The Phony Bluewater Windfarms and Hidden Costs.

As part of the Energy Follies that the left wing are rushing to hurl upon us, we have the sly and slippery Bluewater Wind LLC [1]self-identified as “… one of the nation's leading developers of offshore wind energy projects, and a tireless advocate of wind as a clean, safe, and stable-priced means to meet our energy needs” trying to sell electrical energy along the Atlantic Coast.

Note the terms “stable-priced” here as they state in their frequent and expensive ads that they can hold the sales price constant for 25 years. One has to think about this in terms of wear and tear and also speculate about the construction and maintenance costs of this proposal. E-mails to the representatives of this LLC went unanswered. There was never a public mention of costs.

Later,  a cost analsis on  the matter from  The Public Services Commission (PSC) staff of Delawaer who recently released their report on the proposed Delaware Offshore Wind Park and the costs were ugly.

Critics warned that the project’s construction price -- now estimated at $1.6 billion construction -- was steep, and cautioned that windfarms have never operated on a large scale in the United States. The Long Island Power Authority recently cancelled a project for the waters off New York, citing rising expenses.[2]

It was unclear at this point how the proposal would translate to what an average Delaware resident would pay for his or her electric bill.[3]

"Delmarva would pay 10.59 cents per kilowatt hour for the wind energy, McGonigle wrote. That’s 1.05 cents higher than Bluewater originally bid in December. The difference is largely due to building a smaller wind farm than the one Bluewater originally proposed, Lanard said."[4]

"Bluewater Wind readily agrees that the high cost scenario described in the report would be unacceptable. We would also never expect that and other costly outcomes to be realized. Accordingly we are also confident that we can resolve this concern if we have an opportunity to explore this further with the PSC staff. "[5]

This is a lie. They were asked, upfront, what their projected costs would be. Currently we pay between 2 and 3 cents per Kwh and the price would go up by  350% to a whopping 530%. Their rep erich@bluewaterwind.com  was contacted, twice, for a price estimate and I received no reply. Worse, they talk about 25 years of stable prices while no wind machines will last that long and almost all the recent ones are obsolete. To compound this mendacity, they cut down the number of windmills from 200 to 150 and still seem to have a 1.6 bln dollar construction cost. Somehow they were able to sell this charade to the Delaware state government with help of their former governor Russell W. Peterson[6], now an environmental activist and former President of the National Audubon Society. He did not disclose the cost or even an estimate for this project.

This is a cheap left-liberal swindle reminiscent of the ‘limits to spending’ of the first federal food stamp program, the cost and effectiveness of the Great Society and the War on Poverty. EcoNazism is on the prowl along the Delaware River.

So, let us call them on the unacceptability of the PSC high cost scenario and let them give us their original estimates. Will they be honest and do so?? I bet no.

Watch your wallet when dealing with the EcoNazis and their phony energy programs. They want to ruin our ability to  sustain and increase growth and create some form of socialism society.

Grunt and Grab Liberalism in Force.

rycK

The Grunt and Grab Syndrome of the Liberals.

We need to examine very little of the lessons of history to learn that Karl Marx was correct when he said:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class

struggles. [1]

The Earth is actually populated with those who can make a successful living by their wits and talents and labors and those who cannot. The prize for leading the ‘unfortunates’ and ‘marginalized’ victims of capitalism is free riches from plundering the wealthy.

This is all justified and verified by the following observations:

[1] Marx was a personal failure [alcoholic, blowhard, phony, and plagiarist] and the so-called Bolshevik revolutions [Russia, Germany, Italy] from 1917 to 1919 that all failed. The USSR crashed after 74 continuous years of failure, murder and oppression. This was a classis struggle of the low classes to create more of the low class.

[2] Later attempts to fuse socialism of the Russell or George Bernard Shaw’ Shavianism or other types with Marxism-Leninism failed to set up any viable systems whereby the lower classes were able to move up the economic ladders to some reasonable self-sustaining levels. More failure was seen in the Maoism failures or those of Ho, Fidel Castro or the biggest failure of them all Kim, of North Korea. The People’s Republic and Republic of Viet Nam both realized that capitalism and individual achievement produce wealth and growth and prosperity so they abandoned the phony Marxist theory of value and embraced capitalism. The left will not give credit to these observations. They point to Sweden, who sold guns for 200 years that killed millions and are effectively in the Dirty Gun Business or the Swiss, who are in  the Dirty Money Business.

[3] Nothing has worked in Africa since 1950 as a host of leftist social engineers tried to mix Marxism with Tribalism, several times, and got the worst of both systems. The prize for being an African Marxist dictator seems to play  out as having 1-5 years in a luxurious villa in France or Italy and a fat bank account in Switzerland and a bullet in the head soon after. These two factors are a double problem for Africa and failure is unavoidable if either Marxism or Tribalism is present in their economies. The liberals celebrate both in their quest for failure. Here, they have their success.

These crude and vicious leftist attacks on society resulting in 100,000,000 dead since 1917 are not seen or even acknowledged as failures in the eyes of the far left. They seem to have no memory of failed revolutions and look forward to exercising their forces to grunt and grab as much money from the capitalists as they can before the system crashes. Failure is not seen as failure amongst the rabid left since there is always more money to go for. Castro gets high praise even though his society is on the edge of starvation and his murders and thefts are ignored by the left. Trotsky was right when he predicted that these dictators would just enjoy the fruits of capitalism and mouth the tenets of Marxism. He was murdered for this view and no liberal would apologize for his effrontery to Stalin, our Uncle Joe.

So, where are we in economic terms as we reflect on such failures? Nowhere as far as the rabid left is concerned. Despite spending $5,000,000,000,000 [5 trillion] on phony social programs since 1950 there remains only the Grunt and Grab Syndrome that drives the political horizon for Democrats. It is difficult to listen to any liberal politician talk without not hearing some heart-wrenching stories about those who need a huge tax increase to solve their problems. Tax tax tax.

The latest episode of this disease comes from House Ways and Means Committee “Good Time” Charles B. Rangel of New York[2].

The NYT breaks tradition with their fondling of the  facts and truth and puts for the following view:

In general, the Democratic presidential candidates have made clear that they intend to reverse Mr. Bush’s income tax reductions for upper-income people and use the additional revenue to pay for health care and other domestic programs. But they have not put forward detailed tax plans of the sort offered by Mr. Rangel. [3]

Who said the Devil is in the details? Remember George McGovern and his ‘detail’ of a $10,000 guaranteed income for all.

Other views:

Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts called Mr. Rangel’s proposal the “largest increase in the history of America,”

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York said, “We certainly shouldn’t raise taxes the way Charlie Rangel wants to.”[4]

House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said simply, “no.”[5]

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York said she shared with Mr. Rangel “the goal of tax fairness” and “welcomes his leadership,”[6]

The words ‘no’ and ‘fairness’ remain to be defined in the current context.

Now, this will be the biggest tax increase [the height of tax fairness?] in the history of the world and the Democrats, except for the tax parasite Rangel, just mumble. Add to this the phony Global Warming Follies that would give third world an enormous advantage in commerce by taxing the US citizens and corporations and spending the money on phony wind farms and such. Good Time Charlie would tax the corporations, who supply almost all of the government revenue in the US from salaries, corporate taxes and sales taxes.

Rep. Charlie Rangel is bent on including a carried interest capital gains tax hike in the must-pass patch to the alternative minimum tax.[7]

Under Rangel’s bill, the character of the underlying income no longer matters. Even if the income is from the sale of corporate stock, the portion that general partners retain as a carried interest would be taxed at the full ordinary income tax rates. [8]

The net effect of this tax is to discourage investors as they get stuck with ordinary tax rates, which the Democrats want to raise to the roof anyway. Investment leading to grown is a threat to the left. They operate better in squalor and failure.

Now, given the above, we might ask: Why would Democrats, in light of the failure of high taxes and Marxism and other forms of socialism advocate some system that would discourage investment, cause economic decline and force the loss of new jobs??

The answer is simple: Democrats made their greatest gains during the depression and were able to put in all sorts of failed social programs [New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society, Welfare, Food Stamps, War on Poverty, etc.] and the fact that money was wasted was only of benefit to the left. The Democrats want to lose.

Democrats buy votes by subsidizing failure. They buy votes from the poor by subsidizing poverty. They buy votes from failed education program by wrecking the same system. They put in programs that produce more poor people by corrupting education, support inefficient production as in the labor union feather bedding, stall progress with the phony Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act and other follies. When the benchmarks for the poor are raised, showing that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”[9], they can blame the rich and pander for more votes.

Conclusion: the liberal Democrats need economic disaster or high taxes or both to retain power. They cannot survive in a vibrant economic society. Their former ‘poor’ and ‘marginalized’ voters now want to preserve their successes for themselves and their children and eventually desert the left. When a greater fraction of earnings are   returned to the workers and entrepreneurs the left loses out in terms of power. Capitalism subsidizes success and liberalism subsides failure.

Liberals support sloth, sodomy, crime, high taxes, phony education, Ebonics, economic failure and our enemies like Islamo-Fascists and Communists. Let us get that clear.  Their future is invested in defeating America in military, social and economic terms. They have based their political future on the economy collapsing during the Bush Administration term and still hope to lose the War on Terrorism to gain power. The loss of the lives of American soldiers is of no consequence to them if they cannot get more votes. They want to make a Hoover out of Bush. They didn’t quibble about spending a full year’s GDP during the FDR Administration to defeat their enemies, but grumble about our current 3-5% of the GDP on the War on Terrorism.

Grunt and Grab.

rycK