had lost money in sub-prime mortgages in the US. It was facing likely closure by federal regulators. However, because the bank’s executives were well connected with members of the Obama Administration, a private rescue bailout was arranged. The bank’s employees had donated money to Obama’s Senate campaign. In other words, ShoreBank was too politically connected to be allowed to go under.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasur...
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ShoreBank survived and invested in many “green” businesses such as solar panel manufacturing. In fact, the bank was mentioned in one of Obama’s speeches during his election campaign because it subjected new business borrowers to Eco-litmus tests.

Prior to becoming President, Obama sat on the board of the JOYCE FOUNDATION, a liberal charity. This foundation was originally established by Joyce Kean’s family which had accumulated millions of dollars in the lumber industry. It mostly gave funds to hospitals but after her death in 1972, the foundation was taken over by radical environmentalists and social justice extremists.

The JOYCE FOUNDATION, which is rumored to have assets of 8 billion dollars,  set up and funded, with a few partners, something called the CHICAGO CLIMATE EXCHANGE, known as CXX.  It was to be the exchange (like the Chicago Grain Futures Market for agriculture) where Environmental Carbon Credits are traded.

Under Obama’s new bill, businesses in the future will be assessed a tax on how much CO2 they produce (their Carbon Footprint) or in other words how much they add to global warming. If a company produces less CO2 than their allotted measured limit, they earn a Carbon Credit. This Carbon Credit can be traded on the CXX exchange. Another company, which has gone over their CO2 limit, can buy the Credit and “reduce” their footprint and tax liability. Just like trading shares on Wall Street.

Well, it was the same JOYCE FOUNDATION, along with some other private partners and Wall Street firms that funded the bailout of ShoreBank.  The foundation became one of the major shareholders. The bank was designated to be the “banking arm” of the CHICAGO CLIMATE EXCHANGE (CXX). In addition, Goldman Sachs was  contracted to run the investment trading floor of the exchange.

So far so good; now the INTERESTING parts.

One ShoreBank co-founder, named Jan Piercy, was a Wellesley College roommate of Hillary Clinton. Hillary and Bill Clinton have long supported the bank and are small investors.

Another co-founder of Shorebank, named Mary Houghton, was a friend of Obama’s late mother. Obama’s mother worked on foreign MICRO-LOANS for the Ford Foundation. She worked for the foundation with a guy called Geithner. Yes, you guessed it. This man was the father of Tim Geithner, the present US Treasury Secretary, who failed to pay all his taxes for two years.

Another founder of ShoreBank was Ronald Grzywinski, a cohort and close friend of Jimmy Carter.

The former ShoreBank Vice Chairman was a man called Bob Nash. He was the deputy campaign manager of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. He also sat on the board of the Chicago Law School with Obama and Bill Ayers, the former terrorist. Nash was also a member of Obama’s White House transition team.

(To jog your memories, Bill Ayers is a Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He founded the Weather Underground, a radical revolutionary group that bombed buildings in the 60s and 70s. He had no remorse for those who were killed, escaped jail on a technicality, and is still an admitted Marxist).

When Obama sat on the board of the JOYCE FOUNDATION, he “funneled” thousands of charity dollars to a guy named John Ayers, who runs a dubious education fund. Yes, you guessed it. The brother of Bill Ayers, the terrorist.

Howard Stanback is a board member of Shorebank. He is a former board chairman of the Woods Foundation. Obama and Bill Ayers, the terrorist, also sat on the board of the Woods Foundation. Stanback was formerly employed by New Kenwood Inc., a real estate development company co-owned by Tony Rezko.

(You will remember that Tony Rezko was the guy who gave Obama an amazing sweet deal on his new house. Years prior to this, the law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland had represented Rezko’s company and helped him get more than 43 million dollars in government funding. Guess who worked as a lawyer at the firm at the time. Yes, Barack Obama).

Adele Simmons, the Director of ShoreBank, is a close friend of Valerie Jarrett, a White House senior advisor to Obama. Simmons and Jarrett also sit on the board of a dubious Chicago Civic Organization.

Van Jones sits on the board of ShoreBank and is one the marketing directors for “green” projects. He also holds a senior advisor position for black studies at Princeton University. You will remember that Mr. Van Jones was appointed by Obama in 2009 to be a Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House. He was forced to resign over past political activities, including the fact that he is a Marxist.

Al Gore was one of the smaller partners to originally help fund the CHICAGO CLIMATE EXCHANGE. He also founded a company called Generation Investment Management (GIM) and registered it in London, England. GIM has close links to the UK-based Climate Exchange PLC, a holding company listed on the London Stock Exchange. This company trades Carbon Credits in Europe (just like CXX will do in the USA) and its floor is run by Goldman Sachs. Along with Gore, the other co-founder of GIM is Hank Paulson, the former US Treasury Secretary and former CEO of Goldman Sachs. His wife, Wendy, graduated from and is presently a Trustee of Wellesley College. Yes, the same college that Hillary Clinton and Jan Piercy, a co-founder of Shorebank attended. (They are all friends). The CXX was the brainchild of Northwestern University business professor Richard Sandor, who used $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation to launch the CCX.  For his efforts, Time named Sandor as one of its Heroes of the Planet in 2002 and one of its Heroes of the Environment in 2007.

Interesting?

Because many studies have been exposed as scientific nonsense, people are slowly realizing that man-made global warming is nothing more than a money-generating hoax. As a result, Obama was working feverishly to win the race.

Obama knew he had to get his bill passed before he lost his majority in Congress in the mid-term elections. Apart from Climate Change he “sold” this bill to the public as generating tax revenue to reduce  debt.

But, here’s the KICKER (THE MONEY TRAIL).

The initial estimates of the size of CCX’s trading was around $500 billion but that estimate ballooned to over 10 TRILLION dollars being traded each year. At a commission rate of only 4 percent, the exchange would earn close to 400 billion dollars to split between its owners, all Obama cronies. At a 2 percent rate, Goldman Sachs would also rake in 200 billion dollars each year.

But don’t forget SHOREBANK. With 10 trillion dollars flowing though its accounts, the bank looked to earn close to 40 billion dollars in interest each year for its owners (more Obama cronies), without even breaking a sweat.

It was estimated Al Gore alone would probably rake in 15 billion dollars just in the first year. Of course, Obama’s “commissions” would be held in trust for him at the Joyce Foundation. They were estimated to be over 8 billion dollars by the time he left office in 2013.

Some financial experts believed that this would prove to be the largest “scam” or “legal heist” in world history. Obama’s cronies make the Mafia look like rank amateurs. They will make Bernie Madoff’s fraud look like penny ante stuff.

and the Epitaph …

from an article on Pajamas Media, by Steve Milloy, who publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.

“…Al Capone tried to use Prohibition to muscle in on a piece of all the action in Chicago. The CCX’s backers wanted to use a new prohibition on carbon emissions to muscle in on a piece of, quite literally, all the action in the world.

The CCX seemed to have a lock on success. Not only was a young Barack Obama a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX, but over the years it attracted such big name climate investors as Goldman Sachs and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the CCX’s highly anticipated looting of taxpayers and consumers — cap-and-trade imploded following its high water mark of the House passage of the Waxman-Markey bill. With ongoing economic recession, Climategate, and the tea party movement, what once seemed like a certainty became anything but.

CCX’s panicked original investors bailed out this spring, unloading the dog and its across-the-pond cousin, the European Climate Exchange (ECX), for $600 million to the New York Stock Exchange-traded Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) — an electronic futures and derivatives platform based in Atlanta and London. (Luckier than the CCX, the ECX continues to exist thanks to the mandatory carbon caps of the Kyoto Protocol.)

The ECX may soon follow the CCX into oblivion, however — the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. No new international treaty is anywhere in sight.

While we don’t know how well Al Gore and Goldman Sachs fared on their investments in the CCX, we do know that there’s no reason to cry for Sandor. He received $98.5 million for his 16.5% stake in CCX when it was sold. Not bad for a failure that somebody else financed… “

Read the full article here or click the link below.

And I can’t help but give a punt to Steve Milloy’s book Green Hell – a must read!
Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them

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Cropped version of Thomas Jefferson, painted b...

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Thomas  Jefferson said in 1802:

‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
If the
American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people
of all property -
until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.’

Admin : I rest my case …

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I AM A SMOKER AND I VOTE AND I BELIEVE I AM A VICTIM OF DISCRIMINATION:

A new national poll shows that 85% of Australians support the Federal Government introducing anti-discrimination laws to protect Australians from discrimination according to the Australian Coalition for Equality website  www.coalitionforequality.org.au.   Further they say “The Australian people overwhelmingly want to live in a nation free from discrimination and our Federal laws should reflect that wish.”
So I ask what about ME AND ALL MY FELLOW SMOKERS?  Have we become so sensitized by the media and anti-smoking lobby that we can see it for what it is – plain old ordinary … you got it … discrimination!

Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 I believe a class action could be taken by smokers:

Grounds of unlawful discrimination

Physical, intellectual, psychiatric, sensory, neurological or learning disabilities; physical disfigurement; disorders, illness or diseases that affect thought processes, perceptions of reality, emotions or judgement, or results in disturbed behaviours; presence in body of organisms causing disease or illness (eg HIV virus).

Areas covered

Employment; education; access to premises; accommodation; buying or selling land; activities of clubs; sport; administration of Commonwealth laws and programs; provision of goods; and services and facilities.

If we smokers want to get picky we could claim that we are victims of a disorder (addiction to nicotine) and that we have an illness that affects our thought processes (we are told we will die yet we continue to smoke).

We are denied accommodation or have to put up with ‘non-smoking’ accommodation, we are denied services and facilities at pubs, clubs, restaurants, hotels.   Coles Supermarkets refuse to allow you to buy cigarettes at the normal check-outs.  The government targets us specifically to increase taxes every budget and the list goes on …

And bear in mind that we are now told that Obesity is the biggest killer in Australia – yet Malls are banning smoking but not fast food outlets!!!!

If you are a smoker or you just hate discrimination order your sticker here:  dii@hereticjournal.com


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In all the rhetoric and rehashing of all the same old stuff by the media I have not once seen what exactly the revenue from the proposed Carbon Tax will be used for or where it will go.  Blind Freddie can see there is climate change … as there has been ever since the Earth was formed, hence civilizations have died out or moved or readapted as have animals and plants and yes, I agree we are a wasteful society that needs to reign in our greed and overuse of resources BUT our tiny contribution to the overall problem begs disbelief of the nonsense our society has suddenly taken on board.
All I can see is that the only people who will benefit from all this will be
(a) the big end of town who stand to make millions with ‘green’ products
(b) the bankers and stock brokers and professional investors who will be given yet another ‘intangible’ to trade in.

The very real victims of climate change – our neighbours on tiny Pacific islands who will lose their homes to rising seas, African countries who will encounter even worse famines then we have seen in recent history and who will require practical aid to relocate, or irrigate or require basic food are not mentioned in any debate.

I personally would be happy to pay into a World Fund that could address these issues in a practical way – and it would be easy to administer via our Gas and Electricity Bills – the biggest users would pay the most if a tax was levied on usage.  I object most strongly to providing Wall Street and all the other hangers on with yet another way to make obscene profits at the cost of Australian small businesses and the ordinary man in the street.  Let us give carbon trading and carbon tax a decent burial.

Will any of the candidates in the next election be prepared to think outside the ‘popular’ solutions and ask the real questions? Obviously the media won’t. Even the 7.30 report and Kerry O’Brien, with all his accolades, can only focus on the mundane and rehash the same old arguments. And the Greens, especially Senator Christine Milne can’t see the forest for the trees!

In the run-up to Copenhagen, Naomi Klein made her point against carbon trading quite clearly in an article penned for The Nation:

Climate-justice activists in Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents an unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colonial proportions. Not only will these “market-based solutions” fail to solve the climate crisis, but this failure will dramatically deepen poverty and inequality, because the poorest and most vulnerable people are the primary victims of climate change—as well as the primary guinea pigs for these emissions-trading schemes.

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burra burra copper mine
Image by tauntingpanda via Flickr

Here is an interesting explanation on the so-called Super Tax on Australian Mining that came across the Heretic’s desk today that I thought I’d share …

A number of clients have asked me to explain how the Resource Rent Tax will work – most are under the mistaken impression that resource companies will pay 40% tax instead of the 30% other companies pay (actually not a bad idea!)

This is how it works:

Let’s say you are a mining company, and after getting back all your set up costs, you make $100 profit:

The Rudd Government, being the generous soul that it is, says you are entitled to earn a return on your invested capital – at the Government Bond rate. ( I am unaware of any investor this side of Alpha Centauri who puts capital into a mining development in the hope of a 6% return!). The good news is you won’t pay any tax on your first $6.

On the $94 remaining – you pay 40% RRT – $37.60 to Kev and Wayne.

You now have $62.40 ($6 of it tax-free) rattling around your pocket – you then pay the 30% normal corporate tax rate everyone else does – $16.92.

Great work – you made $100, and you now have $45.48 in your pocket – And Wayne and Kevin have $54.52 to spend on pink batts to set your ceiling on fire.

Jokes aside, the danger in this sum is that there are other countries in the world who actually want mining investment in their countries, and will offer incentives to miners to develop projects there. Projects = jobs, funds recycling in your economy, and future taxes. Ask yourself as the CEO of a mining company – where do you want to go?

Canada’s Finance Minister said yesterday:

TORONTO, May 4 (Reuters) – Australia’s proposed new mining tax could prove advantageous for Canada by attracting investors seeking lower tax jurisdictions, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Tuesday.
“I quite frankly need to review it further. I want to make sure I understand exactly what they’re doing,” Flaherty told reporters.
“If it is what it appears to be, a significant tax increase, that’s another competitive advantage for Canada. We’re reducing our corporate taxes.”

So !!!! This is why Australia’s market is down.

The Heretic thanks John P  BE Mining for this enlightening information.

The Heretic loves this man: Paul Colgan

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Now Micro-Finance

… definitely worth talking about because it is so very easy for each of us to actually do something worthwhile for very little cost or effort. I came across this today “9 Ways to do Good with 5 minutes or $25.00″.

These guys are trying to do it right and what a wonderful concept it has been for so many.  And then of course my favourite people (not!) the wanker bankers just couldn’t keep their hands off it … see article below.   Not a day goes by that these double-breasted suits don’t find another way to feather their nests at the expense of the worst off in all societies.

Shame on them …

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The Heretic has just returned from a wonderful holiday in the USA … wonderful people, awesome (yes the old-fashioned meaning of the word :) ) scenery.  The Grand Canyon is just that – Grand! and I learned lots about a history I’d previously known little about through the imagination provoking ruins of the Ancestral Puebloans while wandering through the Mesa Verde and Canyon De Chelly.

What a country of such massive contradictions!  It has left me with a feeling of deep respect for these ancient people and their culture.  The horrific devastation of the American Indian culture  has also affirmed my view  that we,  ‘The White Man”, with our arrogance and greed, destructive insensitivity,  modern technology, have still much to learn and put right. We also encountered outstanding service, welcoming and open friendliness and warm delightful people from LA to Phoenix to Miami and all other spots we visited.

Sadly though everywhere we went the evidence of waste and greed was overwhelming -  paper cups, plastic plates, plastic cutlery, over-packaged food, condiments – the “Throw away society”.  Everything in one-person portions.

I was offered an explanation by our companion – a long term resident of America – that the water and energy and manpower required to wash crockery and cutlery,  put stuff into sugar bowls and dispensers had been reduced by producing biodegradable, recyclable STUFF.   Oh dear!  The logic is simply lost on me.  What about the energy required to produce all this rubbish, the pollution of the environment by the factories producing them and and and …

Advertising for drug companies and solicitors promising to sue for all manner of personal injuries caused by said drug companies and the plethora of magazines pushing clothing and cosmetics at exorbitant prices ($1300 for a shredded pair of jeans!) just left us shaking our heads.  $1300 would feed a whole family for a year in many places on this planet.  Sorry I just don’t get it – no matter how much money you have, can anyone really justify a $1300 pair of jeans or $500 for a T-shirt????

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Climate Sceptics, take heart, as the facts are starting to overtake the left wing rhetoric…..
Climate Alarmists, read it and wake up to what big brother is doing…..

A Cool Look at Global Warming (1)

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