Contact your Congress critters to let them know that you are tired of high gas prices.
Posted on 07/06/2008 7:15:32 AM PDT by NRG1973
Maine doesn’t have reserves of oil or gas, but that doesn’t mean steps can’t be taken to reduce residents’ heating bills. Environment Northeast, an advocacy group in New England and eastern Canada, has proposed a national efficiency program to reduce heating oil usage. Such programs exist for electricity and natural gas. Expanding the concept to heating oil, which 80 percent of Maine homes rely on, makes sense.
"Energy efficiency means standing up and taking control of the situation, not sitting back to let the situation control us," Michael Stoddard, a lawyer with the group, told the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee last week. Sen. Olympia Snowe is the committee’s senior Republican member.
"The one thing ‘energy efficiency’ does not mean is making do with less," he added, explaining that efficiency is not the same as conservation. Efficiency doesn’t mean turning down the thermostat and putting on a sweater to stay warm. Efficiency means insulating the house and keeping the furnace tuned so that it takes less heating oil or propane to keep the house warm.
Environment Northeast proposes a surcharge on fuel oil, propane and kerosene with the money earmarked for efficiency investments such as adding insulation to homes and improving or replacing heating systems at homes and businesses. The charge would be on wholesale imports to Maine, but dealers are likely to pass the cost on to their customers.
The group estimates home heating fuel usage can be reduced by 20 percent by taking such steps. At current heating oil prices, that could save homeowners $1,000 a year.
A charge of 5 cents per gallon would generate more than $26 million a year and a 10-cent surcharge would generate more than $52 million a year for this work.
(Excerpt) Read more at bangornews.com ...
WTF? In order to save a homeowner $1000 by cutting their heating costs by 20%, the original cost to heat the home would have to be $5000.
Maybe people in Maine all have algore like estates?
OK, why not just forget the surcharge (aka tax) and let people use the money saved by taxes to put their own insulation in or buy their own electric heaters? Oh I forgot, sheeple must be forced. /s
Now why does this not surprise me?
Yeah, like we couldn't see THAT coming!
Without the presence of Collins and Snowe it might be possible to push a pipeline carrying Canada (or Pennsylvania) natural gas into the New England region. With them in the Senate the rather stupid people of Maine will continue to pay inflated prices for fuel oil and propane. So I say, suffer you ignarant bastids. And please stay where you are. We don’t need more of your ignorant kind elsewhere in America.
this will be easy.
i just got my midsummer top off. 100 gal @ 4.85.
Oil companies won’t lock in and I use 150 gal a month mid winter for 1900 SF.
I live in southern CT. Tropics compared to Maine.
This will be the election year issue. First big fillups will happen before election. Budgets for fuel oil will be 800 a month this winter. Easy.
“”The one thing ‘energy efficiency’ does not mean is making do with less,” he added, explaining that efficiency is not the same as conservation. Efficiency doesn’t mean turning down the thermostat and putting on a sweater to stay warm. Efficiency means insulating the house and keeping the furnace tuned so that it takes less heating oil or propane to keep the house warm.”
I have news for these morons. I'm a disabled ole great gramma - My fuel costs have gone from $500 a year to - well, this winter, would be $2,500..
Last winter, I cut down by burning scrap wood off my land - and keeping a wood stove going for this old lady ain't easy...and when having to run the furnace due to back and heart problems, for years now, I have kept it no higher than 68 day/60 night...
That means, especially as the cold gets to me much more than it used to, wearing HEAVY sweaters, thermal socks, heat off in office/studio - often having hands under arm pits to keep fingers warm.
My house is insulated good - evidenced by the fact, that without any wood, it only takes 500 gallons of oil a year...my furnace is clean, etc.
These peoples solutions = to add MORE taxes - as based on the assumption that NO ONE is already applying the savings remedies of good insulation/clean furnace, etc. Many of us are - and now we're going to be punished further?
Not have to wear sweaters??? I'll have to start wearing a snow mobile suit inside.
Maine is already the second highest taxed state - but way down the ladder in per capita income.
Ever since enough out of stater liberal'flat landers’ moved up here about 30-40 years ago and overtook our gov’t - our pockets are just looked at as a free for all money source. And our current gov. is the worst of the worst. I swear he (Gov. Baldaci - 'baldas*ie') has a crew locked up in the state house basement that only get food and water when they come up with a new tax scheme. He has proposed more cockamamie taxes than one can even think of...and is not only bankrupting us natives, but drives more and more business away from the state..which, of course, means coming at us to make up more and more shortfall. A vicious cycle. Yet the top-heavy lib population keeps putting these people back in.
The ironic thing is that our last republican governor was Jock McKernan, Snow's husband! He made Maine a friendlier place for business and brought in a lot of out-of-state dollars. The dimRat gov’s do the opposite.
Here's the latest - upping the tax on jet fuel - and it may well close Bangor International Airport - WTF!
“Jet fuel supplier cites state taxes for BIA pull out “{
http://bangornews.com/news/t/city.aspx?articleid=166642&zoneid=176 Yep. Upping the taxes on jet fuel is working out great, right? How much more money will you be coming at us for to make up the short fall when Bangor International is shut down? Time for every Mainer to write letters to Baldacci, Snow and Collins - AND send copies to all your local papers for Letters to Editor. They don't like seeing it in print for all to read.
It just amazes me how people like this think people...all by themselves...don't respond to something like higher fuel bills. This is based upon the same flawed logic that was used to pass the Alternative Fuel Tax in 1973. The idea was that only the gov't can develop alternative fuels, so we'll collect the tax and develop the fuel. I don't know about your area, but I've been all over Indy looking for an Alternative Fuel station and I just can't seem to find one. I'm sure I've just missed seeing it because, after all, they've been collecting that tax for 35 years so surely they spent my money wisely, right? Oh, wait...you don't suppose they might have wasted my money or...heaven forbid...put it in their home freezer, do you?
.
My house, without wood, takes 500 gallons a year. It's well insulated, Yet = well, see my post # 9 =
This surtax is pure Marxism -
Re big leaky homes: This is true. So address THOSE homes - (and homes of low income people have the solution with the CAP agencies. I used to be Director of the Energy Crisis Intervention Program. That program and the HEAP program (Heating Energy) provides insulation, safe chimneys and wood stoves, efficient furnaces etc)free. (Well, that is also out of our tax dollars),
The wealthy who choose to have these homes can either down size, weather-up or pay their own heating bills.
Don't take more money out of MY pocket - not that there's any left in it.
An aside - to those who suggest adding electric heaters. I'm guessing you don't live in Maine. Electric heat here is far more expensive than oil.
Now that is funny, well sad too...
Maybe, had the state not forced the closure of Main Yankee nuclear power plant the electric prices might not be so high. Hummm
Contact your Congress critters to let them know that you are tired of high gas prices.
“Eighty (80%) percent of Maine’s homes are heated with oil, yet Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are dead set against drilling in AMWR or offshore. It makes me wonder what the voters in Maine were thinking of when they sent those two to Washington.”
We weren’t.......
People are gonna die in Maine this winter, and, the politicians could give a sh*t...
There were still higher even when Maine Yankee was on line - maybe because almost all of any energy produced in Maine was/is sold out of state - and we buy most of our electric from out of state....what's wrong with this picture? ...huummm
gotta tell ya, i upped the upstairs insulation in spring of 07 to 70R, and it keeps the house ambient summer temp at 67deg(when cooled down at night and kept closed during the day) and i made it through last year on less than one tank of fuel oil when normally for as cold as it was it would take 1&1/4 or more.
coal/wood stove this year...
Merely small thinking evidenced here. Charge $1 per gallon and the enviros will have $520 million to putz around with AND it will address the other issue, [the group estimates home heating fuel usage can be reduced by 20 percent by taking such steps. At current heating oil prices, that could save homeowners $1,000 a year.], by driving the middle class and poor out of the state. Ergo, fewer heating costs. See, another successful liberal policy in the making.
Evil, greedy dealers. Why, rather than just sit there and eat the increase, they'd actually pass it on to customers. Say it isn't so. /sarcasm
I say they go back to using whale oil. It is all natural and renewable.
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