Overlooked?

The Fox news flap is lingering in my memory.   I''m trying to reconcile how the White House, which continues to insist it is interested in ideas and opinions "from all sides" can justify calling a news channel an extension of the Republican party--as if this is a bad thing--and still insist it doe not object to opinions other than its own?

Are the ideas of the GOP, even reflected as they insist in the editorializing of shows like Hannity and Beck, (regardless of their complicity with the actual Republican Policy agenda) unwelcome?  How partisan and closed minded of Mr, Obama and his administration.

Anita Dumb (sorry, Dunn) the sacrificial lamb for the "Fox is not news feint" is already on her way out--under additional speculation that she's leaving only to make room for her husbands better White House Job--but that can't be the end of it.  But I see Dunn as simply the latest effort to silence opposition.  She was already going to get run over by the Obama bus, so why not cover her with live grenades and take out as many as they can while she goes out.

Or, maybe its just another in a long list of mistakes by an inexperienced leader who overdelegates to poor administrators after whom he is constantly forced to clean up.

Regardless, the White House clearly cannot stand any opposition. It's almost infantile how they object to speech which does not toe the administrations agenda.  And that's to be expected from a house full of Chicago politicians who are used to buying people off to get their way, and smearing anyone who won;t be bought off.  They have smeared veterans, libertarian, greedy doctors, evil insurance companies, profit grabbing pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, tea party activists, town hallers, bloggers, Rich people, and a news organization, to (and this is scary) name but a few. 

It will be interesting to see, given that they have another 38 months left in which to show their bi-partisan spirit, who will be left standing beside or behind them.

My guess is almost no one.

Paying For NH Power

At the end of July 2009 PSNH instituted a rate increase of roughly 10.3%.  It was the first major increase since the beginning of the year and reflects (according to PSNH) 2008 Ice storm recovery costs and other costs of doing business.  What is more important is that PSNH has already filed a petition to adjust its effective rates on January 1, 2010.  

While the cost of RGGI carbon credits have declined to a low $2.19 per ton, New Hampshire utilities have purchased over 4,758,000 allowances in the past 12 months for a total expense of over 15 million dollars.  There is no evidence yet that generators have made a significant effort yet to recover those costs so requests for rate changes must be viewed with caution. 

Additionally, the cost of oil has been creeping up over the past six months.  The price per barrel has risen from 55 to 80 dollars a barrel.  ($79.69 at close of trading on 11-18-2009.)  The 12 month average projection is $92.00 per barrel which may reflect much higher prices over the average and I suspect 92.00 is low.  Declining currency values impact real costs, so price shifts will continue upward as global suppliers adjust to compensate for lost value in the dollars used to buy and trade the commodity.  This will add additional price pressure to home heating oils and gasoline, which will impact a broad range of consumer prices including those for electricity generation and delivery. 

NEPGA, the New England Power Grid Association, appears to be a regional trade group of power generators in the North East, has expressed an interest in intervening in the upcoming rate hike negotiations.  NEPGA supports competition among suppliers, cost effective development, and represents a form of trade protection—where development protects costs to consumers but does not risk collapsing price to protect generators. 

NEPGA favors CO2 mitigation but on terms that keep a level playing field for all generators and provided they do not present any abrupt or long term impact on price.  Their interest was best expressed in a report to the PUC earlier in the year regarding New Hampshire’s involvement in RGGI and other in state green energy targets. 

The outcome that should be of greatest concern to New Hampshire policy makers in implementing RGGI is the affect that high electricity costs have in making business less willing to invest in new capital within the state or cause some existing capital to become economically obsolete. Energy has an influence that is disproportionate to its share of the state’s real gross domestic product largely because of consumers’ limited ability to adjust the amount of energy they use per unit of output over a short period of time. 

Currently, the Milkin Institutes cost of doing business index ranks New Hampshire as the 12th most expensive place to do business in the nation based upon the fact that the average industrial electricity bill is the 5th highest in the nation.

Taken all together, along with evidence that New Hampshire already generates significant amounts of ‘clean’ energy from Nuclear and Hydro, it is essential that we develop the political will to reassess our participation in RGGI and the implementation of other strategies that drive up costs.  Our legislators have ignored existing nuclear and hydro capacity while focusing on development and the outside purchase of more expensive alternatives with poorer reliability and higher costs to meet arbitrary targets whose very real impact will be to reduce emissions—not through new technology and cleaner energy—but by driving businesses and employers away from the state to avoid excessive energy costs.

If that was the plan, it will work, but at what cost?

This brings us back to the opening paragraph.  PSNH raised rates roughly 10.3% on August 1^st 2009 and is already looking forward to negotiating another increase on January first.  Outstanding costs include requirements that 25% of capacity come from renewable sources (excluding nuclear and Hydro) and the cost of buying carbon credits that cannot be traded away as in a traditional cap and trade market scheme.  So those costs will be crammed down on rate payers. 

Alternative energy is always something we nee to consider, but it being advanced solely on a partisan political will that contradicts the facts on the ground.  We don’t need to do it all now, if at all.  It favors a select class that supports one party—the one pushing the policy.  It will cost consumers and business more for no conceivable benefit unless that is the real goal.

There’s nothing wrong with conservation.  We should always be looking toward future alternatives.  But it should happen as a reflection of real need and the best interests of the people.  Not through layers of government mandates that raise costs and force suppliers to ignore what works in favor of what's trendy and politically expedient to those with the power to force it on us.  

PSNH and other providers will simply respond to those mandated costs--created by the State.  But we are the ones who are paying.

Paul Hodes - Central Planner

Paul ‘the reaper' Hodes said he will fight, that’s right fight to remove a provision from the House Health Care reform plan that bans the use of federal funds to cover abortions.  (Did anyone tell him the Senate already gave Kathleen Sebelius that power?) We could weigh in on all his reasons but they are all pro-death boilerplate and completely irrelevant to the actual objection.   You see the problem isn’t whether people shoulda-coulda-woulda have access to abortion. (That’s a separate issue).  The problem here is that most Americans are not comfortable with paying for them.  And since there is no tenable formula by which the government can guarantee that your dollars will never be spent on aborting even one unborn baby—your moral objection, to which Mr. Hodes gives not one rats ass—is irrelevant.  Paul Hodes doesn’t give a damn how you feel about it.  Paul Hodes is more than happy to tell you where to shove your moral objections.  And now we know that Paul Hodes  will fight, that's right fight to make sure that the government pays for abortions with your money. 

That's Mr. Hodes idea of standing up for everyone's rights.   

Don’t like it?  Too frikkin bad.  Because Mr. Hodes is a partisan member of the political class.   That would be the elitests who know better than you what you need and want.  All that remains is the matter of whether these are in fact his own ideas, or the ones he has been told to espouse for political gain.  Of course either way, it's bad for New Hampshire, and bad for freedom.  And it's bad becasue while this is only one issue, it represents a willingness to choose central planning above all else.

And Central planning is never about what works for you, your friends, your family, your town, or your state.  It's about what the national government needs "from" you and "of" you.  Call that what you like but it's not freedom.  And It's not American.

Speak. Or maybe Not.

Friday’s Union Leader includes an ‘In Brief’ piece from the AP on a movement within the UN to push for a global Blasphemy treaty.  The primary purveyors of the initiative are the 56 member Organization of the Islamic Conference.  AP suggests that such a treaty will meet with resistance from western nations with free speech laws, but I can’t see how that’s possible.   The double standards in what is left of Western free speech are open to the idea of using these laws to punish unprotected classes already.  Hate speech laws mention religion and gender for example, but will never apply to Hate related attacks (whatever the hell that actually means) on heterosexuals and non-gay Christians.  Jews will likewise be excluded from protection on the world stage.  So the addition of another layer of law to protect Muslims from blasphemy is just sauce for the Qu'ranic goose.    

But the biggest hypocrisy of all is that blasphemous speech—that's speech of any kind about Muslims—is already protected out fear of retaliation (based on hatred for non-Muslims) from radical Muslims and their fellow travelers, who are immune to existing hate speech laws the same way other 'protected' groups fear no legal action for their own hateful speech against anyone who opposes them. 

A world held hostage is not about to balk at any such referendum.  They may not all sign the treaty but I certainly can't see anyone trying to stop it.  But those who don’t will be setting themselves up for further extortion by a politically correct class willing to attack anyone who fails to line up behind their definition of diversity, civil rights, and free speech

Deficit Reduction?

Deficit reduction is the new distraction from Obama.  He want's us to beleive he is not committed to responsible budgeting while two massively expensive (and necessary) bits of legislation boil over on the stove top.

The Tax Foundationpoints out the most likely path to deficit reduction in the spend-a-palooza world of the Obamacrats. 

To Close the Deficit, Federal Income Tax Rates Would Have to Nearly Triple

Federal Spending So High That Even Prohibitive Income Tax Hikes Would Not Balance Budget

Washington, DC, October 22, 2009 -- Federal income tax rates would have to be nearly tripled across the income spectrum if Congress were to close the deficit in fiscal year 2010, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Instead of taxing joint filers with rates ranging from 10 percent to 35 percent, tax rates would have to start at 27.2 percent and reach up to 95.2 percent.

"Federal government spending levels are so high that even if policymakers were willing to stop debt-financing government services, the federal tax system in its current form wouldn't be able to raise that much," said Tax Foundation Director of Policy and Communications Bill Ahern, who authored the report, "Can Income Tax Hikes Close the Deficit?" The paper is No. 197 in the Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact series and is available online at http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/25415.html.

"If high-income people had to pay a federal tax rate over 90 percent, plus state and local income taxes and other taxes, total tax rates would be well over 100 percent for many households," he said.

If the federal government were determined to close the 2010 deficit, even resorting to higher income tax rates across the income spectrum, the average tax payment of someone making between $75,000 and $100,000 would jump from $7,055 to $20,515. Taxpayers with AGIs over $1 million would see their tax bills climb from $800,000 to almost $2 million.

Even in 2012, when the President's Budget projects a lower deficit, tax rates would still be need to be prohibitively high in order to balance the budget: nearly double, with rates ranging from 18.7 percent to 74.1 percent.

"Economists debate the extent to which modest tax rate increases persuade workers to work less and entrepreneurs to risk less, but there can be little doubt that the high tax rates necessary to balance the budget in the next several years would discourage all income-producing endeavors," Ahern said.

The Tax Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that has monitored fiscal policy at the federal, state and local levels since 1937.

This probably puts something of a smudge on the Democrat parties promises not to raise taxes on anyone making less than 250,000.00 per year.  Doesn't look good for jobs either.   So where's the deficit reduction coming from as we look into at this 9 trillion to 14 trillion dollar hole.