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These are my links for March 28th from 09:23 to 09:27:

• Bioenergy Crop Company Plants Its Flag in India – Super Green Biofuels Inc., which aims to make fuel from the inedible seed of the Jatropha plant, says it is expanding its operation into India.

  Better known as SG Biofuels, the company has amassed a huge library of DNA and genome information about Jatropha, so it can design hybrid seeds to best fit the land, sun and growing patterns of different areas.

  “Our expansion into India marks a significant milestone for the company as we continue to expand our commercialization efforts,” SG Biofuels Chief Executive Officer Kirk Haney said. “Our ability to quickly develop and scale productive Jatropha plantations using elite, high performing material will play a significant role in providing energy security and economic development while reducing greenhouse emissions.”

  SG recruited Subhas Pattnaik as director of operations for the market. Pattnaik formerly led operations for Mission NewEnergy Limited in India, where he managed the rollout and operations of the largest Jatropha plantation acreage in the world, spanning more than 200,000 acres, 124,000 farmers and five provinces, said a March 7 SG news release announcing the company’s expansion into India.

  According to a report by the Office of Scientific & Technical Information of the U.S. Department of Energy, the shortage of reliable, inexpensive and sustainable energy is a key factor in keeping India and Brazil at poverty levels higher than necessary. Both areas are also potentially prime Jatropha growing areas.

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  Another example of American companies expanding into other countries bringing technology to produce clean energy.

• Koch Membrane Systems: Filtering the world’s water is a growth business – When the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo needed to cleanse large volumes of waste water, it turned to Koch Membrane Systems Inc. in Wilmington — a company that is finding a growing market for its filtration technologies in places where development is running up against water supplies.

  Last year, for the first time, water and waste-water systems accounted for more than half of Koch Membrane’s sales.

  In Brazil, Koch’s polymer membranes are at the heart of a $150 million water reuse project that is one of the largest such projects in the Southern Hemisphere.

  Koch was selected by Aquapolo Ambiental SA, a joint venture of Foz do Brasil, the environmental engineering company of Odebrecht SA, a construction and engineering group in Brazil, and Sao Paulo’s state water and sewer company.

  The facility now under construction will filter up to 265 gallons per second of waste water from a sewage treatment plant.

  The water will be used by local industrial customers, who will be able to draw less from the drinking water system — saving enough drinking water to supply about 600,000 residents.

  Koch Membrane also sells filtration systems in China, Egypt, India, and Singapore; it expects water filtration to be at least 75 percent of its business by 2015.

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  American business cleaning up the environment – fancy that.

  Yet, the LEFT demonizes the Koch Brothers. How ridiculous is that?

These are my links for March 27th from 17:45 to 19:17:

• Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in Trouble? – Like Ann Coulter, Higgins worries that Walker isn’t doing enough to get his message across. … What would that require?

  1) Pointing out the growing disparity between cushy union contracts and the working situation of average American taxpayers. Horror stories are useful here;

   2) Noting that eliminating government workers’ ”collective bargaining rights” doesn’t mean taking away employee’s free speech rights, or the right to have an organization that advocates for them. It means taking away specific, monopoly-like special privileges granted to unions during the New Deal and Great Society years (including the right to be the sole and exclusive bargaining agent for workers, a requirement that employers bargain “in good faith”–whatever that means–and for many government workers the automatic deduction of dues from paychecks).

  3) Pointing out that government unions aren’t like private unions, in that there aren’t any profits in the government to redistribute, union work rules tend to reinforce government’s inherent tendencies toward inefficiency, governments don’t have to stay competitive, the threat of a legal or illegal strike is close to blackmail, and unlike in private industry workers get to try to choose and then buy off the bosses who negotiate with them by donating money and manpower to campaigns.

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  I don't think so.

  When the television ads start – when the elections count – voters will understand these points and if they vote Walker et. al. out of office, they do so at their own peril.

• The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics – The left’s obsession with the Koch brothers – David Koch’s secretary told him the news. This was in February, during the rowdy standoff between Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and demonstrators backing 14 Democratic legislators who’d fled to Illinois rather than vote on a bill weakening public employee unions. Koch’s secretary said that an editor for a left-wing website, the Buffalo Beast, had telephoned the governor posing as David Koch and recorded the conversation. And Walker had fallen for it! He’d had a 20-minute conversation with this bozo, not once questioning the caller’s identity. But then how could Walker have known? Sure, David Koch was a billionaire whose company had donated to his campaign. But Koch (pronounced “Coke”) had never talked to Walker in his life.

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These are my links for March 24th from 14:28 to 14:31:

• Democrats Call Koch Industries ‘Extreme,’ but Justify Taking Their Money – Ben Smith reported this morning that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out a fundraising email, signed by Harry Reid, that tries to ride the anti-Koch bandwagon. Here's the relevant part of the email:

  Senate Democrats are fighting back each and every day. But with only a slim four-seat majority, we have no margin for error. If Republicans can knock just a few bricks free from our firewall, they’ll force through their extreme agenda faster than you can say “Koch brothers.” With the GOP on the attack and with 23 Democratic-held seats to defend, we have no time to spare. We must act now to keep our majority standing strong. I need your help!

  The DSCC must raise $150,371 by our March 31 FEC deadline to keep the Republicans at bay.

  Smith notes the DSCC got about $30,000 from the Koch family in the last election cycle. He also reported back in September that a limited number of Democratic candidates have also received Koch money, including sitting senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. New York's Charles Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, also received $1,000 from Koch Industries in the last election.

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  How do you spell HYPOCRITE?

• Madison Wisconsin teachers given until April 15 to rescind fake doctors’ notes – Madison teachers who missed school last month to attend protests and turned in fraudulent doctor's notes have been given until April 15 to rescind those notes, officials said Thursday.
  The district received more than 1,000 notes from teachers, human resources director Bob Nadler said. A couple hundred of those were ruled fraudulent because they appeared to be written by doctors at the Capitol protests against Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to limit collective bargaining.
  Teachers who don't rescind fraudulent notes could receive a disciplinary letter of suspension, the most serious form of discipline aside from termination, Nadler said. The suspension would be considered already served — the time missed during the protests.
  "We didn't want to give anybody more time off," Nadler said. "They can't afford it. We can't afford to have them gone any more. I don't think kids need their teacher gone another two days."
  Teachers who rescind their note would receive a more minor "letter of expectation" and be docked pay at the end of the school year for the four missed days.
  Nadler said the majority of notes came from doctor's offices and the district doesn't plan on calling each one to determine if the excuse was legitimate.

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  Slap on the wrist and if they are honest get docked pay.

  what a system! NOT

These are my links for March 23rd from 09:13 to 09:44:

• California Prison cell phone bill? Wimpy – State Sen. Alex Padilla, flanked by law enforcement officials, stood on the Capitol's steps Tuesday before an array of cell phones confiscated from prison inmates and declared that smuggling had become an epidemic.

  It is, Padilla said, a "clear and present danger to public safety" as inmates use smuggled phones to harass victims and witnesses and plot other crimes. He called to the podium a woman who said she received harassing calls from her husband's murderer.

  Padilla et al. made a compelling case for a crackdown on smuggling cell phones – nearly 11,000 were confiscated last year. But the bill that cleared the Senate Public Safety Committee two hours later is rather wimpy. It makes smuggling nothing more than a misdemeanor, even for prison employees who are the sources of many illicit phones.

  Last year, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar Padilla bill – the first anti-smuggling bill to reach his desk after several died in the Legislature – on grounds that it was too weak and that smuggling cell phones should be a felony.

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  Of course, this should be a felony. But, do you really expect any public safety laws to pass while Jerry I appointed Rose Bird Chief Justice Brown is Governor?

  I mean really.

  Brown will start letting felons out of the prisons to balance his budget in order to pay of his union cronies.

  And, when these criminals start reoffending, Brown will either shrug it off or blame the Republicans.

• The Koch Brothers: Anatomy of a Smear – The Center for American Progress is generally regarded as a front for the Obama administration. Its President and CEO is John Podesta, formerly Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff and the chairman of Barack Obama's transition team. CAP is lavishly funded by George Soros and several other left-wing billionaires. It runs, among other things, a web site called Think Progress, which cranks out a steady stream of slimy hit pieces for the benefit of the Obama administration and the far left.

  Soros apparently believes that only left-wing billionaires should be able to participate in public discourse, so his Center for American Progress, through its web site, has carried on a bizarre vendetta against Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Industries. The Kochs are two of the very few billionaires who are active in politics on the conservative/libertarian side, a phenomenon that apparently drives left-wing billionaires wild with rage. I'm not sure why; maybe they think the Kochs are traitors to their class. In any event,Think Progress has stalked the Koch brothers with video cameras and produced one false, over-the-top attack on the Kochs after another, some of which we have had fun dissecting here.

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