Creep At Bloom Bodes Ill Wind For TDC

Did you know that Bloom Energy was operating beyond the scope of its DNREC permit? It took prying citizens’ eyes to discover this… DNREC says “oops” it didn’t know… I don’t think Bloom Energy has commented yet… But are we to assume that across this entire state, no one knew what the permit levels were, or that this plant was over-exceeding them?

The issue lies with their excessive use of natural gas. They are purchasing more than the permit allows… Not a big problem except that of course this extra purchase gets passed on to Delaware’s Delmarva rate payers in the form of extra charges on their monthly bill.

But what if the issue instead was pollution? Such as spewing out more radon than allowed. Or more mercury than allowed? Or more cadmium than allowed? Who would know? Someone? Ahhh, but who would say?

One very damning reason why the TDC cannot, and should not be allowed to continue in Newark…

For example, would you ever trust the entire state’s financial assets to a stock broker who was fined by the SEC for illegal actions? Oh, but wait. Excuse me. In this state we do… Not only do we trust this one person with all of our Treasury, who was fined over $900,000 by the SEC (he sits on the Cash Management Board), but when he whines over the idea of any transparency coming to the Cash Management Board, the governor and his movers in Legislature, remove the Treasurer from being able to watch over this Criminal running his hands through our state’s money?

So…. Can we trust this administration’s promises when they say they will keep a tight rein on the Data Center Project’s pollution?

What a silly question I just asked… When it comes to this administration, we already have our answer….

Better Than A TDC?

Would be for the University of Delaware to use that space to build the premiere forefront of nuclear fusion research….  Not fission, which has radioactive residue, but fusion which turns hydrogen into helium  generating heat to rotate massive turbines.

Or research into more efficient turbines.

Or more efficient solar panels…

All three would be keeping with the promise of the University of Delaware’s green promise, and make it a leading intellectual nucleus for future technology to adhere….

Going forwards with a TDC that is gas fired is like buying a steam locomotive in 1952……

The….”Distraction”…..

Steve Newton, one of Delaware’s ablest analysts, issued the warning early in the year… I have since been on the lookout for what he called…. I believe…. The Great Distractor”….

This is a outrage so great, it dominates all discussion, to the extent no controversy can exist beyond it…  It gets covered in the News Journal.  It is the sole subject for weeks on end on the talk shows… etc…

Even bloggers take up the outrage, so inflamed are they and smelling blood, all want some credit for a kill….

Meanwhile, real bills that transfer the building blocks put in place over centuries of public schooling , get pulled and shuffled over to private enterprise….

Bluntly put, the rich get richer by picking all our pockets while we focus on the bar fight taking place on the floor directly in front of us, little realizing the entertainment is completely staged for our own fleecing…..

Yesterday the same topic dominated both the morning show, and afternoon show on WDEL….  Jonathan Starkey’s piece in the News Journal had done its part…..

There was considerable buzz; legislators were being called up on air, and duly pitching their outrage to get their name out in front of the voters….

The controversy is over the unclaimed property issue…   Basically everyone is upset over how the government can claim unused gift cards…  Yes, if you listened… that is what the entire controversy boiled down to. ,   The Republicans think they have an issue.  The Government is taking private property because…. they can….

So let us pop this “distractor” and get back to reality…   All this controversy is about who should own unclaimed property… Two people see a dollar bill in the road… Who should get it?  Why does one have more right over it than the other?  Should corporations be allowed to keep money that is not theirs?  If I find a wallet with $500, should I keep it and spend it on me?  Or should I turn it in to the police, and if no one comes and claims it, they then get to use the proceeds in their service to all….

Obviously, the latter is the more fair.  I certainly have no right to that wallet, except by some made-up rule …. finders-keepers.  Who does that money belong to?  It belonged to someone, one of those who are protected by the police, and who are an  individual just like me… Who is more likely to get an inquiry requesting whether anyone turned in a wallet with $500?  A random stranger (me)?  Or the police?….

Again, it is obvious to which one society would benefit having ownership of that dollar found in the street….. And the amounts of money are paltry… dollar bills for the most part….

Oh, but the outrage!!  The Outrage!   The outrage…..

“Look, Buzz, an alien……  Ha, made you look…… ”

There are some rather serious crises currently nibbling the foundation of the Markell and Democratic party.. Primarily they are two fold.  The economic folly of cutting taxes on the top 1% of Delawareans, who should be funding the state with their windfall capital gains earnings, and that folly’s impact on stifling job growth….  and the crises of building charter schools for “Friends of Jack Markell” by dismantling the public schools that have carried Delaware to prominence up to this point……

They almost need this distraction… In a very bad way….

• Meanwhile they they insist on pushing forward the TDC, to the detriment of all those 30,000 Newarkians who will soon be breathing cancerous particles 24/7….
• Meanwhile they insist on pushing a Charter School agenda forward when next year’s charter schools can only muster 40% capacity.
• Meanwhile they insist on pushing Common Core, by now a completely debunked curriculum, that was so obviously created to summarily give one educational-material corporation an advantage over all others….
• Meanwhile, Delaware’s budget shortfall grows as the economy suffers under too low taxes and way too few government jobs.
• Meanwhile, Delaware is seeing global warming increase all costs statewide, while those wealthy who were to blame for it, get to keep a majority of their earnings off of it, tax free…
• Meanwhile, Delaware is giving far to much of our precious few resources to corporations who repeatedly, had always failed to deliver any return for our investment….
• Meanwhile, Delaware is destroying the 39th best teaching school in America, the educational department of the University of Delaware, to water it down to the abysmal Common Core standards…..

What this administrations sorely needs….

Is ” A Great Distractor”…….   “Look, Buzz, an alien!”

Instead we should be watching out for……..

• House Bill # 334
• HB #333
• SB #210
• Looking forward to the necessary modifications to SB 51 and HB 165.
• And the fact that during these 8 years… Delaware’s children in poverty…. DOUBLED!
• Meanwhile, our cronyism allows our top income earners, to pay little or nothing in taxes……

That last one…… is the real outrage.…. one future generations will hold us accountable for decades to come………

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile

Confesson of a Green Shirt

Courtesy of  Delaware Way

Dear Kavips:

In response to your asking, here is why I went to the meeting in Newark High School for the Power Plant.  My boss made me.  I was pissed off about it because I was suppose to go to my first grader” concert that night, and had to miss it.   I got the call at 4:00 from my boss and was told I had to go there ASAP.  I said WTF for and he said it was important.  I said my daughter is more important, and he said, he could let me go that very day if I didn’t show up for this meeting….

I had to call out of a service call and postpone it till the next day to make the trek up there. and get inside.  I saw a lot of other HVAC vans and many that I trained with so it wasn’t all bad I guess.

Sad thing is, I don’t even want the power plant cause I live downwind from it right off Rt. 4, behind the ShopRite…. I think a lot of others were forced like me to go, because we all weren’t too happy to have to be there… But, gotta do what the boss man says….

Signed…

(your buddy)

State Of Delaware Gets Front Paged On Kos

If Christie laughed at every time he was lampooned, he’d lose weight.

Recently Leaked: Markell to Attempt To Sneak Through Legislative Changes To Coastal Zone Protection Act

The mess in WV brings this home…   Anytime you allow industry near water, at some point in the future there will be an accident…. Prevention as opposed to monitoring, is the only way to insure no such event occurs

The proposed legislation will be incremental.  It will be minor in scope.  It’s design is to pit the same groups that combined to apply political muscle to push forward both Newark’s contaminating power plant, and the Millsboro chicken processing plant, towards next applying political pressure to diminish and eventually abolish the Coastal Act.  It will be pushed along as good for jobs, taxes, and energy benefits.  However, none of those will receive benefit.  Instead it is designed in a way to open the coastal area to development. The benefits will all go to developers, Surprised?  Developers as we know are very reputable human beings and would never break a law, would never allow any facility to be built which might pollute, in order to make hundreds of millions of extra dollars.

The Coastal Act is Delaware.  If it goes, Delaware again becomes the cess-pool is was before environmental laws were ever dreamed.

As went Army Creek, so goes the entire Delaware coastline….

Time to get busy now… Stir the pot so nothing sticks to the bottom later.

CRI Sues DNREC Over RGGI

Don’t you hate how everything is in initials today… As if one is supposed to remember what all those stand for….

Cunt Switching Imbeciles sue Damn Norquist Rectal Energizer Conglomerates over Raping Governor’s Gerbil’s Ass*oles.

Perhaps I got it wrong.  Now I have to go look-up other alternatives on the Internet and see what other possibilities could occur.  Are you sure I’m wrong? You are, huh?  Do any of them fit?

Perhaps if one didn’t use initials and came right out and said  “Caesar Rodney Institute sues  Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control over Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative”, we’d save a lot of time…  However the off-line consensus says I nailed it pretty well with the first stab of interpretation….

So what is this about?

Did you ever at work have those smart asses who try to cause trouble by challenging the interpretation of every word in the employee handbook?  Their prime objective is simply to be annoying.  For example if the handbook states that shoes must be worn, they point out that it doesn’t specifically allow for sneakers, and that under some obscure rule or regulation that only they can find, someone once said that sneakers were different from shoes….  Therefor all those wearing sneakers need to come to work in “real” shoes?  And so they force an issue that should have been left unchallenged, for of course sneakers are shoes and everyone knows that, but we have now to go through a long trial and they and the sneaker people have to appear before the arbitrator and waste everyone’s time to decide the obvious, that yes, sneakers are shoes because they protect the feet almost equally….. And therefore much time is wasted over nothing…..

Yeah, this lawsuit is like that…. Very similar to the Constitutional Sheriff’s argument that 2013 put to rest….  The formula is the same. Take an obscure colonial reference, twist it in a fashion so someone could according to that interpretation be acting illegally, bring it up and harass until it goes to trial, then appeal your loss, then appeal that new loss again….  The sole object it to waste time, and draw attention away from doing one’s assigned duties.

Of course or laws are designed so  they have the right to do that… but in balance,  we are also given right, if not duty,  to skewer them royally for all the selfishness and pomposity they exhibit…  Of course as in the work-place analogy, all the exaggeration we do makes little difference in the outcome, for as the ridicule piles on from us, they double down, enabling us to pile even more ridicule upon them…….  Our only benefit is that we get something to mock, to laugh at… And if you live this life and don’t laugh out loud every other minute, your missing out on life my friend….

One of the suitors is a legislator…. Harold “Lost-My” Peterman… a Log Cabin Republican from Milford…. 

Hi. I’m Harold “Lost-My” Peterman and I approve this lawsuit.

So what does all this mean?

Essentially it means the Koch Brothers are  paying to impede Delaware’s entrance into the agreement we have over CO2 with our neighbors, because Koch-heads don’t care how people get hurt as long as they make their money….   That is essentially what this is all over….

Now here is their mixed up, convoluted,  obfuscated,  Rue Goldberg Contraptionalized, attempt to make that money grab look like something else…..

They are challenging its Constitutionality, taking a page right out of Jeff Christopher’s bid to becomes Supreme Ruler over the Fiefdom of Delaware….

They are trying to win friends by implying that environmental controls  were not put in place to protect the environment from money grabbers who just want to make money and don’t care what harm gets left behind….  but instead were put there by “bad,  bad people” who “just don’t like them”, and therefore in fairness they should just … go away…  So they can make more money.

They are also trying to scare the population by making everyone think that energy costs will rise solely because of laws to protect the environment….

Before we jump on them and bust apart their claims,  let’s cover what the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative really does…

Most of us don’t know.  In plain speak, it was a way of spreading out the costs of what we will one day have to pay…

This concept is very pertinent at a time we are all sensitive to corporate abuse of our social structure. Wal*wart and McDonalds are paying $7.25 and hour, and enjoying the fruits of that low labor cost while they send their employees off to get food stamps and Medicaid at the taxpayers expense…

We, the taxpayers are subsidizing their business…  Wal*Mart and McDonald’s should be paying for the Food Stamps and Medicaid costs out of their excessive profits….   But since they aren’t… it amounts that they are using government subsidized labor to increase their profit margins, then walking away from their self-created problem….

It is the same with energy…. Essentially we will one day have to pay for our energy’s damage to the environment.  That is a given.  The question is when…  Recognizing this, several states joined in a pool to sort of start assessing power companies some of that cost now, so it would not be a giant shock in the future.

The way it works is that in this region, power companies will have to cut down their emissions or pay a fine.  It is minimal in the first few years and gradually gets tighter over time.  The Power companies if they possibly cannot meet the requirement for a variety of reasons, can do so through credits earned by paying cash to companies who did come in under their threshold of gas emissions…. It’s like if I farted less than you,  and you farted more, you could pay me money for the times I didn’t fart…

It is an arbitrary scheme and that is why it has animosity behind it, primarily from people of “that type” who don’t like arbitrary schemes.  But the contrivance was built to create a marketplace incentive by using that biggest motivating factor ever,… money!   By playing these rules, you can make money by cutting down your greenhouse gases….

To make this lawsuit even more of a moot case, every state is already far under the allowance caps, because cheap natural gas from fracking has replace dirty coal in most furnaces….

The second myth being propelled by Koch-heads is that this will cost you, the customer, more money…  They  play on our common sense notions that if things cost more to get, the price goes up….  Well, you can readily see with energy, … that is not necessarily so….

Let’s use gasoline as an example… Right now at the pump gas is at $3.45 to $3.55 a gallon for regular.  I saw both on my return from church this Sunday.   The last time prices were that high, a barrel of oil cost $107.  It now costs $93.   Yet, when it was at $98, the pump prices were between $3.20 and $3.30….

The point being made is that energy prices, because we need them no matter what they cost, are set by demand, not supply…   Holiday Travel pushed the price up the week before Thanksgiving, and  Christmas and New Year’s pushed it up now…  Especially with fracking, acquiring energy is rather cheap.  Some wells produce at a cost of 19 cents a gallon.

So who gets hurt, is not the consumer, if costs go up…  The money makers in the middle are the sole ones who have to eat their profits.   Which is exactly why the Koch Brothers are funding this nuisance lawsuit to cast aspersions upon the Greenhouse Gas Initiative….

If  the Koch Brothers earn $3.26 cents off of every gallon sold at $3.45,  they will fight to make sure that doesn’t drop to $3.25, or $3.24, or $3.23 or lower….  People purchasing energy will not be affected by the Initiatives.  The Corporate Investors will.   Unfortunately as we can see with today’s gasoline, even when energy prices plummet, we the consumer, don’t get the benefit… The Hedge funds do…

So the bottom line is this….  The Greenhouse Gas Initiative save us money… They put the cost of the problem upon those who are creating the problem, and not leaving it for us to pay from some other account at some future date…  Corporate profits in the energy business are too high, and have been since deregulation.    Those who are making money off of polluting the world, off of blowing CO2 into the air,  should be able to make money and pay for the polluting of the world… The Koch Brother think differently, and that is why they are paying for this lawsuit…

It is ironical that a Delaware legislator from Milford, which does not have a huge power plant in their backyard as to those poor souls at Millsboro,…. would sell his soul and the souls of his constituents, just for some Koch Campaign money come his next election…..

Bottom line, is if the Brandywine Zoo put baboons in a glass enclosed Monkey House, and then suddenly no one came into see them, ever,  they  craving attention, would probably file a law suit just exactly like this one….

Does Anyone Know the Law? Does Anyone Really Care?

John Young alerted me to this line in the new election law…..

§ 7558. (Municipal) Election results; recounts; contests.

(a) A person certified as being elected shall not take office before the seventh day following certification of the election.

The commissioner of Delaware’s elections certified  the Newark Election on December 3rd, 2013….

December 4th, 2013    Day One

December 5th, 2013    Day Two

December 6th, 2013    Day Three

December 7th, 2013    Day Four

December 8th, 2013    Day Five

December 9th, 2013    Day Six

December 10th, 2013 Day Seven……..

On December 10th, by law, the  new mayor can be sworn in……  That is this coming Tuesday btw and today is Sunday. December 8th…

(In case you don’t know she was sworn in on December 3rd, 2013. )

The real issue is how can anyone run an election and be in such violation of state code?  Either the code is bogus, or rendered meaningless by lax enforcement, or completely ignored by our election overseers, or completely off the Commissioner of Election’s radar and whatever the law states is in another solar system to her.

How can anyone in the computer age, run and win a campaign, and get sworn in, before the law allows?

What kind of state is this, where law is routinely ignored if your position on a controversial issue, aligns  with those wealthy enough to can throw $45,000 of illegal money to throw a town’s election?

The complaint here is not so much about Polly; it is leveled precisely  the Delaware Chamber of Commerce and like groups for attempting to run things their own way, even if a Delaware law stands in their way…..

The law was broken.  Sp what are we going to do about it?

Nullifying The Newark Election

• $45,000 was dropped into the election illegally and not reported in the required timely fashion…
• That $45,000 was used to distribute literature telling Amy Roe supporters to go to the wrong polling places.
• That $45,000 names a candidate and is not an issue based.  The proposed “issue” is “Polly’s Plan”, naming the candidate; not something like more local jobs through construction, which would not be attached to either candidate.

Only 115 votes separated whether we have a power plant or not….

======

There are just too many questions….  Voters need clarity.

The smart option would be to have a run off election.   Just run Polly and Amy, no one else….

Re-do the election and then we will know…

It is one day. 6 districts.  Just re-do the election…

Reading Too Much Into A Single Small Town Election

I am just as guilty of this as is every one else.

A single issue polarized this election for outsiders.  A huge power plant, which will dominate the skyline from Academy Avenue southwest to Chestnut Hill.

However there are other factors not being taken into consideration.   The 115 margin is disheartening to many of those outside Newark who will be soon breathing toxic air.  But it is a miracle that it was even that close when one considers the dynamics of a small town mayoral race.

The first factor left out of every discussion so far up till now,  is that the incumbent was considered by most Newarkeans to be the best mayor they have ever had.  Both business interests and residents have commented in private, that Vance Funk “got it” .  He understood how things worked together, development and quality of life, and rode the magic line right down the middle.  In truth, the Newark of today is almost unrecognizable from the Newark of the  early 2000’s…   Now when one says Main Street of Newark, one has to ask… which one?

A lot of the magic that is Newark is due to Vance Funk.  So when someone of such stature endorses his pick as someone who will carry the same theme forward, it carries a lot of weight.  Many votes for Polly are votes of thanks to Vance.   “He’s a good guy, so if he picked her, she must be alright too” was a sentiment heard across the streets of Newark the past two months…

Against this, two great candidates, Amy Roe and Rebecca Powers,  would probably not have done as well had they not had the thermal of the power plant issue burning underneath them….   From Amy’s personal biography one has to wonder if she would have ever run, had this not become an issue requiring someone of her stature to step up…  I’ll let Ezra speak for Rebecca.

In point, if one lives in Newark, this race was not only about a power plant.  It was about people you know; it was about how you feel about the  town; it was about who should lead the town in the future on all issues, not just the town’s approval of a power plant…..

And the people spoke. And it was close.  Whether the power plant goes in, or another controversy rises up to stop it, (a severe economic crash for example)… the people will have to live with their choice for a long time.

I think it should be noted, that Amy Roe handled herself in the spotlight rather well, and in the future, all this effort will undoubtedly  lead to a greater good.

And, just in case no one heard Allan Loudell’s observation on WDEL, all the top three vote getters were women…. How nice is that?