Tag Archives: idaho

Business/Economics, Idaho

Hoku Turning to China to Help Finish Pocatello Plant

13 October 2010

Hoku Corporation has taken on several millions of dollars in loans, from Chinese banks, in order to finish construction of their Pocatello, Idaho, polysilicon plant.   That’s according to information on Hoku’s website.

Also, Hoku has amended its construction contract with JH Kelly.  A result of delays due to Hoku having difficulty with funding the construction.

Hoku Corp. produces fuel cell membranes, photovoltaic systems, and hopes to produce polysilicon for solar panels at the new Pocatello facility.

Hoku has made several supply agreements with companies based in Asia, but, those agreements hinge on the completion of the Pocatello plant, and, successful demonstration of polysilicon production.  Those agreements have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of pre-payments by the Asian companies.

Hoku is hoping to get production started by the end of the year.

Business/Economics, Idaho, U.S.

Idaho Investigating Foreclosure Fiasco

Officials from 50 states, including Idaho, along with the District of Columbia, announced they were launching investigations into possible foreclosure abuses.  Today, one of the biggest banks involved announced a $4.4 billion profit in the 3rd quarter.

There is growing evidence that bank employees falsified information on foreclosure paperwork.  RealityTrack says more than 2.7 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since 2007.

CHICAGO - JULY 15: A demonstrator protests outside the offices of JPMorgan Chase July 15, 2010 in Chicago, Illinois. He was demonstrating in support of families being evicted from an apartment building because the building has been deemed uninhabitable by the city. Residents claim the building was not maintained after the bank took over the building following a 2008 foreclosure. Residents are required to be out of the building by Saturday. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Ally Financial/GMAC  have admitted that their paperwork has errors.  Citigroup and Wells Fargo deny they have done anything wrong (www.detnews.com).

On Friday, Bank of America halted foreclosure processes in all 50 states.

Idaho Deputy Attorney General Brett DeLange stated on Tuesday that, “We currently know about this at the national level and we have received complaints, some recent, of specific defects under Idaho law.” (www.idahopress.com).

Business/Economics, Idaho

New Pocatello School Builds Character with Baseball

A new business in Pocatello wants to help your kids become all they can be, using the sport of baseball.

Sandlot Baseball & Softball Academy, located in the Westwood Mall, in Pocatello, opened a week ago, and is taking new students now.

The Sandlot website states: “Our programs are designed to help parents create successful, dedicated and respectful children by reinforcing positive values in our unique baseball/softball setting.”

Sandlot Academy, Pocatello, Idaho.

According to the website, the academy’s training fields are indoors, so no weather worries (www.sandlotacademies.com).

Mike Wise, owner of the Pocatello Sandlot Academy, said they are closed during school hours, but are open 4:30pm-9:00pm (check with Mike), so “…swing on by.”.  Mike’s contact info is on the Sandlot website.

The Westwood Mall is off Garrett Way, in Pocatello.

Business/Economics, Idaho, U.S.

Mental Health Decrease = Violent Crime Increase

A recent story in the Idaho State Journal showed that a random shooting, that took place at the end of September, may be linked to the state of Idaho ending health care coverage for people with certain mental disorders.

On September 27th, a man was shot outside a Pocatello, Idaho, coffee shop. He nearly died after losing 40% of his blood.  The shooter was a man who had not been on his mental health meds because the state cut off the funding.  The article showed there are other instances of violent behavior since the cuts took place.  One man, in court after assaulting his own house and car, was “suggested” by the local judge to get control of his mental problem (findarticles.com).  Hello? Isn’t that part of a ‘mental’ health problem?  They can’t control it without outside help, and many of them are not in a position pay for it.

This year Idaho lawmakers claim they saved taxpayers $9 million by cutting the mental health budget.  They also said, earlier in the year, that only people with private insurance would be dropped from state assistance.  Yet, I’ve read several recent articles that say, in actuality people without any insurance have been cut.  To give you an example of how insensitive lawmakers are; according to an article in the Idaho Statesman, State Representative Ken Andrus, a Republican from Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, said he considers the Pocatello shooting, by a man dropped from state help, to be an isolated case (www.idahostatesman.com).

Several mental health care professionals, here in Eastern Idaho, are warning that this is just the beginning of bad things to come.  The family of the shooting victim are outraged.

This reminds me of the Federal cuts for mental health care, pushed by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.  Instead of saving money, it cost more money in the long run, because of increased incarcerations, and lawsuits, due to resulting violent crime by people who were pushed onto the streets, and, went off their meds.  The difference between then and now is that then the government was trying to save money.  Now, there is no money.  The results will be the same.

Idaho, Opinion

Red Cross Hummers. Why?

Brand new Red Cross Hummer seen in the Fred Meyer parking lot in Pocatello, Idaho.

General Motors has been donating Hummers to the American Red Cross since 2004, along with a lot of cash ($100,000 in 2004). GM claims the vehicles help with disaster response. I can see the Hummer H1 as practical for this, but the H2 & H3 are among the most impractical  SUVs out there.

Why not deck out one of GMs big four door 4×4 pickups with all kinds of rescue gear, that would be more practical. Are the H2s & H3s meant for rescuing the upper class in style?

This is just another example of the lack of wisdom in our corporate leadership. Oh, but wait, I bet GM got a huge tax write off for doing this. A tax write off for an expensive vehicle that was seeing declining domestic sales (a little more than 9,000 in 2009 compared to almost 56,000 in 2007). Oh, isn’t General Motors the company that got bailed out by U.S. taxpayers (yes, they did pay it back, at least on paper).

Here’s better news; the Hummers aren’t even made anymore. The Chinese government rejected plans to buy Hummer, and GM officially ceased production this year (apparently the last Hummer H3 left the production plant in May 2010).

So the question now is; is GM going to continue to donate vehicles to the American Red Cross, or was it just a way to write off their unsold Hummers? If they do give the ARC more vehicles I hope they choose a more practical truck.

Idaho, Technology

Plastic Grocery Bags, Recycle Them!

Ok, I was watching a local East Idaho TV news program. They ran a national story about getting sick from reusable grocery bags. What got me was in their intro to the story they said that plastic grocery bags just ended up in the landfill. Well not if you recycle them!

When plastic grocery bags first went into use one of the main selling points is that they are recyclable, and therefore will not fill up landfills. The reason they end up in your local dump is because shoppers are not bringing them back to the stores to be recycled.

The Walmart in Chubbuck has bins for dropping off your old plastic grocery bags. So does the Fred Meyer in Pocatello. I believe you can recycle them at your local WINCO. If you’re not sure go ask someone at the Customer Service counter at your favorite store. Just make sure your bags aren’t covered in schmutz.

Why spend money on reusable grocery bags, that they now say may be germ factories, when you can use free plastic grocery bags THAT ARE 100% RECYCLABLE? Please don’t throw them in the trash!

And guess what, it’s not just plastic grocery bags you can recycle. Bread bags, cereal box liner bags & more. Here’s a website for more info on plastic bag recycling: www.plasticbagrecycling.org

Idaho, Technology

No Glass or Styrofoam Recycling in SE Idaho?

Today I was dropping off my recyclables at the dumpsters next to Pocatello City Hall, when a city employee told me I was wasting my time dropping off the glass and styrofoam. He said the glass and styrofoam dumpster went straight to the landfill.

This is not the first time I’ve heard this. Many years ago the folks at the local Pacific Steel & Recycling told me the same thing. Well, I’ve had lots of arguments over the years with residents (and even my kids argued with some of their grade school teachers) who believe that you can recycle glass and styrofoam locally. After the City of Pocatello labeled a small dumpster for glass and styrofoam I thought, maybe I was wrong. Nope, the city employee confirmed that the glass and styrofoam is not recycled. His reason was the same reason Pacific Steel & Recycling gave me years ago; no local south eastern Idaho glass or styrofoam recyclers/manufacturers, and it is too expensive to ship out of the area. It’s just thrown in the local landfill.

I decided to double check this, and sure enough, looking at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality website (www.deq.idaho.gov), there are no glass or styrofoam recyclers in south eastern Idaho. The nearest Eastern Idaho recycler taking glass is in the City of Driggs, in Teton County, which is about 125 miles northwest of where I live. There are glass recyclers in North Central Idaho, Central Idaho, Western Idaho, Southern Idaho and Northern Idaho, but not in the south eastern part of Eastern Idaho (and only the one in all of Eastern Idaho). Most recycled glass, in the areas of Idaho that do recycle it, end up being used in road projects.

The DEQ website lists Adams County (on the west side of Idaho) as a styrofoam recycler, but, when I checked their web site I couldn’t find any mention of styrofoam recycling (www.co.adams.id.us). It looks like there’s no styrofoam recycling anywhere in Idaho.

So why did the City of Pocatello label a recycling dumpster for glass and styrofoam? The city employee said they got tired of people throwing glass and styrofoam into the dumpsters labeled for cardboard, plastic or aluminum & tin (even though there’s numerous signage asking people not to). So they simply grabbed a small dumpster and labeled it for glass and styrofoam, and haul it to the dump when it’s full.

Business/Economics, Idaho, International, Opinion, U.S.

Europeans Strike! Who Cares About Terrorism?

Europeans were told that a Mumbai style terrorist attack in Europe was foiled, do they care? Hell no! Why? Because, according to strikers in Latvia, people are dying because of the drastic measures undertaken by their government to deal with their crashing economy. In other words, Europeans are more afraid of their governments than random terrorists.

Today, people in France, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Greece and several other countries not mentioned in U.S. media, went on strike. What happened to the economic recovery? A former European Union commissioner is quoted as saying “The party is over…”. European governments want even more drastic belt tightening, increasing the burden of paying for the partying of political and business leaders upon the average European taxpayer. No wounder Europeans are outraged.

Is this a sign of pending doom for the U.S. recovery? The same caca del toro is happening with our leadership here in the U.S. Where are the mass strikes? Are we so afraid of our leadership that we’d rather continue playing along with their war on terror game?

The real terrorism is being waged on the average U.S. worker, by corporate America and their puppets; our political leaders. Let me give you an example: When my son was 17 he got a job working for a movie theater here on the east side of Idaho. His first two weeks he put in 90 hours. We though he was going to get overtime pay, nope, not under the Fair Labor Standards Act. According to the Idaho Department of Labor, movie theater employees are number 5 on the list of jobs exempted from overtime pay.

We also learned that Idaho employers do not have to provide breaks under Idaho state law. My son was told that he would be fired if he was caught taking a break or eating, even when he worked 8-9 hour shifts. Here is what Idaho says: “IDAHO LAW DOES NOT REQUIRE
1. vacation, holiday, severance or sick pay;
2. a discharge notice or a reason for discharge;
3. rest periods, breaks, lunch breaks, holidays
off or vacations;
4. premium pay rates for weekends or holidays
worked;
5. pay raises or fringe benefits; or
6. a limit on the number of hours an employee
can work per day or week for employees 16
years of age or older.”

Visit labor.idaho.gov

Wake up America!

Idaho, International

Food Prices Up, Crop Yields Down

27 September 2010

Signs of a coming food crisis are everywhere. Most notably at the source, the farms that grow the basic crops. Here on the east side of Idaho, farmers had to deal with a spring that was too cool too long, resulting in crops being planted weeks late, and then a short summer (www.noaanews.noaa.gov) (www.kidk.com).

It’s not just Idaho, but many of the crop growing states in the U.S. are experiencing lower yields, and you can blame the weather. Any type of extreme weather will affect crops (sciencepolicy.colorado.edu).  In Idaho it’s too cool & too dry. In other parts of the United States it’s too wet (just look at all the flooding in the southern states), or too hot & dry. And it’s not just the U.S.; Canada & Mexico, South America, Eurasia & Africa as well as Australia, are all dealing with the adverse affects of weird weather on their crops. Pakistan can kiss most of their crop production goodbye after the incredible floods they experienced. Russia is loosing crops due to record heat & fires (www.voanews.com) (rt.com) (rt.com). Just in the past couple of days flooding in Nigeria has destroyed 240 acres of farmland (www.cnn.com).

The result is that overall, globally, less product is heading towards the markets, which means higher commodity prices paid for those crops (Law of Supply & Demand). This is good for farmers who can still produce big crop yields, as farmers in Colorado are finding out (www.agweek.com), but it’s bad for the average consumer. Coffee retailers have finally started passing on the higher costs they’re paying for the beans (starbucks.tekgroup.com). This will only add to the specter of inflation, a three pronged attack caused by governments printing too much money, precious metal prices blasting off and food prices soaring.

Here’s what has happened to wheat commodity prices: In March 2010 Hard Red Winter Wheat was at a value of 191.07,  by August 2010 it hit a value of 246.35 (www.indexmundi.com).  Not all commodities have experienced such a big increase, a few have actually dropped. But, there is a trend of reduced availability & increased cost, so much so that the UN held an emergency meeting to discuss the issue (www.guardian.co.uk). Some UN officials blame inexperienced commodity speculators for the increases in prices. One example of that is that it looks like the December 2010 Corn futures were “overbought” (Idaho Grain Market Alert 9.23.10). This is a double whammy for the average consumer; not only will some foods become limited but some food will be too expensive. So the coming food crisis may probably be more about people not being able to buy the food, than it’s limited availability.

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