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Selected Editorials from the Editor

Suns & Shields Christian Inspirational Writings by Rachelle Hamlin

Selected editorials from Dr. Katherine Albrecht, Ed. D.

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The Roberts Trap is Sprung

By:  Bill Dunne
www.americanthinker.com
One of the most overlooked aspects of the year just ended is the vindication of Chief Justice John Roberts -- a vindication that showed up as the national catastrophe known as ObamaCare got rolling.  Roberts may have also doomed Hillary Clinton's chance to live in the White House again... click here to read whole editorial

 

Can Fort Fairfield Really Afford Commercial Wind Power?

 

By:  Paul Philbrick

Fort Fairfield Journal, October 29, 2014

 

   With the ongoing discussions of commercial wind development in Fort Fairfield, people there might want to start monitoring the Maine wind task force website, if they haven't already done so. I encourage everyone to inform themselves, and get the real unjaded story of Maine industrial wind development (aka: political corruption):

www.windtaskforce.org

  And here's their (Maine wind energy task force) article on what will likewise be our future with Maine wind power (electricity rates escalating out of control).

Small communities have been bulldozed into buying the tonic that the crony wind capitalist's have been peddling all over Maine. Most small communities do not have the resources to keep from getting rolled over by this fascist crony capitalist scheme. This is all a very clever UN Agenda 21 inspired design. Most surely, wind will divide the people in Fort Fairfield, just like it has done everywhere else the wind carpetbaggers have set their sights.

   We are quite familiar with how the wind charlatans operate in my daughter's hometown, Clifton.  Stephanie is now an elected selectperson, in an attempt to derail the wind scourge there, currently being imposed against the Clifton townspeople's will. Anti-wind is not anti-capitalist, anti-business, anti-progress, nor is industrial wind pro-green/environmental friendly.

   Anti-wind is simply anti-folly.

   The promised pittance of local tax revenue very quickly vanishes with the implementation of step 3 in the process, the TIF package that will inevitably be introduced by the wind developers, and their cohorts, in Fort Fairfield. Then, you and the local people will get to live for the next 25 years, with and under, the glorious sex symbols the 'baptists and bootleggers', and the liberal lamestream media, has teamed up to force upon the community at your expense (as you will subsidize wind locally with your property tax dollars as well). The wind developers would flee Fort Fairfield, if forced to pay property taxes at the same rate as a conventional electric power plant (ie: the local wood to energy facility in Fort now). The benefits of wind power are a tremendous lie, paid for by the tax credits (political bribery) that our politicians have collected from all of their crony wind capitalist friends (one of which is our current US Senator Angus King), and paid for by local property tax payers. Not to mention the loss of individual's property values, to every property owner that finds himself in the company of a new neighbor: an industrial wind turbine, or several.

   Er, cough...I rarely find something in the Bangor Daily News rag with any merit whatsoever...but all your enviro-fascist leaning readers with even an ounce of objectivity on industrial wind, should check out this article for themselves (the politics of this unusual alliance speaks volumes):


www.bangordailynews.com/2014/10/11/opinion/contributors/baptists-bootleggers-and-a-united-quest-for-the-blaine-house/


There are much better environmentally friendly, economically viable and without taxpayer subsidy, alternative energy solutions available, and the taxpayers should not have to subsidize any of them, most certainly not the worst of them: wind. Wind is not a good option. Industrial wind development thrives only because of huge taxpayer subsidies, Maine's fast track exemption from a full environmental permitting review by the state, and an ill advised plan that is ultimately going to double the cost of electricity for local ratepayers in a very short time. Maine is least able to bear the burden of wind generated electricity rates. Maine people and businesses already pay the highest electricity rates in the nation bar none.

   But meanwhile, our local community governments have been forced to dive headlong into industrial wind development, so that we can export all the wind power that Southern New England needs, while realizing almost nothing of any benefit to the local community. And, as the electrical high voltage transmission infrastructure currently exists, Aroostook County generated wind power has only one exit route: New Brunswick, Canada. The power will be deposited directly into the Canadian owned electrical power grid....where it is absorbed by Canadians. Nice unregulated subsidy, eh?

   I could get into all of the electrical engineering folly of industrial wind, but suffice it to say that technical transmission constraints limit the current electrical grid to transmitting only a tiny fraction of what the wind charlatans have promised in Maine, and elsewhere in the US. Just search Germany's folly with industrial wind to prove me correct. These huge latent infrastructure costs have not even come into play yet here in the US, because wind developers have sought to site industrial wind farms only where they can tap out the last ounce of the existing unallocated transmission grid infrastructure. Industrial wind requires that huge transmission upgrade costs be incurred, as these are the highways by which the wind generated power must travel to where the demand is: Southern New England. Further, with all of this industrial wind generation from these large wind projects, all compressed into a 20% time slot when the wind resource is available in Maine to generate the power (to spin the blades), this creates a huge peak flow of electricity required to be transmitted in a very short time period. Present transmission power lines cannot accommodate this peak wind surge. Additionally, the control systems necessary to keep the electricity traffic flow stabilized on these future transmission grid upgrades, create very complex system stability engineering issues that have not yet been solved, anywhere in the world, including Germany the wind energy leader. The costs projections for these necessary future upgrades run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Future electricity ratepayers will most certainly be saddled with paying for these costly transmission and system stability upgrades.

   A completed and operating industrial wind farm is just step 1 in this whole ill-advised scheme, as explained above. And of course, conventional power plants (coal, wood, oil, natural gas fired) still have to be built, to supply electrical power to the grid whenever the wind isn't blowing, or the sun isn't shining (photovoltaic power). The electricity ratepayers are still going to pay the costs of building conventional fossil fueled power plants, because as we all know, the sun doesn't always shine, nor does the wind always blow.  

   Full industrial wind development, as presently proposed by the fascist crony capitalists (the charlatans have alleged that “Maine is the Saudi Arabia of wind”...what a farce), will prove to be a very expensive and colossal train wreck, which is already now very well along in the works. Siting the windmills in the offshore ocean will triple the cost of electricity, vs, double the electricity rates as a result of industrial wind developments sited on land.

   The true costs of accommodating industrial wind development are latent, and the current benefits of industrial wind power are non-existent. Industrial wind development is a boon, only to the wall street crony capitalists (looking for a huge tax break and immediate financial gratification), and no one else.

   Maine, once again, is just a place the city folks chose to site the 'ugly' and 'noisy', to satisfy their whimsical pro-environmental conscience. Maine receives no benefit, no low cost electric power, and lacking anything but a divided local community voice, the industrial wind scheme serves primarily to satisfy the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) city slicker sentiments in Southern New England. Being that industrial windmills are so wonderful and sexy (pictured prominently in political ads and elsewhere...you know, you've seen it), how many industrial windmills do you suppose will be sited around Augusta, Falmouth, Cape Elizabeth, Buxton, or Westchester County, NY?

   Fort Fairfield would be well advised to highly restrict industrial wind development, by unanimously enacting local ordinances that require minimum 2 mile setbacks from nearest adjacent property lines, and not granting property tax exemptions (TIF's) to the crony capitalist wind developers. Otherwise, the good citizens of Fort Fairfield might just as well write the word "SUCKER" on your community's US Route 1A 'Welcome to Friendly Fort Fairfield' sign.

 

Paul Philbrick is originally from Fort Fairfield and is now president of a highly successful electrical contracting company in Bangor, ELCO Electric.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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