Death of Ashley Turton...Arkancide meets the Chicago way?

First, the Tuscon shooting. An anti-immigration Judge just happens to be in the line of fire

Ashley Turton, a former senior aide to Rep. Rosa DeLauro and an energy company lobbyist is ‘burned in her car’. The car just happened to ‘crash into the garage of a home in the 800 block of A Street SE....When the fire was extinguished, firefighters discovered Turton’s body inside the car”

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/01/10/deal-profile-duke-progress-agree-to-137-billion-deal/

Business Lunch: Duke Energy creates largest U.S. utility with Progress Energy purchase

http://business.blogs.starnewsonline.com/12344/business-lunch-duke-energy-creates-largest-u-s-utility-with-progress-energy-purchase/

Duke Energy Corp. said Monday it would buy Progress Energy Inc. for nearly $14 billion in stock, bidding to become the largest U.S. utility at a time of steep costs to build nuclear-generating plants as well as sluggish growth in the economy.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/duke-buying-progress-energy-for-nearly-14-billion-2011-01-10?siteid=rss&rss=1&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter...

If this deal is approved, the combined company would have the third largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the country

The agreement is the latest in a string of utility deals. In November, PPL Corp. bought Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities from Germany’s E.On. In December, Dynegy Inc. agreed to be acquired by Icahn Enterprises. Also last year, First Energy Corp. agreed to acquire Allegheny Energy Inc. while Northeast Utilities agreed to buy NStar, though those deals have yet to be completed.

http://www.salon.com/wires/allwires/2011/01/10/D9KLFIHG0_us_duke_progress_energy/index.html

http://www2.wnct.com/news/2010/dec/13/progress-energy-monitors-tritium-leak-nc-site-ar-614693/

Progress Energy just happens to be in Obama’s Hawaii... http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/20101125_Isles_see_progress_on_clean_energy.html

Aug 18, 2010 ... George Soros initiated holdings in Progress Energy Inc.. His purchase prices were between $37.67 and $40.53

Sep 21, 2010 ... Soros plans to become involved in climate issues ... he was also the force behind Center for American Progress, and its Climate Progress effort.

Soros holds Ford Motor, Duke Energy, El Paso (natural gas), Encana (Canada, natural gas), BPZ Resources (oil and gas, no relation to BP, which he does not hold), Hess, Anadarko Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, Devon Energy, smaller amounts of Chesapeake Energy, Apache and Marathon Oil.

http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/examiner-the-washington-dc/mi_8118/is_20101031/george-soros-funding-war-fox/ai_n56191728/

Did the poor girl, (or her husband) try and rat out on the Chicago Mob? The dirty deal that sold Duke Energy to Progress Energy. Progress energy just happened to go ‘green’ last fall. Fired hundreds of employees. Just in time to take over the Energy industry and full ‘ol Georgee’s pockets?

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/05/07/1420688/duke-ceo-questioned-on-climate.html

Duke CEO questioned on climate lobbying
One shareholder says it puts the firm ‘on a risky course’; queries mark a reversal of recent annual meetings.
By Bruce Henderson
bhenderson@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Friday, May. 07, 2010

At their annual meeting Thursday, Duke Energy shareholders questioned CEO Jim Rogers about the company’s lobbying for climate-change legislation.

Shareholders voted down a proposal calling for a report on Duke’s climate-related lobbying, with 76 percent of proxy votes opposed.

But the questions marked a reversal of the company’s annual meetings, which in recent years have seen activists urging Duke to invest more heavily in green energy such as solar and wind technology.

Duke has spent more than $10 million to lobby Congress since 2008, the Observer reported last October. Much of its work was aimed at influencing measures to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, of which Duke’s fleet of coal-fired power plants are major sources.

About a dozen protesters from the conservative group FreedomWorks marched outside Duke’s uptown Charlotte headquarters during the meeting. They targeted Duke’s support of a trading system for carbon “credits,” or permission to release the greenhouse gas, that is envisioned in congressional energy bills.

“Energy costs are going to go up as a result, and we can’t afford to line Duke’s pockets,” said Joyce Krawiec of Kernersville.

Shareholder Tom Borelli of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank in Washington, said Rogers has “set our company on a risky course” by its advocacy.

The center asserts that Duke will net billions of dollars in carbon credits in exchange for its lobbying. It says climate legislation will raise energy prices and cost jobs.

Rogers also expects electricity costs to rise but said carbon legislation will help guide Duke’s spending to upgrade its fleet of power plants and create thousands of jobs.

In an interview, Rogers said Duke is “very supportive” of efforts by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to craft a retooled climate bill. The bill has not yet been introduced.

(snip)

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/01/11/1970919/duke-progress-deal-aims-to-cut.html

The new Duke Energy, which will keep its name and Charlotte headquarters, would serve 7.1 million customers in six states and have a $37 billion market capitalization. It would have the nation’s largest regulated nuclear power fleet.

State and federal regulators, as well as shareholders, still have to approve the deal. Company leaders said they aim to complete the merger by the end of the year, consummating a deal that began over a CEO dinner in July.

(snip)

The deal will give Progress stockholders a 7.1 percent premium of the stock closing price on Jan. 5, before reports of the proposed merger drove up prices.

“I think the shareholders of Progress should be pleased with this deal,” Johnson said.

7.1% premium for Progress

David Grumhaus, a partner and utilities expert at the Chicago hedge fund Copia Capital, was not. “I don’t like this deal at all if I’m Progress,” he told Bloomberg News. “It’s hard to see how they couldn’t have held out for a bigger premium.”

(snip)

(NO LINK)

Group up in arms over federal funding - of Ind. ‘clean coal’ power plant project
Journal Gazette (Mattoon, IL) - Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Author: HERB MEEKER ; Staff Writer
A Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana director is surprised anyone would recommend federal clean energy funding for the power plant now under construction in western Indiana.

” Duke Energy is promoting this as a carbon capture project. It is the great lie in Indiana. That plant is being built now to not capture a drop of carbon. I’m surprised someone would say commit federal money to this project,” Citizens Action Coalition program director Kerwin Olson said Monday in a phone interview from his Indianapolis office.

Recently, the Clean Air Task Force, a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing atmospheric pollution, recommended to President Barack Obama ‘s Interagency Carbon Capture and Storage Task Force that $1 billion in federal stimulus money scheduled for FutureGen be directed to the Duke Energy Indiana integrated gasification combined-cycle power plant now under construction at Edwardsport.

The task force also recommended the federal government then increase its financial commitment to the FutureGen power plant proposal for Mattoon by hammering out an electricity buyout for 20 years or more for the carbon-capture and sequestration plant.

Those were among several recommendations for helping jumpstart the construction of power plants and other facilities connected to promoting carbon capture and sequestration related to coal use.

Olson said the Edwardsport power plant, which will have a 630 megawatt electrical capacity, is flawed in many ways. In four years, its estimated construction cost has more than doubled from $1.2 billon to $2.88 billion, Olson said. And that price estimate does not include any figures for Duke’s intentions to install carbon capture and sequestration equipment at a later date.

(snip)

Thank you
There’s a lot to go through

How did I miss this in all the places I looked....

“On September 19, 2001, a story ran in the Hyde Park Herald containing then-State-Senator Barack Obama’s response to the 9/11 tragedy. In this piece (quoted in this article from the New Yorker, under the heading “The Speech”), Obama expresses empathy for the murderers! Not anger, not disdain, not a word of sympathy for the victims. His concern was for the murderers

From Obama’s article:

We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.”

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