Davin News Server

On Fri, 14 Jun 2024 18:13:00 +0000,  Mitchell Holman says...  

> > Manufactured outrage.
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
>    Suddenly conservatives care about 
> "Chinese manufactured" goods?

Nice proof of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but does NOT negate this:

Pentagon's Latest Plan To Fight 'Climate Change': Chinese Solar Panels on Its 
Rooftops

The Pentagon, a U.S. military installation located right across the river from 
Washington D.C., is entertaining a proposal to load up the campus with Chinese-
manufactured solar panels. [emphasis, links added]

"The Defense Department will install solar panels on the Pentagon, part of the 
Biden administration's plan to promote clean energy and 're-establish the 
federal government as a sustainability leader,' " PBS reports.

"The Pentagon is one of 31 government sites that are receiving $104 million in 
Energy Department grants that are expected to double the amount of carbon-free 
electricity at federal facilities and create 27 megawatts of clean-energy 
capacity while leveraging more than $361 million in private investment, the 
Energy Department said."

Republicans in Congress are trying to stop the project from going through.

"We write today to express strong concerns regarding the implementation of the 
Biden administration's executive order to make the federal government carbon 
neutral by 2050. As part of its green agenda, at the start of this year the 
Department of Defense announced that it would install solar panels on the 
Pentagon," House Republicans Robert Wittman, Ben Cline, Jen Kiggans, and H. 
Morgan Griffin wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this week.

"We are deeply concerned that the Department of Defense and the Department of 
Energy are not demonstrating appropriate attention to the economic and national 
security risks posed by pursuing this initiative when Chinese solar 
manufacturers continue to dominate the marketplace, historically violate U.S. 
trade laws, and advance the surveillance activities of Chinese military and 
intelligence agencies."

Rep. Rob Wittman:
@SecDef cannot allow our nation's military installations to rely on CCP 
materials and must ensure U.S. dollars do not benefit one of our greatest 
adversaries.

"Today, eight of ten solar panels installed in the United States come from 
China. Even if the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy buy 
panels made in the United States, the metallurgical grade silicon and 
polysilicon needed for solar panels primarily come from China.

"Further, if the Pentagon relies on solar energy for operation, it will 
necessitate increased dependence on battery storage capacity. China remains the 
world's third largest producer of the lithium that batteries depend on," they 
continued.

"While Buy America Act requirements will also apply to any solar panels 
purchased for the Pentagon's use, many requirements under the Act can be waived 
if it is in the public interest to do so."

For the record, solar panels are not carbon neutral. They are heavily carbon-
intensive to produce, transport, and dispose of. The data used to claim carbon 
neutrality is also unreliable.

=====

Canada:

'Worst In The World': Here Are All The Rankings In Which Canada Is Now Last

Most Unaffordable Housing, Highest Cell phone Bills And Worst Rate of Acute 
Care Beds, To Name A Few

If you spend any time on social media, it's likely that you've seen this 
graphic compiled by columnist Stephen Lautens that assembles 11 international 
indices which feature Canada near the top spot. "Canada is broken? I don't 
think so. Neither does the world," reads a caption.

Next time someone rants on how about how "broken" Canada is; or how badly we 
are doing on the international stage... share some facts.

Numbers don't lie, Felicia.

https://archive.is/o/LnFRL/https://twitter.com/DIGuideBradley/status/1554545079
314010112

Naturally, it only tells a partial picture. While Canada may dominate abstract 
indices such as "quality of life" and "peace," there are plenty of far more 
empirical indicators in which we measurably rank as among the worst in the 
developed world.

There's plenty to like about Canada, but below is a not-at-all comprehensive 
list of all the ways in which we are indeed very broken.

WE HAVE THE MOST UNAFFORDABLE HOUSING IN THE OECD

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is essentially a 
club of the world's 38 most developed countries. And when these 38 are ranked 
against each other for housing unaffordability, Canada emerges as the clear 
champion. OECD analysts rank affordability by comparing average home prices to 
average incomes, and according to their latest quarterly rankings Canada was 
No. 1 for salaries that were most out of whack with the cost of a home.

Housing by price to income ratio for the second quarter of 2022. That's Canada 
on the extreme right.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/840da40d6fa3b7fef6fcccdfc1637d24e0786760.webp

WE HAVE THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE WIRELESS COSTS

Every year, the Finnish telecom analyst Rewheel ranks the world's most 
expensive countries for wireless services. And last year, Canada once again 
dominated. Across several metrics, Canada was found to be the most expensive 
place in the world for mobile data. Analysts found that it would cost the 
average Canadian the equivalent of at least 100 Euros to obtain a cell phone 
plan with at least 100 gigabytes of mobile data. Across much of the EU, that 
kind of cell phone plan could be had for less than 40 Euros.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/822bcfe750687b1ef6288ee7df5606fd15629289.webp

Canadian telecoms charge more than 10 times as much for 100 gigabytes of mobile 
data as companies in France or Ireland.

Canadian telecoms charge more than 10 times as much for 100 gigabytes of mobile 
data as companies in France or Ireland. Photo by Rewheel

WE HAVE THE LOWEST RATE OF ACUTE CARE BEDS AMONG PEER COUNTRIES

Canada's health system was particularly walloped by COVID-19 due to the simple 
fact that most of our hospitals are at the breaking point even in good times. 
Multiple times during the pandemic, provinces were forced into shutdown by 
rates of COVID that had barely been noticed in better-prepared countries. A 
ranking by the Canadian Institute for Health Information provides one clue as 
to why. When ranked against peer countries, Canada's rate of per-capita acute 
care beds was in last place, albeit tied with Sweden. Canada has two acute care 
beds for every 1,000 people, against 3.1 in France and six in Germany.

TWO OF THE PLANET'S "BUBBLIEST" REAL ESTATE MARKETS ARE IN CANADA

For at least 15 years now, Canada has been a regular contender on rankings of 
overheated housing markets. And the latest UBS index of world cities with 
"bubbly" real estate markets is no exception. In their 2021 index, Toronto was 
second only to Frankfurt in terms of bubble risk, while Vancouver ranked sixth. 
Aside from Germany, Canada was the only country that saw two of its cities in 
the top ten.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/1961e904e18e8cb533ff42c2eae7beb611827bd4.webp

Only two cities in the entire Western Hemisphere qualified as likely "bubble 
risks," and they're both in Canada.

Only two cities in the entire Western Hemisphere qualified as likely "bubble 
risks," and they're both in Canada. Photo by UBS Global Real Estate Bubble 
Index 2021

WE RACKED UP COVID DEBT FASTER THAN ANYONE ELSE

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in the most feverish global accumulation of debt 
in the history of human civilization. So it's rather remarkable that amidst 
this international monsoon of debt, Canada still managed to out-debt everyone 
else. Last year, analysts at Bloomberg tracked each country's rate of public 
and private debt accumulated during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. 
Canada came in with an overall debt burden equivalent to 352 per cent of GDP. 
While a handful of countries (Japan, France and Hong Kong) came out of the 
pandemic with higher overall debt burdens, Canada outranked all of them when it 
came to how quickly that debt had been accumulated.

Containers on rail cars waiting to be shipped east by rail at the Port of 
Vancouver Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Photo by (Photo by Jason Payne/ PNG)

https://archive.is/LnFRL/5b7e25218f55d343b998db94c6748b57312dafaf.webp

THE PORT OF VANCOUVER IS (ALMOST) THE MOST INEFFICIENT IN THE WORLD

Last year - just as the global supply chain crisis got going - the World Bank 
decided to rank the performance of the world's 370 major ports. Authors weighed 
factors such as how long the ports kept ships waiting, and how long crews took 
to unload a vessel. And when everything was added together, the Port of 
Vancouver ranked 368 out of 370. The only places with worse scores were the 
Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. And it's not like our other 
ports are much better. If Vancouver is too gummed up, you can always sail north 
to Prince Rupert, which ranks 339 out of 370.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/ac861be6fb2f37d1463e7670c232b5cd548d5395.webp

Take that, Los Angeles and Long Beach. Photo by World Bank Group


Queues at Toronto Pearson International Airport. Photo by Peter J. 
Thompson/National Post

https://archive.is/LnFRL/b32f7be38081069e5e696a0029996f6f3adaa760.webp

TORONTO PEARSON IS THE WORLD'S MOST-DELAYED AIRPORT

Flight delays are another category in which basically the entire world is 
feeling the pinch. And yet, Canada still managed to outdo all of them. Last 
month, CNN used data from the website FlightAware to figure out which airports 
were seeing the highest rates of flight delays. In the number one spot was 
Toronto Pearson, with 52 per cent of all flights out of the airport 
experiencing some kind of delay. And it was a commanding lead; the second-place 
finisher, Frankfurt, only managed to see 45.4 per cent of its flights delayed. 
Toronto was also a contender in flight cancellations; with 6.9 per cent of its 
scheduled flights never getting off the ground, it ranked fourth worst in the 
world.

WE'RE ONE OF THE WORLD'S WORST ECONOMIES FOR FOREIGN INVESTMENT

A 2020 study out of the University of Calgary tracked foreign investment flows 
into a cross-section of developed countries between 2015 and 2019. Virtually 
every country on the list saw a surge in foreign cash during that period; 
Ireland topped out the ranking thanks to its foreign investment climbing by 
more than 115 per cent. Only four countries actually saw a reduction in foreign 
investment: Mexico, Brazil, Australia and Canada. A report by the Business 
Council of Canada noticed the same trend. "Canada is the second-worst in the 
OECD on openness to foreign direct investment," it concluded.

https://archive.is/LnFRL/222c5fba154990485338650dcb55e413d85e080c.webp

WE DRIVE THE MOST FUEL-INEFFICIENT VEHICLES IN THE WORLD

In 2019, the International Energy Agency examined the fuel economy of the 
world's private car fleets. On almost every measure, Canada led the pack in 
driving unnecessarily huge, gas-guzzling vehicles. Per kilometre driven, the 
average Canadian burned more fuel and emitted more carbon dioxide than anyone 
else. Canadian cars were also the largest and (second only to the U.S.) the 
heaviest. While it would be convenient to blame this on Canada being a sparse, 
cold country with lots of heavy industry, our ranking was well beyond plenty of 
other countries where that was similarly the case.