Intended as a discussion group, the blog has evolved to be more of a reading list of current issues affecting our county, its government and people. All reasonable comments and submissions welcomed. Email us at: bill.pysson@gmail.com
REMEMBER: To view our sister blog for education issues: www.district100watchdog.blogspot.com
---------------A press release from the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office:------------
MCSO Taking Applications for Correctional Officers
The day room of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement floor.
The McHenry County Sheriff’s Office is currently taking applications for the position of Correctional Officer.
Testing will take place on Saturday, January 9, 2016. Applications and required documents must be received by Tuesday, January 5, 2016.
Applications for Correctional Officers can be found at www.mchenrysheriff.org or at the Corrections Facility located at 2200 N. Seminary Drive, Woodstock, IL.
Qualifications to apply are as follows:
Age: Minimum of 21 years of age. Applicants may test at age 20, but cannot be hired until age 21.
Education: High school diploma or GED.
Citizenship: United States citizenship or possess a permanent resident card. (Green Card)
Experience: No prior experience required.
Driver’s License: Applicant must possess a valid driver’s license.
FOID Card: Applicant must possess a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card. (Can be applied for online at: https://www.ispfsb.com/)
Residency: Must live in McHenry County or any bordering Illinois counties, or Kenosha/Walworth counties in Wisconsin, within one year of hiring. Currently, starting pay is $49,751, with paid holidays, paid vacation and sick time after one-year probation. Major medical, dental and life insurance offered by the County for the employee and dependents (co-pay).
* Benefits subject to change and are dependent upon union contract negotiations.*
Applicants must return the required documents to:
McHenry County Sheriff’s Department Corrections Division ATTN: Natalie Andrews
2200 N. Seminary Avenue Woodstock, IL 60098
Phone: (815) 334-4933 Fax: (815) 338-3321 Email: NCAndrews@co.mchenry.il.us
Gatehouse Media is the owner of the Rockford Register Star. GateHouse Media Inc. (formerly Liberty Group Publishing), former symbol on OTC Markets Group's OTCQB tier GHSE, is a U.S. newspaper publisher, headquartered in the town of Perinton, New York,[a] that publishes 97 dailies in 20 states and 198 paid weeklies, in addition to free papers, shoppers and specialty and niche publications. To read more regarding Gatehouse, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GateHouse_Media
The media elites are a little obsessed about who is the secretive new owner who paid $140 million to buy The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest daily newspaper with a circulation in excess of 175,000. “But one rumored purchaser tells Fortune — via a spokesman — that it wasn’t them: Charles and David Koch, co-founders of Koch Industries and major donors to conservative candidates.”
The Koch brothers are infamous capitalist villains to Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the leader of the Senate Democratic minority. Gatehouse Media sold the paper last week to a company called simply “News + Media Capital Group,” shielding the identity of the new owner (or owners). Another popular rumor is major GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, who has offered no comment. Fortune added:
Given Nevada’s recent history as an important swing state in presidential races — Nevadans have picked the winning presidential candidate in 9 straight elections — there has been a lot of speculation that the secretive purchase was made for the purpose of swinging local political opinion. The Kochs were among the possible names bandied about, but a spokesman says it wasn’t them.
The Left was paranoid in 2013 that the “Kochtopus” was going to take over the Tribune Company and its newspapers (including the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, and the Chicago Tribune). “Stop the next Fox News before it starts,” warned one petition. Instead, Tribune split its broadcast and print entities into two separate companies in 2014.
- See more at: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2015/12/15/koch-brothers-deny-buying-nevadas-largest-newspaper#sthash.9FpbPDdY.dpuf
This so called evidence for Boone County's restrictive wind turbine ordinance no longer exists.
Doug Schneider, Press-Gazette Media 2:30 p.m. CST December 16, 2015
Brown Co. Board of Health in 2014 declared turbines in the Shirley Wind Farm emit low-frequency noise that poses healtht risks. About 20 families experienced health issues they blame on the turbines.
In a devastating setback for people living near the Shirley Wind farm, Brown County's health director on Tuesday declared that insufficient evidence exists to link wind turbines to illnesses suffered by people who live near them.
Residents of Glenmore and Morrison — and people living near wind projects throughout Wisconsin — had packed a meeting room at Brown County Cooperative Extension. Many hoped that Health Director Chua Xiong would order Shirley Wind shut down.
But Xiong, her voice sometimes breaking, said the scientific evidence clearly linking windmills to sleeplessness, nausea, irritability and other health problems just wasn't there.
"It breaks my heart," she said. "I've spent thousands of hours on this ... even on Thanksgiving when I was supposed to be with my family, I was out (in Shirley). I feel your pain."
Her decision, at a special meeting of the Board of Health, followed 90 minutes of comments from members of the public who blamed various illnesses on wind turbines. The Board in 2014 had declared the turbines in the Shirley Wind Farm, in Glenmore and Morrison, emit low-frequency noise that can endanger health. That's believed to be the first time a board of health has issued such a ruling.
Xiong's announcement left many in the crowd of almost 80 struggling to know what to do next. Some have been battling since the wind developed opened in 2010.
"We've spent years, years, literally years, and thousands of dollars. Careers affected, families affected, marriages affected, trying to get this stuff done. We can't even get a board of health, a health director, in our very own county to act," said Steve Deslauriers, who lives near the wind farm. "We've been going to our state. We've been talking to our national representatives. There is nothing we can do. That's why we are here. We are your friends and neighbors. We can't get action here. How can we get action out of the state?
"We can't get anywhere, and our family and friends are suffering! What do we do?"
The board and Xiong have met repeatedly behind closed doors during the past year to study options related to the wind development, and clearly had concerns that a ruling against Duke would trigger a lawsuit. Board members had indicated lately that they were seeking a decision in the residents' favor, but stressed that the decision was Xiong's.
The ruling frustrated board members as well.
"All of this goes on Chua," board member Dr. Jay Tibbetts told a member of the public after the meeting. "We've done all we can, The problem is with our director."
Duke Energy Renewables, which operates the site, has said repeatedly that sounds produced by the turbines cannot be linked to health problems. North Carolina-based Duke, which operates more than 1,000 turbines around the country, purchased Shirley Wind in 2011.
Donald Trump's success has dramatically highlighted the Republican establishment's problems. Unfortunately, he also highlights how hard it will be to change.
Republican US presidential candidate and businessman Donald Trump speaks to the media in the spin room following the Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas.
1 of 1
Washington — Reluctantly, the Republican establishment is coming to terms with the shortcomings that Donald Trump’s insurgent campaign has laid bare.
What to do about them, however, remains as mystifying as ever.
On one hand, Mr. Trump embodies the “happy warrior.” For a party that has been caricatured as dour malcontents determined to say “no” to anything and everything, Trump’s success in casting himself as a can-do, fix-it man who dares to “Make America Great Again” constitutes a rebuke.
Yet, at the same time, Trump also embodies the headlong race toward the politics of fear, most clearly with his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.
There is little doubt that those politics can win votes. Yet there is also a growing sense that those politics, repeated during the recent past, have played no small part in bringing the Republican Party to where it is today – with considerable power, but desperately holding on to a tiger’s tail of voter anger.
In its broadest terms, the question posed by the rise of Trump is how to move past the politics of anger and reclaim the mantle of Ronald Reagan – someone who “made people happy to vote for him.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan has already attempted to stake out this ground, and a new generation of conservative thinkers is laying out a vision of a Republican Party that embraces issues of poverty, reaches out to new voters, and shows compassion.
The lessons aren’t new. A post mortem of Mitt Romney’s decisive loss to President Obama in 2012 came to the same conclusions. Exit polls showed that most voters did not think Mr. Romney “cares about people like me.” But Trump’s ascendance has created a fresh urgency, painting a stark picture of a party potentially on the brink of major losses in Washington.
“Ronald Reagan won in 1980 because he was the happier candidate, he was the candidate with the bigger heart, he made people happy to vote for him,” said Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington think tank, at gathering of conservative activists last week. “How many conservative leaders today have that?”
'This isn't about Trump'
For many GOP activists, the serial controversies of the Trump campaign revive tribal memories of the 1964 blowout defeat of conservative Barry Goldwater, whose views came to be viewed as too harsh and extreme for general election voters.
In 2016, it’s not just the White House that’s at risk but also the GOP’s hard-won control of the Senate.
But attacks by GOP leaders only appear to drive Trump’s poll ratings higher, confirming the low esteem that voters have for the current Republican establishment. After a report last week that GOP officials had met to secretly prepare for the possibility of a brokered convention that could deny Trump the nomination, his poll ratings hit a record high at 38 percent of registered Republican-leaning voters.
“This isn’t about Trump,” Mr. Ryan told The New York Times on Friday. “This is about do we run on substance or do we run on personality? If we run on personality, we lose those elections.”
In a signature speech last week, Ryan laid out his plans to turn the GOP into a party of positive ideas.
It is a vision that harks back to former Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, whose ideas on how to create jobs, lift people out of poverty, and grow a more inclusive party helped define the Reagan Revolution and inspired a generation of Republican activists, including Ryan, who calls Mr. Kemp his mentor.
Vice President nominee Jack Kemp (c.) waves at the 1996 GOP convention. Robert Harbison/The Christian Science Monitor/File
And Ryan isn’t the only conservative seeking to resuscitate the “happy warrior” pioneered by Kemp.
“People see us as grim, grumpy, and unhappy, and that’s got to stop,” said Mr. Brooks last Wednesday.
“Conservatives have the right stuff to lift up the poor and vulnerable – but have been generally terrible at winning people’s hearts,” he adds in his latest book, “The Conservative Heart: How to build a fairer, happier, and more prosperous America.”
“Effective conservatives are not people who fight only for people who support them but also for people who need them” – especially groups that generally vote against Republicans, such as Latinos, African Americans, single women, Millennials, and the poor, he writes.
This has not been the course of the Republican Party in recent years, though there have been signs of a shift. Ryan and Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky, in particular, have stepped beyond the traditional white, male, middle- and working-class base to address issues of poverty.
But the call is broadening. Last Wednesday’s event for conservative activists was held at the headquarters of Americans for Tax Reform, the group that pioneered the taxpayer protection pledge in 1986 to put politicians on record in opposition to raising taxes. Over time, however, that approach came to be viewed as supporting mainly the top 1 percent.
Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist left no doubt that that is not the Republican Party he wants.
“Conservatives need to talk to people who don’t see free market economics as solving problems,” he said last week. “That’s particularly where you need to be a happy warrior, a conservative with heart.”
Trump has some of that confident, outgoing style, but little of the policy, Norquist added. “He keeps saying, ‘I can fix it’ and ‘I will fix it.’ I’d be more comfortable with more specific policy suggestions.”
The birth of the 'Reformicon'
Just as security-focused conservative “neocons” emerged after 9/11, a new breed of conservative “reformicon” is emerging in the wake of the Great Recession, with policies aimed at helping middle-class workers, students, and the poor.
“Reformicon” proposals include empowering investors to pay a student’s tuition in return for a percentage of future earnings, requiring colleges and universities to pay a percentage of student loans in cases of default, and establishing a new Homestead Act to give tax breaks and income-support to encourage worker mobility to areas with better job prospects.
“In the conservative intellectual community, there’s a real effort to come up with ways of dealing with low wages, providing assistance to people to find jobs, keep jobs, give a decent living,” says Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at AEI. “But none of the presidential candidates are talking about these things and not very many members of Congress.”
And that is the issue.
“As much as the [GOP] establishment wants to reassert an optimistic view, that line of thinking does not appear to be what is pushing the front-runners up in the polls,” says GOP strategist John Ullyot, managing director of High Lantern Group in Washington.
“The Republican electorate seems to be responding much more this cycle to a harsher rhetorical line, and that’s probably not good for the party in the long term, but there’s not much that can be done about that for the time being,” he adds.
In the aftermath of Mr. Romney’s 2012 loss, the No. 1 recommendation by a blue-ribbon report from the Republican National Committee opened with a reference to Kemp: “Jack Kemp used to say, No one cares what you know until they know you care."
But little changed in the GOP, and while Trump has his own vision of the promise of the future, he is also cashing in on fear. The latest polls suggest his support is surging in the wake of recent terrorist attacks.
Trump is “channeling anger felt by a certain sector of the electorate that’s no different from what’s felt in Europe among the white working class,” says Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and a leading Reformicon.
“It would be nice to think that the way to appeal to the Trump constituency is to actually address their concerns, which is that they are losing ground under the current economic regime,” he adds. “That suggests that a party that focuses on gutting entitlements and taxes for the top 1 percent is not meeting their needs.”
“You can smile all you want, but that dog won’t hunt,” he says.
The agreement by congressional leaders last night on a multi-year extension of renewable energy tax credits would secure several years of predictable policies that encourage private investment in wind energy, industry leaders said today.
“This agreement will enable wind energy to create more affordable, reliable and clean energy for America by providing multi-year predictability as we have called for,” said Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association. “The later years of this agreement will provide some challenges that the wind industry will work to overcome with our employees, partners and champions.”
Kiernan said industry leaders are examining the agreement now and appreciate the progress. “If this passes, our industry will get a break from the repeated boom-bust cycles that we’ve had to weather for two decades of uncertain tax policies,” Kiernan said. “AWEA has sought greater stability in the credit, with an extension for as long as possible. This plan will drive more development, and near-term prospects look strong – especially as utilities, major end-use customers, and municipalities seek more low cost emissions-free renewable energy. In order to keep the wind energy success story going, we will need to continue to work with Congress and the White House in the years ahead to level the playing field with other energy sources that receive permanent tax support.”
According to the agreement, the Production Tax Credit and alternate Investment Tax Credit would be extended for 2015 and 2016, and continue at 80 percent of present value in 2017, 60 percent in 2018, and 40 percent in 2019.As before, the rules will allow wind projects to qualify as long as they start construction before the end of the period.
The credit is currently worth 2.3 cents a kilowatt-hour of electricity generated for the power grid. Combined with continued growth in demand for low-carbon fuel sources, that is intended to keep wind energy attractive for the investors who finance new wind farms.
The performance-based PTC has helped more than quadruple wind power in the U.S. since 2008 – up from 16,702 megawatts (MW) installed at the start of 2008 to 69,470 MW by the third quarter of 2015. This is enough power to supply over 18 million American homes.
It has encouraged research and development, construction of factories in the U.S. and maximum productivity, helping reduce the cost of American wind power by 66 percent in six years. Iowa, South Dakota, and Kansas all now rely on wind for more than 20 percent of their electricity; nine other states are over 10 percent. The recent “Wind Vision” report by the U.S. Department of Energy says America as a whole is on track to get 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2030.
Today’s 73,000 jobs in wind energy can grow to 380,000 jobs by then, DOE projected.
“The U.S. is home to some of the most productive wind turbines in the world because of this successful policy,” said Kiernan. “That’s due in large part to wind power champions in Congress, and leadership across both Republican and Democratic administrations.”
Lawmakers have agreed to lift the four-decade-old ban on crude oil exports as part of a spending and tax package announced by congressional leadership on Tuesday night, according to a GOP lawmaker.
In exchange, Republicans agreed to extend a series of expired or expiring renewable energy tax breaks. Both the wind production tax credit and the solar investment tax credit won five-year extensions in the tax and spending package unveiled on Tuesday, the GOP lawmaker said.
ADVERTISEMENT
Lifting the crude oil ban was a key goal for Republicans, who have said American oil producers should have expanded access to the international market at a time of low prices and new competition from Iranian oil. Democrats have long proposed trading the renewable energy credits for crude oil exports, though until recently there was little movement on getting an exports-tax credit package to the Senate floor.
But Republicans were aggressive in pushing to including the crude oil bill in the end-of-the-year tax overhaul and spending bills. Democrats worked to tie exports to renewables in the package, with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) saying Tuesday morning that Republicans were weighing a Democratic offer to accept either both provisions or neither of them.
Export supporters say the possibly of Iranian oil hitting the global market as sanctions are lifted on the country would hurt American producers. Ending the export ban, a policy instituted to respond to the OPEC oil embargo in the 1970s, would help level the playing field, they said.
The White House has opposed lifting the export ban on its own, saying the Commerce Department already has the right to approve exports on a limited basis.
Even so, officials didn’t rule out this week some type of compromise on the matter, implying they supported bringing renewable energy credits into the mix.
“We oppose legislation that would lift the ban on the exporting of American crude oil,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday.
“But we certainly do want to see Congress — and hopefully they will in the context of this budget agreement — make the kinds of investments in renewable and clean energy that are good for our economy and have the potential to create good American middle-class jobs down the line.”
Green groups have opposed lifting the ban at all, warning about the impact it would have on the use of fossil fuels around the world.
Bill McKibben, the co-founder of the climate change group 350.org, called lifting the ban hypocritical in light of the climate agreement leaders reached in Paris this weekend.
“Doing it the week after the solemn and pious talk about saving the planet is not like some parent who smoked dope in the ‘70s warning their daughter about drugs — it’s like a parent who is currently high warning their daughter about drugs,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Hill. “You might as well hold the launch party for your vegetarian cookbook at a steakhouse.” —Scott Wong contributed. This report was updated at 10:24 p.m.
The wind industry’s growth is an American success story, and should be celebrated.
Unfortunately, fossil fuel-funded special interest groups like Americans for Prosperity are working to mislead the public and elected officials regarding the wind industry. In a recent column in The Hill, Americans for Prosperity claimed the wind industry is relying on backroom deals and that the Production Tax Credit (PTC) has provided little in return on investment for taxpayers.
The wind PTC and solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) have fueled a new American energy industry, with which AFP’s fossil fuel beneficiaries do not want to compete. Instead, the fossil fuel industry funds front groups to push their political goals – groups like AFP, which we have documented extensively in our report “Attacks on Renewable Energy Policies.”
In reality, the wind Production Tax Credit has helped spark technological innovation, expand high-tech manufacturing in the United States, and create jobs. As a result of the tax break and good, old-fashioned American ingenuity, wind’s costs have fallen 66% in the last six years. Each day, 73,000 people work in all 50 states and in over 500 wind-related manufacturing facilities to expand the use of clean wind energy.
By continuing to support the PTC and ITC, our country can speed the transition from fossil fuels to clean technology while supporting private sector investment and economic opportunity.
Let’s recall that Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a front group that refuses to disclose its major contributors. AFP was founded and is funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, the owners of Koch Industries, a major fossil fuel conglomerate with a direct financial interest in stopping the growth of clean energy. In the 2012 presidential election, AFP was a significant component of the Koch’s $400 million political operation, receiving large amounts of money from Koch-linked dark money groups like Freedom Partners, American Encore, and DonorsTrust. This year, Politico reported that the Koch brothers’ political network plans to spend $889 million in the run-up to the 2016 election, including an estimated $125 million for just AFP in 2015. Yet, AFP is taking issue with the clean energy industry’s political deal-making?
AFP also recently spearheaded a letter calling for the elimination of the crude oil export ban and advocating against tax credits for wind and solar. An Energy & Policy Institute investigation revealed that 19 of the 21 organizations signing the letter have either received funding from fossil fuel interests like the Koch brothers or ExxonMobil or have ties to the Koch political network. All forms of energy in the United States benefit from federal incentives. Conventional fuels have received taxpayer handouts for 100 years, with American taxpayers spending hundreds of billions and counting on subsidies for fossil fuels. Overall taxpayer handouts for dirty fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal dwarf the incentives provided for renewable energy and energy efficiency deployment.
Lawmakers should ignore fossil fuel special interests like AFP that have a financial interest in eliminating clean energy tax breaks. Instead, elected officials should support tax breaks and incentives that will help continue the expansion of clean energy industries and support hundreds of thousands of jobs. Elsner is executive director of the Washington, D.C.,-based Energy & Policy Institute, which works to expose attacks on clean technology and counter misinformation by fossil fuel and utility interests.
The media elites are a little obsessed about who is the secretive new owner who paid $140 million to buy The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest daily newspaper with a circulation in excess of 175,000. “But one rumored purchaser tells 
Doug Schneider
