Showing posts with label domestic energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label domestic energy. Show all posts

24 November 2011

I'm Looking For A Team in 2012

That can insure the continuation of the American Dream, not some pipe-dream socialist utopia where everyone is equally miserable. Right now, it appears to me that Herman Cain has the potential and the documented successes needed to head that team. I'm less concerned about foreign policy. I'm most concerned about domestic energy and jobs, domestic security and how much longer the America I grew up in will be allowed to exist if something isn't done in 2012.

I will be supporting Herman Cain in his bid to become the Republican nominee in 2012, because he is NOT a professional politician and seems to have a grasp of economics. I hope he knows we expect him to choose advisors experienced in the fields where he is deficient.

The time for career politicians and their handlers to go the way of the dodo bird has come. The Founders never intended for our system to become the monster it is.

They certainly didn't intend for people like the Prince of Pomegrantes Harry Reid and Princess of Pineapples Nancy Lugosi to ever carve a foothold wherein they became incredibly rich and stayed forever. The sense of entitlement, arrogance and uppityness that emanates from these two is so overwhelming, it causes nausea in most normal Americans and vapors and swooning in the ones who believe in it. They are no more intelligent than any other citizen, probably less intelligent than most, and certainly are as dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to handling the economy. They might know more than me in some areas but they are certainly not more intelligent.

I'm a well-employed, happy worker with a wife and two kids who are also well-employed happy workers. We love what we do; we do it well and we are adequately compensated for that effort, in spite of the governments attempts to take as much as they can.

I believe Herman Cain will be good for the economic well-being of America. Once that is secured and we are self-sufficient in energy production, America will be safe.

21 December 2009

FACES of Coal

A Message From FACES of Coal
As 2009 draws to a close, we would like to thank you for your support of FACES of Coal and your efforts to ensure that lawmakers and the American people understand that coal energizes our nation and fuels our economy.

Since we launched our campaign in August,

  • 40,000 individuals have registered as members of FACES of Coal;
  • 104 organizations, including chambers of commerce, fiscal courts, manufacturers and retailers, support our coalition; and
  • 1,349 lawmakers representing 44 states have received 30,000 e-mails and letters in support of coal.

Washington bureaucrats have still taken no action on dozens of mining permits that have been arbitrarily stalled. Our legislators have still not delivered the balanced energy and economic policy we need and deserve.

The future of coal mining in America remains uncertain, and we need you to continue writing and calling your elected representatives (you can do so now by clicking the link below). Remind them our holiday lights are shining bright because of the affordable electricity generated by coal.

And we can provide good food and gifts to our families and friends in our warm homes, because of the good jobs sustained by coal.

Thank you for your efforts to protect our jobs and secure our future.

We wish you and yours a happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year.

Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security(FACES of Coal)

Click the link below to log in and send your message:

http://www.votervoice.net/link/target/faces39210323.aspx

05 November 2009

Heritage Morning Bell - Cap and Tax

Cap And Trade’s Mandates And Subsidies Are Wrong
Following major defeats at the ballot box on Tuesday, the left’s legislative agenda suffered another huge setback yesterday when once wavering Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Susan Collins (R-ME) all signed a letter supporting Sen. George Voinovich’s (R-OH) demand that the Environmental Protection Agency provide a thorough analysis of how the Kerry-Boxer cap and trade legislation will impact the U.S. economy. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had been pressing for swift passage of her cap and tax legislation, but conservatives on the Environment and Public Works Committee thwarted her efforts by boycotting a vote on the legislation Tuesday.

An EPA analysis on the economic costs of cap and trade is no small issue. If Tuesday’s elections proved anything, it is that jobs and economic growth are the top concern on Americans’ minds. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis has found that cap and tax legislation would cost the average family-of-four almost $3,000 per year, cause 2.5 million net job losses by 2035, and a produce a cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) loss of $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035. The EPA has issued preliminary reports reaching different conclusions; including an October 23 report on Kerry-Boxer that found it would only cost the average American family $80 to $111 dollars per year.

There are many fundamental problems with that EPA report, none more glaring than their fanciful assumption that nuclear power generation will nearly double in the next 25 years. This is the equivalent of about 100 additional nuclear power plants. The reality is that in the past 30 years, not one new nuclear power plant has been licensed. More importantly, the Kerry-Boxer approach to reviving the nuclear energy relies on the same failed policies that have crippled the U.S. nuclear energy for the past 30 years. Heritage fellows Jack Spencer and Nick Loris explain:

Washington has a role to play in reducing financial barriers, but not by funding projects with taxpayer dollars. The regulatory costs and uncertainty posed by the federal bureaucracy represent significant risk to the success of the nuclear industry, just as regulatory uncertainty significantly affected the timing and budget of past nuclear plant construction. Indeed, this risk and uncertainty results in the higher prices that are most often used to justify government subsidies for nuclear projects. Efforts to reduce that risk by reforming the most obvious areas, such as the regulatory process and waste management, are nowhere to be found in the bill.

Instead, the bill attempts to reduce the financial risk caused by regulatory delays and technological development by expanding the federal government’s responsibility — and authority — on the technical side. It promotes government intervention into areas that are either unnecessary or that should reside solely in the private sector. For example, the Boxer-Kerry bill creates a research and development program to assess plant aging, improve plant performance, engineer safer fuels, and lower overall costs. These are all areas currently being addressed by the private sector and already supported by public institutions and funds.

Instead of handing out more government subsidies to compensate for increased government regulation, Congress should be heading in the exact opposite direction. What the nuclear industry really needs is an end to market distorting loan guarantees, a streamlined permit process for new plants and reactor designs, market reforms for nuclear waste management, and the ability to recycle spent fuel. America can create thousands of new jobs through an expansion of the energy sector. But just as with oil, coal, and natural gas, the less government intervention in the market, the better.

30 October 2009

Kill Cap and Trade

Save the planet? Kill cap-and-trade
Examiner Editorial October 30, 2009

If members of Congress need yet another reason to kill the Waxman-Markey bill, the Obama administration's economy-suffocating, job-destroying energy program, Princeton University's Tim Searchinger and his colleagues have a humdinger: Carbon reduction laws encourage widespread deforestation as trees and other vegetation are harvested to produce energy from biomass to replace oil and gas. The problem is that in long run, this process actually increases greenhouse gas emissions, which cap-and-trade is meant to reduce, according to Searchinger.

The Princeton researcher's paper, published Oct. 23 in Science, points out that almost all prior global warming studies failed to take into account the carbon emissions that result from converting cropland and forests to energy production. This accounting error treats all bio-energy as carbon-neutral, the authors say, despite the fact that burning wood and clearing land actually releases quite a large quantity of carbon into the atmosphere.

"By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years," the Princeton authors say. "Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%." Neither the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nor existing European cap-and-trade programs have taken into account widespread deforestation as farmers worldwide respond to the new economic incentives, Searchinger added.