Direct federal giveaways to green energy companies has fallen somewhat out of favor, of late, Washington having proven every bit as inept at manipulating markets and picking winning technologies as Moscow was in the bad old days of the Soviets.
The most dangerous words in investing are, “this time it will be different.”
The Navy said Thursday it will ramp up its use of public-private partnerships to purchase one gigawatt of renewable energy by 2020.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a statement that one gigawatt is enough to power a city the size of Orlando, Fla. — or about 250,000 homes.
The purchase will be one means for the Navy to meet its goal that half of its energy comes from renewable sources by the end of fiscal 2020.
President Obama in his State of the Union address on Tuesday singled out the Navy for “one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history.”
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Tom Hicks, deputy assistant Navy secretary, said at a panel discussion in July that the service expects to have 100 megawatts of solar power, six megawatts of wind power and 270 megawatts of geothermal power by the end of 2012.
If these energy sources were more efficient than the petroleum-based sources they are to replace, Navy would already have been buying them. Essentially, DoN is taxing the Navy’s operating budget to instead procure more expensive sources of alternative energy as a smiley-faced federal subsidy program.
Fewer warships, delayed and reduce procurement of next generation strike fighters, limited pay raises for serving troops, and higher health care costs for retirees.
Pirates moved an American hostage at least three times in 24 hours and threatened Thursday to kill him after US Navy SEALs rescued an American and a Dane in a bold, dark-of-night raid that raises questions about whether other Western captives are now in greater danger.
“If they try again, we will all die together,” warned Hassan Abdi, a Somali pirate connected to the gang holding the American, who was kidnapped Saturday in northern Somalia.
“It’s difficult to hold US hostages, because it’s a game of chance: die or get huge money. But we shall stick with our plans and will never release him until we get a ransom,” Abdi said.
But the reactions were not limited to Horn of Africa, it seems:
Building tensions between the United States and Egypt flashed into the open Thursday when Cairo confirmed that it had barred at least a half-dozen Americans from leaving the country and the Obama administration threatened explicitly to withhold its annual aid to the Egyptian military.
The travel ban came to light on Thursday after the International Republican Institute, an American-backed democracy-building group, disclosed that the Egyptian authorities had stopped its Egypt director, Sam LaHood, at the Cairo airport on Saturday before he could board a flight to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates…
Just a day before Mr. LaHood was detained temporarily, President Obama had warned Egypt’s leader, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, that this year’s American military aid hinged on satisfying new Congressional legislation requiring that Egypt’s military government take tangible steps toward democracy, said three people briefed on the conversation.
Mr. Obama referred specifically to the criminal inquiry into several democracy-building groups with foreign financing, including the Republican Institute, the people who were briefed said, and he made clear that Egypt had not fulfilled the Congressional requirements, but Field Marshal Tantawi did not seem to believe him.
Then, after the travel ban on the Americans became public on Thursday, the administration made the warning public as well. “It is the prerogative of Congress to say that our future military aid is going to be conditioned on a democratic transition,” Michael H. Posner, an assistant secretary of state responsible for human rights issues, said at a previously scheduled press conference in Cairo on Thursday.
The US has given roughly $2 billion annually to Egypt since 1979; the North African country is the second largest recipient of American largesse. In response to the of a reduction or suspension in US aid, Egypt has acted to prevent designated US citizens from leaving the country at will.
The conditions of their captivity may be superior to that of those held against their will in Somalia, but when you count the dollars in play the Somalis are comparative pikers when it comes to extortion.
American Navy officers have a line they repeat passionately and often: A nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is an imposing and versatile manifestation of the United States’ power. A ship like the Stennis, they say, which was sending aircraft on missions over Iraq one day and over Afghanistan 36 hours later, allows Washington to project influence, unrestricted by borders or basing rights.
To that, Chief Petty Officer Jaime L. Evock, 33, added her own line.
She was watching over the sailors in the red shirts, the uniform that signifies ordnance handlers. They were putting together the parts that allow a carrier and its aircraft to reach inside another country and kill.
Whatever anyone thinks of air power, without munitions and the people who know them, she said, “this ship would just be a floating airport.”
Twenty-two years after the Philippine Senate kicked the US military out of the archipelago, the notion of being friends and allies holds new currency:
Two decades after evicting U.S. forces from their biggest base in the Pacific, the Philippines is in talks with the Obama administration about expanding the American military presence in the island nation, the latest in a series of strategic moves aimed at China.
Although negotiations are in the early stages, officials from both governments said they are favorably inclined toward a deal. They are scheduled to intensify the discussions Thursday and Friday in Washington before higher-level meetings in March. If an arrangement is reached, it would follow other recent agreements to base thousands of U.S. Marines in northern Australia and to station Navy warships in Singapore.
Among the options under consideration are operating Navy ships from the Philippines, deploying troops on a rotational basis and staging more frequent joint exercises. Under each scenario, U.S. forces would effectively be guests at existing foreign bases.
The sudden rush by many in the Asia-Pacific region to embrace Washington is a direct reaction to China’s rise as a military power and its assertiveness in staking claims to disputed territories, such as the energy-rich South China Sea.
The last time the PI had the opportunity to be a part of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, they didn’t like it all that much. Something it would have been friendly to remember back in 1991, when history ended.
I used to think that you never really knew a man, until you’d crossed the Magsaysay Bridge with him at two o’clock in the morning. Seems like the next generation may get that chance.
Today’s USA Today is running an article about a new federal program to help local police departments deal with the “ticking time bomb veteran” chimera. I found elements within it rather irritating:
The Justice Department is funding an unusual national training program to help police deal with an increasing number of volatile confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.
Developers of the pilot program, to be launched at 15 U.S. sites this year, said there is an “urgent need” to de-escalate crises in which even SWAT teams may be facing tactical disadvantages against mentally ill suspects who also happen to be trained in modern warfare.
“We just can’t use the blazing-guns approach anymore when dealing with disturbed individuals who are highly trained in all kinds of tactical operations, including guerrilla warfare,” said Dennis Cusick, executive director of the Upper Midwest Community Policing Institute. “That goes beyond the experience of SWAT teams.”
Shouldn’t SWAT teams always try to de-escalate crises? Is it our usual practice to have a “blazing guns approach” with disturbed individuals? We need a federal training program for this?
The story goes on:
Cusick, who is developing the program along with institute training director William Micklus, said local authorities have a better chance of defusing violent confrontations by immediately engaging suspects in discussions about their military experience — not with force.
The aim, Micklus said, is to try to reconnect them with “a sense of integrity” lost in the fog of emotional distress.
“You can’t win by trying to out-combat them,” Cusick said. “You emphasize what it means to be a Marine, a soldier to people who now feel out of control.”
Do police officers “win” engagements with the public, even disturbed members of that public? Do those people on the receiving end then “lose” anything more important than their lives? These are public servants, performing often valiantly in situations where the public does not want to go. But there should not be a mindset of “winning” in some conflict with that public.
And here’s the kicker:
There is no data that specifically tracks police confrontations with suspects currently or formerly associated with the military. But an Army report issued this year found that violent felonies in the service were up 1% while non-violent felonies increased 11% between 2010 and 2011.
During that time, however, crime in much of the nation declined.
So, Eric Holder’s Justice Department has no data to suggest a rising wave of the perennial “disgruntled veteran” going postal, but we’re all set to develop a new federal program to deal with the threat. We analogize that since violent felonies within the services have risen a meager 1%, that there is therefore some latent pool of combat-trained – and armed! – lunatics out there bent upon going out in a blaze of glory. Which we would be all too happy to provide them with, except the good guys may take some hits too.
This has nothing to do with relaxed recruiting standards during a tough ten years of war, nor our country’s failure to develop meaningful support mechanisms for those who have borne the strains and stresses of those ten years. The important thing to realize is that there are veterans out there!!! With guns!!11!
Ergo we must have a federal program to deal with them, channeling those resources through the “Upper Midwest Community Policing Institute”.
Much of the anecdotal evidence reads like the report of the Jan. 13 standoff between Army Staff Sgt. Joshua Eisenhauer, 30, a veteran of multiple combat tours, and Fayetteville, N.C., police and firefighters.
Anecdotes, but no data. Generalizing from a specific instance to all veterans, who may be armed (!) and therefore must be considered politically suspect dangerous.
Pop quiz: Who’s killed more law enforcement officers: Psychologically scarred veterans, or Mr. Holder’s own Justice Department?
There was a crescent moon tonight over NAS Fallon. Not as who should say a “commander’s moon,” far less one issued to a retired captain. But a moon nonetheless. Which, when coupled with a sky completely innocent of cloud cover and with visibilities unlimited, made for an entirely different experience during the evening go.
It might have helped to have knocked out the rust on Monday evening. It can’t have hurt to have flown yesterday during the mid-day.
But this was almost fun, if by “fun” your definition is expansive enough to include the almost total absence of pain.
It’s late though, and I’m to bed. Flights of angels, etc.
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
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