#ncga: Whores on the corner
That’s a mighty apt take on the current environment on Jones Street, as supplied from one disgusted insider who confided in me. Judging from yesterday’s events, it appears the Republican majority is in bed with the same radical environmentalists who have spent cycle after cycle spending money against GOP candidates.
House committees — dominated by Republicans — shot down efforts to (1) end the renewable energy mandates and (2) kill the 35 percent tax credit for renewable energy producers. The renewable energy mandates — introduced in 2007 by a bipartisan group that included Thom Tillis — codified that utility providers MUST, each year, purchase X-amount of the energy they sell their customers from renewable energy producers. On the other end of the equation, you have a 35 percent tax credit for producers of renewable energy. So, you have government mandating a demand and forcing taxpayers to subsidize the production needed to meet that demand. (Oh, and don’t forget, all of these “renewable energy” options are much more expensive for the producers — and their end customers — than more traditional energy resources.) By killing the mandates AND the tax credit, you are creating a situation where utility bills for EVERYONE go down. And the GOP majority said NO to that.
Opposition to the efforts to kill both propositions came from a coalition of Republican consultants, Republican legislators, and professional environmentalists which was masterfully exposed in this piece from Susan Myrick at Civitas.
Before I go on, I have to give an ‘Amen’ to the preaching of Jon Sanders over at John Locke about yesterday’s events on Jones Street: 
”[…] A campaign of utter nonsense, phony free-market posing, and shameless flat-out begging(which negated the campaign’s economic nonsense and free-market posing, if anyone took the time to think about it) has succeeded wildly.
Those are the tools it takes to carry an issue in today’s North Carolina, just as it was in yesterday’s North Carolina (well, the phony free-market posing is new).
Principled, empirically sound stands for the citizens of North Carolina are no fun and don’t benefit campaign coffers or influential friends. It would just help those piddling poor people who are only useful as props and aren’t Important In Raleigh (other than to confer the title of “Representative” — you know, as being the ones whose interests are supposedly beingrepresented).
Shortly after extending the thirty-five percent renewable energy tax credit for another year, North Carolina legislators today shot down in a House committee an effort to cap the renewable energy portfolio mandate.
I’ve discussed this issue frequently, making that principled, empirical, unfun, stand-for-the-poor case that a policy of least-cost, reliable energy is the state’s best policy — which as you and more importantly they well know stands in opposition to the hogwash-spouting, coffer-lining cronies’ best policy of perpetual public life support.[…]
Apparently, it is now ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS. Doing what’s right for the people of North Carolina and cutting the size and scope of government haven’t just been bumped to the back of the bus — they’re holding onto the bus’s rear bumper for dear life.
I am beginning not to know my party any more, including some legislators I have known for years. This is getting profoundly disgusting. Why bother to bust our tails electing Republicans when they turn around and act like Democrats by jumping on the Al Gore bankwagon of the left? Maybe it is better to use our time and money for something else.
One of my legislators is one of the heroes on this legislation, but the other voted like a Democrat. I know which one will get my help next election, and which one will not get any time or money. Last election, I helped both, but I will be more selective next time.
There are no longer any parties as we knew them. There is a single Ruling Party, who still uses titles of Democrat and Republican. Term limits … maybe only one term in office … would be a start in cleaning up what more and more looks like a RICO operation at state and national government. Hope they have the sense to change, before they are introduced to their Robespierre …
I am glad that enough thinking legislators voted to forward a strategic energy approach. This keeps the modest subsidy for renewables in the short term so that they can begin to compete with the long-time subsidized Big energy industry of coal, oil, and gas.
I could see the federal government subsidizing research to try to find practical wind or solar production methods, but subsidizing the deployment of technology that is not ready for prime time because it costs a lot more than conventional energy is just nuts, except to the environmental extremist ideologues and to the crony capitalists who want to line their pockets even if they are stiffing the taxpayers and the electric ratepayers to do so.
The other problem that is not so easy to solve is that wind and solar are intermittent sources of power that require maintaining expensive backup generation capacity for when the wind is not blowing (or blowing too hard) and the sun in not shining. Until there is some practical way to store electricity, intermittent sources will always be impractical.
Unfortunately, our GOP legislature seems to have gotten the Basnight syndrome.
Why is this a partisan issue? What if these legislators UNDERSTAND the issue and think it just makes sense???
Shame on you for persecuting those for what they believe in.
” [F]or what they believe in?” This is not about what THEY believe in AFTER they are elected. But, it IS all about what we, the people, believed and mandated to them when we elected them. Raleigh is becoming like Capital Hill; insulated from the people they represent. Only good thing is we can drive an hour to make their lives ‘interesting’; something we need to do, that an summon them back home more often to explain their actions, and to give them ‘constituent guidance’.
I think this article should be viewed in conjunction with your previous article on the new term of ”grass topping” being bandied about by lobbyists and consultants in Raleigh, and I think it further defines what they mean by that term, which is ”topping” (beating) the grassroots, which is precisely what they did on this issue. When they got GOP legislators to go against the state Republican platform to vote the liberal position on a major issue, they both beat the grassroots and screwed the grassroots to the wall. It is the grassroots who will be paying the higher electric bills to cover the expensive green energy and the higher taxes to pay for the taxpayer ripoff subsidies.
I see they even got Berger to vote for this excrement sandwich, so I guess the ”conservative Senate” can now also be spoken of in the past tense.
Raleigh is getting just like DC. Elected officials no longer listen to the voters back home or even care about them. They respond primarily to K Street in DC and the lobbyist / consultant cabal in Raleigh. Of course, we still do have a few old fashioned Republicans in both places who do care about the voters back home, but they are regrettably in the minority.
One particular liberal Raleigh consultant who was up to his eyeballs in this particular ”grass topping” that GOP convention delegates should pay attention to is Dee Stewart. That is because Dee Stewart is also the consultant for GOP chairmanship candidate Craig Collins. The grass topping on corrupt green energy was bad enough. We do not need the NCGOP to get grass topped by Stewart, too. ”NO to Stewart = NO to Collins”
Whores on the corner would do a great deal to improve the public perception of NC Republicans. It is an exciting thought.
All this confusion leads me to believe that Tholl Rhoad Thom Thillis had a better handle on things than we thought.
Hey, the NC General Assembly these days is almost like the Bunny Ranch north of Vegas. Lots of opportunities tp score for those of us who like to spend a little green to make a little green. We in the enviro-industrial complex like to call ourselves green because most dolts think that is the color of trees, but actually we do so because it is the color of money, which is what we are really after. We can make a lot of that green by duping legislative whores into giving us your tax money and then making you pay higher electric rates to buy our more expensive electricity. But, hey, you peons should be honored to give up some of your green so that we can get it. So what if you can no longer afford your annual vacation to Myrtle Beach after paying your electric bill. We will be thinking of you while we are hanging out in Hawaii or on the Riviera with all than green your legislative whores are sending our way.
We pay some nice piles of green to our consultants Shu and Stew. They are great to work with, always for sale to the higher bidder, with absolutely no qualms about what we ask them to do. Just like the girls at the Bunny Ranch, and just like so many of your legislators.
Your legislators are so easy, again like the girls at the Bunny Ranch. Pay them some green at campaign time or promise it later and they are eager to please. Mush headed egotists like Nelson are particularly easy to turn, and we do not have to deal with the sexual preferences and level of alcohol intake of his predecessor.
Now that we have got our green, it is time to say ta-ta to those suckers on Jones Street. They threw their constituents and their party under the bus and that may come back to haunt them next election, but we have got our green so who cares. We don’t.
Oh, I expect those nasty conservatives with their Koch addiction, will bring out lots of Koch money against those legislators of easy virtue who gave us a good ride at your expense. After all, those Kochs are making a big issue of corporate welfare from the Ex-Im Bank right on down to state green energy subsidies. That is the bee in their bonnet right now, and with all the money they have to spend, I suspect that some of our conquests on Jones Street might have bulls eyes on their backs, especially the five who killed the repeal of the renewable energy mandate – Dollar, Malone, Bradford, Watford, and Hastings. Too bad.
After a gang bang like this, will anyone respect those guys in the morning?
I know that I invented the internet, but I do not check in often enough to praise those who are doing so much to advance the cause of hard core environmentalism. I want to do that now for a group of Republicans. I know it was those awful Republicans who stole Florida and my presidency back in 2000, but sometimes they do strike a blow for the progressive environmentalist cause, and some of them have in North Carolina recently. They deserve recognition, and this group are true heroes of the hard core environmentalist cause, enough that I would even call then full fledged Al Gore Republicans.
These Al Gore Republicans struck a blow for the polar bears by subsidizing my good friends in the Renewable Energy business like Tom Steyer and George Soros, and I even have some investments there myself. They also struck a blow in favor of the environmental policies of Barack Obama. Way to go Al Gore Republicans!
Who are the Al Gore Republicans. First there are the consultants who took money from our cause to go defeat their own party’s position on these issues. I will call them Dee-Dee Stuart and Pauline Shoemaker. I see being bi-partisan is a lot like being bi-sexual. They really suckered their own party on this one, but then maybe their only real loyalty is to their bank accounts.
Then there are the legislators. The real Al Gore Republican heroes are the five who saved the Renewable Energy Mandate – Dollar, Malone, Hastings, Bradford, and Watford. So what if they are causing electric bills of the average consumer, their constituents, to skyrocket; they are saving polar bears. As for me, I make so many millions selling carbon offsets to the true believers in global warming that I have no problem affording my electric bill on my huge mansion, so why should I care if other people’s electric bills go into the stratosphere?
Then there is Tim Moore. Without the Speaker, this great progressive triumph would not have been possible. It really is great to have a liberal mole on his top staff. Moore is the real deal for the hard core environmentalist cause. He even voted for our bill himself!
There are others. All the lost souls in the GOP caucus that our consultants conned into voting for the taxpayer subsidies for my environmentalist friends.
So rejoice, progressives. The Al Gore Republicans have handed us a huge victory.
One final note. If anyone has any tips on good looking masseuses who make hotel visits, please drop me a line.