Put $42 billion into a government program and what do you get?

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Search Labs | AI Overview

As of September 2024, SpaceX's Starlink has reached over 4 million subscribers, which means that at least 4 million Starlink receivers have been installed globally. 

Lined pockets, but nothing else. You want rural broadband, call Elon.

The Libs are Noticing Biden’s Broadband Scandal

Early on in his Oval Office tenure, President Joe Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with overseeing a broadband internet program. Her job was to get broadband internet to every American across the country at a cost of $42 billion. 

In September, Republican Senator John Thune exposed the program hadn't connected a single household. 

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr explained more. 

"In 2021, Vice President Harris agreed to lead the Administration’s $42B plan to expand Internet to millions of Americans. Not one person has been connected to the Internet. None," Carr posted on X ahead of congressional testimony about the matter. "With VP Harris at the helm, Politico recently reported on the “frustration” and “finger-pointing” that now define the program’s 'messy, delayed rollout.' One state official described 'a chaotic implementation environment,' 'dysfunction,' and 'delays.' She added that the Administration 'has provided either no guidance, guidance given too late, or guidance changing midstream.' The Administration is 'slowing states down,' she said."

"So what has the Administration been doing over the last 1,039 days instead of connecting Americans?  It has been layering on red tape and advancing a wish list of progressive policy goals," Carr continued. "The $42 billion program led by Vice President Harris is being used to pursue a climate change agenda, DEI requirements, price controls, preferences for government-run networks, and rules that will lead to wasteful overbuilding.  All of this will leave rural and other unconnected communities behind."

As a participant in this graft program, Maine has experienced the same failure; contractors have walked away from bidding after calculating the cost of complying with all of the DEI requirements (minorities are hard to find in the Pine Tree State), union rules and pay scales, and new environmental regulations targeted at the installations. Obviously, the clusterfuck is not limited to Maine, but extends across the country, unlike the promised broadband access.

If I hadn't watched the entire nation meekly accepting and complying with the Wu Han Lockdown, I wouldn't believe that the residents of any state (and NY is next) would let this happen; but they are.

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back to the future

By Katy Grimes, December 30, 2024

They are coming for your gas-powered car, your gas stove, your gas water heater, your gas furnace, your gas dryer, your gas grille, your gas blower, your gas fireplace, and any other gas-powered appliance or vehicle you can think of.

Who is “they” besides California Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature imposing these policies on you?

California is set to become the first state to ban natural gas heaters, water heaters, and furnaces by 2030, a policy of the California Air Resources Board, entirely made up of appointees by the governor, I reported in 2023 in The Tangled Government Web Behind the Push to Ban Gas Stoves, where we link Harvard Health Publishing, the Rocky Mountain Institute,  MDPI International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) National Library of Medicine. NIH is the largest source of funding for medical research in the world. The WHO is named in the studies, as are many Chinese studies.

And they don’t care if it bankrupts you or causes you undue hardship. They don’t care if your public transit system is a hellhole on rails, when they take away your gas-powered car. They don’t care if you have to walk 5 miles to work. They don’t care. Just remember that they don’t care about you. They only care about their autocratic rules – and power.

….

Don Wagner, Chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors and member of the Governing Board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, wrote an op ed for the OC Register addressing this. Here is what he reports:

SCAQMD intends to adopt two rules on all homeowners, multi-family residents, and businesses – more than 17 million people in all. The goal: eliminate natural gas appliances. Proposed Amended Rules 1111 and 1121 require homeowners, landlords, and businesses to replace furnaces and water heaters with costly new “zero-emission” electrical units.

He said these new rules “will seemingly do little to clean the air,” but will financially hurt many:

If implemented, these rules would impose ruinous expenses on already stretched residents and businesses, potentially cause people to lose housing, and strain an already stretched electricity grid.

We’re talking potentially tens of thousands of dollars per unit for every homeowner, landlord, and business forced to make these purchases.

Provoing my point that these Air Quality District board members don’t care, Wagner says:

You will be forced to comply. The old technology – the water heaters and furnaces you are using today – will be illegal to purchase or install.

Only the wealthiest of Southern California residents can afford such extravagance. Don’t even think about buying replacement units in other states and importing them. You will not be allowed to get a permit to install non-complying appliances, nor can you sell a property containing unpermitted units. You will have to comply.

Wagner says the new zero-emission water heaters and furnaces require a substantial increase in electricity usage, which we have heard before. But SCAQMD doesn’t even have a cost estimate yet to power these new electric appliances. But their orders will take place anyway. It’s another Nancy Pelosi moment: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Governor Gavin Newsom has already fallen quite short of his promise to build 3.5 million new homes in California while in office. He’s a victim of his own party’s rules and regulations, but won’t admit it. Because as Supervisor Wagner knows, the new all-electric rules run counter to building affordable homes. “They achieve minimal air quality improvements, are prohibitively expensive and ignore the region’s energy challenges,” Wagner adds.

Housing prices in California have dramatically increased since Newsom took office in 2019. And for all of his supposed efforts to streamline new housing construction, it just isn’t happening.

“Newsom promised in October 2017 amid his campaign for governor that he would help spur the construction and completion of 3.5 million new housing units by the start of 2025, according to a post the then-lieutenant governor made on Medium,” the Daily Caller reported.

“The governor took office in January 2019, when the state had around 14,235,201 housing units, and after five years at the helm, the number of units has increased to 14,824,626 as of the beginning of 2024, totaling just 589,626, according to data from the state’s Department of Finance.”

That’s only 117,925 new homes built every year in California, 2019 – 2024, while Gavin Newsom has been governor.

Californians are due to be very disappointed in just five short years:

NYT June 22 2023:

Why the U.S. Electric Grid Isn't Ready for the Energy ...

The current system makes it hard to build the long-distance power lines needed to transport wind and solar nationwide.

Washington Post Mar 7, 2024

Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation's creaking power grid.

According to recent reports, the United States may soon face a situation where it cannot generate enough electricity to meet growing demand, primarily due to an aging power grid struggling to handle the increased needs from new data centers, manufacturing facilities, and the push towards electrification in various sectors, all while facing limitations in expanding transmission lines and integrating more renewable energy sources rapidly enough to meet the rising demand. 

Key points about the potential electricity shortage in the U.S.:

  • Outdated infrastructure:

    Much of the U.S. electric grid was built decades ago and is not designed to handle the modern energy demands, including the integration of large-scale renewable energy sources. 

  • Rapid demand growth:

    The surge in data centers, electric vehicles, and other electrified industries is putting significant strain on the existing power grid. 

  • Transmission limitations:

    Building new long-distance power lines to transport renewable energy from remote areas faces significant regulatory hurdles and community resistance. 

  • Concerns about grid reliability:

    Experts warn that certain regions of the U.S. could experience electricity shortages during peak demand periods if necessary infrastructure upgrades are not implemented quickly. 

Natural gas is cheap, abundant, and reliable: electricity is none of those.

Further, the huge reduction in CO2 gases in the United States is almost entirely attributable to our increased use of natural gas, instead of coal:

Why The U.S. Leads The World In Reducing Carbon Emissions

The focus on 15 years was primarily because that’s when fracking began to substantially boost U.S. oil and gas production. In addition to seeing the largest decline in carbon emissions over the past 15 years, the U.S. also saw the largest growth in energy production. That may seem counter-intuitive, but there is a simple explanation.

Coal produces more than double the amount of carbon dioxide per unit of power production than natural gas (source). The displacement of coal by natural gas in power production enabled the huge decrease in U.S. carbon emissions.

Renewables played a part, but the renewable contribution trailed that of natural gas. We can see that in the following graphic.

The people pushing for the end of fossil fuel production and use know all this, although their cowed subjects may not. The goal is to deindustrialize the United States and return the masses to the peasant ranks. And many are cheering their masters on. For sheer ignorant idiocy check out this response from a resident of Northern Virginia (we can safely assume he works for either the government or one of the corporate charlatans getting rich from these mandate):

Is it true that there is not enough electricity to power all ...

Quora

Edward Myers Lives in Northern Virginia (1983–present)

False. As soon as more vehicles in the US become electric, there will be a corresponding expansion of electrical power generation. Power companies are in the business of selling power and will willingly expand their capacity as needed to increase their profit.

Alternatively, every electrical vehicle could be matched with a corresponding increase in local solar generation alleviating the need for power companies to do much of anything. When the sun shines the electricity generated would go directly into a car battery nearby. On cloudy days, the cars’ battery reserve would be used to power the cars. Neither the grid nor power generation stations need to be enlarged when local solar generation is used to power vehicles.

The utility grid company might start communicating the demand for power by sending pricing signals when it has excess or needs more power. The electric car chargers will use that information to decide whether to add power to the car it is plugged into. This coordination would allow the power company to scale their power generation plants to produce more electricity from their most efficient plants thereby reducing the cost.

A large number of electrical vehicles will reduce the cost of electricity and prevent electrical shortages for everyone.




Walt, however, managed to die with his personal fortune intact

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December 30, 2024:

Bernie Madoff victims get final $131M payout from compensation fund, bringing total to a whopping $4.3B: feds

That’s good news for Bernie’s chumps and suckers, of course, but what about our homegrown boy, Walter Noel, the criminal who served as Madoff’s local feeder, funneling WASP money (a group Bernie, a Jew, couldn’t gain access to) into the Madoff centrifugal cream separation machine, the Harvard boy who put the “Rogue” into Rogues Hill — surely he didn’t suffer, did he? Because he was such a nice man and had such a lovely family!* Not to worry: You’ll be relieved to know that managed to die this spring in his Mustique retreat, surrounded by his doting children and their ill-gotten loot.

April 18, 2024 03:17 PM

Walter Noel, who ran biggest feeder fund into Madoff, dies at 93

Noel founded what would become Fairfield Greenwich Group in 1983 … and made his first $1.5 million “investment “[with Madoff] later that year.

By the time Madoff was arrested in December 2008 for running history’s biggest Ponzi scheme, the firm had about $7 billion invested with him or roughly half the firm’s total assets.

[All of it, in fact; despite Fairfield’s claim that they entrusted clients’ funds to a handful of carefully-selected, vetted funds, every penny scammed from Walt’s gand was handed over directly to Madoff to steal from it as he would - less the 20% slice to Walter, naturally. — ED]

Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison after pleading guilty to his crimes. He died in prison in 2021 at age 82.

Madoff charged no fees to Fairfield Greenwich and other so-called feeder funds, meaning that those firms kept all the money they charged clients on what would eventually be proven to be fictitious returns. In Fairfield Greenwich’s case, that was 20% of any profit, and in later years a 1% management fee on assets.  

With the Madoff investment spinning off a return of at least 10% annually, Fairfield Greenwich made more than $1 billion in fees, according to a July 2010 complaint filed against Fairfield Greenwich’s entities and executives by Irving Picard, the trustee assigned to recoup money for investors. Noel personally received $114 million in partnership distributions between 2002 and 2008, the court document said, a sum that did not include salary or bonuses.  

Picard alleged that the executives of Fairfield Greenwich knew or should have known that Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme and said their relationship was a “de facto partnership.” Picard’s litigation is ongoing. No criminal charges have ever been brought against these parties.

… Noel, his Brazilian-born wife, Monica, and their five daughters led an increasingly lavish lifestyle from their base in leafy Greenwich, Connecticut. As Fairfield Greenwich assets ballooned, so did the number of vacation homes. In addition to the estate in Mustique and their mansion in Greenwich, they had places in New York City, Palm Beach and Southampton.  

Four of his five daughters wed men who later worked for Fairfield Greenwich. The daughters and their children were photographed by Bruce Weber for a 2002 Vanity Fair piece entitled "Golden in Greenwich" that described Noel’s offspring as the anti-Hiltons.  

Corina, the eldest, married Colombian-born Andres Piedrahita, who led the European and Latin American businesses, working out of London and Madrid. Lisina, the second oldest, wed Yanko Della Schiava, based in Lugano, Switzerland. He was responsible for selling Fairfield’s offshore funds in Southern Europe.

The fourth oldest, Alix, married Philip Toub, son of Swiss shipping magnate Said Toub. He marketed the group’s funds in Brazil and the Middle East. Marisa, the youngest, married Matthew Brown, who worked for the firm in New York. Ariane, the middle daughter, married a private equity investor who was not involved in the family business.  

Executive recruiter Russell S. Reynolds, a longtime friend of the Noels, told Vanity Fair that he saw Walter and Monica at the Round Hill Club in Greenwich the day after Madoff’s arrest. “Walter was shaking he was so upset,” Reynolds told the magazine.

 And here’s another take:

Bernie’s Biggest Sucker/Unindicted Co-conspirator Croaks

April 18 2024:

Unlike many of his old friend’s victims, Walter Noel lived to a ripe old age without knowing want.

Walter Noel lost a lot when Bernie Madoff got caught. As head of one of the oldest and the largest feeder fund into history’s biggest known Ponzi scheme, he lost about $7.5 billion of his clients’ assets. He lost a reliable source of income, since he paid his old buddy Bern no fees but charged lavish ones himself—some $1 billion worth over 20 years. He lost a chunk of his fortune, as well, although he never lost the $114 million the Madoff trustee has spent 15 years trying to recoup. He lost his share of a private jet. As four of his sons-in-law worked for his Fairfield Greenwich Group, he lost them their jobs and any real hope of obtaining new ones commensurate with their lifestyles. He lost his professional standing (but not his social standing, since he never had any).

He didn’t have much respect among his neighbors on Mustique, either, according to the man who developed the exclusive private Caribbean island. Apparently, however, the Mustique Company couldn’t do what the Round Hill Club did and simply throw him out. And so Noel was able to live out his final years amidst the celebrity, splendor and luxury that Ponzi paid for before joining his old partner, whose own beachside accommodations were distinctly more modest, in hell.

Walter Noel, who ran the the largest fund to invest with Bernie Madoff and made more than $1 billion in resulting client fees for his firm, has died. He was 93.

He died on Dec. 15 at Yemanja, his family’s property on Mustique, a private Caribbean island, according to his death certificate.

Ah, the memories.

*The Noel sisters of Greenwich, Connecticut, are turning tabloid-fodder sister acts (that is, Nicky and Paris Hilton) on their heads. In lieu of dancing on tables, the five Noel women have made a name for themselves by shoring up the virtues of a nearly extinct aristocracy. They're well educated and well married, and they're raising a pack of wellbehaved, multi-lingual children while keeping their string-bikini figures intact.

"Let me tell you, those Noel girls are perfect," says Laura McCloy, a socialite of a certain age who gestures with a clinking glass of iced tea toward the tall, attractive sisters. Mrs. McCloy, who is dressed all in pool-green Michael Kors, smiles at Corina, 38, Lisina, 37, Ariane, 35, and Alix, 34. The scene is a lawn in Greenwich, part of the property owned by retired Chase Manhattan Bank vice-chairman Robert Douglass and his wife, Linda. The couple is hosting a party for the youngest Noel sister, Marisa, 25, who is to marry 33-year-old investment manager Matt Brown on October 26.

All these new jobs! The unemployment rate will soon fall to zero.

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Okay, Task Rabbiting too much of an intellectual strain? Now you can become a Blue State science teacher instead

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Teachers Will No Longer Need To Pass Basic Reading, Writing And Math Test For Certification In New Jersey.

Joins New York, California, and Arizona

A New Jersey law that removes a requirement for teachers to pass a reading, writing and mathematics test for certification will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.

The law, Act 1669, was passed by Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy as part of the state’s 2025 budget in June in an effort to address a shortage of teachers in the state, according to the New Jersey Monitor. Individuals seeking an instructional certificate will no longer need to pass a “basic skills” test administered by the state’s Commissioner of Education.

“We need more teachers,” Democratic Sen. Jim Beach, who sponsored the bill, said according to the New Jersey Monitor. “This is the best way to get them.”

Gotta love this: “New Jersey is especially in need of math and science teachers, according to an annual report from the state’s education department.”

Just months earlier, Murphy signed a similar bill into law that created an alternative pathway for teachers to sidestep the testing requirement. A powerful teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, was a driving force behind the bill, calling the testing requirement “an unnecessary barrier to entering the profession.” Teachers in the state are paid an average of $81,102 annually, according to the National Education Association.

New Jersey followed the example of New York, which scrapped basic literacy requirements for teachers in 2017 in the name of “diversity.” (RELATED: How Democrats Lost The Plot On Education)

Other states such as California and Arizona also lower requirements for teacher certification by implementing fast-track options for substitute teachers to become full-time educators and eliminating exam requirements in order to make up for shortages in the field that were worsened by Covid, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Who knew? An entire new industry has emerged, and Ivy Victimhood Studies and DEI grads now have an alternative to career baristaing.

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from brown to broadway

“Task Rabbits” — $20 an hour for standing in line for celebrities and other very important people.

If you want a table at Lucali, you’ve got to wait — or hire someone to do it for you.

The acclaimed Carroll Gardens pizzeria — which is cash-only, BYOB, doesn’t take reservations and is beloved by celebs such as Jay-Z and Beyonce — tops the list of a recent report from TaskRabbit on the most popular restaurants in the city for hiring Taskers to wait for a table.

After Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce dined there in September, requests for line-waiters at the pizza hotspot went up 30%, according to a TaskRabbit spokesperson.

“The most popular request by far is for reservations at Lucali,” a Tasker who goes by Tanya B on the platform told The Post. She charges $20 an hour to line up and has waited as long as three hours at the pizzeria.

Hmm. It seems that Carter and Biden had more in common than just incompetency

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The public appearance last fall of a senile Jimmy Carter was one of the worst cases of public elder abuse I’ve ever seen. It was ghoulish of his family to wheel him out in such an undignified condition in service of a political stunt on behalf of the Democratic Party, even if Carter wanted to bask in the glow of knowing that soon he would no longer be regarded as America’s worst modern president after Joe Biden’s ignominious end.

Steven Hayward, quoted above, has a different take on Carter than the version presently being served up by the mainstream media.

The Under- and Over-Estimated Jimmy Carter, RIP

…. I’ll leave to another time evaluating both his presidency and ex-presidency, and for the moment reflect merely on how Carter’s character and capacities were both underestimated and overestimated from the very beginning and continuing to this day.

… In the early stages of Carter’s extraordinary campaign for the presidency in 1976, a common response to his candidacy was, “Jimmy who?” In some respects, we are still asking that question today, 50 years after he emerged suddenly on the national stage.  He had a Jekyll and Hyde quality unlike almost any other American politician.  He is certainly a better person than Bill Clinton; at least Carter only lusted after women in his heart.

Carter presents layer upon layer of difficulty to untangle. Carter’s one-time speechwriter Patrick Anderson observed that in Carter’s hometown of Plains, Georgia, neighbors said of him that after an hour you love him, after a week you hate him, and after ten years you start to understand him.  (Anderson added that anyone who didn’t have a personality conflict with Carter, didn’t have a personality.)  Anderson also described him as a combination of Machiavelli and Mr. Rogers.  The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn observed: “The conventional image of a sexy man is one who is hard on the outside and soft on the inside.  Carter is just the opposite.”  Fellow Southern Baptist Bill Moyers said “In a ruthless business, Mr. Carter is a ruthless operator, even if he wears his broad smile and displays his southern charm.” Part of the mystique of Carter was his careful and successful positioning as someone “above politics.”  He gave off an air that he is too good for us, or certainly better than the rest of his peers in politics.  Carter exemplified the paradox of taking pride in denouncing the sin of pride.  He also displays a talent for combining self-pity and self-righteousness, sometimes in the same sentence.

He was a maddeningly contradictory figure. He first achieved statewide office in Georgia with a cynical race-baiting campaign, and then immediately proclaimed that the time had come for the South to repudiate its racist ways.  An avatar of morality and truthfulness, Carter bent the truth and had a singularly nasty side to his character that ultimately helped cost him the presidency in 1980. David Brinkley observed of Carter: “Despite his intelligence, he had a vindictive streak, a mean streak, that surfaced frequently and antagonized people.” Eleanor Randolph of the Chicago Tribune wrote: “Carter likes to carve up an opponent, make his friends laugh at him and then call it a joke. . .  [He] stretched the truth to the point where it becomes dishonest to call it exaggeration.”  New York Times reporter James Wooten called Carter “a hyperbole addict.”  And Gary Fink, author of a generally favorable study of Carter’s governorship, notes that “Carter usually claimed the moral and ethical high ground” but “practiced a style of politics based on exaggeration, disingenuousness, and at times outright deception.” Carter seldom if ever repented of his nastiness or asks forgiveness.  Instead, when called out for an egregious personal attack, Carter displayed the advanced skills of evasion that made him such an effective presidential candidate, at least until the public caught on in 1980.

The man with the legendary smile could be unfriendly and cold.  “There were no private smiles,” said one disgruntled campaign aide in 1976.  His personal White House secretary, Susan Clough, recalled that Carter rarely said hello to her as he walked by her desk.  Not a “Happy Thanksgiving,” or a “Merry Christmas.”  Nothing, she says.  Arthur Schlesinger Jr. judged Carter to be a “narcissistic loner.”  “Carter was never a regular guy,” Patrick Anderson observed; “the sum of his parts never quite added up to that. . .  Carter talked his way into the presidency, yet in some profound way he never learned the language of men.”

His campaign autobiography, Why Not the Best?, proclaimed that he was “optimistic about America’s third century,” but he became a tribune of “limits to growth” pessimism, diminished expectations for the future, and a national “malaise.” Margaret Thatcher, among others, noted the trouble with this, writing that Carter “had no large vision of America’s future so that, in the face of adversity, he was reduced to preaching the austere limits to growth that was unpalatable, even alien, to the American imagination.”

He campaigned on the slogan of giving us “a government as good as the people,” and then, at the climactic moment of his presidency, complained that the people were no good.  As a champion of human rights and critic of autocratic dictators while president (at least so long as they were pro-American), ex-President Carter compiled a record of meeting with and subsequently praising some of the world’s most loathsome dictators, often strengthening their political stature.  Yet he was always quick to criticize anyone else who treated with dictators.  He remains the only person elected to the presidency who filed a UFO-sighting report with the Air Force.  “I don’t laugh at people anymore when they say they have seen a UFO because I’ve seen one myself,” Carter said at a 1975 press conference. He is the only president to ever to come close to provoking the resignation of his vice president because of a loss of confidence.

Self-righteousness was another obvious hallmark of Carter. Biographer Betty Glad noted that as governor, Carter “seemed to experience opposition as a personal affront and as a consequence responded to it with attacks on the integrity of those who blocked his projects.  He showed a tendency (which will become even clearer as other facets of his career are explored) to equate his political goals with the just and the right and to view his opponents as representative of some selfish or immoral interest.”

This aspect of Carter’s character cannot be unraveled without looking deeply into the self-proclaimed sources of his political thought, and especially his political religion.  There was an alarming superficiality to his political religion that journalists and biographers noticed but did not analyze with sufficient seriousness. Biographer Kenneth Morris wrote that “when he became governor and then president, Carter continued to show himself bereft of a solid intellectual foundation for his political views.”  Betty Glad reached a similar conclusion: “He lacks, it seems, a well-thought-out conceptual framework to guide his concrete political choices. . . Carter’s political views rest on a simplistic moralism.” Some of Carter’s critics thought he was a religious charlatan.  Reg Murphy, editor of the Atlanta Constitution during Carter’s years as governor, called Carter “one of the three or four phoniest men I ever met.”

Assuming the leverage of 80% financing, not too bad, I suppose

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The owners (until today) of 26 Valleywood Road in Cos Cob paid $1.465 million for it in 2022 in a bidding war that had started at $1.395. They put it back on the market this past June, marked up to $1.795, and finally found a buyer in November. Closed today at $1.7. If they had $293,000 (20%) of their own money into this deal, and got that back, plus another $116,000 (assuming estimated transaction costs of 7%) it looks as though they came out pretty well for such a brief period of ownership.

Still, it seems like a lot of work to go through when an index fund would have done better, with no effort on their part.

(Obviously, these are just some top of the head numbers; I’m just always curious to see whether the sort-term stays of so many Greenwich residents is worth the candle and so far, I’m not convinced they are.)