Coats Notes: Misguided EPA Agenda Damaging to Indiana
Translation: Long-overdue EPA regulations will help Hoosiers instead of out-of-state coal interests by advancing low-cost wind power generation.
Sen. Dan Coats (R-Not actually as insane as Richard "Rape babies are God's will" Mourdock) has again blasted out his anti-science, anti-human, anti-sense Tea Party bloviations from what should be the upper house of the people's business. Fortunately, I am learning to point and laugh at him rather than let my blood pressure go up, even though for many other victims of Republican policy it isn't so funny.
Electricity from wind turbines is already cheaper than electricity from coal and gas. For example, these turbines stretching far into the distance along I-65 in Indiana, between Indianapolis and Chicago.
EPA ungood! Obama plusungood! Coal good! Wind power doubleplusungood! Corporate profit doubleplusgood! Rednecks good! Workers ungood! Redneck workers who vote against workers' rights because Blacks get hurt worse tripleplusgood!!! and multipleplusungood immigrants, and women, and minorities, and the young, and the old…everybody except rich, out-of-touch White corporate owners and managers and their Useless Idiot followers.
The snarkfest continues below the decorative divider of Orange Doubleplusungoodness.
Coats proceeds:
When I meet with Hoosier job creators, the message I often hear is simple: stop the regulatory tidal wave coming from Washington.
Translation: When I meet with job-destroying, union-busting industry fat cats from outside Indiana, or more likely their DC lobbyists, the message I often hear is simple: Help us increase our already unconscionable profits, and to Hell with the common good and the planet.
Oh, and that oncoming tidal wave isn't regulations. It's an increasingly Progressive voting public. The data are clear. Republicans in most of Indiana have no more than a decade left if current trends continue. And they are making everything worse for themselves. As with this injurious and insulting message.
Under President Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found numerous ways to flood industry with new regulations and rulemakings, creating uncertainty for all Americans. From water to air to bureaucratic maneuvering, there seems to be new EPA rules or guidance almost every week.
Translation of "uncertainty": We aren't certain that we can squeeze the public for all it is worth.
I apologize. I cannot translate Coats's seeming statement that the EPA has issued onerous regulations on bureaucratic maneuvering. I thought that that was Harry Reid taking on the filibuster. (BOOM!) Although regulating political hot air as an environmental pollutant does have points in its favor. Not censorship, of course. We used to have a thing called the Fairness Doctrine. That might do it.
While this administration touts an “all-of-the-above” approach to our country’s energy needs, a pipeline of regulations from the EPA are clearly drafted in a way that discriminates against fossil fuels, which especially hurts states like Indiana. The President’s recently announced climate change initiative intends to take coal out of our country’s energy portfolio. This will dramatically impact all Hoosiers and raise energy prices across Indiana.
Translations
- "discriminates": treats fairly and honestly
- "hurts": helps
- "impact": benefit
- "energy portfolio": sources of pollution
- "raise energy prices": lower energy costs
Ah, the dreaded “all-of-the-above” policy. You didn't know when you were well off, Coats, nor those in finance and industry who rent your services. Grid parity, when renewables will cost less than fossil-carbon energy, is coming on faster than anybody imagined. Soon no coal-fired power plant project will be able to secure construction funding, because there is no way such a plant will be able to operate for the usual 40-year lifetime when its output will be entirely uneconomic.
Manufacturing, a very energy intensive industry, is critical to Indiana’s economy. Manufacturers employ nearly 17 percent of the Hoosier workforce, which is a higher percentage than any other state.
Wait, what? A fact? No, two facts! Two whole, entire, completely irrelevant facts! As though energy costs and efficiencies in manufacturing industries are more important than any other uses by, I don't know, education? agriculture? non-manufacturing business? health care? government? consumers?
And, one must repeat over and over, wind is driving costs down. Unlike, say, Leucadia's Rockport Coal Gasification Boondoggle, recently turned back by the public and the courts after it came out that the Indiana legislature wanted to stick Hoosiers with the bill for 30 years, and to Hell with the Free Market.
These jobs depend on affordable, reliable energy sources. The EPA seems dead set on ensuring these manufacturers are handed increased rates that will seriously affect their ability to retain existing employees, let alone hire new workers.
Isn't it too bad that Indiana businesses are so fragile that they can't cope with changing costs, in spite of the Magic of the Free Market? Especially when energy costs will in fact decrease. Still, isn't it great that Indiana has so much wind? (Including the wind from Coats's mouth.)
Wind power in Indiana
Indiana is 13th in the US in installed wind power capacity, at 1543 MW. It has wind resources that reportedly could generate nearly a hundred times that amount, 148 GW, producing 443 TWh annually. For comparison, Indiana consumed 106.549 TWh of electricity in 2005. So Indiana could become a net exporter of electricity and creator of non-outsourceable jobs all across the state.
Our state has done energy the right way. Indiana offers some of the most affordable and reliable electricity in the nation. This is obviously of great benefit to Hoosier families and employers in this sluggish economy, and it also has helped Indiana become one of the most business-friendly states in the nation.
Electricity prices in Indiana are actually below the national average. And wind costs less than that.
"Business-friendly" in this version of Newspeak means of course anti-union, anti-regulation, and above all anti-tax and pro-subsidy.
States like ours are bearing the brunt of the administration’s regulatory overreach and crusade to target energy sources it does not like.
Wait! How can the doubleplusungood Muslim terrorist administration carry out a crusade? Watch out, Coats, you don't want people thinking you're soft on Obama.
Instead of punishing Hoosiers, the administration should be encouraging an energy policy that is truly all-of-the-above, allows advancements in fossil fuel technologies and does not unfairly discriminate against certain energy sources.
Yes, Dan, we know that "unfair discrimination against fossil fuels" is what you call the level playing field, at the bidding of your corporate masters.
Well, I'm snarked out for the moment. Anybody else?