From Del. Glen Glass:
My Dear Constituent,
You should be you aware of two bills in the Maryland General Assembly that will increase your utility bills. I am sick and tired of government dictating how you have to spend the money you have worked hard to earn.
HB 89 Gas Companies – Rate Regulation – Infrastructure Replacement Surcharge passed the House and the Senate last week. I stood up and implored my colleagues to vote NO because the charge will hurt the average Marylander and the economy. By voting NO to HB 89, I continued my fight against excessive government intervention in our lives. Sadly, this bill represents another bailout for gas companies who have failed to invest in their infrastructure, forcing us to foot the bill.
Another piece of legislation that I am disappointed to report will have a surcharge attached to it is HB 226 – Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013. HB 226 attaches a $1.50 charge on to your utility bill for the pleasure of having clean energy. Now $1.50 may not sound like a lot; however, the Democratic Leadership has furtively defined the “average residential customer” as anyone who uses 1,000 kWh or less of electricity per month.
However, if you use more than 1,000 kWh, say you use 1,500 kWh per month, you will end up paying $2.25 per month a 50% increase. Only the government can take away your money, give it someone else, and not call it stealing. I say keep your money, and spend it the way you see fit.
These are fees that you do not want and you do not need! I will continue to fight burdensome fees, as well as overwrought regulations that impede economic growth and prosperity.
With your help, we can win this fight!
Glen
Glen….it’s called taxation (not stealing), and it’s constitutional. Tax revenue pays for many things (most are needed and are for the good of the County, State or Country). Tax revenue also pays YOUR salary and for other perks that you delegates receive (hotel, meals, etc.) You know what I’m talking about Glen, because you are a beneficiary of the aforementioned items. Would it be too much to request that you stop your whining and pandering to your dumbed down audience? Hey….here’s a thought….since you hate taxes so much, why don’t you stop being a hypocrite and donate your taxpayer funded salary to some worthy organization AND pay for your own hotel and meals during the 3 month general assembly session????
That’s just about how I found this article as well. I don’t have any problem paying for the changes that I do want to see. Clean energy is important to me and mine; it’s important enough that I have written to my congressmen to express my support for wind and solar. I feel exactly the same as Mr. WTF above.
I am all for clean energy but I don’t want my utility bill to go up! These companies make enough money and I am barely getting by! Why should I have to pay for there programs? Thanks Glen!
Great job Del. Glass for standing up for the middle class! It’s nice to know someone is working hard in Annapolis. Keep up the great work!
As to the wind energy subsidy, it will only cost the average household a buck and a half a month. But wait, there are only a couple of million rate payers in Maryland. Lets say 2,000,000 rate payers times a buck and a half. They only need 3.5 million PER MONTH as a subsidy, so whats the big deal? That works out to only 42 million dollars a year to try to run electric generators out in the ocean. Now to me, that’s a lot of money. To give a subsidy when private industry and the free markets are saying “Are you crazy”?
But, Wayne, that’s why the whole notion is crazy. It is not viable and our government knows that but the environmental folks who contribute to campaigns and spend lots of money lobbying see it as a great opportunity to push their agenda. Our elected Lib/Dem leaders in Maryland know that it is a rat hole that will have to have taxpayer/ratepayer money shoveled in to it forever but they will have gone on to other things leaving this travesty in their wake. Only $1.50 a month. For now. Then $1.75 later. Then more and more and more. Let the energy industry invest their profits in to this if they think it is a good idea. But their position is why should they do it if they can get money from others? I would feel the same way if I were them. Why buy the cow when the milk is free?
Alex R. Certainly you had to know I was joking? This wind stuff out in the ocean is a joke when it is just barely viable in the mountains. There is no profit in it. No free market business would ever consider off shore wind until the technology gets better and someone figures out how to make electrical currents mix with ocean currents.
And I was being just replying to the sarcasm. It’s hard to joke about something that is going to be stuffed down our throats against our will and against all common sense. But that’s The People’s Republic of Maryland, comrade.
You guys would have stood outside your rural farm houses in the 1930s and protested the electrification of rural America that was started at that time to improve the life of farmers and others who were living off the grid.
The only thing that is not viable here is your perception of anything progressive that benefits us all.
Because–We also have wind farms in Western Maryland. They do work in the mountains. To fix the little red light on the top when it corrodes from the sea spray, you don’t need a boat with a union crew of five to go out and replace it. Just one guy with a ladder.
Alex– I would have written “sarcasm”, but I didn’t know how to spell it……….
Wayne you have a simplistic view of what it takes to repair something on land. I think the operative word here is “Simplistic”. That explains so much.
Travel broadens the mind, except perhaps in your case. They have Wind Farms in Texas and in upstate New York at the base of the Finger Lakes. They are a reality, they produce power and it probably frustrates you Flat Earthers to no end.
Well, yes, they do produce power. But not effectively nor efficiently. And that is what frustrates me no end. That plus being forced to pay a subsidy for something that is neither effective nor efficient but is just a pipe dream of the environmental political lobby. Tesla anyone?
Then you figure out a way to get power without adversely impacting the environment. Until then you are merely a critic.
Well, yes, that is one of my rights as a citizen of the US and as a taxpayer. I also don;t have to come up with a viable solution to a problem to call a solution that won’t work just that, a solution that won’t work, and to oppose it. Especially when I have to help pay for it. If you want to have taxpayer subsidy then you come up with a workable solution that is or will shortly be effective and efficient and convince the rest of us to help fund. Don’t grasp at straws because you like the sound of “not adversely impacting the environment” and expect the rest of us to throw our money at it. The environmental whacko crowd was positively orgasmic over solar panels in the NorthEast until they found out that they simply were not cost justifiable. Hundreds of millions in government loans and subsidies down the drain, a lot of which went from the DOE to friends of the President.
Because there is no green energy source
that is reliably available at an attractive
market price.
Because taxing people through their energy
purchases to subsidize progressive green
energy that fails is silly.
Because you love progressivism and hate
profitism.
Common Sense. you blather on endlessly against anything that does not occupy your narrow world view. You have actually tried to resort to poetry in your responses as if that will make your ignorance any more palatable.
Wind and solar beat the hell out of the pollution caused by your dependence on coal and oil. Such zealotry as you display towards an indifference to progress is worthy of living in Iran.
Because green energy fails in the marketplace.
Because liberal progressivism fails for everyone
except for those in control.
Because green energy is not progress if it tales us
away from energy independence, hurts our people
and destroys commerce.
Alex R–do you think that’s the reason BP Solar went bust out in Frederick, closing down and laying everybody off? And they weren’t even begging for/demanding tax payer subsidies……
Wayne, I think I’m very tired of every pipe dream that a special interest group wants to get funded, even when it doesn’t work, and yet gets special interest legislation by their paid lackeys in Annapolis and Washington. And if anyone opposes it then that person hates the environment, or kids, or the poor or firefighters, or policemen or teachers and is mean-spirited and/or homophobic and/or racist. Did you know that in the UK they are yanking the subsidies for solar because it isn’t effective or efficient. And the only objection to stopping the subsidies and rebates that the Green party can come up with is that people might lose jobs.