Posted on 06/24/2002 9:52:26 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
Edited on 05/07/2004 8:00:50 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
On May 30 and 31, The Ithaca Journal published an article and editorial concerning the solar panels on the new Tompkins County Public Library.
The pieces contain many inaccuracies and misunderstandings that should be addressed for your readers.
Despite what the editorial on May 31 implies, there has been no sinister cover-up among county officials to hide solar panel data. Rather, there have been numerous difficulties in implementing the startup of the panels and in coordinating the sharing of data among the various parties. Admittedly, the first 11 months were a learning process, but the situation is improving.
(Excerpt) Read more at theithacajournal.com ...
-On The Board of Directors of the Alternatives Credit Union
-A Tutorial Instructor in Ithaca College's Office of Multicultural Affairs
-And, shockingly enough, a professor of economics at Ithaca College
Of course, Karl Marx was also an economist...
And just from reading this article, I have the feeling the author leans more towards Marx than, say, Milton Friedman:
Perhaps a mother will avoid a trip to the doctor for her child's asthma, or a grandfather will survive to see his grandchild's ball game. We cannot measure such benefits accurately, but we should not dismiss them either.
This was the point that the Journal chose to highlight as the main one out of the article. It also demonstrates the liberal mindset at work here, to wit, symbolism and intanible benefits over substance.
...the educational and economic benefits have been ignored. The learning process has enabled many individuals and groups, including NYSEG ...to gain skills in developing the application of solar power in upstate New York.
NYSEG is a private corporation. In other words, taxpayer-funded mistakes by government officials are being used as a "learning experience" for a private corporation.
The installation of the panels helped to provide local jobs in the area, increased economic activity and tax revenue, and helped to create an upstate market for solar panels.
What a load of hoary horse $#iT.
Pardon my french, but this paragraph is so blatently false that it makes Bill Clinton look positively honest.
Taking the last one (helping create an upstate market for solar panels) first, this goes back to my earlier point. A taxpayer funded entity, a library, no less, is subsidizing private corporations that otherwise, by the author's own admission, would not be successful at this time. I thought the lefties were against "corporate welfare."
Second of all, the solar panels came from Powerlight. Powerlight is a California Company (from Berkeley, no less). How did that create local jobs?
Third, how does a solar panel that supposedly consumes no resources create economic activity? If the library is saving money, they aren't paying it to anybody so how can that increase economic activity?
And as far as tax revenue goes: it is a PUBLIC library. It is a tax free entity. So it couldn't generate tax revenue, could it?
Fourth, Sept. 11 has imposed on us new imperatives. Security can be enhanced through the decentralization of electricity production. Tompkins County is a leader in this field. Our library will always have a safe and secure power supply, unless the building itself is attacked.
And so the power goes out in a library. So what?
It's a library, not a hospital, not a police station.
If the power goes out, everyone goes home. Big frickin' deal.
When people ask why "Ithaca is the City of Evil," the topic of the solar panels on the library keeps coming up. The reason being that is so perfectly demonstrates the illogical, politically correct, sanctimonious ("Fortunately, most of our county politicians have a bit more vision.") ivory-tower mindset of the far left aging hippies that run the town.
It's a cautionary tale. At the same time as people like Christianson here are bragging about how much better they are making the city, more and more businesses shutter their doors downtown.
If you don't want the whole country to be like this, make sure that you keep working to see that the conservatives win, fellow FREEPERS.
It's good they issued this clarification. That clears it all up.
It's a cautionary tale. At the same time as people like Christianson here are bragging about how much better they are making the city, more and more businesses shutter their doors downtown.
Saturday, for example, The Home Dairy the last of the old businesses in "downtown?" Ithaca, closed its doors!!!
I was thinking of that even as I typed my post.
Downtown Ithaca is rapidly turning into nothing so much as a collection of used book stores, head shops and expensive boutiques scattered amoung closed businesses. The liberals fiddle while the lower and middle classes make their exodus.
It is impossible to read his screed with a straight face, knowing that cloud-enshrouded Ithaca New York is one of the least efficient locales for a solar panel.
His spinning, rationalizing and blizzard of non sequitors can be best read as a bureaucrat's pathetic bleat to have the trough refilled.
I had a professor from Dickinson call me to solicit money... I told her I burned my diploma once I got into the real world and realized we lived in a capitalist society. The last Quarterly magazine Ithaca sent me documented the Sept 11 Arab-backed terror attack. The whole piece of Sh*t issue dealt w/ the victimization of Muslims and Arabs by America's foriegn policy... they only interviewed Arab "scholars" for the issue. If the next big Arab terrorist attack were to remove Ithaca off the map they would be doing us all a favor.
No way!!! I loved that place. It's been years since I've been back to Itacha, but downtown was such a unique and historic place especially the well established businesses.
By the way, back to the thread, what a lot of people don't realize is that the Fingerlakes area is notoriously overcast. Solar power has minimal advantages in that area.
Of course, the Greens will suddenly discover heretofore unknown threats to various bird populations, and then there's the frightful "visual" pollution such towers would create.
And since 1983, no less. Twenty years is an awful long time to spend in academia without surpassing the rank of "instructor". I just wasted a great deal of time searching multiple scholarly databases in search of Mister Christianson's published work, to learn more about what sorts of things he finds worthy of study.
Why a waste of time? Well, would anyone be surprised to learn that I couldn't find a single paper he's authored or co-authored, despite searching more than a half a dozen archival databases, representing hundreds of different academic journals? Not so much as a letter to the editor with his name on it.
Which is kind of a surprise. There's hardly a shortage of Ph.D's these days, and it's faintly alarming that Mister Christianson was the best that Ithaca and Binghamton could do...
Shall we call it solar challenged?
You secretly graduated from Cornell didn't you??!!
Or - gosh golly gee gasp - they could have bought BOOKS!
First of all, much (if not all) of this shortfall will be made up over the summer months.
False and misleading.
The stated period of comparison is Jan. 1 to May 22.
If one extends the comparison into the summer months to accrue additional savings to make up for the "shortfall", one must also include the "share of the annual costs" for the summer months to retain an apples to apples comparison.
It's a sad, but typical faulty analysis trying to justify the expenditure when the data doesn't support such a conclusion.
That's good news, but can't say that I didn't...I'm reformed now though!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.