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Yes, those are good numbers, I thought Thom's claim about reducing electricity prices was bogus. You don't add an expensive Cap-and-Trade system without prices going up - one way or another, politicans often like to hide those cost increases, but they are still there.
A common fallacy amongst the religious greens and spin doctor politicians is their belief that correlation = causation. BC politicians always likes to claim how successful their Carbon tax has been at reducing emissions. But in fact almost all of the reduction are accountable by the recession of 2008 and increased exporting of industry overseas. As with Obama's lower emissions claims, as well some replacement of Coal with NG, but Obama's spin doctors don't count the high GHG potential of methane emissions from Shale Gas. And increased coal exports, not counted.
I think it really all depends on just how serious Mr. Trump is about becoming president. Right now, "The Donald" has the spotlight and he's saying what a lot of people are thinking. But how will this pan out in the long run? While he says what people think on one hand, in the very next breath he says something completely crazy. It makes me wonder just how serious he really is and whether he thinks of this as some sort of PR game to feed his ego. Also, the powers that be which control access to the White House and run the government aren't going to let anyone serious about real reform anywhere near the levers of power. It just ain't gonna happen. You can talk about it all you want, but to actually intend to do it? Not a chance.
According to the US Dept. of Energy, the average retail price for electricity in the US is 9.84 cents/kWh. The nine states that make up the RGGI, are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Delaware and Maryland. The average retail price paid by consumers in those states are:
Maine—11.8 cents/kWh
New Hampshire—14.2 cents/kWh
Vermont—14.2 cents/kWh
Massachusetts—13.8 cents/kWh
Rhode Island—12.7 cents/kWh
Connecticut --15.5 cents/kWh
New York –15.2 cents/kWh
Delaware—11.1 cents/kWh
Maryland—11.3 cents/kWh
It is interesting to note, Pennsylvania, which is not a member of the RGGI, (for you geographically challenged mid-westerns, Pennsylvania, is located in the Northeast. South of New York, north of Maryland). The average retail price paid by consumers in Pennsylvania is 9.91 cents/kWh. Two other states neighboring Maryland , are Virginia and West Virginia The cost of electricity is 9.07 cents/kWh and 8.14 cents/kWh respectively in these two states. Neither are members of the RGGI.
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/
#FauxNewsIsNotANewsNetwork
It's FAKES NEWS.
ALEC Threatens “Democracy” Itself
… a limerick …
“Democracy” itself should fret
o’er the ALEC-driven threat.
How bad might it get
if we continue to let
ALEC drag its net?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This baboon needs a
Donald Trump comb-over:
http://ih0.redbubble.net/image.9794770.6964/flat,550x550,075,f.jpg
. . . . . . . . .
Right on, Chuck. Bernie's the man with the plan.
Dubya's reign was pretty crazy-making. I think Scott Walker would be even worse, if a worse presidency is even possible. But like ole Ma used to say: "There's always a bottom below!"
I want to think both are true as well here, he also could be pulling what has been discussed that Trump could be stirring up hatered fo rBush to get him out of the way so that Scott Walker will win the primary, as he is the Koch Brothers boy.
Cap-and-Trade is just a scam to enable more financial/bankster speculators to make enormous profits while producing nothing, doing nothing & achieving nothing. World's #1 climatologist, James Hansen, has long been a critic of Cap-and-Trade, instead proposing a much simpler, non-speculative, revenue neutral carbon tax and dividend.
Let's see, a bankster style cap-and-trade system to reduce those >30 thousand Mexican Drug Cartel killings. Give each Drug Gang a cap on the number of citizens they can murder, set at the current level. And they can make a tidy profit trading their killings with another upstart gang that wants to kill also. The hippie non-violent weed producers who sell their product but kill nobody receive no benefit, no subsidies for them. But the brutal drug cartels can use their quota to kill the hippies to eliminate the competition.
And Wall St Bankters can buy killings credits from drug cartels that haven't kept up their killings level and then make a tidy profit selling their killings credits to other drug cartels. How wonderful is that.
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/289773/europes_failing_ca...
Jim Hansen on Cap-and-Trade:
".... It is possible – if we give politicians a cold, hard slap in the face. The fraudulence of the Copenhagen approach – “goals” for emission reductions, “offsets” that render ironclad goals almost meaningless, the ineffectual “cap-and-trade” mechanism – must be exposed. We must rebel against such politics as usual. Governments going to Copenhagen claim to have such goals for 2050, which they will achieve with the “cap-and-trade” mechanism. They are lying through their teeth. Instead, the United States signed an agreement with Canada for a pipeline to carry oil squeezed from tar sands. Australia is building port facilities for large increases in coal export. Coal-to-oil factories are being built. Coal-fired power plants are being constructed worldwide. Governments are stating emission goals that they know are lies – or, if we want to be generous, they do not understand the geophysics and are kidding themselves..."
This is how you solve the Climate Change crisis:
"....At that point, we’ll be back to the 1940s can-do, will-do, mindset. The attitude that anything is possible. I really don’t think most people understand how countries mobilised and committed themselves during World War II. Winning was everything — it was a matter of life and death — the difference between the survival or downfall of a nation and political ideology. Military spending went from 2 — 5 % of GDP to 35 — 60 % for the major powers. The US diverted most of its automobile factories to making an extraordinary 300,000 planes and a vast naval fleet (the emergency shipbuilders). Russia produced over 50,000 T-34 tanks within the space of a few years, and threw millions of men against the German war machine, losses be damned. Japan was going to fight tooth-and-nail on the home islands, with millions of projected causalities,.."
"...If society realises that it has to build 10,000 nuclear power plants in a period of 20 years, then it’ll do it (as others have pointed out, things happened incredibly fast in the early years of nuclear power — the first 15 years saw a staggering rate of technical development). We’ll find the way to make it happen — of that I have little doubt...."
Once again both are true. Somebody please look up dichotomy.
Trump's insecurities and egotism will not let him admit defeat.
Roland
Either should be neither.
Oliver Wendell Holmes became a hermit and even stopped reading newspapers. But times have changed. Alito, Scalia and Thomas enthusiastically participate in politics; they and Roberts should be impeached, tried and hanged.
Roland
Once again both statements are true. Whoever comes up with these polls should look up dichotomy.
Roland
The answer is YES, but both statements are true.
Roland
Oh Paul! As a pilot, McCain was another Capt. Orr, crashing planes more frequently than he changed his underwear. After murdering women and children, his treatment was infinitely more civilized than the routine torture the US inflicted on about 30,000 Vietnamese in our prison at Cam Rahn Bay. Depriving McCain of martinis and hookers hardly qualifies as torture. He also whined about not being allowed to "maintain military discipline" while in Hanoi; this meant the hundred plus majors and colonels could not run the half dozen enlisted men ragged. After their release those enlisted men said that they had no complaints about their treatment; and McCain accused them of treason and they went right back into prison in Portsmouth. McCain has always been a bootlicker without character.
Roland
AIW -- If you didn't lose your sanity during the dubya reign, your sanity should be ready for anything.
Anyone can say our trade policies are bad. I want the details of the replacement plan. Bernie is the only one that has provided an action plan i.e.. get out of all the trade agreements. I hope Bernie latches onto the Buffet trade plan (cap and trade for trade; i.e.. imports must equal exports).
Stopgap -- Thanks for the humor and letting me know not to take Ou812 and RLTOWNSLEY seriously.
The RGGI is actually called the initiative of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states of the U.S..
RLTOWNSLEY how do you put the logic together of what happened with RGGI and corps will not reduce profits for shareholders and pay for CEOs. Is that not what happened with the RGGI? If not, then the same process could be applied throughout the U.S.. with little objection.
Blog also says... "Nine Northeastern states established the RGGI." ..... sounds accurate to me! Anyway..... "We the People," should have total control over the entire energy sector, a non-profit one.
Thank God for RLTOWNSLY setting us straight about the Fantasy of Global Warming. Hell, I knew Global Warming was a hoax from the get-go. How the hell could constantly pumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere ever have any affect on it? Hell, I even think Pollution is a hoax! I never believed this Dysentery myth for a minute. All these sewage treatment plants are just a way for politicians to shower their friends in the Sewage Treatment business with lucrative contracts.
And how about Ou812 pointing out that being accurate about 18th century geography is more important than the results of a study of the 21st century multistate project known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Hell, I'm form the Midwest and I still don't know exactly how many states make up the Midwest. Therefore, I can't read or write.
Nine New England States:). Let me see. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachussets, Connecticut and Rhode Island. That's only six. This lack of accuracy creates a credibility issue on the entire report.
Trump will do anything to stay in the limelight even if he runs as a Whig and the Media will make sure he stays in the news no matter what!
Why 2 yeses??? My answer would be NO. The Donald is too much of a Republican to be anything else. As an Independent, he would be banned from presidential debates. Plus, he's still the GOP front runner. He says a lot of things that make sense.
Another Global Warming Fantasy and Thom knows it ! Give me a break, private energy companies voluntarily swallowing those carbon taxes thus penalizing their stock holders and reducing their executive's bonuses by reducing their corporate bottom lines without passing those losses through to their customers ? Many Americans were born at night, but it wasn't last night !
The only way RGGI is going to happen nationwide is if big-oil gets their knees capped; and with congress protecting big-oil, that's never going to happen.
Donald Trump is right about trade. Good for him! I mean that sincerely; I never would have guessed his position on trade.
That said, Trump’s elevation in the polls is as clear a symptom as any to highlight the level of triteness we have reached, as a nation and as a culture.
This guy is nothing but a blow-dried, cartoonish caricature of privilege and entitlement; a narcissistic, pompous, bigoted, spoiled brat whose greatest accomplishment in life is the millions of dollars he inherited from his daddy. His followers are mental midgets, caught up in the mass hypnosis of corporate media. All are just chompin’ at the bit to cast their votes for Donald Trump, the real estate magnate who made it big on Daddy’s money, who’s never so much as served on a school board! Swell. Just who we need to be picking the next three or four Supreme Court justices!!
How about Donald Duck for president! Or better yet, Bozo the Clown!!
Fucking pathetic. If this wasn’t so damn scary, I’d be rolling on the floor laughing.
I often think that if I had the money, I’d get the hell out of this shit hole. But I don’t. Therefore I’m stuck here, in the United Mistake of America. All my hopes are on Bernie, because he’s the only real statesman out there running for president. He’s the ONLY candidate who won’t take money from the fossil fuel oilgarchs to fund his campaign. He’s the only candidate with the balls to call out the obstructionists, the bullies, the robber barons and assorted douchebags occupying most seats in Congress these days. And if we manage to get Bernie elected, we’d better vote those toxic clowns out so that he’ll have a Congress he can work with; otherwise we’re just wasting our time, and his.
If Bernie doesn’t win this election, I fear for my sanity. And that’s no joke.