President Obama has a tax deal plan in place for a two-year extension of the Bush Tax Cuts. He cut a deal last week with soon-to-be Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell to extend the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 and 2003. The deal would extend all the tax rates that Bush established, including the 35% top rate on all income above $250,000 for the next two years. Without this deal, the Bush tax cuts would have expired and the top rate would go back to 39.6 %, where it was when Bill Clinton was President.
Included in this plan is an extension of unemployment insurance for 13 months, tax credits for renewable energy, and a payroll tax cut for employees. The estate reverts back to 35% on estates above $5 million after it was exempt for 2010. In 2009, the estate tax was 45% on all estates above $3.5 million.
Outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will step down to House Minority Leader on January 5th when the 112th Congress gets sworn in and the GOP becomes the majority. While this tax deal will irritate Progressives and some Tea Partiers for completely different reasons, this just may have saved Obama's Presidency. A $1 trillion-plus National Deficit is not healthy for the American economy because it forces us to borrow more from China. But, Obama escapes the politically untenable position of allowing tax increases, even small ones, to occur on the ever-shrinking middle class. Or the expiration of unemployment benefits with high unemployment. If unemployment remains above 5.0% through January 2012, the GOP House will be on the hook for extending unemployment benefits during an election season. If they do not, they run the risk of losing the House back to Democrats.
This all but ensures a second term for Obama because Progressives surely aren't going to vote for any Republican or Tea Party candidate for President in 2012 since he is going to be the most left-leaning candidate on the ballot. The Republicans figure to run either Sarah Palin, Mitch Romney, or Mike Huckabee against him. None of these Republicans appears to have the ability or widespread popularity to beat him in a national contest. His re-election will also help protect vulnerable Congressional Democrats in 2012.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Offshore Wind for Maryland: Windfall or Blowing Money Away?
I attended a conference Saturday December 4th in Annapolis about the potential of offshore wind power in Maryland. Chesapeake Climate Action Network put it together to show the huge benefits that it could have for this state.
Compared to wind energy, coal costs more per equal amounts of investment in power capacity. Constellation Energy says that it has invested $875 million to upgrade its Brandon Shores coal-fired power plant in northeast Anne Arundel County to meet Maryland's tough clean air laws by using new scrubbers. Constellation also said that this investment created 2,000 union jobs for three years. That works out to an average of $437,500 per job, or $145,833 per job per year. That seems very expensive compared to wind energy. By comparison, Constellation also has a $125 million investment to build a 28-turbine wind farm in Western Maryland to provide 70 Megawatts (MW) of power. This investment will create 110-120 jobs, with 4-6 annual operating and maintenance jobs upon completion. The Brandon Shores plant has a capacity of about 1,300 MW. To get about 1,300 MW of power from wind energy using this project as an example would require an investment of about $2.32 billion and create well over 2,200 jobs.
Would a coal plant would cost more than this? According to Synapse Energy, for one Ohio utility, the construction costs of a 960 MW coal-fired power plant in Ohio more than doubled from about $1.25 billion in October 2005 to almost $3 billion in January 2008. This was due to worldwide competition for raw materials and plant design construction, especially from China and India. (1)
Construction costs aside, one cannot forget the enormous environmental and health costs that coal wrecks on human beings. It pollutes both the water, requiring governments to spend tax dollars to clean it, and the air, driving up healthcare costs by causing asthma and many other ailments such as cancer. Local governments, especially at the state level, can and do pass laws requiring utilities to upgrade their equipment to protect the environment. They do so to make sure the corporate utility's power plants, especially coal-fired ones, comply with environmental goals desired by their commmunities.
Maryland has a choice: do we continue to destroy Appalachian Mountains to meet our energy needs or do we build offshore wind farms to power our lives? We should choose the latter because it will provide environmental benefits, improve the health of Marylanders, and create more good jobs, making it a win-win.
1. http://www.synapse-energy.com/Downloads/SynapsePaper.2008-07.0.Coal-Plant-Construction-Costs.A0021.pdf
2. http://www.buildingindianablog.com/2010/12/17/coal-gasification-project-to-generate-1000-construction-jobs/
Compared to wind energy, coal costs more per equal amounts of investment in power capacity. Constellation Energy says that it has invested $875 million to upgrade its Brandon Shores coal-fired power plant in northeast Anne Arundel County to meet Maryland's tough clean air laws by using new scrubbers. Constellation also said that this investment created 2,000 union jobs for three years. That works out to an average of $437,500 per job, or $145,833 per job per year. That seems very expensive compared to wind energy. By comparison, Constellation also has a $125 million investment to build a 28-turbine wind farm in Western Maryland to provide 70 Megawatts (MW) of power. This investment will create 110-120 jobs, with 4-6 annual operating and maintenance jobs upon completion. The Brandon Shores plant has a capacity of about 1,300 MW. To get about 1,300 MW of power from wind energy using this project as an example would require an investment of about $2.32 billion and create well over 2,200 jobs.
Would a coal plant would cost more than this? According to Synapse Energy, for one Ohio utility, the construction costs of a 960 MW coal-fired power plant in Ohio more than doubled from about $1.25 billion in October 2005 to almost $3 billion in January 2008. This was due to worldwide competition for raw materials and plant design construction, especially from China and India. (1)
Construction costs aside, one cannot forget the enormous environmental and health costs that coal wrecks on human beings. It pollutes both the water, requiring governments to spend tax dollars to clean it, and the air, driving up healthcare costs by causing asthma and many other ailments such as cancer. Local governments, especially at the state level, can and do pass laws requiring utilities to upgrade their equipment to protect the environment. They do so to make sure the corporate utility's power plants, especially coal-fired ones, comply with environmental goals desired by their commmunities.
Maryland has a choice: do we continue to destroy Appalachian Mountains to meet our energy needs or do we build offshore wind farms to power our lives? We should choose the latter because it will provide environmental benefits, improve the health of Marylanders, and create more good jobs, making it a win-win.
1. http://www.synapse-energy.com/Downloads/SynapsePaper.2008-07.0.Coal-Plant-Construction-Costs.A0021.pdf
2. http://www.buildingindianablog.com/2010/12/17/coal-gasification-project-to-generate-1000-construction-jobs/
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