Zone of Reality: Green Jobs

By Rich Kozlovich

The Zone of Reality will be devoted to exposing those things that everyone "knows" to be true, irrespective of the facts. These posts will be devoted to the concept that everything we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality.

We will explore the logic and rationale of those promoting certain agendas. Some of them will be factual and true and some of them will not. It is good to know which is which. There is so much spin on any given subject that I find it hard to believe what people say publically.

Geraldo Rivera is a classic example. His ability to keep talking to prevent anyone from disputing him while he subtly changes the focus of the subject is a classic. He makes arguments filled with logical fallacies, and I have watched him do this over and over again. His ability to slightly shift the focus of the conversation is almost brilliant. I saw him on Fox News with the morning crowd (It did seem that Gretchen Carlson understood what he was doing, but he wouldn’t stop talking and she was too polite to really go after him in that setting) dealing with the issue of Newt’s ex-wife. He dazzled them with his repartee by changing the subject from the charges by Newt’s ex wife to the fact that Newt has lead an adulterous life while promoting family values, i.e. he is a hypocrite. That wasn’t the question they asked him!

Why is this so difficult to overcome? Because it is true….he led the life of a hypocrite and it is easy to change the subject accordingly. I had a conversation about this very thing with a lobbyist friend of mine in Washington, who is quite the liberal I might add, and he said that Newt’s extramarital relationship with Callista was the worst kept secret in Washington, and that it was going on during the Clinton impeachment hearings. As in all these arguments about this …it wasn’t Clinton’s adulteries he was being impeached for. It was for lying under oath. Of course that was at a time when lying under oath was considered a serious crime by everyone. It wasn't about Newt's hypocracies! Personally I wouldn't believe him if he told me that day was light and that night was dark because he might change his mind tomorrow and sound just as convincing as he was the day before.

Does everyone get the point though? All of these arguments are logical fallacies, primarily known as red herring fallacies. The Zone of Reality will attempt to point out where the real issue lies. Where the facts and conventional wisdom diverge. Where the arguments are outright lies or just lies being disguised by logical fallacies.

I have a job that interferes with my life so I can't really devote the time to all the things in which I am interested. Having said that….please feel free to send me anything that falls within the parameters I have outlined here. I may explore only one issue or I may explore more with each posting. However, I do not wish to explore too many per posting. For those who have sent things I didn’t use…please understand that it wasn’t because I didn’t appreciate your efforts. Remember….I still have a job that interferes with my life.

Where will we start? Since energy is at the heart of a stable and energized economy; and one of the imaginary truths is that 'green' is the only answer we will start with:

The Reality of Green Economics

Obama’s Misleading Green-Jobs Ad: Taking Credit for Imaginary Jobs.
There are only 140,000 jobs in the whole renewable-energy sector, but in a new ad, Obama is taking credit for a “clean energy industry” that has “2.7 million jobs.”  Obama inflated the number of “clean-energy” jobs by adding people who have nothing to do with clean-energy, like “trash collectors” and bureaucrats. By inflating the total, Obama was able to paper over his complete failure to live up to his utterly unrealistic campaign promise “to create 5 million new green jobs.” Most of America’s existing green jobs predate the Obama Administration, which did not create them: “from 2003-2010, the rate of growth for clean jobs was 3.4 percent.”  Indeed, the Obama Administration used federal green-jobs money to outsource American jobs to countries like China: Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop” at American University. “79 percent” of all green-jobs funding “went to companies based overseas,” with the largest payment going to a bankrupt Australian company. “Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. (Please go to the original for more links. RK)

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