Tag: Jimmy Carter

While the Republican controlled congress fiddles with bills and resolutions that will never make it to the President's desk, the damage is already being done. The EPA has made it unprofitable for a power company to do business in the UP.  As the Candidate Obama put it so bluntly in 2008:

"If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that's being emitted."

The Presque Isle Power plant in Marquette faces a shutdown as a major buyer seeks electricity off the grid from elsewhere. From Energy Biz:

"Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., which operates two iron ore mines in Michigan, has notified We Energies that it will begin buying electricity from Integrys Energy Services, a retail electricity provider that sells electricity in states that have opened up their power markets to competition, Cliffs spokesman Dale Hemmila said.

Cliffs spent $120 million with We Energies last year, according to a filing with the Michigan Public Service Commission."

While the competitive forces are straight up and legitimate, A shutdown of this plant due to a federal regulatory nightmare will have an unpredictable effect on the stability of electricity in the Upper peninsula.  Costs for residents will likely skyrocket, and service will become sub-par.

The saying that essentially ascribes responsibility for making certain decisions, becomes particularly appropriate after this country re-elected the un-re-electable last night.

The country says thank you, may I have another?

A commenter on Twitter last night points out quite correctly, that we now will know what it would have been like to have a Jimmy Carter second term.  In 1980, folks might well have paid attention a little more to cause and effect.  Or maybe folks today are composed too wholly of those indoctrinated youth we have ignored for an entire generation and more.  Perhaps it might be something more sinister, but for whatever the reason, we lost control of this one.  We will now own the results.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice .."

And even that isn't a guarantee they will ever see it.

In fact civilization is moving along rapidly enough that the populations of the UP are being drawn out except in the most concentrated population centers.  And in THOSE places, federal grants for housing, and assistance measures are being increased.  It draws those living in the rural outlying zones in to the town centers.  For some of the poor folk who face increasing government punishment for modifying land to suit their needs, additional fuel costs, and the pledge of subsidized urban housing it makes sense to take a path of least resistance.

Then add to this a increase in the cost of electricity that is as guaranteed as craftsman tools, and the landscape becomes fundamentally different.

The cost of electricity BTW because of such measures that would bankrupt those who would build coal fired plants, which was the promise of then Senator Obama, speaking to an interviewer on clean energy options.  THAT promise is now being kept, as the out of control EPA brings the hammer down on Upper Michigan's coal based energy producers.

"Looming environmental rules may lead We Energies to shut down the only major power plant serving Michigan's Upper Peninsula in the next five or six years."

From the department of unhelpful praise, former President Jimmy Carter tells Rachel Maddow he's a-ok with the idea of Mitt Romney as the GOP presidential nominee.

"I'm not taking a position, but I would be very pleased to see him win the Republican nomination," Carter told the MSNBC host, according to advance interview excerpts.

I'd be willing to bet that the Party power brokers at Walbridge, Alticor and certain capitolcritters are none too smiley faced right about now.