Tag: Good News

Excellent — Or Funny?

Budgets, Politics, Trumpism

I see that the U.S. is finally going to get serious about our energy infrastructure:

One announcement Trump is set to make is the allocation of $425 million in Defense Production Act (DPA) funds to aid 13 coal plants in Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, per the official. Funding will also support coal mines in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

The official noted that funding will enable coal plants to extend their operational life through investment in upgrades, strengthen grid reliability, and prevent electricity prices from surging with demand.

So because it’s being funded by the DPA (as it should be), there’s no haggling with Congress required.  But the very next little addendum is what got me giggling:

The president is also expected to tell reporters that $75 million in DPA funding will help construct a coal-export terminal in Oakland, California, the official said.

One wonders what the Watermelons in California will think of their beloved Golden Shower State becoming a conduit for the EEEEVIL COLE to be sent out to pollute other nations’ air.  Maybe their feelings will be assuaged by this:

The West Gateway project is anticipated to create 1,400 on-site jobs and support thousands more in the western states.

…not that California ever cared about those icky blue-collar jobs, though.

There’s a lot more good news, but read the rest of the thing to get it all.

I personally think that the coal-mining industry would be far better served by the elimination of most if not all of the tiresome Obama/Biden-era EPA restrictions, but that would involve Congress and we all know what horrors, foot-dragging and tantrums that would cause.

Waking Up To Reality

Good News

Finally, someone has seen the light:

Bolt CEO fires his entire HR team because they “created problems that didn’t exist”, and “those problems disappeared when I let them go”.

Welcome to the party, pal.

Ryan Breslow, the co-founder and chief executive of US fintech firm Bolt, said the department was scrapped as part of sweeping layoffs aimed at returning the struggling business to “start-up mode”.

The 32-year-old added that HR professionals were more suited to “peacetime” conditions at larger companies rather than a start-up environment focused on rapid growth and efficiency.

In his seminal work, Up The Organization, the late Robert Townsend had a small chapter as part of his plan to make companies more successful:  “Fire the entire HR department.”  (I should point out that his incendiary book — which was and still is one of the best management books ever written — was published back in 1971.  One can only wonder what he’d think of today’s HR.)  Also, for those who don’t remember, Townsend was responsible for taking #2 car rental firm Avis to #1, so he knew what he was talking about.

I used to publish this little comment as a joke, except that it isn’t, really:

What I like is that the BOLT CEO has replaced HR with a small team tasked with “training and employee support” — i.e. the original function of the “Personnel Department” before they adopted the soulless “Human Resources” nomenclature.

Incidentally, Townsend sneered at HR being part of the hiring process, saying that this function should be left to the department managers, who should have a better idea than some third party of the kind of person they’d need.

I bet that Breslow would agree with that, now.

More Gubernatorial Ass-Kicking

Legal Stuff, Resistance, Rights

I really like this trend (if it is indeed a trend):

The Kansas State Legislature overrode Governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill named in honor of assassinated political commentator Charlie Kirk that strengthens free speech protections on college campuses.

House Bill 2333 received two-thirds support in both chambers this month, overruling the governor’s objection. 

Part of the bill, known as the Kansas Intellectual Rights and Knowledge Act or KIRK Act, protects “expressive activities.” It deems outdoor areas “public forums for the campus community.”

“Any individual who wishes to engage in non-commercial expressive activity on campus shall be permitted to do so freely, so long as the individual’s conduct is lawful and does not materially and substantially disrupt the functioning of the postsecondary educational institution,” the act states. 

Here’s the reason for the veto:

Gov. Kelly argued the bill was unnecessary as free speech is already protected.

Yeah, just like the right to own guns is “already” protected by the Second Amendment — except where it isn’t, in states like California, New York, Illinois and other Blue shitholes.

I hate the fact that we need additional laws to underline the freedoms already supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution (like this KIRK law and the USSC’s Gruen decision);  but these are the times we live in, sadly.

And it’s safe to say that it should be so unlikely that the KIRK law should be necessary on, of all places, college campuses — except that it’s in these very institutions where free speech is most threatened, whether at the hands of radical Left students’ “counter-protests” or at the hands of radical Left college administrations.

Let’s have more KIRK laws, then, and more veto overrides of this nature.

Suspension Of Privilege

Gummint, Travels

To be honest, the airline industry has never been one of my favorite institutions, because they (along with modern automotive corporations) have discovered that their business is really a commodity service — therefore with the concomitant low operating margins — and like the car people, are finding evermore-devious and unscrupulous ways to fleece and gouge money from their hapless customers.

However:  I see that Delta has suspended their practice of privileged treatment for members of Congress, to which I can only say:  good.  Leave aside for the moment that politicians should never have any kind of privileged treatment or service given to them in the first place — they get more than enough of that as it is — but this is very much in the spirit that lawmakers should have to live with the effects of the laws they pass, just as we the citizens do.

So if you assholes wish to pass a law which bans private ownership of guns, for example, be aware that such a ban would extend to your own private security as well.  And if you pass a law which mandates such-and-such in the name of “safety” or “security” but causes massive inconvenience or cost to the ordinary citizenry, there’s no way that you or your staff (or family, don’t get me started) should be exempt from the same.

So a pat on the back for Delta this time, with the caveat that they should never reinstate this policy, ever.

Never Mind The Waves, Stop The Wind

Eco-Crap, Good Stuff

…and use the money for gas.  There’s an elegant solution to end the eco-nonsense boondoggle known as “wind power”, and this seems to fit the bill:

The Trump administration is pulling nearly $1 billion out of offshore wind projects off the East Coast and forcing that money into U.S. oil, natural gas, and LNG production, replacing planned wind development with active oil and gas production.

TotalEnergies paid about $133 million for a lease in the Carolina Long Bay area and roughly $795 million for another in the New York Bight in 2022, locking nearly a billion dollars into projects that are now being shut down. The company is only reimbursed if it first invests that same money in domestic energy production, including LNG infrastructure, upstream oil, and natural gas development in the United States.

Sounds good.  Now read what IntSec Burgum said, and it gets even better:

“Offshore wind is one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers.”

Hell, that’s so searing a statement, I could have said it.  Only with a lot more Bad Words and death threats.

Pour yourself a cuppa joe, settle back and read the whole article.  If you’re not giggling like a little girl by the end of it, we can’t be friends.

As for the Greens, the reaction is typical:

More like the above, please.