Duke's Rogers: Wind Subsidies Yield Big Profits | National Legal ...

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Rogers and windmill photoSay what you want about Duke Energy and the often-injudicious CEO James Rogers, but at least he is focused on his company?s profitability and the interests of shareholders.

Last week he composed an op-ed for The News & Observer of Raleigh in which he praised Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan and Republican Sen. John McCain for their introduction of the Foreign Earnings Reinvestment Act. The bill would give American companies a ?holiday? from the 35 percent U.S. corporate income tax, enabling businesses to ? as James Valvo of Americans for Prosperity explained ? invest in capital and R&D, hire and train employees, and pay dividends to shareholders.

?Duke Energy alone has $1.2 billion held hostage overseas by a tax system that penalizes U.S. businesses that want to bring their foreign earnings to America to create jobs,? Rogers wrote. ?With the right changes to our tax laws, we can bring that money home to support and accelerate our capital program investments in smart grid technology, retire and replace older coal plants, and build natural gas and renewable generation.?

If only it was a matter of allowing Duke to bring their money home for such ?investments.? The other side of Rogers?s strategy is to hunt down every means possible to game government domestic policy in favor of Duke?s energy initiatives. Rogers could easily advocate and lobby for the expansion, and protection from excessive regulation, of coal, nuclear and natural gas production and generation ? the most affordable, efficient sources of electricity known. And that would still greatly benefit Duke Power. But rather than act in the interests of his customers out of concern for their ability to afford their power bills, or promote sources of power that are dependable, Rogers emphasizes costly regulatory schemes that prop up so-called ?renewables? and redound to the benefit of the company.

As has been well documented, Rogers has long been an advocate for a federal cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, but only if the scheme gave Duke Energy a strategic advantage over its competitors in the wholesale electricity market. As the Wall Street Journal?s Holman Jenkins wrote nearly a year ago, ?No executive has lobbied as noisily or consistently for a national price on carbon output.?

That effort has fallen short for now, but Rogers has continued to seek ways to play the carbon reduction agenda into profit for Duke. As was reported in August by NLPC, Duke has been on a wind and solar farm-buying and building spree in order to: capture grants from the Recovery Act; capitalize on states? incentives and tax credits; collect Department of Energy research and development grants and contracts; and accelerate depreciation on the facilities so as to shield more of its income from taxation. As Glenn Schleede ? a former Reagan Administration and Atomic Energy Commission official ? explained, all the tax credits transfer ?hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the pockets of ordinary taxpayers and electric customers to a few large corporations that own wind farms?.?

In case there is any doubt that is what Duke?s passion for ?renewables? is about, energy expert Robert Bryce (Gusher of Lies and Power Hungry) cleared it up in his National Review piece published last week:

A few months ago, I ran into Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy. I asked him why Duke ? which has about 14,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation capacity ? was investing in wind energy projects. The answer, said Rogers forthrightly, was simple: The subsidies available for wind projects allow Duke to earn returns on equity of 17 to 22 percent.

In other words, for all of the bragging by the wind-industry proponents about the rapid growth in wind-generation capacity, the main reason that capacity is growing is that companies such as GE and Duke are able to goose their profits by putting up turbines so they can collect subsidies from taxpayers.

That 17-22 percent looks extremely attractive when compared to what utilities are usually allowed to earn on state-regulated retail electricity, which is approximately half what they earn on wholesale electricity sales. So it shouldn?t surprise that Duke invests heavily both in the lobbying that creates the high-subsidy/tax credit atmosphere, and then once the goodies are in place, then building and buying up all the facilities it can that will enable the company to take advantage of all the government giveaways.

Unfortunately when you have regulated monopolies (utilities) operating in conjunction with government overseers (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state utilities commissions) to implement policies dictated by bureaucrats and politicians, the ratepayers are the ones who get screwed. Thanks to the folly of state renewable energy mandates, and the associated demands by environmental extremists to shut down coal-fired power plants and force excessive emissions controls, Duke Energy now seeks a 20 percent rate increase for most of its North Carolina customers. That scenario is being replicated all over the country, with double-digit percentage increases in electricity rates sought by utilities in many other states.

And then there is the FERC-delayed Duke merger with Progress Energy, which would create the largest investor-owned utility in the nation and ? as top executives claim ? make the ?new? Duke Energy even more capable of handling capital investments in new power generation facilities. But FERC has ruled that the merger plans would make the monopolies too monopolized ? if that makes any sense ? and create ?an adverse effect on competition.? So the feds recommended that Duke sell some power plants, transmission lines or other assets, and then come back to get full approval for the merger. The company has offered to sell a fixed amount of megawatts, wholesale, at a fixed discounted rate in certain North Carolina territories with hope that FERC will endorse the plan.

Regardless of what happens, expect the pursuit of inefficient (but very profitable ? thanks taxpayers!) renewable energy capital ?investments? to continue, and even more so if Jim Rogers is allowed to repatriate some of Duke?s foreign earnings via a corporate tax holiday.

Paul Chesser is an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center and is executive director of American Tradition Institute.

Source: http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/10/17/duke%E2%80%99s-rogers-wind-subsidies-yield-high-returns-equity

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PHOTOS: Bonnie Raitt, Jane Fonda and Jennifer Love Hewitt at ?A Decade of Difference? to celebrate the William J. Clinton Foundation

Bonnie Raitt and Jane Fonda enjoy a Magnum Ice Cream bar at the “A Decade of Difference” after party celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the William J. Clinton Foundation in Beverly Hills, Calif., Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011. ?A Decade of Difference?, a concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of the William J. Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton?s [...]

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iHolder 2 iPad Stand Review

Of late, I have been reviewing iPad stands and accessories.? This past week I was asked to take a look at a promising stand for the iPad, the iHolder from Pyramid Distribution.? The marketing for the iHolder 2 states that ?it duplicates the design of the iMac – providing the perfect home for your iPad.? [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/10/15/iholder-2-ipad-stand-review/

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GM?s College Student Outreach Really, Really Sucks

That big sucking sound you hear is coming from General Motors? special website pitching college student discounts (gmcollegediscount.com). ?Sucks? is the word of the week at GM, and this would be a good time for a duck with Groucho glasses and shoe polish mustache to drop in with that word, except the intended audience is [...]

Source: http://gtboy.com/motor-trend/gm%E2%80%99s-college-student-outreach-really-really-sucks/

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Greenpeace launches state-of-art campaign ship (AP)

BREMEN, Germany ? Greenpeace launched a new Rainbow Warrior on Friday, a $33 million schooner that replaces its battered 50-year-old boat, which saw numerous encounters with whalers, seal hunters and illegal loggers.

The new schooner's first mission will likely be in the United States to campaign against the burning of coal for electricity. It will then head south to the Amazon to draw attention to rainforest destruction.

The 58-meter (190-foot) ship, with two A-frame masts soaring almost as high over deck, is equipped with a helicopter pad and rapid-action release system for its inflatable boats, which in the past have carried activists into confrontations at sea.

Melina Laboucan-Massimo of the Cree nation in Canada blessed the ship with a prayer in the Cree language, using smoke from sage and braided sweetgrass as well. The 30-year-old Greenpeace activist whose grandmother was a traditional healer followed a different tradition later ? breaking champagne over the hull.

The name Rainbow Warrior is drawn from an apocalyptic Cree prophesy that in the days when the Earth faces manmade devastation, mankind will join together to heal it and will be known as warriors of the rainbow.

Those dark times "are upon us," she said at the shipyard naming ceremony.

"Until my generation, my family was able to live sustainable off the land," she said, adding that now northern Alberta's watershed has been polluted, its air poisoned and its land destroyed by tar sand mines. "People and animals are being sacrificed for the benefit of a few."

Greenpeace's flagships bear the name of the first ship that was sunk by French intelligence agents in a New Zealand harbor in 1985 for opposing nuclear testing. The second Rainbow Warrior was retired this year to become a hospital ship in Bangladesh. Its last mission was to conduct radiation tests off the Japanese coast following the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster in March.

Greenpeace director Kumi Naidoo said the environmental movement is more engaged in talking to business and government leaders now than in earlier days, when it became known for its showdowns with the U.S. Coast Guard and the French navy protecting exclusion zones for nuclear testing.

While diplomacy is preferred, "we also recognize that time is running out for the planet, and Rainbow Warrior and all our activism will, if need be, celebrate the best traditions of civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action," Naidoo said in a shipboard interview.

Although the ship is expensive, Naidoo said "we will never be able to match the power of the oil, coal and gas companies." Greenpeace has an annual budget exceeding $250 million and has offices in about 40 countries.

At the ceremony, Naidoo called the schooner "the perfect ship with which to navigate the perfect storm" of ecological and economic crises, and vowed that it "will confront environmental criminals across the world."

Among their most recent actions, activists climbed an oil rig off the coast of Greenland to disrupt deepwater exploration in the sensitive Arctic. Naidoo and another protester were arrested in June, fined for trespassing and deported, but two months later the Greenland government met one of the group's demands and released Cairn Energy's oil spill plan for its Arctic drilling.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/environment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111014/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_rainbow_warrior

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94% Take Shelter

'Take Shelter'. Tense, unsettling, playing on the fears of today, and deeply rewarding. A brilliantly paranoid and fearful Michael Shannon!What is it about Michael Shannon? I only realised today, a day after having seen the film, the impression he had made on me in Revolutionary Road. His large presence, gangly walk and intense eyes create a character all of their own, and I'm pretty sure that everyone in the audience was feeling exactly like those in the town hall when he self destructs. It was uncomfortable, but utterly captivating, and once again, Jessica Chastain, pitch perfect as the comforting and loving mother and wife.The ending will divide users, but I absolutely loved the direction it went in.This may be way off the mark, but so often, people, like Michael Shannon's Curtis, coupled with a family history of mental illness, and a family of his own to look after, will look to a grounded, medical opinion to certify them as crazy, prescribe a treatment and cope, when the alternative answer is much harder to fathom, and seek.The easy way out would be to solely credit the events of the film to Curtis, but the point seems to be that fear affects everyone, in a variety of forms, and isn't going away. The storm may have cleared, and Curtis may have been proven right, but what of the impending tornado and destruction that will ensue? Or the ongoing economic hardships?Facing the troubling times together with loved ones seems a step in the right direction.[text from http://blog.c0up.com/take-shelter-spoilers-duh]

June 17, 2011

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/take_shelter/

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Seven Home Based Business Ideas

This article has been viewed 30 times.

What sort of dwelling primarily based business should you attempt to begin? In any case, in today when corporations all around the world are down sizing or outsourcing, even essentially the most highly educated and properly educated staff could discover themselves out of a job!

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Now the worm has turned, and many well educated and nicely skilled folks find themselves at the mercy of bean counters and buyout artists, shady politicians trying to make their bones at the expense of the workforce, why a friend of mine who worked for a catholic church (and did a great job for my part) was sacked simply the day before the Christmas holiday! The latest contract negotiations between the New York Mayor Bloomberg and the Transit Workers Union is one other excellent example of why it?s best to consider beginning a house based mostly enterprise to protect your income, and your family?s security.

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You write teny tiny clasifiied ads, and hyperlink to both your web site, or an affiliate website that you?ve got a relationship with, and you?ll watch the cash roll in on a massive passive income stream. It?s not as straightforward as 1-2-three, however in case you have a knack for writing copy that grips, and you have identified an excellent converting site, why by golly, you?ll be able to actually be making, 10s, a whole bunch, even thousands of dollars a day utilizing google adwords.

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Source: http://www.examinerpages.com/internet/seven-home-based-business-ideas/

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Mac Box Set Family Pack | Computers and Technology

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Install the Mac Box Set Family Pack on up to five Mac computers in your household. Mac Box Set Family Pack The Family Pack Software License Agreement allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple software on up ...

Source: http://ric.web.id/2011/10/mac-box-set-family-pack/

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Is It Time To Sell Your Structured Settlement Payments? | Finance ...

Is It Time To Sell Your Structured Settlement Payments?

Structured settlements are financial agreements allowing compensation being paid via an annuity in regularly scheduled payments, for either a fixed period of time or for the life from the claimant. As it is appropriate for person plaintiffs, the structured settlement may well also include an up front payment to cover any contingency.

Structured settlement payments are generally funded by annuities. These annuities are established to protect recipients of legal awards, insurance settlements, and lottery winnings. A very good percentage of structured settlements are prearranged to provide for extended term care and living expenses of plaintiffs who have been injured and are unable to work.

Structured settlements have not always been accessible. The Periodic Payment Settlement Act of 1982 was enacted to generate big awards a lot more agreeable to all parties and protect claimants. It also affords the insurance company as well as the plaintiff specific tax advantages.

Some situations are well suited for a structured settlement. For example: Cases that involve catastrophic injuries Wrongful death lawsuits that include replacing the lost funds with the deceased Disabilities, either permanent or people requiring extensive recovery time Workers Compensation cases Gambling and lottery winnings

Many men and women choose a structured settlement over a lump sum payment, and courts always award them in civil actions in which you can find long term living and well being care expenses. The anticipated require of money at some future date is taken into account as soon as setting up a structured settlement agreement.

Structured settlements can be established inside a amount of ways, based on the needs from the damaged party. The most basic structured settlements supply normal periodic payments for the life in the agreement; for example, a fixed payment every month for 10 years. Structured settlements do not pay interest, so anticipated gains from the underlying annuity are factored into the quantity of the periodic payments and are non-taxable.

Claimants choose structured settlement agreements more than lump sum awards for a range of reasons. The thought of guaranteed normal payments offers a feeling of security for numerous people who were injured and are unable to earn a steady income. Rather than owning to worry about how to invest a big income award, the information are handled by the attorneys and also the insurance company.

An critical benefit of the structured settlement agreement is that it is tax free. The tax consequences of acquiring a lump sum of money can also be staggering, turning what seemed being a fortune into an amount that may not meet future living expenses. A structured settlement relieves the claimant in the responsibility of planning a tax shelter for their award.

Because with the quite a few benefits structured settlements provide each plaintiffs and defendants, the situation can usually be settled out of court, saving each parties significantly of expense. Mainly because the agreement is great to both parties, the system could be completed quickly, and there is no time lost to a prolonged battle in court.

There are some cases for which structured settlements aren?t suitable. An award to your minor injury sustained in an accident would almost certainly not warrant the use of the structured settlement. In situations exactly where lengthy hospitalization or lengthy word treatment isn?t necessary, a lump sum award can be sufficient to offer for the needs of the damaged party.

Once a structured settlement agreement is enacted, the terms are fixed, and there is no allowance created for unanticipated circumstances. This can be a single reason many persons choose to sell their structured settlement payments. Life situations change, and folks may well decide to purchase yet another home, start a business, or return to school and train in your new career. A lump sum of income offers greater flexibility and far more control over the cash than a structured settlement.

Perhaps one of the most persuasive argument for selling structured settlement payments is that more than time, inflation can severely erode the value with the periodic payments. A dollar today is worth more than the exact same dollar during the future. A lump sum of cash correctly invested today could surpass the future significance of a structured settlement.

When selling your structured settlement payments, you can pick to income in only a portion of one?s future payments. This option offers immediate cash, while preserving some of the extended term security of the structured settlement. In case you decide to dollars inside a structured settlement, sell only the portion of the future payments necessary to meet your financial need.

Finally, you ought to carefully select a structured settlement consumer that has been in company for at least several years. Verify out ability customers on the Better Organization Bureau, and do some research to see if past shoppers had been happy in the company?s services. Creating the search now will insure that you just get one of the most funds for your structured settlement.

Is It Time To Sell Your Structured Settlement Payments? ? structured settlements and settlement annuity payments

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Source: http://financehelpnews.com/mortgages/is-it-time-to-sell-your-structured-settlement-payments

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Purchasing Real Estate in Southeast Asia By Professional Property ...

The Philippines is a marvellous place to reside. The economy is good but the living costs are really cheap in comparison with many Western nations. A lot of people choose to retire to the Philippines so they can enjoy a far more lavish life-style. English happens to be taught in the schools there which happens to be a primary reason that the Philippines is now sort of a center for businesses that need an Asian base. Therefore it is not only retirees that are moving to the Philippines but additionally business people moving there for employment opportunities. If you?re relocating to the Philippines real estate is something you?re going to need to think about eventually but there are several possible risks to take into consideration should you be buying property internationally.

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There are a variety of international investment property options but whether you are going to buy or rent it is a wise course of action to make use of the help of a real estate expert which is extremely knowledgeable about the place you will be relocating to. Purchasing real estate overseas can be very complicated since not only are the regulations distinct from what you may be used to, simply executing any kind of deal from a long distance can present their own variety of obstacles.

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To provide yourself the very best possibility of a hasslefree transition from one nation to a different one look for a local, competent real-estate professional who is extremely knowledgeable about the region. Additionally, it is important that the person or company you opt to do business with has a great track record for customer care. A good way to hire a company to work with is to do some research online. By spending a little time doing a little bit of research yow will discover critiques about different real-estate businesses in order to find out about the experiences some of their actual clients have had. If a company is receiving a great deal of good testimonials then there is a good possibility that they will do a good job for you also.

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Should you be looking for a different area to invest in property Malaysia could possibly be a good choice. Malaysia is a diverse, multicultural society where men and women relocating from another country can also enjoy inexpensive living expenses. Philippines and Malaysia are a couple of the most popular retirement destinations for individuals that are looking to retire in another country. Your cash will go a lot further in these places which enables you to live a much more lavish life style with a smaller budget. Malaysia has an exceptional standard of living and is also a wonderful location for people who adore the great outdoors. There are many national parks, attractive beaches, lush tropical forests and much more. If you need to move to Southeast Asia for work you probably don?t have lots of options regarding where you move to however, if you are moving their to retire it is possible to decide to move anywhere you like and Malaysia and the Philippines are a couple of fantastic options.

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Source: http://www.altuwaijrigroup.com/real-estate/purchasing-real-estate-in-southeast-asia-by-professional-property-specialist/

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