I know this is about money and I’m never surprised at greed or dishonesty when it comes to people trying to make more than they need, but the latest tactics by the Koch’s and other fossil fuel industry vultures is really beneath contempt. There isn’t anything wrong with trying to make a living. There isn’t anything wrong with trying to make more than a living. What’s wrong is when you lie and cheat and try to destroy one of the last means to save the planet just to make more than you would ever need. What’s wrong, is when you are willing to sacrifice the lives of all the people on the planet, including your own prodigy just to make more than you already have, especially when it’s already far too much. That’s when you fall into the lower than a snake’s ass category. That’s the place that the Koch’s and any number of their scurrilous friends and slimy business associates currently occupy in the reptile world.
In Oklahoma, home of the American oil industry a bill was passed last Monday that attacks the owners of homes that have installed solar or wind equipment. The bill was attached to another bill, to hide its content, passed with no discussion and was signed by Republican governor and oil industry butt girl, Mary Fallin. It’s a shinning example of the democratic process at work – for the benefit of those who can buy the votes of the grifters that you voted into office
The bill says that those who install their own solar or wind equipment must pay a license fee to the state to have this equipment installed in their homes. Why? Well the answer is very simple. The big energy companies aren’t making as much on their investment as they used to because a lot of little guys are helping the environment, and saving themselves a couple of bucks a month by installing solar panels or wind turbines to produce a portion of their energy.
The energy companies argue that this isn’t fair. Maybe the first time in history that an energy company executive ever uttered the word or considered the concept of fair. It isn’t fair they say, because those who are reducing their bills by creating their own energy are not holding up their end of the deal the way that those who don’t do this are.
The energy companies argue that those who create their own energy and sell it back to the energy companies aren’t helping to pay for the entire grid, which has been installed at great cost. But I hear no mention of the roads, sewers, communication systems, police and fire departments, and so much more that allows the utilities use to make their profits but which have been created by the government to which many of those same utilities pay no taxes.
Still, the energy companies argue that the distributed energy customers bills are so small that the energy companies can’t make the same profits. Isn’t that a shame? Maybe if the energy companies stopped using fossil fuels that poison the atmosphere, the pipeline routes and the rivers and gulfs all over the world and started to concentrate on the same solar and wind power, there would be no need for their customers to create their own clean energy.
It probably never occurs to the Koch brothers or their fat cat friends that most people don’t want to be bothered creating their own energy. They do it because the big energy companies don’t create “clean” energy, a word that makes the fat slobs gag.
According to the Oklahoma energy people the surcharge is needed to safely send the excess energy back to the grid. “We’re not anti-solar or anti-wind or trying to slow this down, we’re just trying to keep it fair.” Says Oklahoma Gas & Electric spokeswoman Kathleen O’Shea. Sure Kathleen the energy industry has always had nothing but fairness at the point of all its policies and if you believe that I’ve got this bridge back in Brooklyn to sell you. I know these people are greedy dishonest and stupid but why do they think everyone else is stupid too?
Do they think that we don’t understand that distributed energy sources provide great help to utilities. Solar panels feed excess energy back onto the grid helping to alleviate overloads during peaks hours. This lowers regular customer usage of the lines and reduces the need for costly line replacement. The energy monsters should be paying twice what they are now to the creators of distributed energy.
Forty-three states and DC currently have net metering policies. Net metering is the ability of customers to sell their generated electricity back to the utility. Oklahoma could be the first state to reverse that trend. Governor Fallin of the quick and poisonous pen, is the darling of the American Legislative Exchange Council; (ALEC) an outfit that should be infamous to anyone looking for a clean environment or a fair deal for plain people. ALEC is the brainstorm of the Koch Brothers and the backer of all ultra-conservative, anti-environment, anti-safety and pro-pollution agendas.
ALEC is as anti-American as the Nazi or Communist Parties. ALEC is as bad for this country as al Qaeda or the Taliban. So why are the Koch’s throwing their money at it? Simple, it’s because they and their ilk care nothing for this country. They care only for the profits that create the power that they use to crush those who have less then them.
The Koch’s and most of the other oligarchs are the epitome of what is wrong with this country. They are not the entrepreneurs who have made this country great. They are the bloated sons of the idle rich, the decadent leisure class that inherited their money and are now using it to put down everyone who is struggling to make a decent life for, themselves. Why else would they be willing to place profit before safety. Why else would they be willing to poison the planet for the sake of a few dollars more, dollars which they neither need nor seem able to spend constructively.
These men are the current lineage of a long tradition. The Carnegie’s, the Rockefellers and now the Duke’s, Walton’s and Koch’s, fat cats who see themselves as the charitable donors of museums, operas and libraries, even as they starve the children of their workers and poison the towns in which they are trying to survive. These men and women are the inheritors of the traditions of Louis XIV and his famous headless queen and if they continue heedlessly on their course, they just may end up the same way.