Cold Air from Wordpress

"... she's shown the same inclination to buy votes and cover up mismanagement that brought down her predecessor"

Robin Sears, described as "s an NDP party strategist for 20 years," managed to get a good commentary onto the pages of the Toronto Star.  I found a couple of things interesting in  Why does Andrea Horwath enrage some New Democrats so? Ontario elites have long misread their citizens’ anger. It elected Bob Rae, Mike Harris and Rob Ford. The ineptitude of Howard Hampton, Ernie Eves and Tim Hudak gave McGuinty a pass for years. Now Hudak has learned the importance of authenticity and sounds more like a leader. Andrea Horwath is offering a powerful — yes, populist — vision tempered by reality and not fiscal fantasy. Meanwhile, Ontario has recaptured the most shameful crown it has ever worn — we are the most dependent sub-national government in the world — on the cruel demands of global bond traders. We will soon pay them more of every tax dollar than any state or province on earth! The last time we so completely sold our future to bond-holders it gave birth to the angriest right-w...

The Federal Court has released the full ruling on the validity of the environmental assessment that had provided preliminary approval for a new build of nuclear units neighbouring the existing Ontario Power Generation (OPG) Darlington generating station. The issue was in court due to Greenpeace Canada, Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, Northwatch and Canadian Environmental Law Association - all professional anti-nuclear veterans.  The comrades had celebrated the ruling in a May 15th news release : “The Federal Court has thrown out the approvals for building new reactors at Darlington." Well, not really. From the ruling : [394] My specific findings of inadequacies and unreasonableness in the EA Report do not vitiate the whole Report, although it seems to me that some reconsideration and corrective action is required that will allow the Cabinet and s. 37 decision-makers to assess, or re-assess, the whole Project and make their decision accordingly. I have attempted to craft a remedy that w...

This old post by Aldyen Donnelly informs on the foolishness of regressive energy taxation... a lesson ignored in Ontario. [caption id="attachment_159" align="aligncenter" width="381"] From the cited post by Aldyen Donnelly, the "Energy Consumption Taxes" line should be a textbook example of regressive taxation[/caption] Two articles from 2011 were referenced by Edward Keenan on Twitter (to which I responded ), one directly, by Stephen Gordon  (McGill), and the second is an earlier article by Mike Moffat (Western), which I presume is  The '99 per cent' don't really want to fix inequality . Nowhere are "energy consumption taxes" shown to be progressive, by any coherent usage of the term.  That doesn't, in itself, make the taxes a bad idea, but Aldyen Donnelly has a strong argument that data does shows taxing this necessity to be a counter-productive action.

"Ontario is faced with a staggering debt" Dwight Duncan recently said. Yesterday PC leader Tim Hudak caused a campaign stir in claiming he'd get 100,000 people off the public payroll. Simple math: 100,000 at $100,000/yr = $10 billion, which is less than the year's deficit. If people aren't cut, what would be cut? Transit?

The province has a huge issue there getting those [electricity] costs down. That’s an input cost breaking some of our manufacturers.” Goodyear added manufacturers are telling him electricity is costing ‘thousands and thousands a month more than it did even last year.’ “It’s difficult to be competitive when you have those types of exorbitant rates,” said Goodyear said. Hydro One chair of the board of directors Sandra Pupatello warned the province faces a difficult decade of challenges in the energy sector combating falling American electricity prices.

The headline from the sleaziest of industries reads " UTILITY LEADERS, NUCLEAR OWNERS, FERC COMMISSIONER PUBLICLY REBUT EXELON'S ANTI-PTC CAMPAIGN " The nuclear owners quoted prominently include Nextera. The company being attacked is a generator holding a number of nuclear assets, with generation selling, in many cases, in markets at market rates. Nextera is a label of Florida Power and Light (FPL): FPL operates in regulated environments, where they get a guaranteed return on investments through regulated rates.  Where that is not the case, they generally secure power purchase agreements to avoid exposure to market rates. Nextera itself lists 3 nuclear operations: Duane Arnold Energy Center  - Palo, IA Point Beach  - Two Rivers, WI Seabrook Station  - Seabrook, NH Duane Arnold somehow secured a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) - in the heart of wind country only a year ago . Point Beach has a PPA to 2030 (unit 1) and 2033 (unit 2) Seabrook Station has a sm...