This worked recently on a different machine.
Zero experience with yii and composer. I will begin trying to track this down today. If anyone here knows what I am facing, I will be grateful for the help.
Thank you.
Current issue is just getting the web server configured so I can start work on the project
I have probably used composer on this server months or years ago and forgotten (ie I have no idea if some priorf cut and paste instructions installed some version of jquery or bower…)
Basically clueless 
[me@myserver killme]$ composer create-project --prefer-dist yiisoft/yii2-app-basic basic
Installing yiisoft/yii2-app-basic (2.0.6)
- Installing yiisoft/yii2-app-basic (2.0.6)
Downloading: 100%
Created project in basic
Loading composer repositories with package information
Installing dependencies (including require-dev)
Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages.
Problem 1
- yiisoft/yii2 2.0.6 requires bower-asset/jquery 2.1.*@stable | 1.11.*@stable -> no matching package found.
- yiisoft/yii2 2.0.5 requires bower-asset/jquery 2.1.*@stable | 1.11.*@stable -> no matching package found.
- Installation request for yiisoft/yii2 >=2.0.5 -> satisfiable by yiisoft/yii2[2.0.5, 2.0.6].
Potential causes:
- A typo in the package name
- The package is not available in a stable-enough version according to your minimum-stability setting
see <https://groups.google.com/d/topic/composer-dev/_g3ASeIFlrc/discussion> for more details.
Read <https://getcomposer.org/doc/articles/troubleshooting.md> for further common problems.
