It's breaks my heart that Republican Representatives know so little about average American life.
John Boehner doesn't even know that a lot of us with a decent yard kinda look forward to the time when our lawns go dormant, where believe it or not, the lawn turns brown and we don't have to mow it twice a week.
This amazing out-of-touch disconnect with real middle Americans, won't cut it in 2016. And yes, Boehner is blaming water shortages on Obama and liberal policies:
Forget what you may have heard from Sen. Mitch McConnell, who couldn't wait to tell his first big lie about the green energy agreement between the U.S. and China.
Chris Hayes dug deeper and interviewed John Holdren, the presidents top science adviser, who knew all the details, contradicting everything spilling out of the Republican oil dependent spin machine.
The idea that China would wait 16 years to go green and meet the 20% goal is absurd, as McConnell claimed.
The Forbes Magazine story "The Naked Cost of Energy -- Stripping Away Financing and Subsidies," posted this interesting graph of our energy choices and their costs. What they didn't seem to consider was the eventual price reductions via competition and oversupply.
This should clear up any remaining questions about green energy. Again, wind prices should drop dramatically. Nuclear may appear low now, but the outlays for ;newer plants are overwhelming.
Nuclear:Unfortunately, the $7 billion price tag of a single AP1000 nuke plant exceeds the entire financial portfolio of most utilities. Thus, the need for loan guarantees or some way to finance big projects which, in the long-run, are cheaper for the consumer and society as a whole. Almost all of the nuclear plant fiascos of the 1970s and 1980s were actually financing and planning debacles, not a fault of the technology.
Let’s get one thing clear; I’m not hoping Gov. Scott Walker fails to create jobs. What I don’t want to do is simply allow Scott Walker to lay claim to the previous Democratic administrations efforts to bring jobs to Wisconsin, or in this case M-7, the seven county regional organization recruiting businesses. Walker has been unashamed to take credit already, on numerous occasions. The following jobs announcement took M-7 two years to eventually nail down.
jsonline-Tom Daykin: A Spanish manufacturer, Sic Lazaro, is opening a U.S. factory on Milwaukee's north side.
The company, which makes counterweights for cranes, elevators and other industrial uses, plans to begin production this summer at 7040 N. Teutonia Ave., said Jim Paetsch, of the Milwaukee 7 regional economic development group. The group recruited Sic Lozaro to Milwaukee after a two-year effort, he said.
The company expects to have around 30 employees during its first year, and could have 60 or more employees within three years, depending on its sales, Paetsch said Wednesday.
Another M-7 victory turned a bit sour with the Walker anti-green energy agenda curtailing wind power:
One of the most recent and most celebrated instances of M-7 industrial attraction involves Ingeteam SA, a Spanish industrial group that decided this year to spend $15 million on a new factory in Milwaukee. In the next five years, Ingeteam will hire 275 workers to produce wind and solar power generators.
Remember the Republican mantra of "government shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and loser" as it relates to jobs? Guess what, that exactly what the Walker administration is doing, on steroids, out in the open for all the media to see. Green energy and transportation industries; losers. Old established corporate bullies; winners.
When a powerful conservative group with the deceptive name, "Coalition for Wisconsin Environmental Stewardship" gets involved, it should send up red flags to everyone that its position will be flat out ballsy against green energy. Even worse, one of the most partisan conservative former state senators imaginable, Bob Welch, is their public spokesperson. True to form, Welch immediately trashes Wisconsin as "bad for business" in the emerging green economy. When you hear him use terms like a "windmill ghetto," and "we can't see these 'green jobs' canceling out the other jobs," the nation will receive his and Wisconsin's unmistakable message; STAY AWAY.!!! From WPT's Here and Now:
Bob Welch: "The whole issue here is where should you build, and if you should build wind. Wisconsin is not a good place for wind, we don't have the kind of wind capacity that they do OUT WEST...so this is not a good place to build them at all...plus the set back issue, if you were talking about 1800 ft. in a wheat field in North Dakota, nobody would care...your stopping other development. So you're saying we're going to create jobs, but your actually costing jobs at the same time."
Humorously, Welch complains the wind industry helped develop the legislation, not an unusual practice and something Gov. Walker is now encouraging with his private/public commerce department. Or how about the recent Walker backed legislation to allow one business, Bass Pro Shops, to usurp the state constitution so they could build in a wetland area (which Bass declined to do out of respect for the environment). Welch should be a comedian.
Hypocrisy is about to become a meaningless word due to the Republicans contradictory agenda, and my overuse of the reference.
After only a month into the Gov. Scott Walker administration, the Republicans have added over $100 million to the deficit, turned back the future by denying high speed rail, and now are planning to ignore wind energy generation and job creation. Thanks for the heads up, Uppity Wisconsin:
Bizjournal: In response to Walker’s wind energy regulations proposed Jan. 11, the Illinois Wind Energy Association is inviting wind power developers to “Escape to Illinois.”Walker’s proposed legislation would require wind turbines to be constructed with a 1,800-foot setback from neighboring property lines, a mandate IWEA’s executive directorKevin Borgiasaid “would effectively ban wind development from the Badger State,” in a press release.
Illinois is already outpacing Wisconsin in wind energy development, having an installed wind capacity of 2,146 megawatts compared to the 469-megawatt capacity in Wisconsin, according to American Wind Energy Association statistics. Walker’s “counter-intuitive” policy will cause this gap to grow, Borgia said.
“If you’re supporting policy platform that is reliant on low-regulation and open markets, you shouldn’t simultaneously promote regulations and closed markets,” he said.
Borgia said the property tax base created by wind farms has proven critical to rural Illinois communities with low property values, providing much-needed funds for schools, roads and other public commodities. “Their budgets are supported by wind,” he said regarding such towns. “It’s a real value to the community.”
Wind developments have provided $18 million in annual property taxes and generated $8.3 million annually extra income for Illinois landowners leasing their land to farm developers, according to a recent Illinois State University study. Furthermore, the projects support about 500 permanent jobs and a payroll of more than $25 million.
Conservative rural areas are about to live out their often touted family and fiscal values. Good luck with that.
