Map of Intersection of I=5 and SR-133 near the Great Park. Park is in reddish area at right.
I heard the San Onofre nuclear reactor was possibly going to be restarted and people were going to attend the next City Council meeting in Irvine to protest, so I decided to look up the May 22nd Irvine City Council agenda to see what time this issue would be discussed. I didn’t see anything about it (and learned since then the reactor is not going to be restarted… for now), but something else caught my eye. I will post the agenda itself because it’s so lengthy and will make more sense to just read it as printed.
ORANGE COUNTY GREAT PARK APPROVAL OF AGREEMENT WITH THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY TO HOST THE SOLAR DECATHLON 2013
ACTION:
Accept a grant award from the U.S. Department of Energy in the amount of $375,000 for Phase 1 planning to host the Solar Decathlon 2013 and XPO.
Approve the transfer agreement to transfer from the Orange County Great Park Corporation a $375,000 grant award from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Approve a sole source agreement with Fred Smoller, Ph.D. as liaison with the higher education community and community meeting facilitator.
Approve the acceptance and budget adjustments of sponsorships for the Solar Decathlon 2013 and the XPO as pledged and received over the life of the project.
Approve a budget adjustment for Fiscal Year 2011-2012, increasing revenues by $92,000 and expenditures by $50,000; and for Fiscal Year 2012-2013, increasing revenues by $62,000.
Unless otherwise directed by a member of the City Council, the vote on this matter will reflect the prior action of each Councilmember when he or she sat and voted as a member of the Board of Directors of the Orange County Great Park Corporation. However, if a Councilmember is not present at the City Council meeting, his or her vote will be reflected as absent.
The total dollars they will receive is one million dollars; that’s OUR tax dollars folks! I’m not upset with the City of Irvine, I’m angry with the Department of Energy. Aren’t we in a budget crisis? There’s talk about raising the debt ceiling AGAIN. I don’t know about anyone else but in our household when we are out of cash we do without. And when we do use our credit card it’s for emergencies only, however this solar competition is a luxury not an emergency.
The United States of America is BROKE and yet we have money to spend on things like this? Solar homes have been around since 1983, when Solar Design Associates completed a stand-alone, 4-kilowatt powered home in the Hudson River Valley. We don’t need a competition to build a solar home. They already exist. Don’t get me wrong I am all for solar power but If they want to have this competition let private business pay for it. We need money to get our roads fixed, money for schools; or how about money for a year round homeless shelter? They can even make it solar!
I believe this a waste of our tax money. Proponents will say it’s only one million dollars. And I respond that it’s ONE MILLION dollars that belongs to us, the taxpayers!
Excuse me Ms. Wallace – don’t you know that government knows best? The USA has abandoned free market capitalism in favor of government paternalism, socialism and cronyism. Get with the times my dear – get a lobbyist.
We don’t have a socialist system…we have a Corporatocracy.
Socialism is just a word a bunch of cold war dead-enders still like to throw around.
The decades of Billions of tax payer dollars in Big Oil subsidies isn’t “free market capitalism”…….but you obviously suffer from Republican amnesia.
The myth of the “Big Oil Subsidy” newspeak language exposed:
“Big oil subsidies” shrewdly – but inaccurately – conflates two completely different terms in public finance: subsidy and deduction. A subsidy is a payment made by the government, usually to promote the prospects of a specific technology or action – be it solar energy, ethanol or something else. Subsidies are often equated with handouts – a derisory term for sure.
A business deduction, on the other hand, is designed to ensure that a firm is taxed only on its net income. Deductions allow businesses to write off legitimate expenses from gross revenue to calculate net income. Deductions are widely regarded as proper in a system that taxes income, not revenue.
Properly defined, subsidies and deductions are as different as apples and oranges. Not withstanding this fact, many lawmakers routinely accuse oil and gas companies of dodging their “fair share” of taxes even though those U.S. companies use the same tax provisions that are available to all U.S. manufacturers.
Liberals bemoan the oil and gas industry’s access to the domestic manufacturing deduction – commonly referred to as Section 199 – which was enacted as a means of keeping jobs in the United States. The deduction cuts the applicable corporate tax rate by about 2 percentage points on manufacturing income broadly defined and is used by a wide range of businesses. There is no reason Section 199 should not be available for refining and processing petroleum products.
Liberals seek to alter a provision of the tax code that allows American oil and gas companies operating overseas, like all other U.S. companies, to take a credit for taxes paid to foreign governments in computing their domestic tax bill. This provision prevents American companies from being taxed twice on the same income and enables them to compete on roughly the same tax terms as foreign-owned companies. This is not a subsidy.
The semantically accurate way to describe legislation that would eliminate the manufacturing deduction or curtail the foreign tax credit for oil and gas companies is straightforward: the imposition of tax discrimination, not the removal of federal subsidies.
Most Americans agree that tax discrimination is bad policy – Uncle Sam shouldn’t be picking winners and losers through perverted government policies.
*Anon – Excellent…almost: Try Corpratocracy! Leave out the 2nd “O” in our opinion!
Five syllables vs. six!
*Mika – the more you write….the better we like it.
Just trying to keep it “real”….but thank you for the support Ron & Anna
After having gained a dog on account of a bizarre episode concerning a brainwashed unstable compound your musings has inspired me to rethink the meaning of it all, thanks