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Driving US Families Into Poverty
Townhall.com ^ | January 2, 2010 | Niger Innis

Posted on 01/02/2011 7:46:23 AM PST by Kaslin

Editors' note: This piece is co-authored by Rev. Samuel Rodriguez and Amy Frederick

The Obama Administration still hasn't gotten the message voters sent Washington on November 2.

The lame duck session and 111th Congress finally ended, without the White House getting key items on its wish list. So now, the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department intend to impose costly, job-killing, economy-strangling new rules for power plants and refineries, and implement more land-grabs that will lock up additional millions of acres and more billions of dollars of American energy.

Their goal is to end the hydrocarbon and nuclear era in America – and force us to convert to “renewable” energy. Contrary to clear voter mandates and consumer needs, they are using regulations and executive edicts to slash carbon dioxide emissions, impose “clean energy standards,” halt onshore and offshore drilling, and hobble the vehicles, electrical generating plants and factories that are the backbone of our nation’s economy, jobs and living standards.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims these actions are needed to ensure “environmental justice” for poor and minority families threatened by “manmade global warming.” Meanwhile, the United States and entire Northern Hemisphere are enduring yet another nasty winter, marked by early snow storms and record cold temperatures. Some scientists say Earth could be entering another prolonged period of cooler temperatures.

Businesses, workers and families face “fuel poverty,” injustice, bankruptcy and worse at the hands of their government, if this regulatory power grab continues.

The Congressional Research Service says average US households will pay almost $1000 this winter just for heat. That’s average: Alaska to Florida, Hawaii to New York. Northern states residents will pay double or triple that. Businesses, schools and hospitals will also be driven into fuel poverty.

In Cobb County, Georgia, hundreds shivered outside to apply for heating assistance from a welfare agency that may not have enough money for every family that needs help. Along the Canadian border, in St. Lawrence County, New York, over 8,000 households were approved for heating aid by cash-strapped local, county and state governments that wonder where the money will come from – while Albany has blocked drilling for shale gas that could fuel homes and power plants, and generate billions in revenue.

Even worse, all this is before the Feds actually implement more of the job-killing, family-freezing CO2 limits and other plans they are contemplating. To see what’s in store for millions of American businesses and families, one need only look at the planet’s one country that is still actually and obstinately plowing ahead to meet its climate change and renewable energy goals, regardless of the costs.

Across Great Britain, household energy bills could double by 2020, to $3,900 (£2,500) a year, market expert Mark Todd of EnergyHelpLine.com has warned. Gasoline prices are likewise climbing to unaffordable levels, and the majority of United Kingdom companies will see their natural gas and electricity prices skyrocket by 100% between 2012 and 2016 – on top of a carbon tax bill of “at least” $65,660 (£42,000) annually – according to the analytical firm Carbon Masters.

Moreover, most of Britain’s older coal-fired and nuclear power plants are scheduled to be shut down, with almost nothing to replace them, even as electricity demand rises. That will increase the danger of widespread blackouts, said the Daily Mail, and cause hundreds of thousands UK jobs to be outsourced to countries where energy costs are much lower, and air pollution and carbon dioxide emission standards far less stringent. That will hardly improve England’s economy or global environmental quality.

Far worse, more than 5.5 million households will be plunged into “fuel poverty” by early 2011 – forced to spend more than 10% of their family incomes on energy – National Energy Action and other charities said. That’s over one-fifth of all UK households and a huge increase from 4.5 million families in 2008. Most in these households are over age 60, but working families are also struggling to keep the heat on, as prices soar.

Nearly 28,000 people died in Britain last winter, most of them pensioners who could not afford adequate heat. Charities say this is the highest winter death rate in northern Europe, worse even than much colder nations like Finland and Sweden. And this winter has already seen the coldest December night for Wales in 169 years of record keeping. Britain is on track to having its coldest December in a century.

To stay warm, thousands of elderly are using travel passes to ride buses all day, while others seek refuge in libraries and shopping centers, the Sunday Express noted. Others are “putting their health at risk, in an attempt to keep costs down,” by bundling up and turning the heat down or off entirely, said Age UK Charity Director Michelle Mitchell.

Now, amid the Christmas and New Year holiday, two million homes, schools and hospitals face fuel rationing. Some families could wait weeks before they can get their fuel oil tanks refilled, as more snow falls across Great Britain.

Meanwhile, the British government has cut funding for its Warm Front heating assistance program from $470 million this year to $172 million in 2011, Consumer Focus campaigner Jonathan Stearn angrily noted. And because the winds barely blow during the coldest weather, Britain’s “shiny new green” turbines were able to supply only “one-500th of the exceptionally large demand” for electricity during the frigid weather of early December, Sunday Times columnist Dominic Lawson ruefully observed.

That’s a tiny fraction of the wind turbines’ “rated capacity.” But it is a situation commonly faced with turbines on freezing Minnesota winter nights and sweltering Texas summer afternoons, when they average a measly 10% of the electricity output their subsidy-hungry backers say they are capable of.

Is this what Lisa Jackson would call “environmental justice”? How do her actions, notions of “justice,” and government-driven energy price spikes square with a 2009 poll by Wilson Research Strategies? It found that 56% of blacks think politicians and bureaucrats setting climate change policy in Washington fail to consider economic and quality of life concerns in the black community. Fully 76% are unwilling to pay more than $50 a year more for electricity, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Northern US winters are far worse than even record-setters in Britain. Why would anyone want to impose costly and nightmarish energy and environmental policies on American families, rich or poor?

The outgoing Congress nearly enacted a bill that would have provided a much needed congressional check on EPA actions. The Murkowski bill fell just short in a Senate dominated by partisan Democrats. The incoming Senate should be far more supportive of such legislation, especially in the face of EPA and other attempts to override the will of Congress and the American people.

The Affordable Power Alliance will urge the new Congress to honor its constitutional duties and prevent the Obama administration from imposing excessive regulations inspired by extreme ideologies. The 112th Congress, including Democrats up for reelection in 2012, needs to heed the overwhelming public demand that America’s economy no longer be held hostage by an elitist environmental network – even if that network includes the President of the United States.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: carboncult; energypolicy; greenreligion; peoplehate
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1 posted on 01/02/2011 7:46:24 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: ExTexasRedhead; Impy; Liz; AuntB; Willie Green; okie01; neverdem

“Nearly 28,000 people died in Britain last winter, most of them pensioners who could not afford adequate heat.”

That is ubelieveable.


2 posted on 01/02/2011 7:50:53 AM PST by Clintonfatigued (Illegal aliens commit crimes that Americans won't commit)
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To: Kaslin
Their goal is to end the hydrocarbon and nuclear era in America – and force us to convert to “renewable” energy.

Hello. Agriculture is a hydrocarbon intensive industry.

So the next step will be to starve.

All this to implement a climate management policy which no one can know is beneficial or harmful in the long term. Like no one can accurately predict the cloud cover in Central Park New York at noon on July 4th.

Arrogance

3 posted on 01/02/2011 7:54:08 AM PST by cicero2k
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To: Kaslin
In Cobb County, Georgia, hundreds shivered outside to apply for heating assistance from a welfare agency that may not have enough money for every family that needs help.

Would these same poor shivering individuals wait outside in a line for a job?

Doubtful.

4 posted on 01/02/2011 7:58:08 AM PST by unixfox (Abolish Slavery, Repeal The 16th Amendment!)
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To: Kaslin

These newly elcted Republicans/Teapartiers/Conservatives had better develope a way of dealing with the adolescent, left-wing, revolutionary psychotics in the Democrat Party.

If they don’t, and things remain stable, they will also booted out of office. If things turn ugly, and that’s what the left wants, there will be hell to pay.

The bottom line is, please do NOT compromise with revolutionary psychotics.

IMHO


5 posted on 01/02/2011 8:06:58 AM PST by ripley
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To: Kaslin

Seeing that these agencies legally can not make policy or laws. Why would any state go along with what they are now going to demand?


6 posted on 01/02/2011 8:18:46 AM PST by MsLady (If you died tonight, where would you go? Salvation, don't leave earth without it!)
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To: unixfox

Time to pull the rug out from under these agencies. Defund or drastically reduce their budgets, time to starve the beast. Let’s start with the EPA, then move on to the FCC, NPR, PBS, PPH, TSA, DHS oh so many others.


7 posted on 01/02/2011 8:22:19 AM PST by MsLady (If you died tonight, where would you go? Salvation, don't leave earth without it!)
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To: unixfox

Heating assistance programs are also available to low income families.


8 posted on 01/02/2011 8:22:43 AM PST by DJ MacWoW (If Bam is the answer, the question was stupid.)
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To: MsLady
Seeing that these agencies legally can not make policy or laws. Why would any state go along with what they are now going to demand?

You mean, like California?

9 posted on 01/02/2011 8:26:33 AM PST by umgud
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To: umgud

Thank God I no longer live there. Geez, Michigan is bad enough. CA is a living h*ll for those who work and pay taxes.


10 posted on 01/02/2011 8:28:27 AM PST by MsLady (If you died tonight, where would you go? Salvation, don't leave earth without it!)
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To: Clintonfatigued

This is their plan to destroy the USA. Find the perpetrators and who is covering the truth up.


11 posted on 01/02/2011 8:42:38 AM PST by ExTexasRedhead
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To: Clintonfatigued

Ah, but the Greens are thrilled!

Less”carbon footprints”.

It’s sick, isn’t it?


12 posted on 01/02/2011 8:45:56 AM PST by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God).)
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To: Clintonfatigued
That is unbelieveable.

It's reasonable enough that 28,000 people died during a 3-4 month period, and that the majority who died were old. It's not believeable that many of the deaths were related to inadequate heat.

13 posted on 01/02/2011 8:50:35 AM PST by Tax-chick (The gifts we have, we are given to share.)
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To: Kaslin

In Cobb County, Georgia, hundreds shivered outside to apply for heating assistance from a welfare agency that may not have enough money for every family that needs help.


while their 52 inch TVs and xBoxes burned electricity at a furious pace back home ...


14 posted on 01/02/2011 9:03:38 AM PST by DontTreadOnMe2009 (So stop treading on me already!)
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To: MsLady

Watch Texas - our Governor is fighting the EPA restrictions now.


15 posted on 01/02/2011 9:03:57 AM PST by WhyisaTexasgirlinPA ("The View" is the new Maury Povich inspired "Fight Club in Heels")
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To: ExTexasRedhead

.
The Stockpile Song

Take the flag down from the place
where it led the human race.
Run up U.N. white and blue.
That’s what your “leaders” want to do.
They don’t seem to understand
we are a patriotic band.
So spread the word across the land
and stockpile weapons while you can.

Public schools were first to go.
They’re run by leftists as you know.
So school your children safe at home
far from the propaganda zone.
For they don’t want to understand
we are a family loving band.
So spread the word around the land
and stockpile knowledge while you can.

Stage and screen and on T.V.
they’re mocking God in all we see.
They may close your church some day
but they can’t stop us when we pray.
For they refuse to understand
we are a Jesus loving band.
So spread the word across the land
and stockpile Bibles while you can.

Somewhere there near your hometown
professor’s robe or judge’s gown,
there is a leftist who must go.
So lock and load and let them know.
For time will come they’ll understand
we are a patriotic band.
So spread the word across the land
and stockpile weapons while you can.
.


16 posted on 01/02/2011 9:06:20 AM PST by Touch Not the Cat (Where is the light? Wonder if it's weeping somewhere...)
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To: Clintonfatigued

It’s believable. Remember, that’s 28,000 people the British government don’t have to care for anymore. It’s 28,000 fewer people to stand in the way of Muslimizing Britain. It’s what the Socialists want to happen, and it’s coming here soon.


17 posted on 01/02/2011 9:07:54 AM PST by Republic of Texas (Socialism Always Fails)
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To: Kaslin

I’m getting cold just thinking about this...I better throw another log on the fire...


18 posted on 01/02/2011 9:25:34 AM PST by MSF BU (YR'S Please Support our troops: JOIN THEM!)
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To: Clintonfatigued

Meanwhile the government hands out money hand over FIST towards Africa of all places. I really have no idea how crammed Hell is going to be with the souls of these politicians.


19 posted on 01/02/2011 9:29:44 AM PST by Niuhuru (The Internet is the digital AIDS; adapting and successfully destroying the MSM host.)
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To: DontTreadOnMe2009

Go figure, isn’t that the truth?


20 posted on 01/02/2011 9:33:18 AM PST by Niuhuru (The Internet is the digital AIDS; adapting and successfully destroying the MSM host.)
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