The Rogers City High School gymnasium filled up with people one more time last night, in what we were told is the last public hearing for the [...]]]>

The Rogers City High School gymnasium filled up with people one more time last night, in what we were told is the last public hearing for the air quality permit for the proposed power plant.

It has been five years since Wolverine Power announced their plans to build a coal-fired power plant in the world’s largest limestone quarry near Rogers City, Michigan. The hearing was specifically set to help the public understand the emissions limits and best available technology for greenhouse gases, as well as to show the proposed plant will not violate new ambient air regulations.

From the Presque Isle County Advance:

When the state denied Wolverine’s application May 21, 2010, it did so based on a perceived lack of need as determined by an opinion of the Michigan Public Service Commission. Wolverine appealed that denial and a Missaukee County judge agreed that there was no legal basis for the denial, sending it back to the DEQ in January.
DEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel said that without the provision of “need” considered, the applicant would have met all state and federal requirements last year. Modifications in the permit have to made because of new federal regulations enacted in 2010, which Wolverine’s engineers, working with DEQ staff, have strived to meet.
“The department will carefully evaluate comments received, determine whether there should be any changes made to the permit conditions, and develop the “Response to Comments” document. If the permit is approved, the Response to Comments document will be issued simultaneous to the permit,” Wurfel said.

Steve Schulwitz writes in the Alpena News:

The permit to install appears to be the last hurdle for Wolverine to clear in order to build the facility. Hellwig said he hopes to have the matter decided one way or another soon.
“We anticipate closure soon,” Hellwig said. “Following the hearing we consider the testimony and public comment, and then as a decision maker, I will render a decision. Depending on the level of comments, the details of the comments, and the time to do a response document, that will determine how much longer it will take. I don’t anticipate it taking a very long time, but we do have to go through the comments and make sure we rewind to those.”

In short, last year, after waiting 2 1/2 years for an air permit we were promised would take no more than 6 months, the permit was denied based on Governor Jennifer Granholm’s unconstitutional and rescinded executive order that all coal permits be issued on a needs basis. Her administration saw no need for the plant, despite clear, concise documentation to the contrary, and denied the permit. Wolverine Power appealed the denial in court and won, making it abundantly clear that the denial was purely political. This hearing brings us back to October 2008, except for the fact that the federal EPA has tightened emissions limits on two gases that are special to coal burning, NO2 and SO2.
Without going in to too much technical language, the plant passes those standards.

So here we are again. Every standard set by the State of Michigan is met by Wolverine. Every regulation not in place last time has been met now in 2011. Whenever a safety minimum has been suggested, Wolverine has doubled and sometimes tripled their own standards to remove any doubt that they are committed to building a state-of-the-art clean coal-fired power plant in one of the most economically depressed counties in the State of Michigan, and that’s saying something. It is now left, once again, to the State of Michigan DEQ to give the permit an up or down.

Following another long wait for a court ruling from Missaukee County, Wolverine seemingly can move forward with the Clean Energy Venture.

According to [...]]]>

Following another long wait for a court ruling from Missaukee County, Wolverine seemingly can move forward with the Clean Energy Venture.

According to Presque Isle Newspapers editor Rich Lamb, “Missaukee County Circuit Judge William Fagerman determined the “action of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) exceeded its statutory authority by denying the permit to install (PTI) base upon need,” and sent the matter back to the state for reconsideration.”

Ever cautious are we here at Jennerationx, because we know what may stand in Wolverine’s way, but for now, it seems, according to NPR public radio, that the state is not standing in their way.

Brad Wurfel is a spokesman with MDEQ. He says their decision to change course is partly because of two judges ruling against the state and partly because of the new administration.

“Governor Snyder is in favor of building Michigan’s economy and in the case of Wolverine Rogers City has expressed an interest in additional power to realize a long term vision for increasing its port capacity, expanding its infrastructure, and they need power to do it. Right now they’re buying that power from Ohio and Indiana.”

Wurfel says it’s not an issue of whether or not the new governor is for or against coal plants.

“Our job at the department of environmental quality is to see to it that the permits that are issued to them are in compliance with state and federal clean air statues.”

What this may mean is that the long fight over an air quality permit, which lasted over 1000 days for Rogers City and Wolverine, is not over. I have asked for an interview of the parties involved, and will report back, but I can envision further difficulty because of the EPA.

The EPA is disregarding the three branches of government entirely and putting in place regulations in lieu of legislation, completely hobbling our energy future.

Congressman Fred Upton is the grandson of the co-founder of Whirlpool.

I find that interesting.

Thomas Edison has been credited with bringing light to [...]]]>

Congressman Fred Upton is the grandson of the co-founder of Whirlpool.

I find that interesting.

Thomas Edison has been credited with bringing light to a world of darkness, but he also has been credited with coming up with the FIRST MODEL OF A COMPLETE CENTRAL POWER STATION.

Power generation to the masses gave rise to many more inventions, like the electric clothes washer.

So, basically if not for Edison, Whirlpool may never have been founded, because at the time, Edison was competing with other scientists in both America and Europe. If Edison had not exhibited electric generation to the masses in New York and Massachusetts, the Uptons of Michigan may not have started a multi-billion dollar industry, benefiting nearly every household in the modern world and families who worked for and are still working for Whirlpool.

Fred Upton went to college, received a Bachelor’s degree, and immediately began work as a staffer for David Stockman, an economist who would eventually become part of the Reagan Administration.

Would he have been able to do that if there was no Thomas Edison?

Upton wants to become the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, yet he introduced a bill to ban the incandescent light bulb by 2012. That bill became law, and it needs to be repealed.

It seems to me that Upton should have been shouting against banning the work of the man who buttered his bread.

Congressman Fred Upton has been receiving harsh criticism of his quest to become chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Republican has co-sponsored a bill [...]]]>

Congressman Fred Upton has been receiving harsh criticism of his quest to become chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Republican has co-sponsored a bill with a liberal Democrat to ban the incandescent light bulb, which was originally made available to the masses by Thomas Edison, because, in Upton’s view, it uses too much energy. Upton believes we, as a society, must focus on energy savings since our energy needs will double in a certain time frame due to a study done by God knows who, and paid for probably by a green group.

Upton argued that only 10% of the “obsolete” incandescent energy use was light, and 90% was heat, making the fluorescent a more efficient bulb.

So he introduced a bill to ban Edison’s lightbulb by 2012.

Thomas Edison was a genius. He moved to Port Huron as a child, and frustrated teachers by his constant question of “why?” His mother knew he was not “addled” as his teacher said, she knew he was gifted. She took him home, taught him herself, and he began a business distributing newspapers, snacks and candy that was so successful, he branched out by selling fruits and vegetables. By 14, the boy was campaigning for Abraham Lincoln, the father of the Republican Party. He started his own newspaper, outlining the Lincoln-Douglas debates and was making 10 dollars a day, enough at the time to live comfortably on his own. But he instead used his extra money to finance his chemical lab.

One of his first inventions was the electric vote-recording machine, which was rejected because lobbyists liked to be able to coerce members of the legislature away from their instinctive vote in the Massachusetts legislature during a long, drawn out manual counting of votes. Edison was told, “This is exactly what we do not want” a seasoned politician scolded him, adding that “Your invention would not only destroy the only hope the minority would have in influencing legislation, it would deliver them over – bound hand and foot – to the majority.”

Edison’s invention would have hurt lobbyists and special interest groups like say, the green movement.

Edison’s biography is very interesting, and I encourage you to go to ThomasEdison.com
and read it.

Upton and Edison are both from Michigan, both Republicans, both interested in Energy and Commerce. However, one of Edison’s crowning achievements, the modern incandescent light bulb, brought the world out of darkness as a result of his ever thinking, ever inquisitive mind. Upton’s ban is a snuffing out thought and innovation in the free market.

Edison relied on himself and science, the push for fluorescents comes from government’s intrusion in the marketplace.

The modern incandescent light bulb is the intellectual property of Thomas Edison. When he brought it to the masses, it was heralded as a source of light and heat. The argument that we need to ban it because it is called inefficient is wrong. It is not inefficient, it does what it was invented to do, provide light and heat.

Where Upton goes wrong in his ban is that it is not the business of government to decide what I can purchase to light my home. I should have the freedom to look at what the government wants me to use, and Thomas Edison, and say, I like what Tom has done, the light is better, and the fact that I can feel heat from it is helpful here in the north. I want to buy what Tom made. If Fred wants to buy a fluorescent bulb, he can go ahead.

The House Energy and Commerce committee should look at creating more power plants, not stopping energy usage. Edison, and other inventors of that extraordinary time in American history, competed with each other, all using the latest technology to invent things using the free market. Upton needs to look at history.

I fully support a repeal of the ban on incandescent light bulbs.

What McDowell says,

You make a very good point, just so you know the [...]]]>

What McDowell says,

You make a very good point, just so you know the statistic is out there, 70% of your total healthcare in your entire life is spent the last three months of your life. And as a society, if we can’t get a control on that, we’re not gonna be able to provide the healthcare up front, we’re not gonna be able to you know, provide for our children’s education, and we won’t be able to provide for all the other things we need to do first, as a society. Because we are taking so much money for healthcare at the end of life. And the reason is, I’ve mentioned this before, that our healthcare system is based upon procedures, doing these procedures with real expensive gadgets and whistles and bells.

The first time I was running for office, my first campaign manager, I brought that statistic up, and as a society, we only have so many resources out there, we only have so many resources for healthcare, or education, or protecting our environment, or public safety, and we have to decide how we are going to allocate those resources to get the most we can get out of it. And she told me, “Don’t you ever, ever say that again.”

But we have to realize that as a society, that eventually, we are going to have to make some tough decisions, individually, working with your family, your surgical and also with your healthcare provider on what’s the best course.

WE MUST REPEAL IT!

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

There is a petition in Michigan to keep the Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes.

DNA of the Asian Carp was found in October, 2009 within [...]]]>

There is a petition in Michigan to keep the Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes.

DNA of the Asian Carp was found in October, 2009 within 6 miles of Lake Michigan.

Attorney General Mike Cox is actively trying to force the  locks in the Chicago area closed in order to keep Asian Carp from infiltrating and devastating the Great Lakes.  He filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court back in December on behalf of the State of Michigan and was subsequently joined by the States of Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Canada’s Ontario against the State of Illinois.

The Obama Administration’s Solicitor General, Alana Kagan asked the Supreme Court to reject the lawsuit, prompting the Great Lakes States to conclude that the Obama Administration is providing political favor to the President’s home state.

The Asian Carp, originally were introduced in Arkansas as a natural way to control algae and generally clean fishing ponds in response to environmentalists concerns for chemical treatments in the early 1970′s.  At that time, it was considered that anything used that would naturally do what a chemical was produced to do, would be of benefit to the environment, as the ecologist Rachel Carson begged in the infamous book, “Silent Spring” in 1962.

Asian Carp, as pictured to the left, jump out of the water in response to boat motors.  Although it seems an angler’s dream for fish to jump into a boat, they often hit anglers, leaving welts and loose teeth, scars and bruises.  The fish are not delicious, like any carp, and reproduce thousands of times more efficiently than native species.  They can reach 100 pounds and have no stomachs, constantly eating 40% of their weight per day in plankton, making the basic diet of other fish obsolete, in turn, shrinking the population of sports fish.

The blame for the Asian carp coming so close to the Great Lakes can be reasonably put at the feet of environmentalists, who, in looking for an alternative to chemical treatments, and childishly assuming the carp would not be able to reproduce in the wild, were not careful as to what was happening to the silver and big head carp they imported from Malaysia to study using government tax dollars in the 70′s.

Nevertheless, the carp are now at Lake Michigan’s door, and the State of Illinois gives three thin excuses for not protecting the Great Lakes.

1. Other states don’t have the legal authority to demand the closing of canal locks within Illinois.

2. Shutting the locks could cause flooding in the Chicago area and hurt commercial shipping.

3. We should not be doing anything that is really going to compromise our efforts at putting people back to work.

The Obama Administration has a similarly weak  reason that doesn’t make it past the smell test.  (sorry)  The actual reason from the Obama Administration is that environmental DNA, or “eDNA,” testing was experimental science.  “Discovery of genetic material from carp doesn’t necessarily mean the fish were there.”

If you would like to sign the petition you can click here.

By the way, during his Presidential campaign, Obama pledged to be a stalwart against invasive species that threaten the Great Lakes.

The Substitution of Legislation by Regulation

Click [...]]]>

The Substitution of Legislation by Regulation

Click here to view Part 22

The Heavy Hand of the EPA

One of the things that makes America different from other countries is our political system, presumably.  I mean to say that we elect leaders to represent us and work in our interest among the political causes of the day.  Unfortunately, this is no longer the case in the United States of America.

Under the Obama Administration, what cannot be done through legislation is now being done by decree.

EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a press release on Friday, “Business leaders, security experts, government officials, concerned citizens and the United States Supreme Court have called for enduring, pragmatic solutions to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing climate change. This continues our work towards clean energy reform that will cut GHGs and reduce the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our national security and our economy.”

The fact that the science of global warming has come under serious question and even been shown to be made up, seems not to be an issue for Ms. Jackson.

Since these regulations will most likely ban the domestic drilling of oil, it will in no way “reduce the dependence on foreign oil.”

What does this all mean for the Rogers City Coal Plant?  Well, as of this writing, Wolverine has not been issued an air permit or a permit to install.  But if it does receive the main permit, it will be a double-edged sword.

With Cap and Trade legislation largely considered dead-on-arrival in the Senate, the EPA means to enact similar, without a doubt, more stringent commands on coal plants.  It is not to be ignored that a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute concluded, “The only certainty is that EPA regulation would be far more expensive than congressional-designed legislation.”

After all, why is the Global Warming bill (Cap and Trade H.R. 2454) in trouble in the Senate?  Is it not because a large number of Senators have constituencies that are very much opposed to the bill?  In fact, the only way Cap and Trade was passed in the House was in the middle of the night by a vote of 219-212.

The people of this nation have no say in the matter.

This is not how the U.S.A. is supposed to work.

Click here to view Part 24

Click here to view Part 21

Tom Karas says quit [...]]]>

Click here to view Part 21

Tom Karas says quit “whining” while he kills our children’s future.

A couple of weeks back, I noticed that Tom Karas, an out-of town environmentalist, was planning to show up at the Presque Isle Electric and Gas Co-op annual meeting to formally demand a complete financial disclosure of Wolverine’s Power Plant proposal.  He stated so openly in an editorial in the Advance.

Knowing that he had been actively trying to kill the future of Rogers City by casting aspersions against the financing of the coal plant for almost two years now, I threw his demand back in his face.

Advance (10/29/09) Opinion:

To the editor,

As a member of Presque Isle Electric and Gas Co-op, I hereby introduce a motion demanding Tom Karas’ financial disclosure.  By carefully following the coal plant story for the past three years, I know he has started at least three web sites without disclosure to the public of who pays for them.  I know he has paid for at least one study that is biased in nature and shares his world view.  I also know that he himself has admitted that he gets paid from San Francisco to continue to force Wolverine to spend money to address his concerns.  I want to know who he is paid by, how much he is paid, and more importantly, how much money he stands to gain if this coal plant does not go through. I have been writing about this coal plant on my blog.  You can read it at http://jennerationx.wordpress.com/rogers-city-coal-plant/.

Jennifer M. Kuznicki

Rogers City(sic)

Hawks

Tom has distastefully responded to my inquiry by leaving an arrogant comment on my website and like a school-yard bully, sent me an email to try to get me to meet him for a photo-op in front of the Advance to accept his tax returns from last year.

I have decided to handle the inquiry in this manner.

As you can see by reading The Proposed Coal-Fired Power Plant in Rogers City, MI Part 5, my inquiry was a result of Karas’ own words.

Part 5--Quoting from the Advance, “Karas, who voiced his disapproval of Wolverine’s project on many levels, said he receives funding for his efforts from the Energy Foundation, based in San Francisco, California.  According to its website, the goal of the Energy Foundation is ‘to develop and promote U.S. state and regional policies to reduce global warming pollution in order to build models for, and momentum toward federal global warming policy.’    ‘They want me to do public education, ‘ Karas said.

The Energy Foundation funds 501(c)(3)s to which Karas would have to apply and receive funding for a certain project under a different name.

501 (c)(3) organizations include charitable, religious and educational groups. They pay no taxes on income, and contributions are tax deductible for donors. This is the only category of tax-exempt organizations with this fundraising advantage. One of the conditions for this favorable treatment is that these groups strictly prohibited from supporting or opposing candidates for public office. However, they are allowed to engage in a limited amount of legislative lobbying.

This funding would not show on his individual tax return.   I believe his “project” is to kill the Wolverine Clean Energy Venture.  The name used could be Co-op Conversations.

I do not “whine” in public, Tom.  I see you as a self-serving egotist who stands in the way of my children’s future.

Click here to view Part 23