For some reason they feel that all these draconian rules and regs will jack of the cost of living and hurt the poor
(Washington Times) The very same voters who helped put Barack Obama in the White House increasingly are turning against the president’s climate change agenda, with influential black and Hispanic leaders warning that stiff regulations to limit carbon emissions will have a devastating effect on the poor and will further stifle economic opportunity for minorities.
Some of Mr. Obama’s most ardent supporters say they simply cannot go along with the administration’s increasingly ambitious program to combat global warming. They argue that, contrary to the Environmental Protection Agency’s claims, the carbon regulations will drive up utility bills for poor households and will stunt economic growth in low-income areas.
The mounting wave of criticism shows that for many minority leaders who backed the president’s election bids and support him on a host of other issues, Mr. Obama’s environmental agenda runs counter to their chief concern: protecting the poor and ensuring that they can afford to keep their lights on.
Well, really, the Obama/Dem agenda is mostly bad for the poor, especially minorities. The “climate change” insanity is an easy one to recognize, as it directly affects real world costs, often in real time. Of course, the rich white Dems who run the party do not care in the least. Minorities are just interest groups to use and abuse.
Teach did you read the article in the Washington times? I tried to find out how many were “some leaders” but couldn’t open that article
I did find that on the internet that in 2008 the average cost of electricity in the USA was about 11.25 cents per kwh
In 2016 that price is supposed to skyrocket to 12.86 cents
That is about 10% in 8 years
Our esteemed host noted:
I don’t s’pose that that’s due to Fearless Leader telling us that, under his proposals, the cost of electricity would “necessarily skyrocket.”
I’ve seen plenty of arguments from our friends on the left, the ones who really don’t have to worry about money, saying that the cost of some proposal or other would only be a couple of dollars a week or some such, without the first clue that the cost of their proposals would be a gallon of milk that a family couldn’t put on the table that week.
And, of course, John just proved it, telling us how the cost increase would be minimal, somehow not realizing that for the poor — you know: the people the left claim to champion! — any cost increases mean that there’s something they can’t buy.
It depends upon where you get your electricity. Coal fired plants are being forced to shut down.
Texas has actually increased its production of coal generated electricity in the last decade….hence Texas will see a dramatic hit when coal is banned….A large percent of Texas is Black and Hispanic.
Arizona likewise has seen a 7 percent increase in coal use…..Arizona is obviously very hispanic.
Louisiana 6 percent increase in coal in the last decade….Obviously a state with a large Black community.
Iowa, Nebraska and Alaska have seen a positive increase in coal use in the last decade….all three of those states are hardly a hotbed of Hispanic or Black communities.
California and Nevada(huge black and hispanic populations) have seen HUGE declines in the consumption of Coal fired electricity. The economies in both states are hurting badly. Electricity bills are some of the highest in the nation.
Taking a national average and then saying oh gosh its only gone up 10 percent really makes a lot of sense in the context of addressing Hispanic and Black concerns.
This is where facts get in the way. That 10 percent increase sounds just peachy until you apply it to hotbeds of black and Hispanic voters who tend to congregate in areas such as the ones Ive mentioned.
The USA generates 20 percent of the worlds electricity by the use of coal. That means the other 80 percent is generated by the world. China produces 40 percent and they have almost no anti-pollution devices in place. The AGW crowd should be in China not the USA, but of course they all know they cant threaten China or they will find THEMSELVES dead….so they threaten the USA where they can kill the careers and intimidate anyone who refuses to be politically correct.
Facing declining demand for electricity and stiff federal environmental regulations, coal plant operators are planning to retire 175 coal-fired generators, or 8.5 percent of the total coal-fired capacity in the United States, according to an analysis by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Now it is by necessity going to require the building of new gas fired plants to make up for this nearly 20 gigwatts of electricity.
The problem is that electricity companies are not starting any new power plants because we have such a dysfunctional government right now that half way thru a 3 billion dollar plant….they could be staring at new regulations making natural gas illegal.
Now lets look at some facts published by the government itself. In 2003 there was 629 units of electricity produced by oil and 1166 units of electricity produced by natural gas.
Now in 2013 the last year the tables show those numbers have falled to 518 and 1,101 respectively. While OTHER RENEWABLES energy sources increased from 1425 in 2003 to a whopping 1435 in 2013.
In short the amount of produced electricity within the united states is falling not increasing and with low, low prices of natural gas….even the amount of electricity produced by oil and natural gas has declined during this decade snap shot.
There needs to be an edit button. The USA is in fact building about 250 new natural gas plants to replace retiring coal fired power plants.
I meant to say that the USA is building almost no nuclear plants because of the uncertainty around nuclear regulations and disposal and my mind was on Gas.
However that being said the very fact that the USA is building 250 or so new 500million to 1 billion dollar plants will necessarily see the cost passed on to citizens in areas in which coal is lacking or being replaced.
Blacks and Hispanics are predominantly low income…….any price increase is hard for them to digest especially when they can see the political storm surrounding WHY THEY are having to pay more for somthing because of politics.
Cons spend years denigrating the poor and suddenly we should believe you care about Blacks and Hispanics? lol
It just shows you love the coal corporations more than you hate Blacks and Hispanics. You hate environmentalists more than you hate those lazy, mooching, poor people.
If there was just some way to make certain the poor wouldn’t suffer from a gradual increase in energy costs…
Perhaps our friends on the left have a problem with the concept of real wealth. If the cost of sparktricity increases, that means that people will have less money available to purchase other things; what doesn’t get purchased because electricity prices are artificially increased due to political action? If you are wealthy, maybe you don’t really notice, but if you are poor, then yes, you do notice that you aren’t living quite as well as you did previously.
It’s really easy for people who aren’t poor to say that people can easily do without something. It’s really easy for the well-to-do to say that, oh, we are building more efficient refrigerators and furnaces and the like, which will offset the increased costs of electricity, when they don’t consider that poor people aren’t always able to go out and buy a new refrigerator or furnace.
Me? I’m not poor now, but I grew up poor; I know what it’s like.
An example of how the left just don’t understand the poor they claim to represent:
Remember “Cash for Clunkers,” the program to provide government incentives to trade in less fuel efficient vehicles for new, more fuel efficient ones? Well, this was at the worst of the recession, and only the well-to-do could afford new cars, or get the financing to buy new cars. That’s not too surprising: the poor aren’t normally able to buy new cars anyway!
So, the Obama Administration puts together this program, which assists people in buying new cars, but it’s a program which assists them by providing tax credits. Simply put, the incentive didn’t help with the monthly payments, but showed up when the buyers filed their income taxes. Thus, the buyers had to be able to afford the new cars without the help from the government, but got a break on April 15th! It was welfare for the well-to-do, and didn’t help the poor in the slightest.
And it actually hurt the poor! The poor depend on a supply of used cars for their vehicles, but since the cash-for-clunkers beneficiaries were all reasonably well off, the “clunkers” they had weren’t really clunkers at all, but newer vehicles. C4C required that the traded in less efficient vehicles be permanently disabled, the engines damaged in a manner which rendered them both inoperative and unrepairable. Thus, while the well off got government help to buy new cars, the supply of newer used cars was artificially depressed; the traded in clunkers were off the market, leaving the poor with a market of older used cars, less efficient used cars, with which they had to make do.
As someone who grew up poor, and who wasn’t really well off — though we weren’t in poverty, money was still tight — until I was in my forties, I was able to see this problem immediately, but the always well off liberals in government never did. (I still consider myself working class, even though our income is into six figures.)
This is a real problem for the left, who think that they represent the poor: the leadership have never really been poor, have never really been working class, and they don’t understand how people who live paycheck-to-paycheck live or have to manage their money.
You bring up a great point about cash for clunkers. I was working at Carmax at the time, and we were seeing the pool of certain vehicles drying up. Now, I won’t blame it all on CFC, other factors helped. But, it didn’t just help remove vehicles that would have been quality purchases in the $12k and under market, and especially the $10k and under market, ones with under 100k miles and in good condition. It drove the price of those in the market up since they were typically good MPG vehicles (spiking gas prices hurt, as well). This also drove up the price of other fuel efficient vehicles.
Furthermore, it created a bigger problem with loans on the lower price vehicles, since their actual market value became much higher than the NADA values banks use. And that is still happening today. The loans usually exceed LTV (loan to value), so people usually have to put down a lot of money, or get them from buy here pay here. At respectable dealerships, these are treated simply as cash cars, ie, paying for the whole thing up front. So, CFC is still h3lpibg to cause problems for the poor.
Jeffrey responds as expected:
Well, maybe if you tell yourself that we just care about poorer white people, and somehow can’t exclude Hispanics and Negroes from the same arguments.
The people I respect are working people, people who work to support themselves and their families, and there are a lot of white people who do that and still don’t make a lot of money. I’m from eastern Kentucky, and I’ve seen a lot of that.
But, I also realize that there are a lot of Hispanics and blacks who work for a living and still don’t make a lot of money, and yes, I respect them as well. I don’t respect the lazy scumbags, of any race, who could but will not work.
As much as you tell us how good and compassionate you are toward those who don’t earn as much, you display a remarkable lack of understanding about their lives and what they have to do to survive. I know about these things, because I once was poor; I know what it takes to move out of poverty into a reasonably successful lifestyle because my mother accomplished it and I accomplished it as well. I learned my lessons the hard way, through doing rather than talking.
Latest stats.
Percent on welfare by race.
white 38
black 39
Hispanic 17
Other 7
I care about them all. What I find truly amazing is how progressive Saul Alinsky Communist can take any argument and turn it into they……YOU HATE THE POOR< WOMEN< BLACKS< HISPANICS< GAYS and just about every other thing on earth.
Meanwhile all us struggling middle class conservatives ONLY CARE ABOUT BILLIONAIRES getting more tax breaks…….
Gotta love Saul Alinsky.