Happy Festivus, Everyone!
Happy Festivus, Everyone!
In case you’re unfamiliar, Festivus is perhaps the holiest day of the year, where family members gather around an unadorned aluminum pole and air their grievances with each other. Keeping with this sacred tradition, I have a few grievances I’d like to air.
In the words of St. Francis (Costanza):
Mark Dayton:
Policy disagreements are to be expected in life, that’s fair, but to give 22 state employees huge raises on your way out the door is exactly why people on the left and right have lost confidence in politics and begun favoring populist candidates.
Scott Walker
As a native Wisconsinite I still keep tabs on my old home state, and Scott Walker has earned his share of grievances. First off, Foxconn.
What was he thinking giving away billions of dollars in tax offsets to this company? For a guy who got elected by denouncing the government picking winners and losers, he probably shouldn’t have gone around picking winners and losers.
Second, this venn diagram.
The optics of Wisconsin lawmakers stripping the newly-elected executive of powers the legislature explicitly granted to Walker are bad, but this venn diagram is worse.
The Renewable Energy Lobby
NGO’s, utility companies, companies like Mortenson Construction, and politicians talk about how renewable energy is good for our wallets, and the environment. Neither thing is particularly true.
Minnesota’s electricity prices have increased 26 percent faster than the national average since 2007, when Tim Pawlenty signed Minnesota’s renewable energy mandate into law. Since then, our state has squandered $15 billion on wind projects and transmission lines, but we still depend on fossil fuels when the wind isn’t blowing, which is frequent.
Xcel Energy’s plan to go 100 percent carbon free by 2050 will cost Minnesotans much more.
Environmentally, wind and solar will never be able to achieve the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions we could have achieved with nuclear power, but it is illegal to build a new nuclear plant in Minnesota.
In 2016, due to lack of wind and sunshine, wind turbines operated at only 35.5 percent of their rated capacity, and solar operated at 15.7 percent. This meas that fossil fuels filled in the gaps 64.5 percent of the time for wind, and 84.3 percent of the time for each fuel source, respectively.
If “saving the planet,” is the key objective, why would we waste time and resources on electricity sources that are hopelessly dependent upon fossil fuels to keep electricity flowing to our hospitals, schools, and homes when the weather doesn’t cooperate? If climate change advocates were being intellectually honest with themselves, they would be clamoring for Minnesota to legalize nuclear power, yesterday, and stop messing around with expensive, unreliable energy sources like wind and solar.
Honorable mentions are Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers. McCarthy should have been canned years ago, and Rodgers’ petulant attitude is tolerable when the team is winning, but insufferable when he’s missing check downs and wide open receivers.
What grievances would you like to air on this sacred day?