Along with its highest-profile duty — protecting the president — the service has other branches that do everything from detect counterfeit currency to monitor networks of electronic crime. One branch, some 120 men and women strong, collects ink. More than 8,500 samples of ink, in fact, which have been sent to the USSS from manufacturers since the 1920s.
Each new ink formulation prompts a new delivery, with samples arriving from around the world as liquid in a bottle or perhaps a new batch of pens or refills.
Each time, the team scribbles a sample of the ink onto Whatman filter paper, grade 2 — hence the paper’s common nickname, scribble sheets — tucks it into a protective sleeve inside a binder, then stores it in dark cabinets to protect it against degradation from light, temperature, and humidity. The USSS proudly oversees the largest ink library in the world — and we needed their expertise.
If it takes 120 people to collect ink then that’s an indication of a small part of the vast amount of resources the government waste.
It may well be that in some cases we need to narrow down what kind of ink but in how many and at what price.
While I’m bitching the whole bio-fuels subsidies,
“…The Wall Street Journal reported that environmental groups estimated between 2008 and 2022, biofuels will receive $420 billion in subsidies…”
We’re not talking small change. It’s a lot. If we we’re going to throw money at renewables why don’t we at least throw the money at something sustainable. The efficiency of plants to turn Sunlight into plant matter is pitiful. Like 3%. Why not focus effort on solar panels? New solar panels have 40% efficiency. We could use them to chemically make fuel from air and water?
Ethanol directly from CO2 in air and water
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VSq1LcO-xE
Turning Carbon Dioxide into Petrol – Carbon Capture – Horizons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5SqwSU8ns4
Before you do any of that “renewable” stuff with solar panels, the full range of actual costs needs to be accounted for, from materials mining for everything involved to disposal.
Honest numbers on this stuff are never part of the calculations–Just like with wind power, they hand-wave the expenses of running the grid to the towers, the roads to service them, and all the rest. As well, the damn things never last as long as they project–All those windfarms out in the midwest where they’re now running into problems with disposing of the blades were slated to last for 25 years. Many only managed 15 or less before requiring replacement.
The only way renewables are even remotely sensible is when they’re deployed for remote locations where you can’t transport fuels or have other energy sources available. Otherwise, all you’re doing is transferring money from the taxpayer to China, where most of the equipment is produced. And, do note: The Chinese are not actually relying on this crap–They’re building coal plants. What does that tell you?
Renewable energy is an oxymoron and a scam, from start to finish. Unless you’re talking about something like a breeder reactor, all you’re doing is managing and converting solar power gathered over millions of years–Assuming that oil is produced the way we think it is, which may or may not be the case.
Kirk: “The Chinese are not actually relying on this crap–They’re building coal plants.”
As well as building something like 2 coal-fired power plants per week, China is also investing heavily in sustainable carbon-free nuclear power. As of end-2019, China had 47 nuclear power plants in operation, 12 under construction, and another 212 plants in various stages of planning & design. China also has the steel-making and manufacturing capabilities to make those plants.
Sam J is correct — with enough plentiful cheap energy (e.g., from nuclear), we already have the technology to make liquid hydrocarbon fuels, which will always be the optimum fuels for many transportation & construction activities.
It is so frustrating that the US’s current Best & Brightest are such a bunch of third-class losers compared to China’s current Best & Brightest. It did not have to be this way — but now we are stuck with the consequences.
Gavin, the reason this is happening basically boils down to Gramsci and the long march through the institutions. They’re not going to wake up until they’ve spent generations under the heel of the left, and maybe not even then.
It’s amazing to observe. Anyone who can do math can work out that we should have gone to nuclear power generations ago, but the idiots have propagandized against it so much that it’s probably never going to happen. We could have had safe and sane pebble-bed reactors thirty years ago, ones that can’t suffer catastrophic accidents, but noooooo… They stigmatized them. And, now we’re gonna do electric cars, when the reality is that manufactured rectified liquid hydrocarbon fuels are the way to go, and would plug right into our existing infrastructure. Instead, they’re going to ruin the environment to make inferior electric cars that will only displace pollution and serve to make a bunch of idiots wealthy.
Installed base would argue for cleaner and more efficient liquid hydrocarbon fuels, ones that were carbon-neutral (if that’s even a necessity–We’re still way below historical CO2 numbers).
The whole thing is a scam, just like the “Ozone Hole” crap. The thing that nobody really paid attention to was what was going on in the background–Like, DuPont’s patents on R-12 running out, and who was actually financing all the hysteria. Reality? All those nasty, dirty R-12 plants got moved to places like India and China, and they’re still pumping out the refrigerants today, and they’re actually probably releasing more of them into the atmosphere than we were… Follow the money: DuPont was about to lose a cash cow, and the whole of the hysteria got ginned up as a means to an end.
Like so much of the environmentalist movement, it’s been co-opted by money interests whose actual intents are more than a little corrupt.
Take away the subsidies and all the rest, and precisely nobody would be buying either electric cars or building “renewable energy”. It simply wouldn’t be affordable, and absent the panic over “climate change”, we wouldn’t be doing it. I look forward to people trying to explain how we’re going into another “Little Ice Age” in the next few years, as the solar cycle does what the solar cycle does… Give us a couple of volcanic eruptions, like in Iceland, and we may get another couple of “Years without a summer…”. Care to imagine what that will look like, with the crop of idiots we have running things?
I can but laugh.
“…Before you do any of that ‘renewable’ stuff with solar panels, the full range of actual costs needs to be accounted for, from materials mining for everything involved to disposal…”
What’s the price on being dependent on oil from the middle east? Too high for me.
Lest anyone be confused I’m hardly a flower toting eco-nut. My preference for renewable is based on security and freedom of action.
“…The only way renewables are even remotely sensible is when they’re deployed for remote locations where you can’t transport fuels or have other energy sources available…”
This not true when you amortize the security cost associated with controlling the middle east(By all means let’s count ALL the cost). If every penny of this was spent on research in every single chemical supply house, every major or minor college down to the local community college and we posted huge cash prizes that would added to and rolled over every year, getting bigger and bigger I have no doubt within 5 to 10 years we could have a good or better than good chance of making solar sells and carbon batteries at serious dirt cheap prices.
The new Perovskite solar cells are really, really cheap. They had problems with water ruining them but at least one company supposedly has a coating worked out. They are building a factory as we speak and are supposed to go on the market with a Perovskite over silicon solar cell at 40% efficiency(the Perovskite captures more of the blue light). If they can keep the cost down this is a big leap. The efficiency for Perovskite solar cells is theoretically very high.
I’m not saying this is all in the bag but with proper financing it can be so. Mostly carbon batteries have already been built and work fine but there’s been no money for long term testing. It’s going to take that.
A fairly good graphene(carbon)battery was made by a guy and the Edison company bought all the rights. How much you want to bet they shelve it? They’re not stupid. If you could make a dirt cheap carbon battery even at solar prices as they are now you certainly wouldn’t need a big ass power company for personal use. Yes you still need industrial power but not personal.
All of this is within reach as lab built stuff is already built. Now I know that’s not the same as commercial but with the proper cash infusion it could be. Will it? Probably not because there’s too much money keeping us in the monopolistic system. With cheap solar you could build your own methanol plants and tell everyone to fuck themselves. One of the major reasons I’m for “small”, “personal” solar is to tell the State to fuck off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perovskite_solar_cell
“…Renewable energy is an oxymoron and a scam, from start to finish. ..”
That some of it is does not make your statement true. It is false.
Sam,
Instead of being dependent on the Middle East for oil, you think we would be better off making ourselves dependent on China for solar cells and batteries? That would also continue our dependence on China for rare earth elements and on Africa for elements like cobalt.
By the way, the Middle East provided only about 1/3rd of global oil exports in 2019, pre-lockdowns. Much of those exports went to the two big global importers, China and Europe. It is a complicated world.
We all understand the attraction of living off-grid and being able to thumb our noses at the State. But that is essentially an unsustainable free ride on the back of the rest of society — unless we can make our own cheap efficient solar cells and batteries in our back yards.
It’s all an indicator for how badly people are maleducated today. They can’t math, and because they can’t math, they keep falling for the scams.
“Renewable energy” has always been a means to transfer tax money into the pockets of the anointed ones. The fact that they manage to get as much crap through as they do is a marker for just how stupid the public is.
Good God above, even the Swiss are too stupid, in general, to note that they’re paying higher rates by default in order to have all their power sourced from “green” power. That’s kinda a marker, right there–Most of ‘em are just not cognizant that they’re paying a “social justice” duty on their electricity, and let it go on and on. Reality is, that power they’re paying for is likely sourced from either coal, nuclear, or hydro–It sure as hell isn’t “renewables”, because those simply aren’t contributing to the damn grid when everybody is drawing their power.
The whole thing is a swindle, and if anyone ever looks back on it all with even a modicum of balance, it will go down as one of the great con games of history. The whole deal with Buffett getting the pipelines shut down so he can maximize traffic on the railways he invested in is another huge scam.
End of the day, we’re getting robbed by all these assclowns. Renewables really only work in edge cases, but when you try to base your entire system on them, boy howdy, do you start to run into major issues. Like, disposing of giant prop blades that are decommissioned long before they were supposed to be, per the happy-dappy projections made when it all started out.
Follow the money. See where it takes you–And, where you find it running out will be some bright light’s investment banking accounts, just like with Solyndra.
Something that should have gone into investigation the minute that Trump took office, but because all of them are complicit in the scam, nobody went looking for where the money went. Doesn’t matter what party, it’s all about the connections–The nomenklatura has no party, just “interests”, and those interests will always be served. At the expense of the common man and woman.
You can tell immediately that renewables don’t work by one simple indicator….
If “Green Energy” worked, was more efficient and cost effective, all the great big evil, wicked, capitalist corporations would have adopted it long ago, for the cost savings alone. That they have done some token projects (the FEDEX rooftop solar panels etc), is either for virtue signalling and to milk the subsidies, not because it works…
Same goes for recycling. If it were really efficient, it would not need to be subsidized.
Same goes for the “wage gap”, if it were real, large corporations would exclusively hire women for administrative roles so as to save the alleged 25%….
“Instead of being dependent on the Middle East for oil, you think we would be better off making ourselves dependent on China for solar cells and batteries?”
Being against one doesn’t mean I’m favor of the other. I can’t expect you to have kept up with my other comments, not meaning that in a snarky way at all, but I’ve commented a lot on my favoritism for nuclear for base and industrial loads. I have no problems with burning coal which we will not run out of anytime soon and the residue makes great geopolymer concrete.