There are many reason’s I’m glad to see you go, Jennifer, but number one is the crap you pulled with the Rogers City Coal Plant

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The State of Michigan is headed for an Energy Crisis, and the Democrat Party is mostly to blame.

From the Alpena News:

According to a press release from Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s [...]]]>

The State of Michigan is headed for an Energy Crisis, and the Democrat Party is mostly to blame.

From the Alpena News:

According to a press release from Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s office, the state’s decision is based on findings of the Michigan Public Service Commission, which said the company failed to demonstrate the plant was needed to meet future supply needs.

In October of 2008, the MDEQ affirmed that the Rogers City area was safe of air pollution from the proposed Wolverine Clean Energy plant.  So, the Granholm administration went to work to stop the plant by changing the rules.

Jennifer Granholm’s State of the State Address in 2009 laid out the unconstitutional plan to use the MPSC as the decision maker instead of the MDEQ.  Instead of arguing about the environmental impact, because her administration had just proved there would be little if any, she wanted to move the target.

So, in June of 2009, the MPSC started the process of being the office that would decide if the plant was needed by using future economic modeling.  Since the only way Northern Michigan could prosper was if the plant was approved, the future without the plant is pretty glum, therefore ensuring there would be no uptick in need for electricity.  Convoluted?  Welcome to bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, our genius Republican legislators thought it would be a grand idea to, at this point, merge the MDEQ and the DNR.

In September of 2009, the MDEQ was  combined with the DNR using a legislation package, a portion of which was proudly brought to the floor of the Senate by Jason Allen, as a measure to streamline government.  Allen  is now seeking a job as representative of the First District of Michigan in Washington D.C.

I’m all for smaller government, but, when you combine two departments like the MDEQ, who had already did their work in approving the plant, and the DNR, who had no interest in the plant whatsoever, dump tons of paperwork on this new “streamlined” government office, it makes it easier for the special interests and the Governor’s office to pressure and push for a decision.

Like it or not, Michigan career politicians, this is also partially your fault.

From the Alpena News:

Ultimately, the DNRE said Wolverine had not adequately demonstrated through the alternative analysis the inability to secure long-term power supply purchase arrangements, such as buying power from an existing power plant, to meet their member needs.

“Through the alternative analysis” means that after the State changed the rules, Wolverine didn’t follow the new rules and come up with the right numbers to make the control-freak governor happy.

How is it that the MDNRE has the power to tell a manufacturing company that they don’t need to manufacture, because they can buy it from somebody else?

If it was the Wolverine Jeans Company, and they wanted to hire people to build a jeans manufacturing plant, then hire more to manufacture the jeans, would our nanny government be able to tell them that they have no need to make jeans, because they are being made elsewhere?

The fact is, the Granholm Administration continually changed the rules and moved the target because she wants to please The Sierra Club and Green Peace, and all the green energy companies that she approved.

Consider these facts:

56 wind turbines only produce 180 MW of energy when the wind is blowing very hard, and none when it is calm.

Our side of the state does not produce enough wind to provide any energy.

It takes one month to construct 30 wind turbines on land.

Most wind turbines are made in Canada.

Off shore wind turbines would only be useful off the coast of the North Western Lower Peninsula, which also happens to be the most scenic, with the most beautiful sunsets, and extremely high property values.

It only takes one person to keep a windfarm running.

So, when Granholm’s office says that the jobs would be short term, the fact is, there is not much more short term than one month.  Wind energy and solar energy will not and cannot provide more energy.  The energy companies of Northern Michigan will continue to buy coal power from other states, and someday, these Democrat politicians interested in authoritarian control will be held to account.

The regulators of Michigan’s Utilities have deemed that Northern Michigan has no need for additional energy.

That means that Northern Michigan will continue to have to buy electricity from downstate and other states to [...]]]>

The regulators of Michigan’s Utilities have deemed that Northern Michigan has no need for additional energy.

That means that Northern Michigan will continue to have to buy electricity from downstate and other states to meet the energy requirements it currently has, as the electric co-ops have been doing, and for the foreseeable future.

It also means that Northern Michigan’s stagnant economy is assumed to remain stagnant, a bet the State of Michigan is insuring.

Because the State of Michigan has no economic plan, other that managing it’s own decline, Northern Michiganders can count on forever sending their children away to search for prosperity in another state.  Indeed, Northern Michigan’s largest export is her children.

It is no secret that Michigan is over-regulated, but the fact that it has been put down a path of decline by the authoritarian control of the Granholm administration in concert with the Sierra Club and other radical environmentalist groups interested in killing any hope for change in it’s economic development, cannot be ignored.

What it boils down to is that the Democrat Party is not interested in standing for the little guy.  From Al Gore and his demonstrably false attack on man, to Jennifer Granholm’s inane wishful thinking of green energy supply, to Tom Karas and his dirty ties to radical environmental groups in California, it is obvious that feelings and hopes and wishes of a utopian society have replaced logic, science, jobs and results.

The two schools of thought, one, that energy is produced to fuel economic freedom, and the other, that energy should be produced to strictly feed absolute need, are diametrically opposed.

Economic freedom, an approach long abandoned by Michigan’s leadership, is a quintessential goal sought in this state since it’s inception, and is free-market based.

The strangulation of freedom is what our state government excels at.

Requests made by the Int’l Brotherhood of Electrical Workers were ignored.

Requests made by the Cheboyan and Presque Isle Development groups were ignored.

What the State has said, essentially, is that the small towns, the little guy, the union worker, have no right to enjoy high-paying jobs, to benefit their families.

With the ruling on the permit, the State has manufactured false numbers to tell us ‘little people’ that they are protecting us from a rate increase.

He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.-Ben Franklin

She isn’t a Democrat, she thinks of herself more as a QUEEN.

People around town are asking, “What is going on with the air [...]]]>

She isn’t a Democrat, she thinks of herself more as a QUEEN.

People around town are asking, “What is going on with the air permit?”  The only logical answer is that Jennifer Granholm wants Wolverine’s air permit put on hold until the EPA comes out with a plan to implement what the legislature tried to do with Cap and Trade.

You see, Jennifer Granholm does not want this clean coal plant to happen, and she believes that a small town in the frozen north is not going to harm her party’s chances at election time.

The Advance reports in the February 3, 2010 issue,

“Before determining whether to support the construction of a new coal-fired power plant that would cost Michigan ratepayers billions of dollars and affect Michigan’s environment and natural resources, the governor believes it’s important to first understand whether the energy from the plant is needed and whether the plant is the best way to meet our energy needs,” Granholm’s Press Secretary Meghan Brown said.

First of all, the Governor needs to drop the, “I’m only looking out for the ratepayers,” bullcrap.  She is not concerned with the people of the north who belong to Co-ops.  She made that clear when she fast-tracked a 930 MW power plant downstate.

She can stop patronizing us with the idea that she is concerned this plant will hurt the environment.  Her own DEQ affirmed that Wolverine has done everything possible to protect the environment.

Since the beginning of this project, Wolverine has spent over 700 million dollars buying power from downstate utilities as well as Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin.  So yes,  it is needed.

Most people think that if a person makes it to the Governorship, she must be intelligent.  So I have no idea why Granholm seems so thick about what is the best way to create power.  The better way to create electric power is to burn something, not wait for the wind to blow.

The decision of whether or not to issue the air permit to Wolverine is not being driven by politics – this is all about whether issuing the permit is the right policy for Michigan under the laws that govern air quality,”

Au contraire, this whole issue is politics.  The idea that we need an energy plant is political, the fact that Wolverine wishes to build it in the middle of a limestone quarry is political, the idea that the company has to hold public hearings is political, the environmental concerns are political.  And don’t think it has escaped many people’s notice that most of the people against this plant are Democrats, and most for the plant are Republicans.

The only part about this whole saga that is not political is the support from the local townspeople.  They are the ones who finally have hope that the schools won’t lose more funding, that the taxes collected from an operation like this along with the added tax base from an increase in population can mean the city can make improvements, the roads can be fixed, and all the other things this plant means.  The fact that there will be jobs!  Jobs.

What the Governor means by “under the laws that govern air quality,” is that she is waiting for the EPA to create some laws to govern carbon dioxide emissions.  At a time when the hoax of global warming is unraveling, and the news that a major scientist admitted he fudged numbers to make the case more compelling, and that there has been no warming since 1995, Granholm is sticking to her plan.

“Processing an air permit of this magnitude is enormously complex. The DNRE staff have received 6,500 individual comments on the proposed air permit, which must be reviewed, considered, and responded to before taking action on the permit. Permits like these take time to process – both in Michigan and around the country – because they have such important stakes,” Brown said.

Knowing everyday people like I do, I am willing to bet that about 6250 of those “individual” comments were drummed up by The Sierra Club and the Michigan Land Institute.  The type of comments we all heard at the public hearings.  Nit-picking to the nth degree, the environmentalists have nothing better to do but wonder if something may happen.  One committee member referred to the tactics by the environmentalists as “death by a thousand papercuts.”

THE ONLY consideration given to the permit is what the law allows, (DNRE) representative Bob McCann asserted, regardless of political pressures from outside organizations, both for and opposed to the power plant, or even from the governor’s office. “There is obviously a great deal of outside interest from a number of parties, however, decisions by our permitting staff are made solely on scientific and legal purposes. Quite simply, the law doesn’t allow for anything else,” McCann said. The wait continues.

If it’s the law that McCann is interested in, laws are made by congress.  That is how our system is set up.

But like I said, by the end of March, the EPA will provide the necessary law.