Er, um...Tell Congress to Go Blow "Us" in a new direction on renewable energy.

For all the flailing and hand-wringing over Global Warming and clean air, right now in Congress there are two very important pieces of legislation that will help fix both problems--and are being largely ignored.

Yes. They are federal tax credits.  Not very sexy, but they get the job done.

And they are what's needed to make all the legislated "good intention" Renewable Portfolio Standards being passed on the state level a reality.  The wind turbine component supply chain is very specialized and stretches coast to coast.

Only national action will assist this industry.

Not exactly.  But, it’s a start. And it’s simple.

A proposed extension and expansion of the current federal Renewable Energy Tax Credit is in the House Committee on Ways and Means.

Title:
"Securing America's Energy Independence Act of 2007"  (S. 590 - H.R. 550.)

Status:
House - only 54 Co-Sponsors
Senate - only 15 Co-Sponsors

We have a l-o-n-g way to go before the July 4th target date for passage.

Visit--

www.solar-nation.org/
http://www.solar-nation.org
or
www.votesolar.org/
http://www.votesolar.org

More about the bill below the fold.

We are little more than two months out from spring county, city, village, town and school board elections.

How many kos readers are involved in a campaign or referendum issue on the local level?

I suspect not too many.

[It is easier to lurk, pound a keyboard or forward that hot blog post, news article web link etc...to show how in touch you are with national issues.  

Thanks, jackass.  You are now the sixth person to send me that damn thing. You know who you are.]

Is Howard Dean a Luddite?

I am confounded by the DNC Chair's inability to embrace cutting edge voter microtargeting.

The 50 State Strategy appears well intentioned, but the road leading through those 50 states may well lead to hell or "nowhere" at best if it is at the exclusion of sophisticated database modeling and usage.

As "Angry Data Nerds Rain on Democratic Parade" notes--

When Mr. McAuliffe took over in 2001, one of the first orders of business for his team of computer geeks was to gather information for the national party to turn into a flexible, open-source format for use in races across the country.

Then, when Dr. Dean took over last year, he essentially made a clean sweep of the people who had engineered the nascent national database effort.

Yesterday I tried to refocus attention to personal preparedness with little luck.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/1/15439/55356

So, I'll go at it again with a very simple solution to a complex problem--

Clean drinking water in an emergency

Q.  How many people walked by the laundry section of a looted grocery store and ignored the tools to save their own lives and the lives of others?

A.  Amost every one of them.

More below

After you write your check to your favorite Hurricane Katrina relief fund, keep that checkbook out.

Remember charity begins at home.

Start shopping to assemble your personal preparedness "Bug Out Bag" for you and your family members.

More below.

While what Katrina will do to the price of gasoline is foremost on people's mind, many have ignored what it will do to the price of Henry Hub NG.

http://quotes.ino.com/exchanges/?e=NYMEX

Click on any one of the four futures contracts. Henry Hub Natural Gas (NYMEX:NG) Gawk at the chart.  Yikes!

Henry Hub spot and futures prices have become the surrogate for "real-time" wellhead natural gas prices.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/henryhub/

"Approximately 49 percent of U.S. wellhead production either occurs near the Henry Hub or passes close to the Henry Hub as it moves to downstream consumption markets."

The hub infrastructure terminates in Vermillion Parish, Louisiana, at the Henry Hub near the town of Erath.

If Katrina damages the infrastructure, we'd better hope for a warm winter.  Otherwise, the term "our winter of discontent" will take on new meaning.

Any reports from in and around Erath, LA appreciated.

(Erath is due south of Lafayette and slightly west of New Iberia...Cajun Country.)

Yes, it's too late to send a Christmas package.  But, you can send a New Year's Box to a soldier, sailor or airman.

Check out AnySoldier.com, an internet site dedicated to providing moral and actually support to U.S. troops overseas.

http://www.anysoldier.com

I am a vice chair of a large Dem county party.  This weekend a vigilant older voter contacted me via email stating a retired friend who had moved from FLA FOUR YEARS AGO received two absentee ballot mailings--the first from Gov. Jeb Bush and the second from the Sarasota Republican Committee with an absentee ballot request.

The odd thing about this is that she was a registered Independent in FLA according to my contact.

I alerted my state party chair, executive director, the FLA state party chair and the chair of the Sarasota Democratic Executive Committee.  (My state chair is on it already.)

FLA Repubs are vote trolling out of state for their boy...far, far out of state even among Independents...who haven't lived in the state for years.

While this may not be illegal, it certianly belies their fear...and demonstrates the lengths to which they'll go to snag out a vote.

Has anyone heard of similar stories?

If so, please advise.

Good News:  Theresa LePore, aka "Madame Butterfly," whose poorly designed butterfly ballot cost Gore around 6300 votes in 2000, lost her bid for re-election in a tight race Tuesday night for the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections post.

Bad News:  The four year term begins in January 2005, so she will be around for the November election.

Read the news out of Palm Beach County here.

FL Dems will still need to keep an eye on her.