President Obama has lots of explaining to do. On January 26 a Georgia court case hearing was held which revolved around the Natural Born clause of the Constitution and whether or not Obama qualifies under it to serve.
More so, if found ineligible, Obama’s name would not appear on the 2012 ballot in Georgia. Obama’s attorney, Jablonski, was a no show at the court hearing as was Obama, who had been subpoenaed to appear.
Although President Obama’s citizenship has been repeatedly questioned since he took office in 2008, during which time ridicule was the outcome for any one who dared even question the legality for Obama to serve as president as defined by the Constitution, it is noteworthy that a court hearing finally did take place in what is the final year of President Obama’s first term.
Strange is the silence about this matter on NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN. Has the chance that Obama might be ineligible due to this father’s citizenship become so terrifying to both parties that the matter has been reduced to silence or ridicule? But, are we as nation of laws anymore or is it about who can seize and hold power?
Why is it that we only know what Obama’s autobiographies tell us about him? We have no other records of his life except that he attended school in Indonesia under his step-father’s citizenship where he was listen as a Muslim for the purpose of religious education.
Then there was the long-awaited long-form birth certificate that photo shop experts claim had been altered digitally.
Absent are grade transcripts from the three colleges Obama attended. Absent also is information about Obama’s trip to Pakistan when no US citizens were allowed to travel there (What passport did he use?), and what about Obama’s SS # from Connecticut where he never lived and which was issued to another citizen in 1980?
Somehow we are supposed to say, “Ok, everything is fine,” when it isn’t.
Why has so much effort and money gone into concealing Obama’s past unless there is something to hide? If Obama’s so brilliant, why hasn’t he released his college transcripts? Bush and Gore released theirs. It Obama’s parents were of modest means, who paid for college? Harvard isn’t cheap.
Anyway, the questions and evidence are a matter of court record now. We must wait to see how the judge rules about President Obama’s right to be on the November ballot in Georgia as he seeks a second term in office.
Two links are included below for individuals who are interested in learning more about the Georgia court hearing of Thursday, January 26 addressing Obama’s citizenship, the first article by Craig Andresen and the second by Bob Unruh.
OBAMA ELIGIBILITY COURT CASE…BLOW BY BLOW http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/?p=4138
GEORGIA JUDGE CONSIDERED ‘DEFAULT’ AGAINST OBAMA http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/georgia-judge-considered-default-against-obama/print/
Obama’s State of the Union disregards the steady buildup of storm clouds on the horizon
January 28, 2012
Obama’s State of the Union disregards the looming buildup of storm clouds
So much has already been written about President Barack Obama’s Third State of the Union Address on the night of Tuesday, January 24, that, as a recipient, I now have an excess of information within me that I must widdle down. As I sat down to write an article, foremost in my mind was what I might say of worth that could add to what Illinois Review readers likewise have been able to discern from post-speech blogs and articles, some dissecting word-by-word President Obama 7,000 word speech.
As posted by Eric Erickson on Wednesday, January 25, John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Continuing, Erickson wrote, “Instead Barack Obama’s State of the Union was all about informing the American people that the government is going to do everything for you, and when unable to keep its promises, it will take from the successful and give to you.”
President Obama’s fairness doctrine was exhibited and put on display for all to observe when he invited the secretary of Warren Buffet to sit next to his wife, Michelle, who displayed the opposite of fairness when she showed up in outlandishly expensive $35,000 designer dress fit for a queen.
It is not that Buffet’s secretary was reduced to eating dog food after paying more taxes on her salary than her employee. It has been reported that secretary Debbie Busanek’s likely salary is between $200,000 to $500,000. I’m sure she is living quite well on what she earns.
As with the deviousness and deception that ran throughout Obama’s address, Buffet’s secretary was invited with one goal in mind, as a means to raise the unfairness of the tax code put in place by Republicans, which taxes individual income from capital gains and dividends at a lower rate than earned income from salaries.
President Obama seems indifferent to Mitt Romney’s $3.2 million payment to the IRS or his charitable giving of $400 million (15% of his income). By contrast Obama, so generous in spending taxpayer money, donated a shameful 1% of his income.
With President Obama’s usual swagger and flippant attitude he informed the American people, “Let’s never forget. Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a government and a financial system that do the same. It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom.”
How can President Obama with a straight face tell hard-working Americans that they are not paying their “fair share” when it was revealed on Wednesday, January 24 that forty one of Obama’s White House aides owe $831,000 in back taxes?
Even if all the wealth were confiscated from the richest members of America’s society, it would barely make a dent in this nation’s deficit. Obama has created $5 trillion in debt in less than four years and his on his way to $6 trillion.
Rush Limbaugh informed listeners on his Thursday, January 26, WLS-AM radio show, that all total there are 8,274 individuals in the U.S. who earn over $10 million a year. The combined incomes of all 8,274 individuals with earnings of $10 million, adds up to $240 billion, which is only enough to fund government for eighteen days!
It was during Obama’s first State of the Union speech that he promised: ”My administration has begun to go line-by line though the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective spending.”
How then did the $400 million Solyndra boondoggle taxpayer handout slip through the bureaucratic cracks, signed on to by the Obama administration on day one, after the previous Bush administration rejected the request to do likewise? Reported recently is that hundreds of other government-sponsored solar project went bust like Solyndra.
Michelle Malkin posted an informative bog post on Wednesday, January 25, Obama’s Green Robber Barons, in which she noted that besides Solyndra, the controlling Barons of Beacon Power, Spectra Watt, and Nevada Geothermal reaped in an obscenely unfair share of billions of tax dollars through their ties to the Obama administration. Michelle Malkin made this astute remark about fairness: ”Fairness is in the eye of the wealth distributor.” http//michellemalkin.com/
In the fantasy world in which the Obama administration resides, where government is thought to be able to accomplish whatever it desires if it spends enough of your hard earned tax dollars, dreams are being pursued to eliminate pollution and squalor by promoting wind, solar, and batteries as viable, green energy sources to meet this nation’s increasing energy needs. These pipe dream, pie-in-the-sky sources of energy are only profitable to investors because of generous government subsidies. They were further touted to produce thousands of green jobs.
It is hokum for President Obama to envision the creation of thousands of green from investment in solar and wind. A study commissioned by the University of Juan Carlos and the Juan de Mariana Institute in 2009 tells another story. The result of the study indicates that despite committing 28,671 million Euros (or approximately $37 billion in U.S. dollars), “for every green job that is attempted to be created, there is a 2.2 destruction of the resources that on average the private sector employs per worker.”
http://www.gresshasissues.com/2010/03/green-jobs-flop-spain/#axzz1PpxPwfI6 <http://www.gresshasissues.com/2010/03/green-jobs-flop-spain/#axzz1PpxPwfI6> ; http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf <http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf> – University of Juan Carlos and the Juan deMariana Institute
The green energy fantasy that the Obama administration has unquestionably and whole-heartedly adopted and embraced, as has Europe, rests upon the hoax of man-made Global Warming, as peddled by Global Warming alarmist Al Gore, who is still waiting for the oceans to rise and for the earth to heat up to ravish the planet as he beckons all to heed his urgent call.
The determination of the Obama administration to replace fossil fuels with green energy sources came to fruition last year when the EPA mandated CO2 as a pollutant, citing oil and coal as the main culprits, without which plant life cannot survive.
How proud President Obama was when reveling in the success of his GM bailout, using, as he did, GM as the “poster boy” of American car makers. It matters not that GM was bailed out by government (taxpayers) to the tune of billions of dollars. By the way, our government still owns 25% of GM contrary to statements made to the contrary in advertising.
GM, in following the guidelines set by the government ownership, developed the Volt, a green car that was going to light fires in a less than fertile car market.
And how did the Volt fare in the public arena? GM can make the Volt, but Americans cannot be forced to buy the green GM car. Volt car sales have been a dismal failure.
A rather feisty hearing was held on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, January 16, in regard to the unexplained engine fires that have started unprompted when the Volt was at rest. I’m sure future hearings and scrutiny will pursue over the unexplained Volt malfunction.
My veins ran cold when listening to Obama’s unconvincing patter about the need for an national energy policy. It was when Obama called for more oil and gas production that I knew President Obama wasn’t really serious.
What about Obama’s recent rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline that would have limited this nation’s dependence on oil from unfriendly countries instead of from our neighbor to the north, Canada? The Keystone XL pipeline would have delivered Canadian oil to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.
Incidentally, in blocking the Keystone XL pipeline project, Obama enriched the wealth of his friend Warren Buffet. It so happens that Buffet owns the Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC which transports 75% of the oil currently shipped by rail out of North Dakota.
Obama, the self-proclaimed savior of the middle class, scuttled thousands of well paying jobs by opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, choosing to please instead the environmental “greenies” over union approval of the pipeline, even though environmental groups and union represent a steady pipeline of campaign money to Democrats
Although Obama’s State of the Union offered many promises from past addresses that remain unfulfilled, I noticed several important omissions.
It is not surprising that Obama failed to mention TARP or his Stimulus bill. But then why would he? Both failed, despite huge infusions of money meant to create jobs and jump start the economy. Instead, they became slush funds for the Obama administration to pick winners and losers in a game of political payback.
Also unmentioned was Obamacare, recognized by President Obama as not popular with the American people.
Not understood is why Obama failed to acknowledge the presence of still recovering Gabriel Giffords (D-Arizona), who since then has tendered her resignation from the U.S. House, or Senator Mark Kirk’s (R-IL) absent in the Chambers after suffering a stroke in close proximity to Obama’s address.
What was perhaps the most irritating moment in Obama sixty-five minute speech came toward the end when he told the American people:
“Any one who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world.”
The Pew Research Center in May of last year reported that both the U.S. favorability rating and confidence in Obama has fallen sharply since 2009.
Regarding an America in decline, decline can also be measured by the amount of the debt being racked up that will impact future generations, along with a nation’s unemployment level.
According to the Heritage Foundation, “The unemployment rate currently stands at 8.5 percent. In December of 2011 200,000 jobs were added,” but as Heritage Foundation’s James Shark writes, “At that pace, the unemployment rate will not return to normal levels (or 5.2 %) for four and a half years — not until September 2016.” http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/24/state-of-the-union-2012-heritage...
Regarding this nation’s debt, how can our nation not face bankruptcy given its reckless spending and borrowing? It matters not that Obama’s policies have nearly doubled the debt over just three years since taking office in 2008, Obama’s child-like response is to blame the Bush administration for his own irresponsible policies that have fostered trillions of additional debt.
Certainly Obama can’t run on his record of stewardship. Taking the nation from a $5 billion debt on the way to $6 trillion in four years is not a record he can defend.
Although Obama decried the obstructionism of Republicans in Congress for blocking his initiatives to create jobs and stimulate the economy, in truth, Republican in the House have proposed many solutions, all of which were never taken up in Senate, blocked as they were by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
Understandably absent was any criticism by Obama of his Democrat-controlled Senate for not having passed a budget in over 1,000 days, which is Senate’s basic duty.
In that Obama has a majority in the Senate, much of what Obama desires in legislation could be passed by the Senate. How convenient it is for Obama to blame the Do-Nothing Congress (basically Republicans) for his inability to pass legislation that would help the middle class, and then using his dishonesty as a means to convince the American people that he could offer them relief if only those nasty Republicans didn’t stand in the way.
Obama’s address was heavy on class warfare, commitment to raising taxes, increasing regulations, establishing more government agencies — coupled with warmed-up failed policies — that aptly reflect Obama’s extreme leftist ideology which would result in a fundamentally changed country.
It has been disputed that President Obama is a devotee of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radical” and that Alinsky’s rules are being exhibited through the thrust of Obama’s policies and Executive decisions.
As a sweetener to those Americans who can be fooled by misleading rhetoric, Obama has presented himself as a president hard at work for the middle class who needs four more years to finish his job.
But the American people are hurting, President Barack Obama! While your family is taking extravagant vacations and you and Michelle are enjoying a lifestyle that befits a king and queen, the American people are suffering with much belt-tightening taking place. But not so for your family!
So far during Obama’s presidency the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 83%, the price of ground beef by 4% and the price of bacon by 22 percent. The American people so far haven’t blamed Obama for the high gas prices at the pump (but why not?) as they did former President President George W. Bush.
Of concern is a present discussion among oil producers about withdrawing the dollar as the unit value for oil. If acted upon, it would prove devastating for the American economy.
Heavy-handed government regulations and the threat of tax increases only creates uncertainty that keeps employers from hiring and entrepreneurs from launching new businesses.
Indicated by Obama’s State of the Union address is how little Obama actually understands, based on reality, about the State of the Union.
Obama, in previewing his address the weekend before its presentation, said: ”We can go in two directions. One is towards less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for…building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.” http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/24/state-of-the-union-2012-heritage...
European governments are collapsing due to policies they can no longer sustain. Yet Obama remains unfazed on his ruling pathway and is well along the way to taking this nation down the same route as has befallen Greece and Spain.
Personally, I am scared of the possibility that the American people will select the second option. This nation cannot weather another four years of President Obama with policies that are akin to the failed socialist policies of Europe, with Obama’s added promise that he will go it alone through Executive Orders and rule by Czars if Congress refuses to go along with what his philosophy dictates is best for this nation.
IL General Assembly need two doctor candidates in Springfield, Arie Friedman (Senate District 29) and Mark Neerhof (House District 58) to cure state ills
January 26, 2012
March 20 is fast approaching and with it the Illinois Primary Elections. It is important that voters choose wisely by sending legislators to Springfield whose policy choices do not lead to further bankruptcy.
Highlighted in a recent Illinois Policy Institute report were the following staggering statistics that bode ill for Illinois and its future:
• For the past 15 years, Illinois has lost more than 806,000 people to other states, the equivalent of losing Aurora, Rockford, Joliet, Naperville, Springfield , five of Illinois’ six largest cities, and half of Elgin.
• Along with the loss of 806,000 individuals from 1995 to 2010, went $26 billion in adjusted gross income which would have been part of the Illinois tax base.
• In 2009 alone, Illinois lost $1.5 billion in taxable income when 40,000 people moved to 42 other states.
• States netting the most people from Illinois include the following: Texas, Indiana, Florida, Wisconsin, Missouri and Iowa. Four are neighboring states which negates the idea that Illinoisans are fleeing to warmer weather states.
• Illinois residents migrated to states where, on the average, taxes are lower, including estate taxes; housing is more affordable, and union membership nets 10 percent rather than Illinois’ 18 percent.
These three changes must take place if there is any hope of turning Illinois around:
1. Pension system reform: Unfunded pension are estimated at $85 billion to perhaps as high as $200 billion.
2. Repeal 2011 individual and corporation tax increases. Lower taxes are needed in Illinois to create a level playing field.
3. Tackle run-away health care costs.
As of now there are no doctors in either the Illinois House or Senate to tackle run-away health care costs. Arie Friedman, M.D. is running to replace an open senate seat held by Susan Garrett in the 29th Legislative District and Mark Neerhof, M.D. is running for another open seat held by Karen May in House District 58. Both are outstanding candidates who are willing to take time off from their lucrative medical practices because of concern over the direction of this nation and state, coupled with love of country and their desire to try to make a difference.
Sending principled individuals to Springfield will start the ball rolling to turn Illinois around, ending the Democrat culture of spending and borrowing.
Doctors Arie Friedman and Mark Neerhof represent principled Republican candidates running for seats in Illinois Senate District 29 and House District 58, respectively, who will not go soft when elected, but who will fight to undo Democrat policies that have placed Illinois at the bottom of the heap in state rankings and brought shame to Illinois and its people.
Finke attributed the following quote to Gov. Pat Quinn: “There is a major mountain to climb this year and I’m willing to lead the expedition.”
Quinn has many major mountains to scale in 2012 in the wake of his incomplete 2011 climbs, among them being pension and Medicaid reform.
Although Quinn did manage to pass an income tax increase in 2011, it was declared a flop on its first anniversary by the Illinois Policy Institute.
The tax hike neither stemmed the loss of businesses or people from Illinois, helped with the state’s monumental financial problems, or stopped Moody’s from lowering the state’s credit rating down a notch from A-1 to A-2.
Yet Finke in his article doggedly stood by Quinn’s misguided policy by hinting that Republicans are the ones who are defying logic by calling for a repeal of the 2011 tax hike. In Finke’s world, repealing the tax hike would amount to the loss of $7 billion generated for the state through the tax hike; repealing would only add to the state’s financial problems.
Might you explore these questions, Mr. Finke, before voicing again your misguided assumption that more money will cure what ails Illinois? 1.) What has been done to curb spending in the state? 2.) How was the $7 billion tax rate hike spent? 3.) Why the urgent need to borrow $800 million more in the near future if the tax rate hike did so well in 2011 in adding to the state coffers?
Furthermore, the Illinois Policy Institute’s efforts to get candidates to sign its Pledge to Repeal the 2011 Income Tax Increase should be applauded and not dismissed, if there is any hope for Illinois to achieve an honest, sustainable and accountable government.
From the get-go in the Sun-Times surprising Editorial of Monday, January 21, Why we will no longer endorse in elections, the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board made quite clear that the newspaper was founded in 1941 by Marshall Field III to counter here in the Midwest the partisanship of Col. Robert McCormick and his Chicago Tribune, which leaned right for many years, during the Roosevelt administration.
Images and reputations take a long time to restore, as is often the situation politicians face when their reputations have been sullied through the spread of false information. “How can I get my reputation back? has been heard more than once among political candidates who have been unfairly targeted.
Questions for the Chicago News-Sun to consider include:
1. By no longer endorsing candidates in elections, will it really make a difference in countering long-held perceptions that the Sun-Times is a left-leaning newspaper?
2. If newspaper endorsements are of important to some readers, might people gravitate toward the Tribune instead for guidance?
3. By keeping on the staff commentary writers like Laura Washington, Richard Roeper, Ester Cepeda and Lynn Sweet, all of whom espouse left of center rhetoric, how will it be possible to attract subscribers other than your core group of readers, so essential to keeping the Sun-Times afloat?
Might it be that the Sun-Times is queasy about endorsing its home town candidate for a second term, President Barack Obama, and that by squashing Sun-Times endorsements the Editorial Board will be relieved of publishing the reason why!
The Tribune’s Editorial Board a day later on Tuesday, January 22, stated in an editorial why it will continue to endorse political candidates. But, alas, what used to be a right-leaning newspaper under Col.Robert McCormick is no longer a partisan right-leaning newspaper, as was evident in the Trib’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president in 2008.
I mourn not over the declamation by the Sun-Times not to endorse or the Tribune’s message that it will continue to make endorsements, but over the absence of a Chicago newspaper that does not lean to the left.
Trib denies Newt’s Alinsky-Obama connection allegations
January 25, 2012
On the contrary, Newt Gingrich is entirely justified and correct in his campaign rhetoric which zeros in on Saul Alinsky as a radical.
It is absurd not to consider Saul Alinsky a radical. As outlined in Alinsky’s book, “Rules for Radicals.” President Obama embraced the philosophy of Saul Alinsky when working as a community organizer in Chicago. When elected president, Obama carried Alinsky’s philosophy into the White House. Since 2010 Obama bit by bit, through Executive Orders and the use of his Czars, has employed Alinsky’s play book to implement policies geared to take this nation from a constitutional democracy to one associated with Utopian.
Kate Thayer’s article was definitely a hit piece against Newt Gingrich. Might Mr. Thayer only be following the guidelines of the Tribune to bash Gingrich? Heaven help the Tribune if she was!
It will not help to increase the Tribune’s circulation by protecting the so-called Chicago Gang and former White House advisers to Obama, all of whom ascribe to the same philosophy as outlined in Alinsky’s Rules for Radical, among them Bill Ayers, Rahm Emanual, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett.
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Opening page -
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to he very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history… the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom —
Lucifer.”
Prologue“The Revolutionary force today has two targets, moral as well as material. Its young protagonists are one moment reminiscent of the idealistic early Christians, yet they also urge violence and cry, ‘Burn the system down!‘ They have no illusions about the system, but plenty of illusions about the way to change our world. It is to this point that I have written this book.”
1. The PurposeIn this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace…. “Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.’ This means revolution.” p.3
“Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing.” p.6
“A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage — the political paradise of communism.” p.10
“An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth — truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing…. To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations….” pp.10-11
Notes on Saul Alinsky and Neo-Marxism:
Alinsky’s tactics were based, not on Stalin’s revolutionary violence, but on the Neo-Marxist strategies of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist. Relying on gradualism, infiltration and the dialectic process rather than a bloody revolution, Gramsci’s transformational Marxism was so subtle that few even noticed the deliberate changes.
Like Alinsky, Mikhail Gorbachev followed Gramsci, not Lenin. In fact, Gramsci aroused Stalins’s wrath by suggesting that Lenin’s revolutionary plan wouldn’t work in the West. Instead the primary assault would be on Biblical absolutes and Christian values, which must be crushed as a social force before the new face of Communism could rise and flourish. Malachi Martin gave us a progress report:
“By 1985, the influence of traditional Christian philosophy in the West was weak and negligible…. Gramsci’s master strategy was now feasible. Humanly speaking, it was no longer too tall an order to strip large majorities of men and women in the West of those last vestiges that remained to them of Christianity’s transcendent God.”
2. Of Means and Ends [Forget moral or ethical considerations]
“The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. … The real arena is corrupt and bloody.” p.24
“The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves…. The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means… The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be….” pp.25-26
“The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means….” p.29
“The seventh rule… is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics….” p.34
“The tenth rule… is you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.… It involves sifting the multiple factors which combine in creating the circumstances at any given time… Who, and how many will support the action?… If weapons are needed, then are appropriate d weapons available? Availability of means determines whether you will be underground or above ground; whether you will move quickly or slowly…” p.36
Notes: Apparently, Michelle Obama referred to these words during her Democratic National Convention speech: “She said, ‘Barack stood up that day,’ talking about a visit to Chicago neighborhoods, ‘and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about ‘The world as it is‘ and ‘The world as it should be…’ And, ‘All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do – that we have an obligation to, fight for the world as it should be.”
Do you wonder who — or whose values — should determine what “the world… should be?”
4. The Education of the Organizer
“To the organizer, imagination… is the dynamism that starts and sustains him in his whole life of action as an organizer. It ignites and feeds the force that drives him to organize for change….
“The organizer knows that the real action is in the reaction of the opposition. To realistically appraise and anticipate the probable reactions of the enemy, he must be able to identify with them, too, in his imagination, and foresee their reactions to his actions….
“The organizers searching with a free and open mind void of certainty, hating dogma, finds laughter not just a way to maintain his sanity but also a key to understanding life.”pp.74-75“…the organizer must be able to split himself into two parts — one part in the arena of action where he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations that it really is only a 10 percent difference.” p.78
“…the organizer is constantly creating new out of the old. He knows that all new ideas arise from conflict; [See Dialectic Process] that every time man as had a new idea it has been a challenge to the sacred ideas of the past and the present and inevitably a conflict has raged.” p.79
5. Communication[Notice the emphasis on conflict, dialogue, relationships, etc. Team "service" is essential to building strong relationships through "common involvements"]
”And so the guided questioning goes on without anyone losing face or being left out of the decision-making. Every weakness of every proposed tactic is probed by questions…. Is this manipulation? Certainly….” p.88
“One of the factors that changes what you can and can’t communicate is relationships. There are sensitive areas that one does not touch until there is a strong personal relationship based on common involvements. Otherwise the other party turns off and literally does not hear….
“Conversely, if you have a good relationship, he is very receptive…. For example, I have always believed that birth control and abortion are personal rights to be exercised by the individual. If, in my early days when I organized… neighborhood in Chicago, which was 95 per cent Roman Catholic, I had tried to communicate this, even through the experience of the residents, whose economic plight was aggravated by large families, that would have been the end of my relationship with the community. That instant I would have been stamped as an enemy of the church and all communication would have ceased.
“Some years later, after establishing solid relationships, I was free to talk about anything…. By then the argument was no longer limited to such questions as, ‘How much longer do you think the Catholic Church can hang on to this archaic notion and still survive?’ …the subject and nature of the discussion would have been unthinkable without that solid relationship.”
pp.93-94
6. In the Beginning: The Process of Power [Notice the compromise needed to build the power base. Yet, since pragmatism has eroded all values, it's simply a matter of ends justifying means. It's not unlike churches that attract members through the world's entertainment -- then continue to soften or hide Truth in order to keep them happy and lure more.]
“From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams… only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed that mass power base, he confronts no major issues…. Until he has those means and power instruments, his ‘tactics’ are very different from power tactics. Therefore, every move revolves around one central point: how many recruits will this bring into the organization, whether by means of local organizations, churches, service groups, labor Unions, corner gangs, or as individuals.”
“Change comes from power, and power comes from organization.” p.113
“The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns…. All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.” p.116
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“An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent… He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises….
“The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them. When those prominent in the status quo turn and label you an ‘agitator’ they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function—to agitate to the point of conflict.” p.117“Process tells us how. Purpose tells us why. But in reality, it is academic to draw a line between them, they are part of a continuum…. Process is really purpose.” p.122
7. Tactics“Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. … Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves.” p.126
Always remember the first rule of power tactics (pps.127-134):1. “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”
2. “Never go outside the expertise of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear and retreat…. [and] the collapse of communication.
3. “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)
4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.”
6. “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”
7. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time….”
8. “Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.”
9. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
10. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”
11. “If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside… every positive has its negative.”
12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen.’…
“…any target can always say, ‘Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When your ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target…’
“One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.” (pps.127-134)
Saul Alinksky, Rules for Radicals, Vintage Books, New York, 1989.
Additional Notes: Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals:
“Known as the ‘father of modern American radicalism,’ Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972) developed strategies and tactics that take the enormous, unfocused emotional energy of grassroots groups and transform it into effective anti-government and anti-corporate activism. … Some of these rules are ruthless, but they work.”
Article by Phyllis Schalfly titled “Alinski’s Rules: Must Reading In Obama Era,” posted at www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=318470857908277 (2-2-09)
“Alinsky’s second chapter, called Of Means and Ends, craftily poses many difficult moral dilemmas, and his ‘tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends’ is: ‘you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.’ He doesn’t ignore traditional moral standards or dismiss them as unnecessary. He is much more devious; he teaches his followers that ‘Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.’…
“The qualities Alinsky looked for in a good organizer were:
- ego (“reaching for the highest level for which man can reach — to create, to be a ‘great creator,’ to play God”),
- curiosity (raising “questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern”),
- irreverence (“nothing is sacred”; the organizer “detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality”),
- imagination (“the fuel for the force that keeps an organizer organizing”),
- a sense of humor (“the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule“), and an
- organized personality with confidence in presenting the right reason for his actions only “as a moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved.’…
“‘The organizer’s first job is to create the issues or problems,’ and ‘organizations must be based on many issues.’ The organizer ‘must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.’”
See also Obama: Training an army of world servers
Collectivism in churches and Trading Truth for a “Social Gospel”
Climate Change alarmism shamefully promoted at the Chicago Tribune
January 25, 2012
A Tribune front page article by reporter Michael Hawthorne on Sunday, January 22, titled, CLIMATE CHANGERS, named two coal-fired plants owned and operated by Midwest Generation, Crawford and Fisk, as a key source of greenhouse gas contributing to Climate Change. Listed also were 18 other big industrial emitters of greenhouse gasses in the Chicago area.
My reaction to the Tribune story is based on documented and scientific evidence that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever played on mankind. The EPA decision in declaring CO2 a pollutant lacked scientific grounding, but instead was ploy to malign and phase out fossil fuels to advance so-called unreliable and doomed-to-fail renewable energy sources like sun and wind — Consider Solyndra as one of many misguided investments by the Obama administration at taxpayer expense — and to peddle upon a gullible public electric cars as a way to save the world from catastrophic happenings due to Global Warming.
Chicago-based Heartland Institute, Joe Bast, CEO, was the prime source of my reasoned decision based on studies by thousands of scientists worldwide whose findings remain hidden through selective reporting by the news media in favor of global warming alarmism.
Jay Lehr, Ph.D, Science Director at The Heartland Institute, has conveniently place these “10 Facts Abut Climate Change” on the back side of his business Card:
“1) Global temperatures have not risen since 1998.
2) 900,000 years of ice core records show continuous 1,500-year warming cycles.
3) It was 7 degrees F warmer in the 13th century when Greenland was actually green.
4) Carbon dioxide is to plants what oxygen is to man, not a pollutant.
5) Computer models used to forecast future warming cannot calculate the known past.
6) Antarctic ice is increasing far more than Arctic ice is melting
7) Historically, CO2 concentrations have risen after, not before, warming periods.
8) Many in the news media promote global warming alarmism through selective reporting.
9) The climate is always changing. The present warming is neither unusual nor harmful.
10) Findings to prove man caused global warming has reached $5 billion annually.”
May Illinoisans soon wake up to what is happening to their state. Man-made climate change is being promoted for nefarious purposes.
Promoting wind and solar while condemning greenhouse gas sources will only hurt the pocketbooks of Illinoisans and hinder the state’s economic recovery.
I suspect that the Chicago Tribune’s article came first in the lineup on Thursday, January 19, Topinka: Illinois’ Unpaid Bill Crisis Just Keeps Getting Worse, and that it served as the spring board for the following day’s opinion piece on January 20 in The Wall Street Journal, The Greece Next Door, which contrasts Illinois’s credit rating downgrade to positive happening in Wisconsin. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/01/19/topinka-illinois-unpaid-bill-crisis-just-keeps-getting-worse http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577164944279702590.html?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb_h
Both articles instead of fostering a sense of citizen pride for their state, should serve as a siren of despair and a wake up call Illinoisans.
As related by Illinois State Comptroller, Judy Topinka, on a WBBM fellow report by Regine Schlesinger on January 19:
“Illinois keeps falling farther behind on its debt. Officially the state has a backlog of more than $4.25 billion in unpaid bills. But Illinois State Comptroller Judy Topinka says when one factors in other bills, the figure is closer to around $8.5 billion. Those other outstanding bills include tax refunds, employee health insurance, and bills that have not yet reached her desk.
Topinka says this is extremely disappointing, since a year ago, the state sharply increased income taxes. Said Topinka, ’After the largest tax hike in our history, the state continues to be in this precarious fiscal position with persistent payment delays, and frankly, the situation is unlikely to significantly improve in the near term.’
Some state officials say the solution is more borrowing to pay the bills, but Topinka says the solution is to cut spending.” http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/01/19/topinka-illinois-unpaid-bill-crisis-just-keeps-getting-worse
The The Wall Street Journal commentary had this to say about the dismal fiscal management of IL, before continuing on with a glowing picture of Illinois’s north of the border state, Wisconsin, contributing its improved financial status to Governor Walker’s now maligned pension reforms:
“Run up spending and debt, raise taxes in the naming of balancing the budget, but then watch as deficits rise and your credit-rating falls anyway. That’s been the sad pattern in Europe, and now it’s hitting that mecca of tax-and-spend government known as Illinois.
The WSJ article goes on to inform readers about Moody’s downgrade of Illinois’s state debt to A2 to A1 — the lowest among all 50 states — despite the recent one year anniversary to raise individual income taxes by 67% and the corporate tax rate by 46% by Governor Quinn and fellow Democrats.
Given that Illinois raised $7 billion in extra revenue through its 2011 income tax rate increases, intended, by the way, to put the state back on sound fiscal footing and to improve its credit rating, The Wall Street Journal has every right to question why Democrat state legislator during 2011 made no effort to either curb spending or tackle meaningful Medicaid and Pension reforms so desperately needed, facts upon which Moody lowered Illinois’s credit rating.
Recently Governor Quinn branded Republican lawmakers as unrealistic when they suggested that the 2011 income tax increases should be repealed as failed policy.
According to the Illinois Policy Policy Institute, John Tillman, CEO:
“The tax hike flunked. It failed to put Illinois on sound fiscal footing, it failed at restoring confidence in government’s ability to meet serious challenges head on. It failed to strengthen the state’s economy. It failed to create opportunity and prosperity. it failed families and the businesses that want to be a part of making Illinois great again.” http://illinoispolicy.org/news/article.asp?ArticleSource=4614
Even with the additional $7 billion in revenue, which seemed to disappear down a rat hole or into thin air, spending grew in Illinois, bills went unpaid, pension reform stalled, Illinois’s unemployment problem worsened, and the tax hike made Illinois less competitive and forced businesses to leave the state.
To add insult upon insult, recently Governor Quinn tendered a bond sale of $800 million of new 10-hear general obligation bonds which is to be used to pay for investment in schools, roads, mass transit, and other key capital projects across the state.
As reported in the already named WSJ article, because of Moody’s downgrade of Illinois state debt from A2 from A1, “The state’s cost of borrowing for $800 million of new 10-year general obligation rose to 3.1% — which is 110 basis points higher than the 2% on top-rated 10-year bonds of more financially states. This translates into millions of dollars of extra cost for already cash-strapped Illinois.
To one Illinois lawmaker, who just happens to be my own IL House representative in District 58, Democrat Karen May, she is not in the least concerned by recent reports in the press about Illinois’s credit rating and recent $800 bond sales.
Rep. Karen May had the following to say to her constituents in a Internet newsletter on Friday, January 20:
“You may have seen recent reports in the press about Illinois’ credit rating and recent bond sales. Some press reports didn’t tell the whole story, and the state’s bond sale actually went quite well. Certainly, our credit rating is of concern, however our recent bond sale was well received by investors and demand was high. At 3.9 percent, Illinois’ bonds sold for the lowest interest rate since at least 1976, according to the Governor’s budget office. This is good news, despite dire predictions.”
Karen May is living in a world of fantasy, as are most Democrat lawmakers Illinoisans have sent to Springfield.
(Note: As Rep. May is not running for another term in the House this November, there is an open House seat in District 58. I have endorsed Dr. Mark Neerhof as my candidate of choice for May’s House seat. As a practicing obstetrician, having served patients in the Chicagoland area for more than 20 years, Dr. Neerhof qualifies as a businessman and would bring his knowledge to the House to fix the broken Medicaid system, along with his fervent desire to cut spending and deal with pension reform.).
Although credit-rating agencies have explicitly warned against borrowing to pay for operations, Illinois doesn’t get the message. It just keeps on borrowing.
As noted by Illinois State Comptroller Judy Topinka:
“Moody’s made it clear that it would view further borrowing to pay current obligations as a negative act that would cause another downgrade. The only way out of this mess is to keep cutting spending, provide for a business climate and, for once let growth outpace spending.” http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-11/news/ct-edit-borrowing-20120111_1_pension-costs-pension-reform-comptroller-judy-baar-topinka
A little more than half way through The Wall Street Journal editorial of January 20, revelations are made to reveal the reasoning behind Illinois as The Greece Next Door to Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s Governor Walker is credited for his ”plan to require government workers to pay a larger share of their health-plan costs, and to shore up the pension system by trimming future retirement liabilities”
Despite the union-financed attempt to remove Walker from office, unlike Moody’s warnings to Illinois, “Moody’s has praised Mr. Walker’s budget as “credit positive for Wisconsin,” adding that the money-sving reforms ring “the state’s finances closer to a structural budgetary balance.”
As a result:
1. Wisconsin has jumped from 41st to 17th in the ranking of state’s business climate; Illinois dropped to 48th from 45th.
2. Governor Walker balance the budget without new taxes.
Wisconsin voters better wise up to the positive happening in Wisconsin before they throw out Governor Walker and see their state return to the not so Good Old Days!
Research led me to this excellent article published in the City Journal by Christine Schneider, Winter 2012, It’s Working in Walker’s Wisconsin (The governor’s controversial labor reforms are already saving taxpapers million. http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=7771
Illinois voters better keep an eye on the positive results in neighboring Wisconsin where serious pension reform took place and
Governor Quinn is at least acknowledging that Illinois’s gaping pension obligations is making it impossible to fund other obligation such as education, health care and public safety, but will Democrats once again be cowed by powerful unions from whence comes votes and political campaign contribution?
Investments in solar and wind by Invenergy reflect Illinois’s misguided energy policy
January 21, 2012
The following article in the Chicago Tribune by Julie Wernau in the Business Section on Wednesday, January 18, ComEd to receive more solar power, captured my attention:
“Beginning in July, Commonwealth Edison Co. customers will receive more power from the sun, thanks to a solar project under way in LaSalle County.
The 23-megawatt project by Chicago-based Invenergy LLC, using technology from General Electric Co’s renewable arm, will be the largest solar project in the Midwest” http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-18/business/ct-biz–0118-solar-farm-20120118_1_solar-project-solar-panels-solar-power
In the same Trib article, Wernau informed readers that the 60 acres, 2.3 megawatt solar project planned for LaSalle County will be located next to another already functioning project by Invenergy, its Grand Ridge-wind farm, “where 140 of GE’s 1.5 megawatt wind turbines will produce 210-megawatts of power.” Through research, I found that the Grand Ridge-wind farm covers 28,000 acres.
Some background information: Invenergy and its affiliated companies develop, own and operate large-scale renewable and other clean energy generation facilities in North America and Europe with its home office in Chicago. Invenergy and its affiliated companies have developed and placed in service twenty-six wind farms, making Invenergy one of the top six largest owners of wind generating facilities in the U.S.
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=4850990
As if Julie Wernau’s Trib article informing readers of a new Invenery Illinois solar plant and of an existing wind turbine farm weren’t enough to stir my thoughts toward one of total disbelief, Wernau further let slip that Exelon Corp’s LaSalle nuclear power plant is located in close proximity to Invenergy’s solar project and functioning wind farm.
Although my educational background is in music education, I have written numerous articles about the Zion Dual Nuclear Plant, located about 15 miles south of my home in Lake Bluff, IL When standing on Lake Bluff’s Sunrise Beach, I could see the dual towers of the Zion’s Nuclear Facility looking northward from Lake Bluff. http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2010/06/why-i-think-th...
My Nuclear Energy knowledge resulted from extended back and forth communication with David Hollein, a Barrington Hills resident, who during his career at Westinghouse led a number of projects worldwide where he because acquainted with some powerful people. At one point in his career, Mr. Hollein had charge of Westinghouse’s Commonwealth Edison projects and had the lead for at least three two-unit power stations, including the Zion’s Dual Nuclear Facility. Built in 1973, the first Zion unit started producing power in December, 1973. The second unit came on line in September of 1974.
Zion’s Nuclear Facility is presently being decommissioned by Zion Solutions, and when completed over a ten- year time period at a cost close to a billion dollars paid for by electric rate payers in northern Illinois, the Zion Facility will be but a blurb in history of a Plant shut down unnecessarily and prematurely in 1998. Zion’s decommissioning will result in the loss of 2,100 MWs of clean, cheap electricity from a power generating station site covering 257 acres. Zion used as its cooling pool Lake Michigan: Intake structure – 2,600 ft. off shore; Discharge structure – 760 ft. off shore.
And what about Exelon Corp’s LaSalle Nuclear power plant mentioned in Julia Wernau’s article? The LaSalle Dual Nuclear Station covers 3,055 acres which includes a man-made cooling lake of 2,058 acres. LaSalle’s Unit 1 is capable of generating 1,138 net megawatts; Unit 2 is capable of generating 1,140 net MW. Together the units can produce enough energy to power more than 2.3 million average American.
I have no fault with Julie Wernau’s Trib article. She is an excellent reporter who covers Energy Issues for the Trib and only presented the facts as she found them.
Why then am I so upset with the facts in Julia Wernau’s Trib article?
The answer lies here: Before Zion’s shut down in 1998, it was producing 2,100 MWs of power, enough power for 2 million homes. Lasalle is now producing 2,278 MWs of power, enough to power 2.3 million average American homes.
It upsets me that wind and solar power are being considered as viable energy sources here in Illinois under the assumption that they can supply the state with its increasing, future energy needs.
The sum total of megawatts from the new Invenergy solar power project upon completion is 2.3 MW. Combined with the l.5 MWs of power produced at Invenergy’s Grand Ridge-wind farm with its 140 turbines covering 28,000 acres, they add up to a paltry 3.8 MWs of power!
This amount of energy is trivial in comparison to the massive amount of energy produced by just one nuclear plant which on the average provides 1,000 MWs of green, safe, efficient, and inexpensive power.
I don’t hold any ill feelings against companies such as Chicago-based Invenergy LLC who are only looking to make a buck from their investments in wind and solar as the accepted flavors of the day.
Such companies are being developed and spurred on by climate-warming prophets like Al Gore, who claim that the earth is facing unstoppable destruction due to man-made global warming, if man’s dependence on fossil fuels for energy is not abandoned in favor of green energy source — such as solar and wind — which are not filthy and which do not pollute the earth with CO2 emissions.
The idea of wind and solar power as sources capable of providing vast amounts of power is but a pipe dream, but if there is money to be made through hefty government subsidies to invest in wind and solar power — without which wind and solar would not be profitable ventures — companies will continue to invest in these renewable, green energy sources until they are no longer profitable to operate. Abandonment will occur, as is happening in Europe, when government subsidies dry up. Looking into he future, this nation’s landscape will be dotted with rusting wind turbines and abandoned solar power sites.
To be emphasized: Wind and solar power are produced only when the wind blows and the sun shines. Back-up energy must be provided when Mother Nature rations both the wind and the sun.
Concerning wind turbines, there is not a single-wind farm in the world that pays for itself without massive government subsidies. It would take a wind turbine farm covering 300 square miles to produce 1,000 MWs of power. Compare this to one nuclear facility which on the average produces 1,000 MW of energy on a site measured in acres, not in square miles!
Blame must be placed on fool-hardy Illinois legislators who have jumped head-long and feet-first into the unrealistic and unscientific Al Gore premise that Global Warming exists, and that it’s a man-made phenomena.
As cited by Julia Wernau in her aritlce, “Passed by Illinois legislators and under state law, utilities must receive one-half of 1 percent of their power from solar (AND WIND?) by 2012, with that total doubling each (tripling between 2012 and 2013) until it reaches 6% in 2015.”
Further research by Julie Wernau would have revealed that Illinois legislators have likewise mandated that 18% of Illinois’s energy should come from wind and solar power by 2025. According to Wernau, Illinois has not even reached its mandated 2011 goal of one half of one percent.
Illinois is blessed in having an estimated 211 billion tons of coal lying beneath the state. This demonstrated coal reserve base is the second largest in the U.S., and, for bituminous coal, the largest in the nation. Illinois coal resources hold more British thermal units (measure of heat) than all of Saudi Arabia’s and Kuwait’s oil reserves combined. http://sz0092.ev.mail.comcast.net/zimbra/h/printmessage?id=75986
Coal production is a major part of the Illinois economy. In 2004, the state produced over 31 million short tons of coal worth an estimated $819 million dollars, which ranked it 9th in the nation in coal production. Coal deposits lie under 37,000 square miles of Illinois, about two thirds the entire state. Recoverable coal reserves are estimated to total 30 billion tons, accounting for almost one-eighth of the nation’s total coal reserves and one-fourth of bituminous coal reserves. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Illinois_and_coal <http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Illinois_and_coal>
As with the Obama administration, Illinois Democrat legislators have become enamored with and dedicated to Al Gore’s unscientific hypothesis that man-made Global Warming, with its culprit CO2, must be phased out. Irrational thoughts about saving the earth through the development of wind and solar power continue to swirl around in the misguided brains of Springfield Democrat legislators.
In yet another Trib article by Julie Wernau published June 11, 2011, Consumers’ electric bills likely to spike as coal plants close, Wernau warns how stricter EPA regulations, which have already been put in place, will force some power generators to decide to shutter their coal-fired plant, rather than to comply with the costly improvements mandated by the EPA.
Wernau’s article further informs readers that starting in 2014 the average residential customer in ComEd’s territory would see increases of $107 to $178 a year. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-11/business/ct-biz-0612-rates-20110611_1_generators-electricity-illinois-power-agency
Every single source of energy besides fossil fuel and nuclear is either less convenient, more expensive, or both. Right now there is no alternative that is economically competitive with oil, coal, gas and nuclear.
Some time ago I received a communication from Howard Hayden, Prof. Emeritus of Physics at the University of Connecticut, an expert on wind, solar and nuclear power, who shared with me this salient comment which says it all!:
“We are not going to run this country on chicken manure, sunbeams and breezes. It is an unconscionable waste of money to subsidize phony energy sources and to look for the Holy Climate Knob in the sky.”
