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Democracy Update

Recall this, and the excellent comment in the comments indicating that folks who don’t like the outcomes of “democracy,” particularly when it comes to energy related issues, blame high spending by evil energy companies to influence elections. Well, since we want to play that game, then no election is legitimate, none at all. Each Presidential candidate had about $1 billion in “outside money” spent to influence elections. No election regarding government schooling is legitimate because teachers “unions” outspend their opponents by many factors. That’s fine by me. I am ready to make any election null and void and enter that scarcy world where we just have to figure out other ways to cooperate to get things done.

But here is the latest example. Voters in Michigan just overwhelmingly voted against promoting a “renewables mandate” that would have required the state to get 25% of its energy from renewables by the year 2025. I suppose the Big Oil and Energy companies were behind the defeat. I am sure of it. So we should just ignore “what the people want” and go ahead with the mandate? In any case, here is what we learned about that vote:

Proposal 3, Michigan Energy-Michigan Jobs (MEMJ), which would have forced Michigan taxpayers and ratepayers to produce 25 percent of the Michigan’s electricity by 2025 from renewable sources, primarily industrial wind. Despite national backing and a lot of money spent, Michigan voters rejected the “25×25″ measure by a 64–36% margin.

Clearly, the voters saw through what would have been a large tax increase on electricity, endangering reliability as well.

Background

This initiative was hardly local. It was driven by national pressure groups like the Sierra Club with their backing by natural gas company Chesapeake Energy, and the League of Conservation Voters, also heavily funded by deep-pocketed elites.

MEMJ itself was funded largely by the Green Tech Action Fund of San Francisco and the Natural Resources Defense Fund of New York, both darlings of green industrialists, particularly Tom Steyer, a California hedge fund billionaire.

These carpetbagger activists placed a bull’s-eye on Michigan ratepayers with Proposal 3. The Sierra Club was blunt: “If successful, the [Michigan] 25×25 initiative will send an important signal to the nation that public desire to move toward green energy remains strong.”

Answering the Sierra Club, Michigan ratepayers shouted that there is no such “public desire.” In fact, there is widespread opposition to mandating forest-denuding biomass and massively expensive solar. But the hottest conflict centers on industrial wind.

Read the rest.

4 Responses to “Democracy Update”

  1. Speedmaster says:

    Could we argue that oil is renewable if we set our time horizon long enough? 😉

  2. chuck martel says:

    Everyone should join the Sierra Club so its membership wouldn’t be limited to enviro nutcases.

  3. Trey says:

    Heard this down at Scholz Garten the other day. My comments in brackets. Remember to add Texas accent.

    (See http://www.masterresource.org/2012/02/texas-eu-wind-power/ for more.)

    –Trey

    De-mo-cra-cy?! Don’t like it. Never did. ‘Been told one of them cave-dwelling Greeks didn’t like it either — smart man.

    Us folks down in Texas, we know how to get things done. Thanks to big ego [T Boone Pickins], big government [Rick “Gov. Good Hair” Perry], and big intellect [Enron, you know the __ guys in the room], we have more wind power than you can shake a stick at. [The fact being that we have more wind towers than sticks in some part of Texas.] Yup, others call it crony capitalism, we just call it the good-ol-boy network. I’m sure them politicians in Michigan will get the hang of this practice quicker than a rattlesnake bite.

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