Time for Texas’ leaders to support important wind-power tax credit

Editor’s Note: This article was written by Andy Bowman, the President of my company.   Time for Texas’ leaders to support important wind-power tax credit.    What if our leaders spent $7 billion on a new superhighway that would better connect key parts of Texas to create trade, jobs, investment and tax revenue — but then decided, after all the money was committed and the highway had been built, to take steps to make sure it wouldn’t be used? Most people would say that makes no sense at all.    But that is exactly what is happening with Texas’ new electricity transmission … Continue reading this post

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White House Gun Control Petition Becomes Site’s Most Popular Ever

Editor’s Note: Please sign this important petition here. White House Gun Control Petition Becomes Sites Most Popular Ever. A pro-gun control petition submitted on Friday through the White House’s “We the People” platform has quickly emerged as the most popular cause ever championed on the website. User David G. launched the effort hours after a shooter entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. and gunned down 26 people, including 20 young children. It quickly surged past the 25,000 signatures needed to warrant a White House reaction and has since secured more than 150,000 supporters. The petition, one of a number of similar efforts calling for action … Continue reading this post

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In Chicago, Bill Clinton calls for national grid to boost renewable energy (repost from Midwest Energy News)

In Chicago, Bill Clinton calls for national grid to boost renewable energy | Midwest Energy News. CHICAGO — Former President Bill Clinton invoked the ancient Sumerians, campaign stops at wind-blown Texas border towns, the looming budgetary fiscal cliff and an eclectic assortment of other concepts while proselytizing for more investments in the grid and clean energy, during his speech at the Wind on the Wires gala in Chicago Wednesday night. Veering between big picture philosophical conclusions and wonkish descents into policy details and proposals, Clinton made the case that renewable energy is symbolic of a struggle central to human nature: “a constant … Continue reading this post

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The World Energy Report’s scariest findings – Salon.com

Editor’s Note: Buried deep in this Salon.com article is this very disturbing point:  Even if governments take vigorous steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded, the continuing increase in fossil fuel consumption will result in “a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C.” This should stop everyone in their tracks. Most scientists believe that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius is about all the planet can accommodate without unimaginably catastrophic consequences: sea-level increases that will wipe out many coastal cities, persistent droughts that will destroy farmland on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their … Continue reading this post

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First 15 years of renewables subsidies small fraction of first 15 years of fossil/nuclear subsidies

An excellent report released in September 2011 by private equity firm DBL Investors sheds new light on the history of federal subsidies for various energy sources and technologies.  One unique finding was particularly instructive in today’s debate about renewable energy tax credits and other investments in renewables: The below graph shows investment in various technologies as a percentage of the federal budget in the first 15 years of subsidies for each technology, allowing for a comparison of subsidies for renewables in the first 15 years of renewable subsidies with subsidies for other energy sources in the first 15 years of those … Continue reading this post

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How to Live Without Irony (the perils of hipsterdom)

  How to Live Without Irony By CHRISTY WAMPOLE (from the Opionon Pages of the New York Times, originally posted here)  Leif Parsons If irony is the ethos of our age — and it is — then the hipster is our archetype of ironic living. The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several … Continue reading this post

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Iowa scientists: Drought a sign of climate change

Note: As I’ve outlined in an essay you can find here, the huge and mounting costs of climate change and global warming are external costs that would be included in the market for oil & gas if those markets were actually functioning correctly.  This is a great example of unpriced consequences of fossil fuels and why it’s factually wrong to say things like “coal is cheaper than wind” because the market price for coal power electricity isn’t reflecting the true cost, an example of market failure. Posted on November 20, 2012 at 6:41 am by Associated Press in Climate Change, global warming DES MOINES, Iowa … Continue reading this post

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Obama’s Opportunity – possibilities and pitfalls of the next 2 months

Within hours of Obama’s reelection on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) interpreted the Obama win and Democratic victory in the Senate by declaring that the election is not a mandate for Obama’s policies and that Obama’s job now is to propose something that will pass the GOP controlled House. The next day, House Speaker John Boehner (R) declared, in conciliatory tones, that the high-income tax increases on which Obama ran and was reelected was a non-starter. Meanwhile, the “fiscal cliff” looms around the corner.  On January 1, 2013, the U.S. economy will be jolted by the convergence of the expiration … Continue reading this post

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512 Paths to the White House (Interactive Tool)

The NYTimes has an incredible interactive tool that graphically shows the paths to victory as you enter election results into the tool.  To start with, Obama has 431 paths to victory while Romney has 76 paths.  But as you select the winner/loser in each election, you see the remaining paths dwindle until a winner is certain. I’ll be using this live while watching election results.  I had put my own post together along these sames lines here, though it did not benefit from this high-graphics, interactive approach that the NYTimes has put together. Very cool!  

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Make Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan Work

Check out this excellent tool that lets you try to make Romney’s tax plan work by selecting the cuts and deductions you would need to add up to pay for Romney’s tax cuts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/31/interactive-make-mitt-romneys-tax-plan-add-up/

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