Both Cap and Trade and the proposed Carbon tax will raise the price of electric service. All the Corporations will do is tack their costs onto our bill. Most Public Utility companies are allowed a percentage of current assets for their calculating prices in order to obtain the legally mandated maximum profit. Any modification of the present process engineering design will increase costs and not produce as much electrical power for the thermodynamic load. Result: Increased costs to the consumer. Can we afford that? That is the question. Can we afford to not? Which alternative provides the best results for the lowest cost to the consumer?

You have a point, Aliceinwonderland! Actually, several. But with the preponderance of would-be "hang-em high" willing jurors out there....they are much better without me as a juror anyway.

Pal -- Once again, there has never been a building like the WTC, before or since. Building 7 has the electrical substation for all of lower manhattan. Building 7 could have brought down the other towers. I think these two things can explain everything but the thermite.

Aliceinwonderland ~ The Flying Spaghetti Monster can take anyone/anything down. That's one bowl of pasta you don't want to get boiling mad.

Doctor can easily check online reviews. Even if you leave your computer or the Internet to find valuable information and useful facts are not open. Even the family doctor review websites free to use and you can use them if you want. They are a great place to meet people who seek treatment are exceptional.

Looking at the list of the 10 poorest states, all except Montana are east of (or border on) the Mississippi River. That means they are older states. Those nine also happen to be concentrated in the South. This is significant: They were all slaveholding states. They focused on producing commodities, whereas the northern states produced more value-added goods, more manufactured goods, more capital-intensive goods. Combined with national policies that conferred economic advantages on the relatively industrialized, higher capitalized North—policies that created some of the friction that led to the Civil War—the South’s economic development lagged.

As is common in societies based on producing raw commodities, the Old South had an elite that owned the land and employed a poorly educated workforce to plant, tend, and harvest the crops. Historically, then, education was of less importance, and therefore emphasized less, in the South than in the North—a trend that contributed ongoing economic advantages to the North.

After the Civil War, Republican carpetbaggers from the North kicked around the defeated South, further widening the economic gap between the two regions. One political consequence was that the Deep South was monolithically Democratic for the next century. Only in the last generation, when the secular counterculture took over the Democratic Party, did many Southerners finally bury the distant past and register as Republicans.

In short, those nine erstwhile slaveholding states have been lagging behind the northern states economically for two centuries. Just because one generation of leaning Republican has not eliminated a disparity that was entrenched for centuries, it is not an indictment of Republicans.

As for Montana, whose people elect Democrats and Republicans to statewide office with almost equal frequency, its economic status has a geographical cause. Montana is remote and its climate is harsh; consequently, it has never attracted enough people to achieve an economic “critical mass” to advance much beyond the commodity-related businesses of farming, ranching, and mining. That is why it has lagged economically—not because of anything Republicans have done.

Another common mistake in economic analysis, seen often, for example, in the (irrational) rationale that liberals use when resisting cuts in marginal tax rates, is to adopt a static rather than dynamic view—to see life and economic conditions in terms of snapshots rather than as a motion picture. In the politically motivated attempt to blame Republicans for the lower incomes in the 10 poorest states, Thom Hartmann have taken one snapshot—of the census’ income statistics—and combined it with another snapshot—of current political leanings—to create the impression that Republican policies make America poorer.

The more important factor is not the economic ranking of states at a point in time, but the overall trends. An important article by John Merline compared the economic performance of blue states and red states during the presidency of Barack Obama. The trend of economic indicators clearly favors Republican states. Democratic states have experienced lower growth in both jobs and income in the last few years. Home prices have fallen further in blue states, and their unemployment rates are higher. In other words, a dynamic economic analysis of the states casts a far more favorable light on Republican states than static analysis. Since real life is dynamic, not static, Republicans can make the stronger case about which party is best suited to lead the way to greater prosperity.

The most fundamental difference between the data that conservatives prefer—that the 10 poorest cities are longtime Democratic strongholds—and the data that liberals will be more inclined to cite—that the 10 poorest states are predominantly Republican, is that conservatives can point to actual policies that Democrats implemented that contributed to the impoverishment of the cities, while the liberals cannot point to specific GOP policies that have caused the poorer states to lag behind.

The Democratic case is illusory and circumstantial; the Republican case is solid and substantial. However, in a country where so many people are economically and historically illiterate, combined with the human proclivity whereby “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” (Paul Simon, “The Boxer”), the Democrats may be able to score some points with a hollow argument. The Republicans, though, have the facts on their side.

I finally found a credible source for what to do if you are going to turn 65 and will be transitioning to Medicare from the ACA Marketplace insurance companies.

Quote healthcare.gov:
If you have a Marketplace plan, you can keep it until your Medicare coverage starts. Then you can cancel it without penalty.

If you like, you can keep your Marketplace plan too. But if you’ve been getting tax credits or lower out-of-pocket costs on a plan you bought through the Marketplace, these savings will end once your Medicare Part A coverage starts. You’d have to pay full price for the Marketplace plan.

Canceling your Marketplace plan

Once your Medicare coverage starts, you can cancel your Marketplace health plan without penalty. You can do this by contacting the Marketplace call center or cancelling your coverage online.

If you have Medicare coverage, you’re considered covered under the health care law. You won’t have to pay the fee that some people without insurance must pay.

Be sure not to cancel your Marketplace plan before your Medicare coverage begins. Otherwise you may have a gap in coverage.

https://www.healthcare.gov/what-if-i-have-a-marketplace-plan-but-will-be...

Those $200-per-pill medications might as well not exist if scarcely anyone can afford them.

I know an old woman, in her late 80s, with an inoperable cyst on her spine that causes her lots of pain. The 24-hour topical pain patches she needs are $100 each. That's anywhere from $2800 to $3100 a month if she goes through one each day.

It is inhumane to hold people's medicines hostage for fucking profit. When will we all have had enough of this disgusting, cruel racket?! - AIW

Palin, you speak my language. I love it! Let 'er rip. - AIW

Chuckle8: So, I suppose you must think that it is all the Republican's fault that this country has turned into a dystopia where the government spies on us, can assassinate anyone the President thinks is worthy of being assassinated, that the many whistle blowers that have reported on government wrong doing should be prosecuted, etc? Was it the Republicans who forced Obama to take the people who were responsible for most of the economic criminality in the US into his cabinet to be his economic advisers?

You can spout that list of things you've mentioned before but it is token bullshit as far as I am concerned. The really important things have been ignored....like single payer health care, laws to keep banksters and wall streetsters in check, laws to keep jobs in this country and not overseas, laws to force wealthy people and corporations to keep their money in the US and force them to pay their fair share of taxes. As far as I am concerned, the Dems wasted their time on relatively unimportant things in those 13 weeks. The Dems lost out because the people were sick and tired of the Dems playing their games of deception. That's why people didn't turn out en masse to vote for them. I think that many people are on to them and know that neither party is going to go to bat for them. I think many people realize that both parties are owned by the ruling elite and you can't believe anything they say anymore. And as long as they keep fooling people to vote for one party or the other, things will only get much worse for us.

Pal -- For the 13 weeks the dems were in power they did so many good things. That fact (do you need the list?) does not ring true with your belief. This was in spite of the fact that they were fooled in to believing the repugs were negotiating in good faith. The repugs were only negotiating because they had no power. The prime example of this is the 800 billion stimulus package that had 200 billion in tax cuts.

I just hope and pray this country and all countries do more than necessary,

or unfortunately would be forced

into not becoming the frog in the boiling water, so to speak.

A species that looks ahead and acts accordingly based on our best knowledge.

Instead of waiting until the cost is too high or irreversible.

Or both. the hesitation to not do everything possible is sad.