We used to be able to rely on the MSM to sort the wheat from the chaff, now we get mostly the chaff and it’s disturbing. Remember when news was news and we had ET and shows like that for the shiny stuff? Now it’s all the same )o:

Excellent and I recommend others read it (o:

The Alaskan leg is left with a big mess to clean up. While it is true they didn’t impeach Palin it is ALSO true that the public didn’t recall her so IMHO ya take it from here – no point in playing the blame game. Sarah Palin is ultimately responsible for what she did or didn’t do for her state. Besides for all we know she quit because she was told she WOULD have been impeached or recalled before her term was over.

I hope from here on out the Alaskan public write, call, email their legislature on all issues of concern and let them know what the people want. Example: If you don’t want Campbell or Sullivan let them know right now (o:

Most of you may not recall that after the super secret energy policy meetings held by Cheney at the start
of the first term of his administration energy conservation was summarily declared to be useless and
ineffective. It was not even an option. So I decided to look at what would have happened if some form of
energy conservation had been invoked back then and sustained and increased until the end of last year.
Doing these kinds of calculations becomes quite complex if you try to allow for all the variations so I had
to make several simplifying assumptions, in every case I took the worst case, the least optimistic.

The program I modeled was quite simple, get as many people as possible to drive a little less each year.
Ten miles a week less or 520 miles less per year. I assumed there were 120 million drivers in the US and
that that number remained constant. I also assumed that the average mileage of the vehicles driven was
16 mpg and remained constant. Further I assumed that only half of all drivers would participate at first
but as new drivers joined the program they could get on the curve by cutting their mileage the same
amount original participants had over the years and that the overall participation would increase from
50% of drivers in 2001 to 85% of drivers in 2008. Each year another 10 miles per week would be cut from
the total mileage of a participating driver. So by 2008 85% of drivers would be driving about 4160 miles
less per year than they did in 2001. That would amount to a cumulative reduction of 12% of total mileage
over seven years.

I calculated two numbers, the gallons of gasoline saved, and the retail value of that savings based on the
EIA statistics for the cheapest gasoline nationwide for each year. During the period considered the price
of gasoline increased 232%.

In the first year, 2001, 50% of drivers driving 10 miles a week less, would have saved roughly 1 billion 950
million gallons of gasoline at a cost savings of ~$2.7 billion. Not such a big deal? But of course with
increasing participation and cumulative effects, in 2008 those numbers would have been 26.67 billion
gallons of gasoline and $85.7 billion. The total savings over the whole 7 year period would have been
103 billion gallons of gasoline and $258 billon in cost. Averaged over all drivers the cumulative savings
would come out to a little over $2000, it would of course be higher for those who participated from the
beginning and zero for those who participated not at all. An investment in a savings account at 1.6%
interest would have earned $825 less and an investment in the stock market… well, you might have
been wiped out by a margin call.

With the numbers being thrown around these days a paltry quarter of a trillion dollars does not seem
like much. Or does it? This overly simple and crude example is just a hint of what we could have done.

The objective of this post is simply to point out that those who argue against efficiency and conservation
are actually liars. Anyone with a basic grasp of arithmetic can figure it out to a first approximation. Anyone
with a grasp of basic logic could also work out the implications of using less and being more efficient by
doing more with what we do use.

I am quite sure that rural Alaskans are very familiar with how to make do with what they have, their
protestations that they are again threatened by famine and cold in the coming winter are not false claims.
All Palin was doing by rejecting energy funds was pandering to a tiny minority of wealthy interests such
that she could feed from their trough to fatten her political, partisan, extremist carcass.

The simple answer to the above stated question of what conservatives conserve is profits for their
corporate sponsors and graft for themselves.

I agree. The Branchflower Report’s findings should have been followed up with strong corrective action against the governor. They essentially gave her carte blanche to act like a little dictator until she quit.

I have no respect for Palin and little to none for the legislators. They helped launch an atrocity of a politician who sows hate and fear in her wake upon the entire country. Gutless foolishness by the legislators….for which we’re all paying the price.