Liberals block renewable energy

Typical Liberals, Democrats, anti-technology Greens, environmentalists and NIMBY's block wind generation and transmission infrastructure.

This article is from the Wall Street Journal August 18, 2008. Link to article : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121901822110148233.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
All credit goes to WSJ.

Wind Jammers
August 18, 2008

In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats.

To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often. To exploit this energy, utilities need to build transmission lines to connect their electricity to the places where consumers actually live. In addition to other technical problems, the transmission gap is a big reason wind only provides two-thirds of 1% of electricity generated in the U.S., and solar one-tenth of 1%.

Only last week, Duke Energy and American Electric Power announced a $1 billion joint venture to build a mere 240 miles of transmission line in Indiana necessary to accommodate new wind farms. Yet the utilities don't expect to be able to complete the lines for six long years -- until 2014, at the earliest, because of the time necessary to obtain regulatory approval and rights-of-way, plus the obligatory lawsuits.

In California, hundreds turned out at the end of July to protest a connection between the solar and geothermal fields of the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles and Orange County. The environmental class is likewise lobbying state commissioners to kill a 150-mile link between San Diego and solar panels because it would entail a 20-mile jaunt through Anza-Borrego state park. "It's kind of schizophrenic behavior," Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently. "They say that we want renewable energy, but we don't want you to put it anywhere."

California has a law mandating that utilities generate 20% of their electricity from "clean-tech" by 2010. Some 24 states have adopted a "renewable portfolio standard," while Barack Obama wants to impose a national renewable mandate. But the states, with the exception of Texas, didn't make transmission lines easier to build, though it won't prevent them from penalizing the power companies that fail to meet an impossible goal.

Texas is now the wind capital of America (though wind still generates only 3% of state electricity) because it streamlined the regulatory and legal snarls that block transmission in other states. By contrast, though Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Ed Rendell adopted wind power as a main political plank, he and Senator Bob Casey are leading a charge to repeal a 2005 law that makes transmission lines slightly easier to build.

Wind power has also become contentious in oh-so-green Oregon, once people realized that transmission lines would cut through forests. Transmissions lines from a wind project on the Nevada-Idaho border are clogged because of possible effects on the greater sage grouse. Similar melodramas are playing out in Arizona, the Dakotas, the Carolinas, Tennessee, West Virginia, northern Maine, upstate New York, and elsewhere.

In other words, the liberal push for alternatives has the look of a huge bait-and-switch. Washington responds to the climate change panic with multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidies for supposedly clean tech. But then when those incentives start to have an effect in the real world, the same greens who favor the subsidies say build the turbines or towers somewhere else. The only energy sources they seem to like are the ones we don't have.

Typical anti-technology hypocritical libs. They are for renewable energy but it cannot be seen or heard. How will electricity be transmitted? Last time I looked, transmission lines are the ONLY way to do this. Do greenies know how electricity is generated and transmitted? Do greenies know that we are using the same electrical transmission lines that were built in the 1950's and hardly any new lines have been built to handle current day electrical loads?

You cannot bury high voltage transmission lines like your buried residential 220V lines that go to your house. It is too hard to maintain and the risks to the people and the grid is too high.

Electricity is the backbone of life here in America.

I guess the greenies do not remember the 2003 blackouts that California was struck with. Electricity from the Pacific North West goes down to California via two high transmission lines. If one of those lines go down, LA and probably the rest of southern California is screwed since the other line cannot handle the load. I doubt the power lines from Nevada/Arizona could handle the load.

In closing, improving an old infrastructure is great and once again the people who would rather let us sit in darkness of the 18th century reveal themselves as liberals. What was the name of that guy who uses 200+ kilowatt hours a month on his house...

Bias at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Moscow-Pullman Daily News publisher Nathan Alford has repeatedly extolled to me the virtues of free speech and the press. But is the press at the Daily News free of bias?

You read these examples and tell me:

In 2005, a letter to the editor from Ed Schweitzer endorsing Wal-Mart was sat on until the day after the Pullman City Council election in which a PARD member was running. The Daily Evergreen published the same letter two weeks before.

A reporter from the Daily News wanted to cover my visit to the Wal-Mart Home Office in April 2006, but an editor killed the story.

A BREO press release last year about a petition from a group of seniors in favor of Wal-Mart was never covered.

Libelous and defamatory comments from PARD members and sympathizers are allowed to be posted and remain posted at Dnews.com in the name of the "Safe Harbor."

So when a reader of this blog wrote a rebuttal to Chris Lupke's latest insane rant against me, what did the Daily News do? Bury it.

Oh, every letter to the editor trampling out the vintage where the sour grapes are stored from Lupke, Orlich, Damm, et. al. gets published. But here's the letter sent in a few weeks ago that you haven't seen in the Daily News:

I read with interest the letter from Christopher Lupke dated July 5, 2008. In the letter he claims the salary he makes is inaccurate. The information on salaries comes from http://lbloom.net/wsu07.html. The information on the web site is gathered from the Washington State Office of Financial Management and is for 2007. I checked both the salary for my husband and myself. According to the website, both were listed correctly. When the list first came out, I also discussed this site with friends who work at WSU and they agreed that the information was correct. Therefore my question is this…is your listed salary too high or too low, Mr. Lupke? Or is it that you are embarrassed to be earning that much money for only nine months of work? According to Mr. Forbes figures the average Pullman family earns $40,709 a year. It certainly makes it difficult to claim non-elite status when you are earning approximately 54% more for nine months of work than the average Pullmanite makes in a year.

As for the comment, “This pig needs to be removed from the trough.” It was written by a commentator to the blog, not Mr. Forbes personally. Many people can post to blogs. This is just a typical example of taking something out of context for your own personal end. Rather similar to what PARD did to Pullman for the last few years by their unseemly lawsuits and their claim of representing the common people of Pullman. At any rate, the comment was meant to show some professors are elitists and make far too much money for the work they do.

If you want the healing to begin, PARD should apologize for holding Pullman hostage and putting our tax base in jeopardy.

I expect this kind of crap from the puerile Watermelon. But a paper run by level-headed adults? I think we can find a better local newspaper.

Pass The Class Hatred, Comrade

Speaking of anti-bourgeoisie manifestos, did anyone catch some of the Pullman League of Women Voter's ballyhooed "non-partisanship" on display in Lenna Harding's colmnn in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News today?

What kind of people can be happy with failure to address some of our country's most basic problems? It is this smug head-in-the-sand satisfaction with the status quo that the author of that message shares with our current leadership that has got us deeper into the morass that I have described. Things are just peachy with them. They have their flashy gas-guzzling SUVs or sports cars along with speedy boats and ATVs that tear up our pristine wilderness. They have enough money to buy corn-fed beef and the latest electronic gadget when it hits the market.

These same head-in-the-sand types often are the same folks who equate pledging allegiance, flag-waving, wearing flag lapel pins with patriotism, and who decry those who don't follow protocol or criticize our leaders as unpatriotic. Like the flowers that bloom in the spring - tra la - these have nothing to do with the case.

Aren't you glad that so-called "progressives" are not bigoted, don't question others patriotism, don't play to stereotypes, don't practice the politics of division, and don't encourage class warfare?

Let me skewer the myth of the wealthy, selfish conservative one more time. A recent study by Arthur C. Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University, found that on average, liberal families annually earn 6 percent more than conservative families. Furthermore, conservative households give 30 percent more money to charity than liberal households.

Watermelon: (Ever)Green on the Outside, Red on the Inside

Couple of interesting quotes from the Opinion page of today's Summer Watermelon, "Pullman's paper of record:"

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”

– Karl Marx

Depressed about the elections? So is Karl.

And

The American people themselves are “the greatest obstacle to progressive change” in America.

Still not too late to stage a takeover, conservative Cougars.

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Anyone can blog, anyone can be a "journalist" in today's over-bloated information age - no matter their training or agenda. Readers beware - sort fact from fiction.

- Vicki Rishling, "Local newspapers are linked to the community," Moscow-Pullman Daily News, June 25, 2008

I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican. But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.

- Tim Groseclose, UCLA political scientist and lead author of a study that found most media outlets have a liberal bias

Anyone who still believes that bloggers are one breed and journalists are another has been living in a cave since roughly 2002.

- Mark Glaser, "Distinction Between Bloggers, Journalists Blurring More Than Ever," PBS, February 28, 2008

"College Republicans wrong to complain"

Here is a letter to the editor from Friday 4/25 in response to Danny's letter and my own letter to the editor on Thursday.

"Editor: Concerning the whining of College Republicans about why they were not awarded among the 20 of the most influential students list, I think it shows a serious lack of respect for those who were awarded to complain that no members won the award......The Evergreen has more than done its job to appease the College Republicans. As most people who have been reading the Evergreen for more than 3 years have noticed, the number of conservative articles has dramatically increased, and the page space for conservative writers overlaps that of the liberal ones by leaps and bounds. This year alone, a person could not open the Evergreen without reading some lowbrow attack on liberals, immigrants, gays or minorities in every opinion column, only to be followed by a far-right diatribe on why we need Jesus and no other god in our lives. Leave the podium with dignity, College Republicans, you’ve had more than your fair share of the limelight."

-Isaac Harrison alumnus, 2005

First off, my letter to the editor did not refute those on top 20 most influential but rather stated that it is ridiculous that the most influential and active group on campus had no members on the list. Of course, today they continued to add the great influential Liberal students such as Alex McDonald to the list, the Evergreen then tried to save face and state that they wanted to add Chris Del Beccaro, but due to time constraints and space they could not. Mr. Isaac Harrison believes that the Evergreen has in the last 3 years seen "the number of conservative articles dramatically increase". He is correct in the fact that maybe they have increased simply because the newspaper slanders the College Republicans even more than they used to. There is 1 positive article for at least every 20 negative ones about us in the newspaper. So congrats Isaac you are correct there are more articles demeaning the most influential group on campus.

Secondly, there is a difference between the Evergreen hiring opinion columnists and those who actually write news articles and do other jobs for the Evergreen, they try to hire 1 Conservative columnist on staff to try to be "balanced" - 1 to about 15 isn't very balanced in my mind though. Also, Isaac your information is a little incorrect in believing that you could not open the "Liberal Green" without reading "some lowbrow attack on liberals, immigrants (illegal aliens is what I think you are referring to), gays or minorities". I was the only Conservative opinion columnist last semester Isaac, and for some reason I don't remember ever attacking gays or minorities - and I never attacked Liberals, just stated the truth. Get a life Isaac and stick to reading your Liberal propaganda rather than attempting to write your poorly thought out letters with complete fallacies and figments of your imagination.