Even the Power Company admits wind is cheaper

High Country News published an article in it's May 2005 issue titled The Great Energy Divide about the challenges consumers face in getting their OWN power companies to build windmills instead of coal fired power plants.

Although an initiative had been voted for by Coloradans, the power companies hadn't made any plans to build any windmills, and kept right on planning to build a number of new coal fired power plants. Apparently, they don't believe that the customer is always right – or in the power of democracy.

One of the biggest opponents of the Colorado publics' desire for windmills has been Xcel Energy. They really want to build another coal fired power plant. But, why?

High Country News states that: “coal has its obvious appeal: It's a known technology, it's reliable and traditionally it's been cheap.

But the price of coal has been rising since 2003. Even the Powder River Basin coal ... the Nation's cheapest – is becoming more expensive. The current breakdown of price per kilowatt hour, according to Xcel's own numbers are: 3 to 4 cents for wind, (and) 4 to 5 cents for coal”

That's right, the company that will more than double its pollution emissions at its Comanche Station when it adds another coal fired power plant, could have done it for cheaper with windmills. These are there own numbers! So, what did they know back in May of 2005 that we didn't know?... They probably knew that the Energy Bill of 2005 would be passed later that year. They knew that sweetheart deals would soon be made in the back rooms of Congress, and that taxpayers would soon be footing the bill in subsidies to make coal cheaper for them again. But definitely not cheaper for us. (Taxpayers are paying the difference.) And most definitely not cheaper when you consider all of the health problems caused by coal pollution that never seem to be included in the power companies' cost accounting.

The lone windmill farm in Lamar, Colorado is owned by a Scottish company – that's right, Scottish. It's now so obvious that the US energy companies have been extraordinarily complacent when it comes to alternative energy. US energy companies don't even know how to build windmills. So, instead of trying to catch up, they've stacked the deck, they've corrupted our government, so that they can keep making profits – no matter how many people get sick, no matter how much our weather is changed, and no matter how much life on our planet dies.

And now they want even more money from us to get us dependent on coal. That's right, they think they can get away with taxpayers paying billions more to them - so that they can continue to CLAIM that coal is cheaper. Check my Nov 10 entry; "Lame Duck Legislation"

Lame Duck Legislation

The good news is; a whole bunch of corrupt politicians just lost their jobs. The bad news is; they still have their jobs till January.

That's right, a whole bunch of lame duck politicians will be looking for work come January... and they really want to impress their future employers – their present lobbyists. Be on yellow alert for some really bad spending bills in the next month.

I'll warn you about one: another Energy Bill.

In case you don't realize how bad the give away of our tax dollars to the big oil, coal, and nuclear companies the Energy Bill of 2005 was, click here. Guess what? Thanks to the Energy Bill of 2005; we got to pay them even more, right when the oil companies were making record profits.

This kind of Energy policy makes no sense whatsoever. Billions of our tax dollars subsidize fossil fuel corporations, they don't have to pay nearly their fair share of taxes and royalties, and they leave an ecological nightmare everywhere they go – for us to live with or clean up ourselves... and Bush just asked for even more for them!

In his recent address, “President” Bush has asked our lame duck congress to rush through another Energy Bill before the end of 2006. See if you can find his request buried in this fluff filled press release from Fox.

This is what information I have on the Energy Bill. It looks like they want to charge us $20 billion to make the big energy companies even richer.

... I'll let you in on a little secret. If they were competing on a level playing field, wind power would be cheaper than coal. (for more info, check my next entry)

In an ideal world, Congress' Energy Bills would support wind, solar, wave, and geothermal energy. In our world, we tax these technologies and subsidize their dirty, low-tech competition.

Department of the Inferiors?

How could those bureaucrats in Washington ignore their own people in the field, and order the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to all drop their protests against the Las Vegas Water Grab? It was just wrong. It ought to have been illegal. But, it was also just the tip of the iceberg... That's right, there's much more.

Check out the news releases on the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility website. The list goes on and on. If it weren't for people like the ones who ultimately work for the Department of the Interior, and still have the nerve to stand for what they feel is right – we wouldn't even know about most of these subjects.

Most recently, there have been two scandals at the Department of the Interior (DoI). I'll tell you the smokescreen scandal first. It's about nothing important. And its implementation was designed to aggravate conservatives, so they wouldn't notice the second scandal. The scandal I'm speaking of is, of course, the DoI internet porn scandal. Apparently, DoI employees watch too much internet porn at work. So, the DoI computers now block out all that internet porn – and a few conservative blogs... a few conservative blogs? What? Do you understand “wag the dog?” Sure, this story got a lot of press. But the real story was that honest employees of DoI are in open rebellion against the corruption they've witnessed.

Auditors for the DoI claim that, since 1998, 1.3 Billion dollars was not collected in royalties, and have taken it upon themselves to personally sue more than 20 oil companies, on behalf of taxpayers. Even the DoI's inspector General has testified that “short of a crime, anything goes” at the Department of the Interior.

Members of Congress have called for a hearing on the DoI's “pattern of corruption.” To hear their press release (which I highly recommend), Follow this link, scroll down to the player, and then scroll down ¼ of the way down the player to “House Democrats call for hearings on alleged DoI misconduct.” Yes... They are Democrats. But, somebody was going to have to do something. And the Republican “Congress has failed to oversee the corrupt activities of this administration.”

There could be as much as 80 Billion dollars at stake – money that taxpayers will have to make up for. As you might have expected, Republican Chairman Richard Pombo didn't want a hearing. But, we got one.

DoI “bungling” as Time magazine calls it, has been going on for quite some time. Some of these people go back to the Reagan years. And historically, corruption and the DoI go way, way back. Do you remember your history lessons about the Teapot Dome scandal?

Native Americans have known about the DoI for a long time. We've been trying to warn you. But since, for the past hundred years, the royalties haven't been paid to Indians – nobody paid much attention.

The Black Mesa Indigenous Support website states: “all across the nation billions of dollars in American Indian royalty funds remain unaccounted for, and many tribes are accusing the Interior Department of mismanaging the funds. The Bush administration has actually intervened in a Navajo Nation lawsuit against Peabody that produced evidence that company engaged in backdoor deals with the Interior Department and diminished Navajo royalties since 1985. A U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Interior Department violated its trust responsibility when it engaged in these deals. The Bush administration says a ruling ordering the government to make payments to the Navajo Nation to replace lost royalties would be too costly and could lead to similarly expensive rulings favoring other tribes that share royalties with other energy companies.”

Yeah... But, wouldn't that be the right thing to do? They want us to pay our taxes, don't they? I know that it “would be too costly” wouldn't work on the bottom line of my IRS form.

Hey, I have an idea. Let's replace the IRS with the DoI, tell them to keep up the good work, and we won't have to pay our taxes.

Will you vote FOR pollution?

Congressman Gibbons recently decided that mercury was no longer a poison. His report to congress stated, more or less, that one hundred years of scientific studies and health damage observed were actually wrong – and that mercury is relatively safe. His buddies in the oil, coal power and gold mining industry, of course, had nothing to do with his report... of course.

Gibbons was also involved with the Mojave Generating Station – one of the dirtiest coal fired power plants in the US. (scroll down the Jan 11, 2006 blog entry "Reveiw Journal wants to poison Ely kids with mercury" Although the companies involved (including Sierra Pacific) promised to clean up the plant in 1999, the plant was eventually shut down – because they wouldn't install the equipment that would have reduced “air” pollution.

Oh yeah, Gibbons supported the give away to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries by supporting the 2005 Energy Bill

Gibbon's opponnent, however, claims to be against pollution. Dina Titus' website states that “Dina Titus will appoint a Public Utilities Commission that enforces Nevada’s law requiring electric utilities to provide 20 percent of their power from the clean, renewable energy sources of geothermal, solar and wind power by the year 2015”

I believe that:

Religious texts should be appreciated more for their beauty than their authority.

Historical reviews should be appreciated more for their present relevency than their patriotic expediency.

Corporate publications should be appreciated more for their hidden motivations than their dubious "facts."

And political speeches should be ignored... Don't watch the lips, watch the hands.
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A Vote For Real Democracy

This is not a Democrat or a Republican thing. This is not a conservative or a liberal thing. That's the spin. That's how they keep us arguing amongst ourselves.

No, this time it's literally about the integrity of our democracy. This time it's about fairness. This time it's about true freedom and justice. This time it's about what America really stands for.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote an article, titled Was The 2004 Election Stolen?, published in the June 15, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone. In the article, he wrote of Nevada; “Sproul & Associates, a GOP-paid consultancy, shredded Democratic voter registrations... Electronic voting machines in the state's two most populous, Democratic-leaning counties recorded no presidential vote on 10,000 ballots.” Exit polls in Nevada showed Kerry leading by 7.5%, yet Bush won Nevada by 2.6%. This is statistically unheard of – and it happened in a number of States.

Your side may have won the election in 2004. But, if they had to cheat to win; no one really wins. Would you be willing to lose your Democracy for your side to win? If you are; remember, someday the tables will turn on you. Majority rule (with strong minority rights) is a flawed and imperfect way to govern – but, minority rule (with few majority rights) is much worse.

The Secretary of State Project states: “Katherine Harris. Ken Blackwell... these two Secretaries of State,” (of Florida and Ohio) “each chair of Mr. Bush's presidential campaigns in their respective States, made damaging partisan decisions about purging voter rolls, registration of new voters, voting machine security, the location of the precincts, the allocation of the voting machines, and dozens of other critical matters”

“In recent pivotal elections, Republicans have relied upon their control of the Secretary of State position to dramatically influence voting and to block implementation of voter-verified paper trails. The results have been catastrophic for the nation.”

The Secretary of State Project recommends Ross Miller for Secretary of State in Nevada. Click here to read why.

Shall We Let Desperation or Hope Be Our Motivation?

In the past two days, I have been to two upscale restaurant openings, and a meeting with the candidates for the local elections. The food was great, and the restaurants' atmosphere was better than I had ever enjoyed in the town of Ely. However, at the meeting with the candidates, I felt that some of the incumbent candidates still felt that they were living in the old Ely.

Like many old Western mining towns, Ely has had to live with the desperation of the local mine closing. When times were bad, it wouldn't have been difficult to wonder if Ely would end up another Nevada ghost town. But it didn't happen. Although the local economy is still heavily dependent upon the mine, money is coming in from tourism and growth of the retirement community.

I have been predicting for the past five years that Ely was on the verge of an economic renaissance. It didn't take a crystal ball. The town is about as far away from the big city as you can get in the United States. There are no freeways. There is no Wal Mart. There is no smog. People recognize you when you walk down the street – and you're not afraid to walk down the street. Millions of city people would love to live like this. It was just a matter of time before people started moving here.

As a relatively new resident myself, I recognize some things that the locals may not see. This place is beautiful. And unlike most of the rest of the country, so much of this vast area is so pristine.

The town is growing, ever faster – because it is such a nice place to be. The infrastructure to support a tourism industry is developing too. Just stop by Maggie's for a meal, and you'll see what I mean. So, why cripple what we have, and what we can create; for dangerous, antiquated coal fired power plants – that we don't even need?

Think about it. In just a few years, we will stop building coal fired power plants. Face it, they're dirty. Their effluents are poisonous. Clean coal is an oxymoron. This attempt to shove through over a hundred coal fired power plants onto America, is a last ditch, desperate attempt to force consumers into a dependency on coal. America will eventually catch on. Hopefully, White Pine County will catch on before our homeland is despoiled.

Yes, coal fired power plants will bring in a few hundred jobs (most of them temporary). But a beautiful and healthy homeland will eventually attract thousands of new residents and hundreds of thousands of tourists.

Ely is on the verge of becoming a major stop on a tour of the West. Think of it; San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, to Ely, to Moab, and on to either Crested Butte, Durango, Santa Fe, or the Grand Circle, and maybe Vegas. I'm not speculating. This is already happening.

So, how do we want to perceive our situation? Do we want to see our community through the eyes of the desperation of our past... or hope for our future?

White Pine County doesn't need coal fired power plants to be prosperous. But, if we have the sludge ponds and the smog, and no water, what will make us unique from the rest of the country? If we lose what makes this place special, people will stop coming here. Nevada is not a wasteland... unless we permit it to become one.