Archive for April 26, 2021

Report from Louisiana: Loose Thoughts

Posted: April 26, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT:  Random thoughts and observations today.

Help Wanted.  Have you noticed that nobody wants to work anymore? I mean, with this extended unemployment and the stimulus rollouts, the restaurants and shops around here are all begging for help. Almost everywhere you go there are help wanted signs. We went to a Mexican restaurant after church today and the first thing the hostess told us was “we are short of servers today – nobody wants to work…”.  It’s crazy.  I went to Bed, Bath, & Beyond later: also help wanted signs. They’re everywhere.  If you want a part-time job, this might be a really good time to find one. I’m thinking about it! I’m retiring from teaching in less than a month; a little side-hustle might not be a bad thing.

What? Retiring?!  Yes, after twenty-five years, I am done. As of May 28, I’ll be officially retired. Mentally, I’m already there. We took our end of course tests last week – six weeks early because the State was concerned about quarantines. So mentally, the students are done, too; they think, why bother? We took the test already.

To be honest, I’d love to have gone five more years and retire at 30 years; it is about a $300 a month pay cut for me to go now (thus, the side-hustle), but I can mentally no longer battle kids with cellphones, TikTok, terrible curriculum, and apathy. I. Just. Can’t. 

My husband has been retired from the police department for several years and he is bored senseless. I don’t think I’ll have that problem: I’m looking forward to time for writing, doing another book, a million and five home projects, working in the yard, and traveling. But, maybe I’ll tire of all that, too. He doesn’t really have many hobbies and I think it is important to keep busy. We will see. 

But, yeah: twenty-four more days of school. Do it.

Seacor Power Tragedy: President Donald Trump has donated 10K to the United Cajun Navy to help search and rescue efforts in the Seacor Power tragedy.

United Cajun Navy founder Todd Terrell confirmed Friday that the former president made a hefty donation toward the rescue efforts of the seven men who are still missing from the Seacor Power crew.

The U.S. Coast Guard suspended their search for the missing crew members on Monday at sunset. At that time, officials said they do not expect to find more survivors from the vessel.

Officials spent several days searching for the missing workers from the oil industry lift boat Seacor Power, which capsized on April 13 during a fierce storm in the Gulf of Mexico south of Port Fourchon. Six of the 19 workers on the boat were rescued within hours of the wreck; five more bodies were found in the water.

This has been a terrible tragedy and so devastating to watch and hear from these families. Heartbreaking.

Kudos to President Trump.  Thank you.

Y’all have a good week!

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport, at Medium, and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

Powerline on Green Energy Unclear on the Goal

Posted: April 26, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

There is a rather excellent piece at the Powerline Blog about the reasons why Green energy is doomed to fail. The bottom line in his piece is land use and the infrastructure to bring the energy from where it is generated to the NIMBY folk who want the energy but not the infrastructure is dramatic to say the least.

When “green” advocates tabulate the costs of wind and solar energy, they generally don’t include the thousands of miles of transmission lines that are required to bring electricity from the rural areas that are stuck with “green” development to the urban areas where the electricity is used. But such transmission lines represent a huge economic and environmental issue:

Connecting lots of wind and solar to the grid also requires appropriating land for transmission projects. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, converting the domestic electric grid to run on renewables will require roughly doubling the amount of high-voltage transmission capacity in the U.S. At present, the U.S. has about 240,000 miles of high-voltage transmission. Therefore, renewables conversion means adding enough high-voltage transmission lines to circle the Earth about 10 times.

The piece and the report it cites is excellent however there is one glaring error that I would like to point out and it’s an error in terms of premise.

The premise of the piece is that green energy is “doomed to failure” however that is incorrect. Not because it won’t provide the energy needs it claims, it won’t but because the goal of green energy is not to provide energy but to provide cash, from the piece:

So why does the “green dream” persist? In part, because it is inflicted on children from elementary school on. But mostly because there is a great deal of money in it. This chart shows the volume of U.S. tax incentives per unit of energy produced for various energy sources:

“Green” energy holds political sway, which has made a relative handful of people (largely non-Americans and lobbyists) immensely wealthy, while impoverishing utility rate payers and taxpayers–that is to say, the rest of us. 

“Green” energy is all about the green that is all about the green that lobbyists can get from US taxpayers for their clients and the political kickbacks in terms of both contributions and jobs for the connected and their families in these industries all paid for by you.

If you remember that this is the actual goal, to grease the connected at the taxpayer expense rather than produce clean power for the public then Green energy not only hasn’t failed but it has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.