Romney & Bain

[Gregg]

I don't know free... It seems like there are so many people/businesses/industries that have a vested interest in keeping us all divided that, right now, it is just about impossible for a candidate to break through based on something as foolhardy as common sense. I really, REALLY like Ron Paul. I'm not 100% in agreement with him, but he comes a whole lot closer to my personal ideology that Romney or Obama. And yet his candidacy just could never quite get the traction it needed. It's become quite obvious to me that just as everything in government takes money so does getting there in the first place. Romney has it. Obama has it. Ron Paul didn't (or at least no where near enough). I would like to see drastic campaign finance reform and eliminating PAC's and Super PAC's entirely as a way to level the field, but it will never happen. Can you imagine how quickly every lobbyist in Washington would jump to get that shot down? And even if it caught on it would be years of wrangling during which we remained at war, went farther in debt, etc. That's all just a long way of saying I don't really know what to do. I'll keep writing letters and working for candidates I believe in when they come along. I will also keep working on building my own safety net in case there is no government to provide one.

[peggy]

I don't know free... It seems like there are so many people/businesses/industries that have a vested interest in keeping us all divided that, right now, it is just about impossible for a candidate to break through based on something as foolhardy as common sense. I really, REALLY like Ron Paul. I'm not 100% in agreement with him, but he comes a whole lot closer to my personal ideology that Romney or Obama. And yet his candidacy just could never quite get the traction it needed. It's become quite obvious to me that just as everything in government takes money so does getting there in the first place. Romney has it. Obama has it. Ron Paul didn't (or at least no where near enough). I would like to see drastic campaign finance reform and eliminating PAC's and Super PAC's entirely as a way to level the field, but it will never happen. Can you imagine how quickly every lobbyist in Washington would jump to get that shot down? And even if it caught on it would be years of wrangling during which we remained at war, went farther in debt, etc. That's all just a long way of saying I don't really know what to do. I'll keep writing letters and working for candidates I believe in when they come along. I will also keep working on building my own safety net in case there is no government to provide one.

On this we certainly agree. Do away with the super pacs! Super pacs have silenced the average voice, and Citizens United changed the political landscape forever. What a disastrous ruling by this Court! With one swoop they changed us from We the People to U.S. inc. Sad sad sad...
We can't count on politicians to listen to us, the average middle class person, as they are only human, not super human, and will ALWAYS follow/listen to the money, and as we know, money is speech...(sigh)

[ApatheticNoMore]

I firmly believe it is possible to bankrupt this country.

I don't know, it's easier for a country without it's own currency to get in trouble (Greece), but it's certainly possible for one with it's own currency (Argentenia too many times to count, only the U.S. is much more powerful economically than them). But the whole empire business to the extent it makes any sense at all in terms of national interest (not just the interest of defense contractors, and Shell Oil and Exxon etc.. (who get to drill the conquered countries oil), I guess is a bid to control real resources as an economic move? Seems dumb if this is your *only* economic policy going forward (and it seems so in the U.S.!), but I don't know how it will play to completion.

The choice is whether or not we are even going to be here in 20 or 30 years to give anything to anyone. If we don't do something different we won't be. Mr. Obama had 3 1/2 years to tackle my priorities and didn't get it done so I'm going to vote to give someone else a chance. If you have other priorities then you have every right to feel, and vote, differently.

I think the biggest wildcard for 20-30 years from now is environmental not economic. A healthy environment is the base of an economy, a healthy environment is the base of an economy .... Some things like global climate change and not entirely in a single country's control (although this U.S. *IS* still a BIG PLAYER on the scene, and it has done nothing but undermine climate talks). But a lot of other environmental issues are.

[Gregg]

I guess is a bid to control real resources as an economic move?



I think the biggest wildcard for 20-30 years from now is environmental not economic.

Civilizations have worked to control real resources as long as civilizations have existed. The issue is that they have mostly fought over finite resources (wood, coal, oil, etc.) rather than develop more sustainable plans. I don't think it should surprise anyone that we find ourselves following in the footsteps of a thousand that came before.

I think economic interests and environmental interests are joined at the hip. One directly impacts the other all the time. That's not saying people always think that way, but the impacts are there. If we destroy our environment the economy will obviously suffer, but sometimes its harder to see that the reverse is also true. We need to start doing it right pretty quickly, I'm not sure there are a lot more second chances.

[peggy]

Ah, but the infinite resources are free to everyone! wind, solar...and there's not a chance in hell the big energy companies are gonna develop that! At least not to a useful, affordable level. Nope, not gonna do it, except where we, the average citizen, would be stuck on some 'new' teat, like wave or ethanol or algae or something not practical or easy for the average homeowner to produce. Gotta keep us dependant!
But, with especially solar, here is a tinker's technology. I do believe the big innovations there will be made in garages and workshops across the country, or world. Here is something still available to the little inventor/innovator to fiddle with.

[SteveinMN]

Ah, but the infinite resources are free to everyone! wind, solar...and there's not a chance in hell the big energy companies are gonna develop that! At least not to a useful, affordable level. Nope, not gonna do it, except where we, the average citizen, would be stuck on some 'new' teat, like wave or ethanol or algae or something not practical or easy for the average homeowner to produce. Gotta keep us dependant!

One of the challenges in moving to any source of fuel is efficiency in production and storage as well as in actual use. Whatever we move to will have to be made available on a wide scale and the demand for it will force efficiencies in production. Oil and gas companies (as well as electric companies) already have that infrastructure in place. Does it make sense to re-invent it? I don't think so. I would argue that the big energy companies should be involved, both as sources of the infrastructure and the entities which front the capital needed to adapt it to new technologies (those windmill blades aren't cheap and they're not maintenance-free). The question then becomes whether we want to treat them more like utilities or more like profit-making corporations. It interests me that people get p!ssed off at record oil-company profits but they also got p!ssed off at what happened with Solyndra. Sounds like America should have a discussion about it -- if we can.

[Gregg]

Ah, but the infinite resources are free to everyone! wind, solar...and there's not a chance in hell the big energy companies are gonna develop that!

Want to know how your infinite, free resources work in the real world? Contrary to your belief, it's the big energy companies that drive the alternative energy industry. The electricity generated by wind and solar has to go somewhere. Very, VERY few people are the end users of their own power. Almost all of it feeds onto the grid, available to everyone. The generation of energy can, and should, have as many small, localized producers as possible in addition to the big, central power plants. The big energy companies know that.

You may not know that most electric utilities WANT you to build that solar and wind system. It's like pennies (actually dollars, lots of dollars) from heaven for them if you do. You do all the design work and engineering, secure the permits, buy the equipment, complete the construction, maintain the system, insure the system and basically absorb every penny of cost to get it started and keep it running. And you will continue to do that for decades. The good news is that you will slowly recover the cost of your system in savings on your electric bill and with the excess power that the utility buys from you and you can sleep at night believing you helped save the planet from the oligarchs.

Now compare your solar array to their big power plants. They have to go through essentially all the same steps you do. One difference is that the approval process can take years, sometimes even decades, and will cost tens of millions of dollars where yours will take days or maybe weeks and cost them nothing. Another big difference is that it can easily cost big energy billions of dollars to actually build a new plant where yours again costs them nothing. Yes, the cost of new plants will be passed along to consumers, but it will take big energy decades to recover the full cost. Utility companies start to make a profit on your home generated power the first second you throw the switch on your shiny new solar panels (they buy it from you wholesale and sell it to the grid at retail). You become their supplier and they are your customer.

Big energy makes a profit from your power with little or no investment. Can you even imagine how rich they would get if every house in the US had a system on the roof? You do all the work and spend all the money to provide the middlemen with a product. They get all the obscene profit without ever needing to make capital outlays. Not sure what your business school taught you, but in mine that seemed like a pretty sweet deal.

But it gets even better for them. Know why they REALLY love solar? The #1 energy use day in the US every single year is in August. Different dates every year, but the absolute peak demand always comes somewhere in the afternoon of a hot day in August. Because its hot people are not only running lights and computers and TVs, they are running air conditioners. They are on in every office AND every home at that time. Federal law states that the electricity providers must be able to generate 120% of that tip-top peak even though that actual demand will only be that high for about an hour a year. That's the government's idea of an insurance policy. Now you come along with your solar panels and when do you suppose those are reaching their absolute peak of production? Take a wild guess. That's right, on hot, sunny, summer afternoons! If enough people pump all that green electricity onto the grid right then it shows up as generating capacity for the utilities. They don't have to drop an extra billion or so to expand their capacity because you just did it for them. They still get to make a profit off of every single kWh you generate, but then they get to put that billion right straight into the executive bonus plan instead of spending it on building more plants. To add insult to injury many big commercial and industrial users are on demand meters. That means they get charged more for using power at high demand times. The utility still pays you the flat, wholesale rate, but gets to make 2 or 3 times as much profit on the power you provide during those peak times. How sweet is that!!!

[peggy]

[QUOTE=Gregg;99290]

Big energy makes a profit from your power with little or no investment. Can you even imagine how rich they would get if every house in the US had a system on the roof? You do all the work and spend all the money to provide the middlemen with a product. They get all the obscene profit without ever needing to make capital outlays. Not sure what your business school taught you, but in mine that seemed like a pretty sweet deal. /QUOTE]

Uh, wanna think about that one again? LOL

And that's actually my point. If every roof in America had a solar array, we wouldn't NEED the middle man. See, if I and my neighbors create out own energy, efficiently, and were able to store it, efficiently, and pass it back and forth among ourselves, middle man is cut out. Only the maintenance man is needed.
Sure, right now the energy companies like me making solar to feed them,(not all states have a buy back program) at rock bottom prices to sell to my neighbor at top prices. But when I and my neighbor both have panels, and the folks across the street and in the next neighborhood, etc... that's why I say they aren't in a hurry for solar to be inexpensive and efficient for the average homeowner, cause the average homeowner will send them packing, energy speaking.
Sure, they want to develop solar, for them to collect and sell to us, but they don't want me to be independent of them.

You can't tell me that if they used even a tenth of the money they use on fracking now on solar cell R&D, we couldn't have super efficient, inexpensive cells within a very, very short time. It's simple math really. They can make way more money selling me energy for 20 years than selling me an inexpensive system once every 20-30 years. So it's in their best interest to keep solar expensive, and not practical for average people.

[bae]

I get my electrical power from a rural electrical cooperative, which everyone who uses owns direct shares in, and we all vote to elect members of the community to run it.

Our electrical "middle man" offers huge incentives for installing local power generation and storage systems. And huge incentives for things we can do to *reduce* the load and the amount of power we buy. And we already have some of the lowest power costs around, considering the difficulty of our circumstances - after our recent tariff increases, I'm still only paying ~7.5 cents/kWh, and ~5 cents offpeak.

[Gregg]

Uh, wanna think about that one again?

Well, no, not really. I'm pretty sure its right.

And that's actually my point. If every roof in America had a solar array, we wouldn't NEED the middle man. See, if I and my neighbors create out own energy, efficiently, and were able to store it, efficiently, and pass it back and forth among ourselves, middle man is cut out. Only the maintenance man is needed.

Sure, you can do that. As long as you and your neighbors can come up with a few trillion dollars to build your own infrastructure you could share it with everyone. Of course you would still need someone to provide all the R&D, the raw material sourcing, the manufacturing, the engineering and design, the construction, etc. Unless, of course, you want to bring all that in house as well.

and were able to store it

That little line deserved its own quote box. Let me know if you figure out how to do this, I'd be happy to throw in some seed money. So far its been the holy grail for a bunch of pretty sharp guys who are trying to figure the secret out.

But when I and my neighbor both have panels, and the folks across the street and in the next neighborhood, etc... that's why I say they aren't in a hurry for solar to be inexpensive and efficient for the average homeowner, cause the average homeowner will send them packing, energy speaking.

Until you solve that pesky little storage issue you're still stuck with the fact that the sun doesn't shine at night and the wind only blows when it wants to. You can burn candles like grandma did or just go to bed when the sun goes down, I'd rather stay up a little later.

Sure, they want to develop solar, for them to collect and sell to us, but they don't want me to be independent of them.

Trust me, they're not worried about that.

It's simple math really. They can make way more money selling me energy for 20 years than selling me an inexpensive system once every 20-30 years. So it's in their best interest to keep solar expensive, and not practical for average people.

The simple math is that energy companies can make just as much money wholesaleing and reselling with minimal investment as they can by making massive capital investments that they have to staff and maintain for 20 - 30 years or more. And they know it.