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Trump Orders a Lifeline For Struggling Coal and Nuclear Plants (nytimes.com)
According to The New York Times, President Trump has ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to "prepare immediate steps" to stop the closure of unprofitable coal and nuclear plants around the country. From the report: Under one proposal outlined in the memo, which was reported by Bloomberg, the Department of Energy would order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants for two years, using emergency authority that is normally reserved for exceptional crises like natural disasters. That idea triggered immediate blowback from a broad alliance of energy companies, consumer groups and environmentalists. On Friday, oil and gas companies joined with wind and solar organizations in a joint statement condemning the plan, saying that it was "legally indefensible" and would force consumers to pay more for electricity.
The administration has also discussed invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950, which allows the federal government to intervene in private industry in the name of national security. (Harry S. Truman used the law to impose price controls on the steel industry during the Korean War.) If the Trump administration were to invoke these two statutes, the move would almost certainly be challenged in federal court by natural gas and renewable energy companies, which could stand to lose market share. Such an intervention could cost consumers between $311 million to $11.8 billion pear year, according to a preliminary estimate (PDF) by Robbie Orvis, director of energy policy design at Energy Innovation.
The administration has also discussed invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950, which allows the federal government to intervene in private industry in the name of national security. (Harry S. Truman used the law to impose price controls on the steel industry during the Korean War.) If the Trump administration were to invoke these two statutes, the move would almost certainly be challenged in federal court by natural gas and renewable energy companies, which could stand to lose market share. Such an intervention could cost consumers between $311 million to $11.8 billion pear year, according to a preliminary estimate (PDF) by Robbie Orvis, director of energy policy design at Energy Innovation.
Isn't the point of capitalism to allow failing companies to die? At least during the financial crisis there was a national interest reason (collapse of the economy and banks runs are bad), but coal mines?
Coal is outdated and needs to be replaced with natural gas.
Nuclear has issues (most of them caused by lawyers paid by the hour, most of the rest caused by executives paid by the quarterly stock price, and a small handful of technical issues) but they're still a good way to get a lot of energy from a small footprint with a minimum of global warming.
Finally we have a president who truly understands the value of "free markets" without government interference.
At least Trump is demonstrating that every one of the most hallowed conservative principles really don't mean a thing to conservatives. They never did. It was always a con job. Trump could perform an abortion with a rusty screwdriver while raising taxes and banning guns on Fifth Avenue and conservatives would still meekly seek his approval and make excuses for him as long as he continues to send up the racist bat-signal.
A reckoning will come.
You are welcome on my lawn.
they use the word to hide the fact that they're actually in favor of sweeping societal and economic changes. They're not Conservative (opposing change and supporting the status quo). Heck, one of the most Conservative politicians in history was Hillary Clinton. She'd have kept everything as is, making only small changes to keep everything on course; and she polled terribly. As a rule "progressive" policies (Medicare for all, College for everyone, New New Deal, ending wars, infrastructure spending, living wage, etc, etc) poll in the mid to high 60s, yet their candidates can't seem to win elections.
What I'd like to see is an honest label for the entire movement. Maybe "Regressives", since they seem to want to roll us back to the early 1900s or even late 1800s. Except not quite because they wouldn't support the isolationism and anti-bank sentiment that was popular back then. I wouldn't call them Neo-Liberals because they stop all sorts of liberty (Drugs, abortion, Gay Marriage, etc). I'm open to suggestions, but it bothers me that they use such a deceptive label. If people knew their actual policies they wouldn't have a chance.
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Glad to see the Republicans sticking to their principles.
Ha! good thing I didn't sell my stock in buggy whips!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
because I don't trust Americans. They'll want to privatize it sooner or later because it's easy to convince 51% of the population that the private sector is so much more efficient (which is funny, since most of them have worked for mega corps and seen exactly how efficient private business is). Of course private enterprise isn't more or less efficient, but people expected cost savings and dam-gummit they're gonna get those savings... by dangerously cutting corners and/or running plants far outside their useful life cycle.
This isn't even hypothetical. It's exactly what happened in Fukushima. And the people involved got off Scott free too. They cried a little on TV and all was forgiven. Meanwhile lots of the clean up workers died of cancer already and thousands lost their homes and jobs.
Until you can convince America that Ronny Reagan was full shit when he said "Government's not the solution, it's the problem" then I want nothing to do with nuclear. I suppose if you could make it cheaper to run a safe plant than an unsafe one, but that tech isn't even on the horizon.
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and haven't budged once since he got elected (+/- 2% for error). And he keeps doing worse things. He supports TPP now, and DACA, and H1-Bs, and looked the other way while Carrier Air and Harley Davidson outsourced jobs, and protected Chinese jobs at ZTE, and failed at Repeal & Replace... I could go on.
All these broken promisies, the first two absolutely critical to his base, and still his poll #s are at or near 40%. Meanwhile the Dems are getting ready to run another Milktoast Hillary-bot 2.0 "centerist" candidate in all their races and give up both the House and Senate and eventually another presidency...
Trump at least _says_ he'll do something. He's lying, but the lies feel good. So far the right wing corporate Dems don't promise anything but the same policies that got us in this mess. Meanwhile the few Dems like Bernie and Alison Hartson get hammered by the establishment Dems and shut down.
I don't see any sign of reckoning. All I see is business as usual...
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Just passing along that, The entire coal industry employs fewer people than Arby’s -- and just a bit more that Whole Foods:
The coal industry employed 76,572 people in 2014, the latest year for which data is available. (That number includes not just miners but also office workers, sales staff and all of the other individuals who work at coal-mining companies.)
Although 76,000 might seem like a large number, consider that similar numbers of people are employed by, say, the bowling (69,088) and skiing (75,036) industries. Other dwindling industries, such as travel agencies (99,888 people), employ considerably more. Used-car dealerships provide 138,000 jobs. Theme parks provide nearly 144,000. Carwash employment tops 150,000.
Looking at the level of individual businesses, the coal industry in 2014 (76,572) employed about as many as Whole Foods (72,650), and fewer workers than Arby's (close to 80,000), Dollar General (105,000) or J.C. Penney (114,000). The country's largest private employer, Walmart (2.2 million employees) provides roughly 28 times as many jobs as coal.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This is the nightmare of government interference into markets that conservatives have long used to attack the left for their regulatory and subsidy policies, summed up in the pithy phrase of "picking winners and losers". But this is unvarnished use of political power to the economic benefit of political allies, a crony capitalism that is an even more explicit form of the "swamp" behavior that Trump ran against.
If you think the above rebuke is wrong, please tell me what the genuine public interest is in the underlying rule "to consider guaranteeing financial returns for any power plant that could stockpile 90 days’ worth of fuel on-site". Several forms of power generation don't stockpile fuel (natural gas is typically piped in), or don't use "fuel" at all, such as wind, solar, and hydro. If fuel disruption was the legitimate security concern, then not requiring fuel distribution at all would be the most ideal for that end.
Propping up coal is particularly egregious, since the coal industry has a plethora of negative externalities, which means that if anything coal power has been selling at rates well below it's true overall cost to society. Coal power also is at the top of the list of mortality and impaired health of all forms of power generation, far higher than natural gas generation which has been the main competitor crowding it out on price.
Subsidizing coal power is plainly not in the general public interest, only the narrow interest of those who depend economically on the coal industry.
Because they haven't revealed *which* of the listed proposals will be implemented yet. That estimate is vague because the proposal is vague.
We only know that if it's implemented it will cost consumers somewhere between "lots" and "a hell of a lot". Forcing people to buy products they didn't want causes prices to go up.
who consistently said Hilary was in trouble and needed to be campaigning harder while everyone else said Trump didn't have a chance.
Again, his poll number's don't budge. If you ask people about issues they consistently oppose Trump. If you ask them about _Trump_ they consistently support him. Thing is, that's not how politics work in America. In America we have wedge issues (Abortion, Gun Control, Gay rights) that split the voters almost evenly. Then there's a small number of 'swing' voters.
Thing is those voters vote on their 'gut'. They don't rationally weigh options and policies. They vote for the candidate that makes them feel the best. This is why you can take a Trump voter, run Trump's polices against them and find they oppose Trump 70-80% of the time but they'll still come out and vote for Trump. Trump makes them feel _good_. His rallies are fun. He Makes America Great Again. Hillary (and the Milktoast right winger Dems like her) make everybody feel bad. They call you a racist and a sexist. They tell you how bad you are for not making it through college or not having enough money to get your kid's through college. Trump tells you he's gonna get your jobs and healthcare. Hillary says she's gonna leave things as is, with you unemployed and not able to afford a doctor visit even if you have insurance.
This is the reality of the American Political system. None of it was by accident. It was built this way to keep wealthy landowners in power. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do: provide the illusion of Democracy. I don't know how to fix it either.
A buddy of mine is absolutely fucked. Almost 50, lots of health problems, has a parent who just won't die and is weighing him down. Dead end job because they shipped his career overseas. Fucked. He's turned to phony-baloney "Alternative" medicine bought off Amazon to treat his various illnesses. Right now the symptoms can be lived with (albeit with a big hit to his productivity), but that's not gonna last. Still, he's convinced himself everything's OK, that he's getting better. That Homeopathy works. And that he's gonna get rich off some dumb ass crypto coin scheme he put $300 bucks into. Meanwhile he just starting working for some gig economy bullshit where they dictate everything he does but don't have to pay benefits or minimum wage.
He should be pissed that he and his parents got tossed aside like hot garbage. He should demand healthcare and a decent wage. He should be voting the the Dems primary to drive the party left and then in the general to drive them to victory. That's the problem I don't know how to solve. We're a nation of temporarily inconvenienced millionaires...
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these are the same folks who vote for the farm bill and oil subsidies every year. The same folks that made marijuana illegal to prop up private prison industry and cotton. The same folks that ran proxy wars in South America for bloody _fruit_ companies.
No, there's nothing even a little capitalistic about this party. They're just Kleptocrats.
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It's only economical if you don't budget for decommissioning and cleanup (pushing that to future generations) and it's only safe if either (a) it's regulated to death--which also makes it uneconomical, or (b) at no point in the 60 year operational lifetime no one ever gives control of safety over to an MBA (or just a bad engineer). And the penalty for making too many mistakes is a cataclysmic disaster. Oh, and it requires a gigantic capital investment that only pays off over many decades and only if alternative energy sources don't continue to drop in price.
Here's a lesson for young engineers out there: A good engineering solution is one that is intrinsically safe and simple, one that naturally fails in a safe way (that's where the word "failsafe" comes from). A solution that only works out if everyone does their job perfectly is called "stupid". It doesn't matter if the more complicated approach uses a lot of cool math & physics and allows you to feel smarter and more righteous that the non-technical masses--you're the one being stupid, not them.
The future is pretty obvious, natural gas in the near term as we transition to wind & solar & batteries (with natural gas for peaking & backup).
Does that make this OK? The inability to acknowledge is a huge problem in politics. Your ideology that doesnâ(TM)t allow you to publicly acknowledge that this is a government regulation/subsidy in action because it is proposed by your horse in the race shows a lack of logical reasoning.
Except ACA directly benefits the people, where as this only demerits particular businesses.
Also, had the ACA been implemented as single payer instead of the "bending for the Republicans" and allowing the for profit private insurances companies drive pricing and terms, the ACA would have been MUCH better off.
If coal didn't have the subsidy of not having to pay for the health problems it causes in the population it would be way too expensive to use.
If nuclear didn't have the subsidy of the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act they wouldn't be able to insure nuclear power plants and they would all close.