Archive

Archive for December, 2016
December 27th, 2016 at 9:02 am
NY Gov. Cuomo Administration Remains Unable to Defend Energy Boondoggle
Posted by Print

In an op-ed published last week at The Daily Caller, CFIF Sr. Vice President Timothy Lee explains how New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Administration remains unable to defend its crony capitalist Clean Energy Standard (CES) against burgeoning bipartisan public opposition.

According to Mr. Lee:

Conspicuously, Cuomo Administration officials remain unable to defend the plan against burgeoning public opposition.  In a recent local television appearance, Cuomo’s Public Service Commission Chair Audrey Zibelman couldn’t justify the decision to provide billions of dollars in subsidies to upstate plants while simultaneously closing downstate plants, and she stubbornly refused to acknowledge the plan’s high costs.

Nuclear power remains a reliable domestic energy source that the United States can cleanly and safely utilize to a far greater extent.

Governor Cuomo’s crony capitalist CES scheme isn’t the way to go about it.  The growing bipartisan opposition movement is an encouraging sign, one that should confirm for New Yorkers of all political leanings that the plan should be rejected.

Read the entire op-ed here.

December 25th, 2016 at 10:11 am
Ramirez Cartoon: Obama’s Gift
Posted by Print

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

December 16th, 2016 at 6:54 pm
Empire Center: Gov. Cuomo’s Green Energy CES Boondoggle Already Beginning to Collapse
Posted by Print

For months now we’ve been exposing an inexcusable, costly, climate alarmist, crony capitalist, green energy boondoggle imposed upon New York state citizens by Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) composed entirely of his appointees.

Specifically, the PSC rushed through their “Clean Energy Standard” (CES) last August, which requires that 50% of power generated in the state come from carbon-neutral sources by 2030.  The CES works by forcing power companies to buy “Zero Emission Credits” (ZECs) from a state bureaucracy on behalf of financially struggling upstate nuclear energy plants.  In the first two years of the plan alone, the cost is an estimated $1 billion.  For the entire span of the CES scheme, the estimate is approximately $8 billion.

Crony capitalism enters the stage in the sense that those subsidies will benefit Exelon, a single company that owns all of the struggling plants standing to benefit.  Think of it as a state-level Solyndra, with costs ultimately hitting New York businesses and consumers, as usual.

These are just some of the reasons that citizens and groups spanning the political spectrum have spoken out against the scheme.

But there’s positive news to report.  Confronted with the CES’s inherent contradictions and flaws, the Cuomo Administration is already drastically scaling back the plan, as reported by the Empire Center:

The State Public Service Commission has quietly reduced the amount of renewable energy that utilities will have to purchase next year by 94 percent, according to PSC documents.

In August, as part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Clean Energy Standard, the PSC ordered utilities and others to next year purchase renewable energy credits (RECs) equivalent to 0.6 percent of their electricity usage.  This amounted to a total of 974,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of RECs, which are generated when a renewablee plant such as a solar farm or wind turbine sells power into the electrical grid.  The governor’s ultimate goal is for 50 percent of the state’s electricity to come from renewables by 2030, and 2017 was to be the first year in which the PSC incrementally required these ‘load-serving entities’ to financially support increasing amounts of renewable energy.

But in an ‘Order Providing Clarification’ issued on November 17, the 2017 amount was slashed from 974,000 to 56,142 MWh – a 94 percent reduction – after the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) determined few renewables would actually qualify to issue the credits. Load-serving entities will now have to purchase RECs equating to just 0.035 percent of their total usage.”

And just as the costs of the plan ultimately hit New York consumers and businesses, scaling back the plan’s ambitions benefits those consumers and businesses, as the Empire Center notes:  “For starters, the move will collectively save ratepayers $19.4 million in 2017 as utilities and others aren’t forced to buy as many credits as anticipated.”

The entire boondoggle was transparently destined to fail, but even skeptics didn’t anticipate it would begin collapsing under its own weight this quickly.  But New Yorkers shouldn’t relent until the entire CES is consigned permanently to the policy ash heap.

Tags: , , ,
December 13th, 2016 at 11:30 am
Withdrawing From Obama’s Climate Treaty
Posted by Print

In an interview with CFIF, Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment, discusses why Donald Trump should allow the Senate to kill President Obama’s controversial global warming treaty, when a treaty is not a treaty and whether Obama may be his own worst enemy when it comes to regulations.

Listen to the interview here.

December 12th, 2016 at 4:37 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Show Lineup
Posted by Print
Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”   Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT: Anthony Summers, NY Times Best-Selling Author: “A Matter of Honor Pearl Harbor: Betrayal, Blame and a Family’s Quest for Justice;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT: Brian Slattery, Policy Analyst, Defense and Security Studies at the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation: National Defense Authorization Act;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT: Tzvi Kahn, Senior Policy Analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative: Russia and the Middle East;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT: Vincent Vernuccio, Director of Labor Policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy: Labor Reform Wins Big on Election Day; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT: Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs: “Fake News” and President Obama’s Legacy.

Listen live on the Internet here. Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

December 5th, 2016 at 11:06 am
The Recount
Posted by Print

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

December 2nd, 2016 at 4:24 pm
ATSC 3.0: What Could It Mean for American Consumers?
Posted by Print

Next month’s arrival of a new Trump Administration, alongside a Congress ready to hit the ground running, promises a flurry of corrective activity after eight years of Barack Obama.

However, Americans should remain vigilant against regulatory mischief that some are trying to push through unnoticed at the outset of the new Administration and Congress.

Exhibit A:  An effort by broadcasters to convince Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve an entirely new broadcast television standard known as ATSC 3.0.

In a nutshell, the ATSC 3.0 standard amounts to yet another new federal action upon a private marketplace and a handout to a favored industry that could inflict significant and unnecessary costs, ultimately to be paid by consumers.

Under current law, cable and satellite television providers must carry local television stations, so the regulatory scales are already tipped in broadcasters’ favor.  The proposed new mandate could extend the scope of providers’ obligations requiring them to transmit broadcast signals in the new standard to the public.

As a result, consumers who currently receive local stations over the air or via cable or satellite providers suddenly would face the possibility of incurring the cost of new equipment in order to receive the new signal, as current equipment does not support the new standard.  Obviously, millions of consumers who are already struggling to make ends meet could thus be forced to pay – whether through higher monthly subscription fees or direct charge – for new equipment for a “benefit” that may not be needed or even desired.

Satellite and cable providers could also face technological hurdles to accommodate the new standard, which could inevitably lead to additional costs and quality assurance issues.  Ultimately, subscribers could have to pay those costs and endure those potential technological glitches as well.

Keep in mind that all of these costs and changes could be imposed without a sober cost/benefit analysis from the FCC.  It’s precisely the sort of hasty, top-down, crony capitalist federal regulatory action that has tested the limits of American tolerance over the past decade.

Technological advance is a good thing, whether in the TV market or elsewhere.  But that’s something that should occur as the result of market forces, not through fast-tracked federal regulatory action riddled by too many uncertainties.