Insider Report
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Gingrich's School Janitor Proposal Called 'Good Idea'
2. Warren Buffett Secretary Buys Second Home
3. Support for Renewable Energy Yields 'Poor' Results
4. Israeli-Arab Cyberwar Spreads to Iran
5. Russian Scientist Claims Probe Found Life on Venus
6. Chevrolet Dealers Rejecting Electric Volt
1. Gingrich's School Janitor Proposal Called 'Good Idea'
Newt Gingrich created a storm of controversy when he suggested that inner-city schools could fire their janitors and pay students to perform their duties.
But Time magazine columnist Joe Klein not only admires Gingrich's plan, he claims he originated it.
Republican presidential candidate Gingrich said on the campaign trail: "These schools should get rid of unionized janitors, have one master janitor, pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work; they'd have cash; they'd have pride in the schools. They'd begin the process of rising."
In the Jan. 30 edition of Time, Klein said Gingrich's idea "did come from me — although I put a slightly different twist on it.
"I first made the suggestion in 1991, after the New York City [school] janitors negotiated a gaudy contract that required them to mop the cafeteria floor only once a week.
"I proposed that the city hire private contractors to do heavy work like boiler maintenance and have students and their parents help keep the schools clean. But not just poor students — all students, even those attending the city's elite high schools.
"I still think it's a pretty good idea. I may be even more compelling now, given the rising cost of government and decline in creative citizenship."
Klein said it could be beneficial if all Americans started their adult lives working for the government in some capacity, getting paid at apprentice level.
"Maybe we'd have a stronger society if we spent less money paying other people to provide public services," he adds, "and spent more time providing them ourselves."
Editor's Note:
2. Warren Buffett Secretary Buys Second Home
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's secretary Debra Bosanek has become the face of President Barack Obama's so-called Buffett Rule, which maintains that the secretaries of wealthy Americans should not pay a higher tax rate than their boss.
Yet despite her presumably crushing tax burden, Bosanek and her husband last year were able to buy a second home in Arizona complete with a swimming pool and putting green.
The Bosaneks bought the 2,100-square-foot home in Surprise, a city outside Phoenix, paying $144,000 for the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath property, according to The Smoking Gun website.
Their principal residence is in Bellevue, Neb., not far from Buffett's corporate headquarters in Omaha. That home, built in 2000 and valued last year at $217,000, also has four bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths — but no swimming pool or putting green.
Bosanek, 55, attended Obama's State of the Union speech on Tuesday as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama to spotlight the president's proposal to impose a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on Americans earning more than $1 million a year.
Buffett — who is worth an estimated $50 billion — said in an August editorial that he paid an effective income tax rate of 17.4 percent, lower than the wage earners in his office, and has said of that discrepancy: "How can that be fair?"
Mitt Romney called attention to the income tax disparity this week when he released his income tax returns for two years, showing that he paid a 13.9 percent rate on his earnings in 2010 and 15.4 percent in 2011.
Editor's Note:
3. Support for Renewable Energy Yields 'Poor' Results
Renewable electric energy from nonhydroelectric sources — chiefly wind and solar — contributed only 3.6 percent of total U.S. generation in 2010 — yet received 53.5 percent of all federal financial support for electric power.
And wind power alone, which provides 2.3 percent of generation, received 42 percent of all support.
Wind and solar renewable energy have failed to thrive despite government support because they face substantial "market impediments," according to Benjamin Zycher, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
"Energy policies in the United States for decades have pursued energy sources defined in various ways as alternative, unconventional, independent, renewable, and clean in an effort to replace such conventional fuels as oil, coal, and natural gas," Zycher states on the AEI website, and "renewable electricity receives very large direct and indirect subsidies from the federal and state governments.
"These long-standing efforts have, without exception, yielded poor outcomes."
Among the "market impediments" to large-scale development of renewable energy resources is the amount of land required for wind farms and solar facilities.
A wind farm would require 500 windmills, each producing 2 megawatts (MW) of energy, to generate 1,000 MW — assuming the farm operates at full capacity, which would be virtually impossible. Since wind turbines must be spaced apart to maximize production, a 1,000 MW farm needs from 48,000 to 64,000 acres of land — from 75 to 100 square miles.
In contrast, a 1,000 MW gas-fired plant needs about 10 to 15 acres.
As for solar facilities, it takes a square meter of solar energy-receiving capacity to produce, at best, enough power for a single 100-watt light bulb, according to Zycher.
Renewable energy also presents transmission problems. Wind farms are best suited for the Midwest and solar facilities for the Southwest, far from the coasts where most electricity is consumed, and this creates significant transmission costs.
One survey found that wind projects would have a median transmission cost of $15 per megawatt hour, compared to $3.60 in transmission costs for coal and natural gas.
Looking ahead to 2016, "the projected cost of renewable power is at least five times higher than that for conventional electricity," says Zycher, author of the new book "Renewable Electricity Generation: Economic Analysis and Outlook."
He concludes: "Despite these excess costs, political support for wind and solar power remains strong. No state has formally abandoned or weakened its renewable electricity requirements, and federal policies to promote renewable technology in electricity production remain in place."
Editor's Note:
4. Israeli-Arab Cyberwar Spreads to Iran
An ongoing cyberwar between Israeli and Arab hackers has now spread to Iran, with Israeli hackers briefly bringing down the website of the Iranian media outlet Press TV.
The hackers, who call themselves "IDF Team," also attacked a website belonging to Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education, altering both sites to display an Israeli flag.
The Ministry's website "will be down until further notice," the hackers wrote in a message on Thursday. "In addition Iran's television network, broadcasting in English round-the-clock, based in Tehran that is called Press TV will be down until further notice."
They added: "Ahmadinejad what do you have to say about that?"
The IDF team said their actions were in response to a series of attacks on Israeli sites the previous day — the sites of Sheba Medical Center and the Assouta hospital network, the Jerusalem Post reported.
In previous weeks the Insider Report has chronicled the ongoing cyberwar that began when hackers claiming to be from Saudi Arabia divulged tens of thousands of Israeli credit card numbers on the Internet. An Israeli hacker known as OxOmer and his four-member team called Israel Defenders responded by publishing hundreds of Saudi credit card numbers.
The exchange of cyber-assaults that followed has included attacks on the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange, the Arab Bank of Palestine, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, and the Hebrew website of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Editor's Note:
5. Russian Scientist Claims Probe Found Life on Venus
A Russian scientist claims to have discovered life on Venus after examining photographs taken by a Soviet space probe that landed on the planet 30 years ago.
Leonid Ksanfomaliti of the Space Research Institute at Russia's Academy of Sciences analyzed photos of the Venusian surface taken by the Venus-13 probe in 1982.
He said the images showed a scorpion-shaped body, a disc and a "black flap" that moved as the probe's cameras recorded the scene, The Daily Mail reported.
"What if we forget about the current theories about the non-existence of life on Venus," he wrote in the Russian journal Solar System Research.
"Let's boldly suggest that the objects' morphological features would allow us to say that they are living."
Scientists are extremely skeptical about the possibility of life on Venus, the second planet from the sun. Venus is roughly the same size as earth, but much hotter due to its thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. The surface temperature, 880 degrees Fahrenheit, is hot enough to melt lead.
However, scientists have not ruled out the possibility of life having once existed on Venus, in the distant past before the "greenhouse effect" created today's scorching temperature, the Mail observed.
Since the 1982 Soviet probe, unmanned NASA expeditions have examined Venus more closely, mapping nearly all of the planet's surface with much better resolution than that of the Soviet mission.
No signs of life were detected.
Editor's Note:
6. Chevrolet Dealers Rejecting Electric Volt
The electric Chevrolet Volt has been touted by the Obama administration as a major step toward a green future of gas-free vehicles, but one key group is spurning the car: Chevrolet dealers.
"Dealer ordering is down," acknowledged General Motors spokesman Rob Peterson, who said many dealers have been waiting for resolution of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's probe into the risk of fires in the car's battery pack. Three packs caught fire last year following government test crashes.
GM sold just 7,671 Volts in the United States last year, short of its 10,000-sales target.
A dealer in Clovis, Calif., Brett Hedrick, sold 10 Volts last year but in the past two months he turned down the six Volts allocated to him by GM. He told Automotive News that GM "thinking we need six more Volts is just crazy. We've never sold more than two in a month."
Another dealer on the East Coast said he agreed to accept the five Volts that GM allocated to him this month even though he has seen a "huge drop-off" in customer interest.
"I probably should have taken only one," he told the News.
The Insider Report disclosed three weeks ago that the Volt won the dubious distinction of being named one of the "Worst Product Flops of 2011" by Yahoo! Finance.
Commenting on the Yahoo! report, the National Legal and Policy Center stated: "The Obama administrations' favorite car has had a rough time of late with sales goals not being met" and "media exposure of the high cost to taxpayers regarding Chevy Volt subsidies."
"Considering all the money spent by GM to hype the vehicle, the Worst Flop award is well-deserved."
Volt buyers receive a $7,500 subsidy from taxpayers.
Note: Newsmax magazine is now available on the iPad. Find us in the App Store.
Editor's Note:
Editor's Notes:
© 2012 Newsmax. All rights reserved.