As your Senate representative to DC, we will the wasteful federal spending of our hard earned money:

Not Yours To Give

In the video on the left; Former congressman Davy Crockett explains how government transmogrified from a limited representative government to an unlimited unrepresentative central authority. Colonel Crockett, who died at the Alamo, was congressman from Tennessee’s 9th district from 1827 to 1831. Excerpts from “Not Yours To Give” at http://www.mises.org & http://www.LibertyPen.com

Too often, our Congress feels obligated to “bring home the bacon” by “investing” in sundry projects, promising that this will create jobs, or that will sustain the economy.  Whatever the excuse, the bottom-line is that our money is not theirs to give.  Our money is only to be used to support the enumerated responsibilities and operations of the Federal Government. There is no such thing as “investing” in the future of our country to be found anywhere in the Constitution.

Not all “Green Tech” is environmentally friendly

From The Big Cover Up: Wind Industry Burying Millions of Toxic Turbine Blades In Landfills

… “The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the repository of at least 870 discarded blades, and one of the few locations in the country that accepts the massive fiberglass objects.

Built to withstand hurricane winds, the turbine blades cannot easily be crushed or recycled. About 8,000 of the blades are decommissioned in the U.S. every year.

Once they reach the end of their useful life on electricity-generating wind turbines, the blades have to be hacked up with industrial saws into pieces small enough to fit on a flat-bed trailer and hauled to a landfill that accepts them” …

The real cost of solar and wind

“The main problem with either wind or solar is that they generate electricity erratically, depending on the wind or sunshine. In contrast, a fossil-fuel plant can generate electricity predictably upon request. Blackouts are very expensive for society, so grid operators and designers go to a lot of trouble to make sure that blackouts are rare. Adding wind or solar to a grid does not mean that existing fossil fuel plants can be retired. Often, neither wind nor solar is working and at those times a full complement of fossil fuel plants, or sometimes nuclear or hydro plants, must be available. Both wind and solar have pronounced seasonality.”

“Wind behaves erratically hour to hour. Even though the Texas 18,000-megawatt system has thousands of turbines spread over a wide area, the net output is erratic changing by thousands of megawatts in a single hour. These shifts must be balanced by fossil-fuel plants slewing their output up and down to compensate and keep load matched to generation.”

As we saw in the recent “Big Freeze”, Texas’ energy network collapsed, not because it was too cold, but because both federal and state regulators refused to permit Texas to crank up the fossil fuel plants to fill the gap, because of “concern for EPA pollution limits”.  Never mind that the blackouts caused far more damage than the claimed environmental damage.  Another example of unaccountable regulators ignoring economic science.

“Viewed from the effect on the economy, adding wind or solar electricity provides the benefit of reduced fuel consumption in backup fossil fuel plants. This saving in fuel amounts to about $15 per megawatt hour, the cost of natural gas to generate a megawatt hour of electricity.  The cost of coal is similar. The backup fossil-fuel plant still has to have its full staff and may have more costly maintenance due to the up-down style of operation forced by the introduction of erratic energy. If the renewable energy costs more than $15 per megawatt hour, then it is not competitive. Wind or solar power actually costs around $80 per megawatt hour.

How can I claim that wind or solar cost $80 when power purchase agreements at $25 per megawatt hour are often touted in the press? Even at $25 the wind or solar is far from competitive. The gap between $80 and $25 is accounted for by subsidies. The $10 difference between $25 and $15 is also a subsidy because the purchaser is paying $25 for the electricity that could be generated in a backup fossil fuel plant, that already exists and that must exist, for $15.”

“No utility would buy $80 renewable electricity to replace $15 fossil fuel electricity. A stand-alone, enterprise wind or solar plant would be a huge economic failure because there would be no market for overpriced electricity. The entire renewable electricity industry is actually a government boondoggle. Neither, is renewable electricity an economic method for reducing CO2 emissions as has been made clear by the most important proselytizers for global warming such as Climate Scientists for Nuclear.”

— Norman Rogers
Author of Inconvenient Facts About Dumb Renewable Energy

CO2 Pipelines In Iowa

You may have heard of the Heartland Greenway or Summit CO2 pipelines, so what’s the difference? Actually, what’s the sum of 2 different pipelines criscrossing Iowa?

Proposed Heartland Greenway and Summit CO2 Pipelines

Summit, an Ames company that calls its project Midwest Carbon Express, proposes building nearly 710 miles of pipeline across 30 of the state’s 99 counties. Altogether, it would travel 2,000 miles across and into four other states: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Texas-based Navigator CO2, which calls its project Heartland Greenway System, wants to build roughly 900 miles of pipeline across 36 counties. Altogether, it would cross 1,300 miles and also reach into Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota and South Dakota.

Don’t make the mistake of believing that these two pipelines are the end goal, there will be expansions that the “investors” can take to the bank.

Current Status of Pollution Sources and Mitigation Pipelines. As you can see from all the green dots, more CO2 pipelines “have” to be built.

Terry Branstad, Charles Grassley, Tom Harkin and Bruce Rastetter, a power broker in Iowa Republican politics and the co-founder of Hawkeye Energy Holdings, all pushed for subsidies promoting ethanol and bio-diesel as part of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) scheme. In 2005, the first Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) became law as part of the United States’ energy policy.

In an 2016 interview, Grassley said, “We won’t phase out that mandate until we know that we’ve got E-85 pumps at more stations. If you phase out that mandate now, you’re never going to get that infrastructure built up. Ethanol’s still a big issue”.

Riddle me this, why didn’t they think of the need to sequester CO2 and make it part of the RFS infrastructure? Because they think we’re idiots.  If they did that RFS fuel would be more expensive.  So let’s just mask that cost by giving a seperate subsidy for the pipeline.  And should there be a future occasion requiring the removal or repurposing of the pipeline, due to the collaspe of ethanol, why we’ll just have another subsidy.

This is the evil of subsidies, they hide the true cost of a thing where it can’t stand on its own in a free market and those adversely impacted are the taxpayers and consumers while the suppliers are ensured of their profits.

Are the pipelines a good environmental solution?

Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University civil and environmental engineering professor, said that carbon capture systems so far have failed to meet the promises of significantly reduced emissions.

For example, a carbon capture system at a Texas coal power plant cut emissions 55% the first year and 70% after three years. But the company, which used the carbon to extract oil, claimed it would capture 90% or more of the emissions, Jacobson said.

Instead of trying to extend ethanol’s viability, Carolyn Raffensperger, an Iowa environmental lawyer, said Iowa should focus on transitioning the state’s farming economy away from producing renewable fuel, and the corn and soybean crops needed to make it.

Iowa also is the nation’s largest biodiesel producer in the nation and taps soybean oil, along with used cooking oil, grease and animal fats to make it. The state is the second-largest U.S. soybean grower.

“The drive toward electric vehicles raises questions about the long-term future of Iowa corn production,” Raffensperger said.

Are CO2 Pipelines Safe?

While oil pipelines are pressurized only enough to move the product, CO2 requires high pressures to liquify the CO2 gases. From the Des Moines Register, penned by Donnelle Eller;

Iowans who oppose the projects point to a carbon dioxide pipeline leak a year ago in Mississippi that sickened dozens of nearby residents. A recent Huffington Post story said Satartia residents were engulfed inside a greenish cloud and within minutes were “gasping for air, nauseated and dazed.”

Cars shut off, since they need oxygen to burn fuel. Drivers scrambled out of their paralyzed vehicles, but were so disoriented that they just wandered around in the dark, the article said.

‘We got lucky’

From an USnewsmail article entitled; CO2 Pipeline Explosion Turned Mississippi Town Into ‘A Zombie Movie’.

“It was almost like something you’d see in a zombie movie, they were just walking in circles” Sheriff’s Officer Terry Gann told Huffpost, while survivor Hugh Martin said that the “only thing I been through worse than this was the gas chamber when I was in the Army training for Desert Storm, and that was cyanide gas.”

Bad as that may sound though, the situation could have been significantly worse, as they actually “got lucky,” as Yazoo County Emergency Management Agency director Jack Willingham explained. “If the wind blew the other way, if it’d been later when people were sleeping, we would have had deaths.” The Verge called its competitor’s reporting a “scathing investigation of the company, Denbury, that operates the pipeline,” and its headline exhorted readers to “Go read the harrowing story of the world’s first CO2 pipeline explosion.”

RFS is NOT environmentally friendly

In an Iowa Standard Opinion piece about Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), Janna Swanson writes:

I have been fighting back against the onslaught of industrial wind and their excessive power lines since 2013 with the Coalition for Rural Property Rights, National Wind Watch and The Preservation of Rural Iowa Alliance. A few years ago, I and a few others fighting wind met with Americans for Prosperity seeking help. They wanted us to come out against the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) along with other renewables. Because two of us farmed and sold much corn to ethanol, we declined.
 
Fast forward to today and I now see why I need to come out against the RFS. The RFS is keeping Iowa’s fortunes tied to the whims of the federal government. If we accept money from the government, we also accept the strings that are attached. In the case of the RFS the strings attached are industrial wind, industrial solar, excess power lines, large scale batteries, electric vehicle charging stations, and carbon capture pipelines. It is like paying $500 to receive $5.
 
The government needs to be removed from the marketplace. Government should not be giving anyone taxpayer money. They should not be deciding who should buy what. This is the problem with the RFS. Is ethanol a good product? Then prove it, market it, sell it. Do not let the government force the sale. No farmer I have ever met wants to be forced to do anything so don’t be involved with forcing others to buy your product.

Most Iowans recall that Sen Chuck Grassley saddled us with the “Unfrastructure Bill”, claiming that Iowa needed it for our bridges, roads & broadband. Only after the Bill was passed and signed did we find out what all was in it. Roughly 10% is dedicated to “infrastructure”, meaning Iowans are on the hook for 1000% of our total share of that Bill, because we also have to pay for the crap we don’t want nor benefit from.

What Sen Grassley didn’t tell us is about funding the CO2 pipeline to the tune of $50 per metric ton. A hocus-pocus boondoogle of a pipeline to “mitigate” the increased CO2 emissions cranked out by our ethanol plants as they massively drain water, among other resources to convert food into fuel.

From a project management perspective, why didn’t the pro-RFS lobby think of this before starting? Assuming that Co2 is indeed a problem.  Instead of legislating, Chuck and his swamp friends sat back and let the EPA add CO2 to its portfolio of “dangerous” emissions, never mind that plants need CO2 to breathe. So what happens when too much C02 is removed? Lower crop yields and more chemicals and GMO to try and make up for the reduced CO2?

Climate Change

Of course Americans want a clean environment, clean air, clean water, clean lands, clean energy and we lead the world in that effort. The problem with global initiatives is that typically they put the US taxpayers on the hook to pay for the rest of the world.

These climate change “treaties” ignore the massive pollution churned out by China, India and other developing nations. While we laud the efforts by these countries to clean up, we must say no to financing it for them and at the same time having to further restrict our own economy. Simply put, if all these nations came up to our standards, the world would be a much cleaner environment.

Not that we would sit on our laurels, continuous improvements in technology will continue to bend the “pollution curve” ever downwards. Furthermore, when it comes to clean energy, nothing can compare to nuclear energy, it is the cleanest, most reliable and cheapest form of energy, but environmentalists refuse to acknowledge that fact.

That said, it is interesting that Branstad is invoking “Climate Change” in a letter to farmers, shaming them for not wanting to yield to the pipeline.

The increased presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can make the climate worse, researchers say.
 
“As a landowner and potential partner in the Summit Carbon Solutions project, you are now a target of the Sierra Club,” Branstad’s letter warned. “Please don’t be intimidated. They are not your friends and will be gone long after they destroyed the ethanol industry and the value of your corn producing lands.
 
In an interview broadcast Sunday on WHO 13, Branstad explained why he argues that the carbon pipeline is key to the future success of the state’s ethanol industry, while helping to limit the damage caused by industry to the environment.

Really Terry? And what do you say when ethanol industry collapses when electric cars and trucks make up the lion’s share of vehicles on the road? You’ll find another scheme to use subsidies to “save our farmers”?

For a family farmer with 100, 1,000 or 10,000 acres, such a land grab will hurt their business model and make it more difficult to turn a profit.  But what of the Homesteader with their “tiny” 5, 10 or 20 acres? A pipeline running through their property would devastate their hopes and dreams of self-sufficiency.  How is it any different from 2 Samuel chapter 12 where the prophet Nathan confronts King David, to when a rich private interest takes land away from the little guy and shares the proceeds with “friends and allies”?

v5. David burned with anger against the man. “I solemnly swear, as the Lord lives,” he said to Nathan, “the man who did this certainly deserves to die!

v6. And he must pay back four times the price of the lamb because he did this and had no pity.”

Our Creator makes it clear that it is an evil to deprive anyone of their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness in order to protect their own riches and to gratify themselves.

Never mind the bureaucracy and red tape that all who work the land for their living have to put up with.  Time and time again, unelected bureaucrats have proven that they cannot be a better steward of the land than the landowners themselves.  Climate change is NOT a compelling interest of the federal government, rather it is a scheme by the New World Order to impoverish the Common Man for the benefit of the elites. This abuse must end!