A lesson in US Civics:

What happens when the losing candidate gets most votes?  Well, Trump is not president until December 19^th and any time up to and including that date the Electoral College can change their minds but; you can be sure they won’t.   

This is the 5^th time in US history that this has happened.

Proposals are out to do away with the Electoral College which is a group of people bound by the Federal Law (Judges, Generals, Fire Chiefs, Mayors) or by the state, by pledges or law, to vote for a specific candidate chosen by the people. (Popular vote 26 states out of 50 have such laws in place) You can see the excitement over these states during the election.

These states are:

Electors in these States are bound by State Law or by pledges to cast their vote for a specific candidate:

ALABAMA – Party Pledge / State Law – § 17-19-2
ALASKA – Party Pledge / State Law – § 15.30.040; 15.30.070
CALIFORNIA – State Law – Elections Code § 6906
COLORADO – State Law – § 1-4-304
CONNECTICUT – State Law – § 9-175
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA – DC Pledge / DC Law – § 1-1001.08(g)
FLORIDA – Party Pledge / State Law – § 103.021(1)
HAWAII – State Law – §§ 14-26 to 14-28
MAINE – State Law – § 805
MARYLAND – State Law – § 8-505
MASSACHUSETTS – Party Pledge / State Law – Ch. 53, § 8, Supp.
MICHIGAN – State Law – § 168.47 (Violation cancels vote and Elector is replaced.)
MISSISSIPPI – Party Pledge / State Law – § 23-15-785(3)
MONTANA – State Law – § 13-25-304
NEBRASKA – State Law – § 32-714
NEW MEXICO – State Law – § 1-15-5 to 1-15-9 (Violation is a fourth degree felony.)
NORTH CAROLINA – State Law – § 163-212 (Violation cancels vote; elector is replaced and is subject to $500 fine.)
OHIO – State Law – § 3505.40
OKLAHOMA – State Pledge / State Law – 26, §§ 10-102; 10-109 (Violation of oath is a misdemeanor, carrying a fine of up to $1000.)
OREGON – State Pledge / State Law – § 248.355
SOUTH CAROLINA – State Pledge / State Law – § 7-19-80 (Replacement and criminal sanctions for violation.)
VERMONT – State Law – title 17, § 2732
VIRGINIA – State Law – § 24.2-202
WASHINGTON – Party Pledge / State Law – §§ 29.71.020, 29.71.040, Supp. ($1000 fine.)
WISCONSIN – State Law – § 7.75
WYOMING – State Law – §§ 22-19-106; 22-19-108

This proposal has been put forward over 700 times!   However, it takes a @constitutional change to enact a law to remove the College.

#To change the US constitution, requires the house and senate to both approve the change with 2/3 majority plus the change, if it gets that far it must be ratified ¾ of the states.  Canada is much more straight forward but the Wild Rose Party would like to take us in the US direction.

 

The Electoral College was put into the Constitution to protect the voting public (can you believe?) from demigods or very corrupt presidential candidates.

Speaking of demigods.  @Trump has ripped up all the US environmental agreements even though the Arctic Tundra is melting and earth’s elliptical orbit is on track and; we are still heating up!

During the election, Trump told the U S that #global warming was a farce dreamed up by the Chinese to injure US economy. Now he is saber rattling about the South China sea pointedly taking US attention off the middle east.  It is easy to see why his comradeship with Mr. @Putin was so easily formed.

His policies are the epidemy of protectionism complete with walls and fences.  Wait until he goes to work on the rest of his rhetoric.  @Saudi’s will have to dig in.  Perhaps the US will be an unwelcome guest on their middle east airports and military bases?  New middle east alliances?  @Turkey

How I see the results?

China can put more onto Trump’s plate than the US is capable of handling.  Starting with pulling or selling off their US dollars.  A crippling move!

I must explain the US has a half dozen ways of measuring unemployment but you really have to dig for the totals.  Their popular figure is 2% where in fact that is just one iconic measurement. There is a large segment that have used up their equivalent of EI so are not counted as unemployed.

Trump took office with 8 million Americans unemployed.  Perhaps he’s ready for war?  I don’t know.  But, he may see a robust military build up and engagement as being a way  out of recession which, has been proven so many times, not to work at all.

If he follows up in his present course, it will leave Russia to get rid of ISIS and anyone not friendly with Assad and firmly install the old regime (Assad) who Russia backs and it will be left to Israel to clean up a mess.

The next 4 years are going to be hell on earth!

Carbon Tax vis Cap and Trade and Trumps position on it.

 A carbon tax is mostly recoverable if people change their living habits.  Turn down the heat in your home; don't idle your vehicle so long. Or more extreme shut your vehicle off on long traffic waits.
Get used to wearing a sweater around the house.  Turn down your hot water tank.  If possible invest in new technology in a vast number of areas.

If you get into a real self program of turning off the heat, you will break even probably under a carbon tax.

Conservatives prefer the cap and trade vision on a world wide scale.  That is because true to Conservative form it is basically a scam.   It allows business to transfer money across borders with no tax penalty.

An example.  A US parent company declares they have reduced their carbon footprint by X number of tonnes per year.   If the price on cap and trade is set at 20.00 per ton (it will be a higher number than the carbon tax for PR purpose. And, frankly it doesn't matter what number they put on it as its meaningless.  

To continue; a Canadian company, a subsidiary of the mentioned  US parent company, Comes close to showing a profit.  This company takes real cash 20.00 times X tonnes and transfers it to the US parent.

In Canada this company cries "we are close to broke"  "no raises possible because of our carbon penalty" etc.  Canadian profit shipped to US parent company giving the Canadian company a tax deduction and the  US parent avoids taxes on this amount as that is what cap and trade is about.   And it does nothing for our huge problems in the environment.

And to compound this we  have an insidious complication in Trump's election.

The world's financial state now, is very similar if not the same as the disastrous financial situation of the world  prior to World War 2.   And, then we throw in a wild card, a man who demonstrated his own ignorance on an unprecedented level, could easily step into the role of Hitler if just a little of what he said during the election is to be believed.

Western Canada's Journalists.

For your reading pleasure I highly recommend:

@https://susanonthesoapbox.com/
and
@http://albertapolitics.ca/

 Rabble is nonsense on the other hand.
#Enjoy good journalism/\.

Devon Trails; the new section.

 About 250 all weather steps down to River Level

 Map at head of the Stairs

 Uniform; Beautiful.

 My companion listening for a mouse, earthworm.  Who knows for sure?

Ample Park benches and Dog Bins along the trail

 New Addition to a great walk.

 New Addition side view.  Hole appears to be 1 1/4"  Not sure what they are trying to attract.

 Still another design on trail to day 1" opening will attract lots of birds

My Dog (Giant Decker) getting a cool down.

Shaw.ca is not the Shaw.ca you came to know over the years!

Shaw.ca was purchase by a US company who sees great opportunity in profiting in a reduced economy.  As with the Dentist and the News Papers its simple. Charge the consumer more.

This morning I found my voice mail was cut off.  This is because I am told I never paid for it specifically.   It was not included in our original deal of "all of the phone services" and I must be mistaken, its my fault.

This company has paid the Shaw Family big bucks even as they are swamped with cancellations.

I would estimate 250,000 customer base at 6 dollars per customer on average will return them 1.5 million dollars every month!

There are other alternatives for TV Telephone and so on.  I would suggest  you do some shopping including the start up companies.

A million and a half a month is not going to satisfy them!   There will be more line charges like call notice call hold not to mention the wide open tv Directory assistance is up to 1.00  That .15 cent increase will net them 37,500. a month if everyone calls information once.

Thats moving close to 300,000 a month or 3.6 million a year.  More than anything its a insult to think Canadians are such an easy mark!

Nuclear Power - Why NDP direction is wrong!

The public at large are misinformed, ignorant and kept that way because it serves the NDP purpose (whatever that is)  The newly built wind farm in southern Alberta is being rebuilt at who's expense?

The world is going Nuclear! http://www.ksl.com/?sid=40282731&nid=148&title=utah-energy-group-pursues-nuclear-power-project

A nuclear plant would outlive a wind farm by 90 years!  The point I'm trying to make with this article is that if the NDP does not change direction somewhat, we will not be competitive in the world for marketing anything.  

The 3-mile island misadventure was one of many of its day.  The reason being the US Government turned over to private industry the design of the US Submarine power plants and the go-ahead to build the same nuclear reactors that were installed in US submarines.

The US Navy complied but never told the industry that design had inherent heating problems which remained unfixed!  Once built and put into production these plants overheated. In most cases, the companies reduced output by 50%  to accommodate inadequate heating.   Many of these companies went broke; had no money left to trim trees etc.

Since those early days, there have been many innovations allowing plants a near 100-year lifespan

The "rods" are hollow tubes filled with ceramic beads that have a minuscule amount of radioactive material embedded within. Militarily of no value.

These tubes are changed out about every 3 years in operation.  One design on some new plants is to have storage on site for 40 years of spent tubes.  Speaking of which, the tubes start at 4% and are pulled out at 1%.  A years operation of such a nuclear facility would produce enough spent rods to fill a family refrigerator at 2000 MW production for a full year.  Rods preform for 3 years!

Canada's Candu Reactor design recharges its own tubes so there is no waste to the process.

When the cooling water circulates around the reactor it picks up free radical oxygen molecules.  This is what corrodes the cooling pipes.   3M  have recently come up with a diaphragm that fits in the cooling system and pulls out these same oxygen molecules.  This gives a reasonable view of a 100-year operating life and 1/4 or less of the present maintenance schedules.

NDP bloggers say all this is good but where will you find a company to build and pay for one?  Notley makes it a point to hire people of "like thinking" which seriously limits any ability for innovation.  Public pressure is needed!

Uranium is abundant and natural in sea water.  Now it is being extracted for use as atomic fuel.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/#792e448346e2  The supply is endless and as renewable as sunshine!
It's not here yet; but soon.

Financing new nuclear power plants   

There is a range of possibilities for financing, from direct government funding with ongoing ownership, vendor financing (often with government assistance), utility financing and the Finnish Mankala model for cooperative equity. Some of the cost is usually debt financed. The models used will depend on whether the electricity market is regulated or liberalized.

Apart from centrally-planned economies, many projects have some combination of government financial incentives, private equity and long-term power purchase arrangements. The increasing involvement of reactor vendors is a recent development.

Some options are described in the WNA 2012 report: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles.aspx

How much is the Alberta Government paying towards its new wind farms?  Does the Taxpayer own them?  What kind of financing is in place?  The industry is sure as hell not giving away freebie deals.

Drawing again on Finland's experience which is expensive.  I will be using cents per kWh rather than the EUR/cent/KWh
Cost of Wind Generation  5.01 cents per 1000W/Hour
Cost of Coal                       4.43 cents per 1000W/H
Natural Gas                        3.92 cents per 1000W/H
Nuclear                               2.37 cents per 1000W/H
And, going to US Nordpool (Oil)                    4.24 cents per 1000W/H

Source:R. Tarjanne& K Luostarien, Lappeenante University of tech 03.07.2003

A World Nuclear News editorial in February 2015 addressed this issue helpfully.

Deregulated electricity markets with preferential grid access for renewables have left some utilities with stranded assets, which can no longer be used sufficiently fully to be profitable. As a result, many are being decommissioned, eg about 9 GWe by E.On and RWE in Germany in 2013, and a further 7.3 GWe expected there (apart from nuclear capacity).

The economic rationale for electricity from any plants with high capital cost and long life does not translate into an incentive for investment unless some long-term electricity price is assured. This has been tackled differently in various countries.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-figures/world-nuclear-power-reactors-and-uranium-requireme.aspx

South Korea is now building 4 nuclear reactors.  China has 32 Nuclear Reactors with 22 more being built now!  

Germany:

• The cost of attempting to replace nuclear power with renewable is estimated by the government to amount to some €1000 billion without any assurance of a reliable outcome, and with increasing reliance on coal, especially lignite.

• Mexico has two nuclear reactors generating almost 4% of its electricity.

• India has a flourishing and largely indigenous nuclear power programme and expects to have 14.6 GWe nuclear capacity on line by 2024 and 63 GWe by 2032. It aims to supply 25% of electricity from nuclear power by 2050.

Alberta and climate change.

Through out the years, Alberta has nourished a healthy agricultural industry.  But, why?

Alberta has only been less than 1 inch of moisture away from desert conditions!  Agriculture worked well not because of the amount of rain which we received but, the fact that it always arrived when we needed it.

Climate change has effected all that regularity.  What does the future hold?

Post Media on hard time; pulling coin from your pocket.

Post media to their credit dropped home delivery from 500 dollars a year to 400 dollars a year. That is sizable but still too high.  I cut my subscription.

They are pushing their on line readership at 120.00 per year for one paper.  If you decide you want the Financial Post or National Post that will be double thank you.

I am not subscribing to that either.

There are other news sources available.  Take the time, save a bundle and look.

The World is in Dire Straits!

Reported in detail on the CBC  the Northern coastline of Canada is showing hard evidence of global warming.  The Tundra is warming up; thawing out and re-freezing again and again.

As it gets warmer the amount of Tundra will become larger.

Canada's Tundra stores more than half of the World's methane the singular worst of the global warming gasses.    Add to this the millions upon millions of tonnes of Carbon Dioxide that is frozen into that same Tundra.

If we do not arrest global warning it will be the end of civilization as we know it.  And, it's not going to take centuries to accomplish this dubious end!   A few years should put us around the corner!

The significance of what is happening will affect the world at large and cannot be understated.

How much carbon is stored in frozen ground?

There is a huge amount of carbon stored in permafrost. Right now, the Earth's atmosphere contains about 850 gigatons of carbon. (A gigaton is one billion tons—about the weight of one hundred thousand school buses). We estimate that there are about 1,400 gigatons of carbon frozen in permafrost. So the carbon frozen in permafrost is greater than the amount of carbon that is already in the atmosphere today. That doesn't mean that all of the carbon will decay and end up in the atmosphere. The trick is to find out how much of the frozen carbon is going to decay, how fast, and where.

How will additional methane from permafrost affect global warming?

There are several opposing processes at work, which make this a hard question to answer. Warmer temperatures mean that permafrost can thaw and release methane to the atmosphere. But warming also means that the growing seasons in Arctic latitudes will last longer. When the growing season is longer, plants have more time to suck up carbon from the atmosphere. Since carbon in the air is what plants use to grow, it can also act as a sort of fertilizer under certain conditions. Then plants to grow faster and take up even more carbon. Right now, the Arctic takes up more carbon than it releases. This means that plants take up carbon during the growing season, but do not release as much carbon through decay. So we say that the Arctic acts as a carbon sink.

But if the Earth continues to warm, and a lot of permafrost thaws out, the Arctic could become an overall source of carbon to the atmosphere, instead of a sink. This is what scientists refer to as a "tipping point." We say that something has reached a tipping point when it switches from a relatively stable state to an unstoppable cycle. In this case, the Arctic would change from a carbon sink to a carbon source. If the Arctic permafrost releases more carbon than it absorbs, it would start a cycle where the extra carbon in the atmosphere leads to increased warming. The increased warming means more permafrost thawing and methane release.

if governments around the world knew how much methane could be released from permafrost, it could help them decide what to do about it. For example, they would know how much we need to reduce fossil fuel emissions from human activities. They would also need to know how much carbon the Earth is emitting on its own.

In addition to this pressing evidence, there is still more proof on the earth it's self!

Earth travels in an elliptical orbit.  Right now, we are moving away from the sun right on schedule but, instead of cooling down as we should be, we are warming up.  We either get a handle on this or totally lose our glaciers and associated potable water on the short term.

Greenland glaciers are diminished, gone into the sea as water or icebergs.  This is diluting the Arctic waters and the northern currents.  Water is migrating south to the higher gravity regions which, is throwing off earth's gravity!

Rachel Notley claims power lines over built is the high cost of the lines; BS!

This is Notley's tax now; not the Conservatives.

In March 2015 ago it was announced there would be a $30 addition to every power bill in the province as a power line build tax. There is no ending date on this. There are 1.5 million meters spinning in this province which means a billion-dollar rip off every 2 years!

http://albertathedetails.blogspot.ca/2015/04/up-to-date-summary-with-players-mapped.html

Notley would like to say the powerlines are over built but their design is to improve profitability of the generation people see: http://albertathedetails.blogspot.ca/2015/05/just-how-free-is-oiles-free-ride-in.html 

When our Government is bigoted!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/XELWyJeKSV0?rel=0&showinfo=0

This is a great post by the Rebel it is showing  us the unholy ignorance of our NDP Government.

We can learn from this info; I don't think the NDP are capable of new learning.

  

Swiss Member of Parliament is fed up!

Excellent presentation, in German with again excellent subtitles in English.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/pCW2hxux3Ro?rel=0

Swiss member of Parliament Oskar Freysinger ...truth with passion that
few politicians in most countries speak. Maybe an awareness of what’s
happening will dawn on both sides of parliament in all European
countries, before it’s too late....