Obama Set to Cost Each of Us Hundreds a Year in Higher Electric Costs

-By Warner Todd Huston

Barack Obama’s avalanche of needless regulations on coal-fueled power plants are going into effect and the net result will be the closing of hundreds of power plants all across the country just when our need for power is increasing. This will absolutely necessitate the cost of our power to skyrocket. But, this is exactly what he wants. He wants to rape us for our power. He said so from the beginning.

Well, now that he’s had the opportunity to put into place just some of the new rules and regulations he wants — and he’s only pushed through a tiny bit of what he really wants, indeed — we are already seeing the results of his attack on us.

Look to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland where six coal-fueled power plants are being shut down by FirstEnergy because the retrofitting the power plants will have to undergo to satisfy Obama’s whims is just too expensive to justify.
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Obama Set to Cost Each of Us Hundreds a Year in Higher Electric Costs”


PG&E Wants Higher Rates Even While Collecting Millions for Improvements Never Made?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Since the several disastrous accidents that claimed the lives of too many Californians, Pacific Gas & Electric has been fighting criticism over its dismal safety record. In response, the energy provider cried poor and said it needed billions for upgrades and repairs and wanted ratepayers to pay even more for its services. But a new report says that PG&E collected millions from ratepayers for repairs and improvements that it never actually made.

Early last year PG&E got a large rate increase, but by August the energy provider was at it again asking for an additional $2.2 billion for upgrades, repairs, and improving its explosion-prone delivery system, a cost to be born on the backs of the ratepayers.

This January, though, the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) reported that PG&E has already collected half a billion dollars that was supposed to go to these repairs and upgrades yet the repairs were never made.
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PG&E Wants Higher Rates Even While Collecting Millions for Improvements Never Made?”


PG&E’s Catastrophic Failure of Public Trust By Company and Government Both

-By Warner Todd Huston

Another in a long line of explosions and other catastrophic safety failures occurred at the end of September when a natural gas pipeline built and owned by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) ruptured in Roseville, California. This is just of a piece of the failure of PG&E to ensure public safety, a failure that the so-called government watchdog agency set up to watch the utility, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), has seemingly done little to mitigate.

Now, not only has PG&E failed to safeguard the public, but the company is insisting that ratepayers foot the bill for repairs and new safety programs to the tune of some $2.2 billion. Government watchdog CPUC seems wholly content to stand aside while they do it.

Michael R. Peevey, President of the CPUC, has been at the helm of the regulatory commission during many of the worst failures of public safety. Yet, even as he’s claimed he intends to make major changes in the agency, Governor Jerry Brown has not sacked Peevey whose term ends in 2014. The question is, why?

Peevey has been a disaster. Peevey has reigned over some of the most disastrous failures which have caused the deaths of nearly a dozen Californians, his softened stance seems to have allowed PG&E to act with impunity and arrogance, all to no good effect for ratepayers pocketbooks and their very safety.
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PG&E’s Catastrophic Failure of Public Trust By Company and Government Both”


The ‘Solar Decathalon’ That Needed a Gas Generator for Cloudy Days

-By Warner Todd Huston

What happens when the sun refuses to shine on a PR event for solar power…

Yeah, look to the right under the sign. Yep, that’s a gas generator powering the “solar” sign.

Brett Jacobson was alerted to this hilarious example of the unviable nature of solar power as a reliable source of energy.

It was too deliciously funny to ignore.
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The ‘Solar Decathalon’ That Needed a Gas Generator for Cloudy Days”


EPA to Give Itself Powers to Preemptively Deny Natural Resource Development?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Once again an Obama regulatory agency tries to give itself wild new powers, powers that would crush American energy and natural resource development, powers meant to quash the business sector.

A press release from Resourceful Earth News imparts a warning about the Environmental Protection Agency’s newest powergrab. A lfet-wing Democrat Senator is asking the EPA to accept the idea of taking upon itself the power to deny mining or development of other natural resources before any scientific studies or any permitting procedures even begin. This Senator wants the EPA to just say no because, well, simply because it feels like it.

This effort is at the behest of Washington Senator Maria Cantwell (Dem.) who is urging the EPA to invoke the Clean Water Act to put a permanent end to the development of Pebble Mine in Alaska. Pebble Mine owners have already spent $120 million over three years to satisfy federal and state government regulations. Expensive and expansive scientific studies and environmental studies have already been conducted but now that the EPA has agreed to launch its scientific analysis of the mine, Cantwell wants the EPA to preempt the environmental review process the EPA itself put in place and simply decide to prevent the operation of the mine out of hand with no science needed to back it up.
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EPA to Give Itself Powers to Preemptively Deny Natural Resource Development?”


Solyndra: Green Jobbery, Green Robbery

-By Warner Todd Huston

We have come to learn something about our president. He really loves green. But what we can’t quite decipher is if that green is green jobs and energies or just the good old fashioned green of tax money. Whatever the case, it sure is true that the green of U.S. tax dollars is far more prevalent with “O” than those mythical green jobs he’s trying to fund with it and this mess with failed green company Solyndra is revealing quite a lot.

Now, firstly lets dispense with the left’s weak defense of this whole Solyndra mess, shall we?

Left-wing organization The Center for American Progress is trying to take the spotlight off Obama and Biden and off the current administration’s culpability for the millions in tax dollars given Solyndra by informing everyone that the first time a federal loan to the green company was broached was during the waning weeks of George W. Bush’s presidency.
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Solyndra: Green Jobbery, Green Robbery”


No Spark: The Unanswered Questions of the Chevy Volt

-By Warner Todd Huston

Every time we turn around these days President Obama is touting the idea that the “future” of America lies in green energy and one of those greenie ideas is an Obama favorite: electric cars. Not to let him down, Government Motors has obliged by pushing the Chevy Volt as the car of the future. But thus far the future looks a lot like GM’s present; a whole lot of failure leaving a whole lot of questions.

While Obama continues to tout his — meaning our — investment in GM others are not so sanguine. For instance, billionaire Warren Buffet has invested in a Chinese electric car company instead of putting his considerable investment acumen to use with the Chevy Volt. Buffet may be a dolt on taxes, but apparently his investing senses haven’t gotten any spark from the Volt.

One of the reasons that Buffet went for the Chinese company is that some of its technology seems superior to various systems of the Chevy Volt. According to Forbes, Buffet has targeted the company because the, “car can travel 186 miles, more than the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, on a single charge with a top speed of 87 miles per hour.”
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No Spark: The Unanswered Questions of the Chevy Volt”


Temporary Limit on Lightbulb Ban Passes House

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a small step in the right direction, the House of Representatives passed a provision to defund the 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, denying the government the funds to enforce the new lightbulb standards that would have levied a defacto ban on incandescent bulbs.

Of course, the problem is that this is a temporary, stopgap measure not a full solution. This defunding process will have to be repeated every year or the lightbulb standards will slip into effect anyway. This amendment does not eliminate the new EPA standards, but it does give manufacturers of the bulbs and retailers of the same another year to sell their product without the weight of Big Brother coming down upon their heads.

The amendment to the 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Act was put forward by Rep. Michael Burgess (R, Texas) and passed on a voice vote on Friday morning, July 15.
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Temporary Limit on Lightbulb Ban Passes House”


Obama’s Plan To Make Your Electric Bills Jump 60 Percent

-By Warner Todd Huston

Only a few days ago I wrote about how Obama’s new EPA rules would force Americans to pay up to 60% more on their electric bills. This weekend, the Chicago Tribune said the same thing.

Leading off saying, “Consumers could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40 to 60 percent in the next few years,” the Trib went on to highlight the same destructive EPA rules I wrote about on Friday.

Coal-fired plants historically have been one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity, but operating costs are expected to increase significantly because of upgrades needed on older plants to meet new environmental regulations. The Illinois Power Agency estimates that by 2017 the energy portion of bills could jump 65 percent from today’s rates.

But one thing the Tribune did not mention. Obama campaigned on forcing us to pay that 60% more on our electric bills. Obama wants to bankrupt the electric industry, he wants us to lose jobs, he wants us to be soaked to pay more for our energy. He wants this because he feels America should be taken down a notch or two He wants to hobble this country. It’s what he’s said since day one… (See the following video)
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Obama’s Plan To Make Your Electric Bills Jump 60 Percent”


Will a Lloyd Dobler Economy Save Us?

-By Beth Shaw

Will a Lloyd Dobler economy save us? That’s the question being asked around the internet today and we can surely expect more of that sort of question as we are seeing more and more headlines of looming economic disaster, both nationally and globally.

What is getting in the way of the United States creating, building, producing and hiring?
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Will a Lloyd Dobler Economy Save Us?”