Ideas and Opinions: Energy rip-off

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Energy rip-off

October 30, 2005

Letter to the editor/viewpoint, Submitted exclusively to the Duluth News Tribune
Submitted for publication

In September some Minnesota newspapers carried the story, “Canadian Pacific brings wind power to the prairies,” and the accompanying pictures of the train rumbling through western Minnesota carrying the equipment were very interesting. and raise a number of issues. It is unfortunate this wind power electric generating equipment is only passing through Minnesota on the way to Canada where it will be installed in Saskatchewan, rather than being erected right here in Minnesota.

Minnesotans would be further ahead if state legislators would make an investment in alternative sources of generating electricity rather than polluting our environment with coal fired generating plants and bio-mass plants. Oh yes, the claim is that these coal gasification plants are less polluting than other coal fired power generating plants. But, no one mentions that there are no smokestacks now!

The main stumbling block is that the present private-for-profit power generating industry owns our state legislators, whose influential lobby is second only to the private-for-profit healthcare industry. The Canadians got rid of private-for-profit healthcare years ago. And the Saskatchewan and Manitoba governments have successfully owned and operated huge power generating industries for many more years.

Saskatchewan is on the cutting edge of wind power technology. Why hasn’t Minnesota cashed in on wind energy rather than throw tax dollars away on outdated, polluting, natural resource wasting, power generation and on hare-brained schemes that have farmers growing corn on some of the most fertile farmland in the world to fuel gas guzzling vehicles rather than growing food to feed a hungry world and engineering vehicles to be more fuel efficient?

Former Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson warned Minnesotans that they would pay a very heavy price for power generation remaining in the hands of private-for-profit corporations. We are now paying through the nose because legislators failed to heed Governor Olson’s warning.

Thousands of long-term, good-paying jobs could be created manufacturing wind turbines right here in Minnesota. Why did Saskatchewan have to go to Europe to buy their wind generators? They could have purchased this equipment right here in Minnesota if legislators would establish a publicly owned power energy industry such as had been recommended by socialist Governor Floyd B. Olson. The people of Saskatchewan and Manitoba have popularly elected socialist governments, publicly owned power generating industries, and public healthcare, along with good paying jobs. Dairy farmers in Manitoba grow corn to feed their cows while making a good living milking them. While Canadian owned trains roll over tracks transporting everything from grain to taconite and now wind generating equipment, Minnesotans get poverty wage jobs mining peat out in the Big Bog or working in casinos at poverty wages without any rights.

By the way, we can purchase power cheaper from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and even Ontario than what it will cost to build these massive, polluting, coal gasification plants across northern Minnesota. There is no need for these plants now or in the foreseeable future… what Minnesotans need is low cost power that comes to us through real electric cooperatives, not through profit gouging private corporations. What the heck… we would be better off loaning Saskatchewan and Manitoba money interest free, to build more generating capacity in return for cheap electricity… rather than giving taxpayer dollars to this fly-by-night outfit that we all know what is going to happen… eventually they will declare bankruptcy, go into receivership, and the assets will be turned over to one of the huge power mega-monopolies; and taxpayers are going to be left holding the bill AND paying through the nose for electricity for homes and to run farms and businesses... these coal gasification plants are just another capitalist, get rich quick scam… Just what we need, to purchase coal from the Rockefellers after they ran away with the iron ore profits and left us with huge gaping pits in the earth that are now going to be hawked by Rockefellers’ land holdings company as lake-front resort property; Check it out; who is going to be selling off the land around Sparta, Minnesota and running people out of their homes?

Here is what we have:

Nation of sheep.Run by wolves.Owned by pigs.

Just take a look t the last legislative session… and these clowns expect us to re-elect them?

Jobs, jobs, jobs… get real. None of these politicians cares about working people. If they did, 20,000 Minnesotans wouldn’t be working today in casinos at poverty wages and without any rights!

Thank you for publishing this letter… was it printed on Canadian paper?

Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
218-386-2432
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

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An Open Letter to President Barack Obama from Sidney J. Gluck

Attached is an open letter to President Barack Obama.

I don't know whether you agree with my point of view or not; but I am functioning out of the feeling that the negative aspects of capitalism are becoming obvious to people all around the world regardless of class positions, that understanding its avaricious nature brings them closer to Marx's analysis of the system which all of you can read his seminal word on "Capital." Chapter 26 which deals with the law of capitalist accumulation will give you the prototype of which the USA's capitalism is the arch example of its worst (together with the British who started out but are following along with the USA).

Globalization is a mess and everyone knows that the USA has created more poverty with its capital investments than existed before the global expansion. We know that formal colonial countries are seeing through this domination and are moving in directions which reject the control of foreign capital in their own developments. WE ARE LIVING IN A CENTURY OF EPOCHAL CHANGE. Our hope is that the change which is now developing in the form of a bipolar economic structure will continue to redevelop economies technologically and sustainably. We hope too that the ultimate resolution of differences between the double-structured world economic system will not be resolved by warfare. That is the most important struggle we must be involved with. A peaceful acceptance of epochal change and the survival of all in a better world.

Sincerely,

Sidney J. Gluck

Dear President Obama,

The world economic crisis sparked by the financial sector of our country has put the capitalist system on a defensive more openly than any other time in history. I am one of many who strongly supported your candidacy based on your vocalization of much of what we felt had to be changed in our country to make it more livable for those of us who produce the wealth and intellectual atmosphere.

You are facing the sharpest attack from the ranks of the Republican Party. We all admire your diplomatic ability to deal with those who disagree with you; but, the time has come when you must take an ideological position in order to clarify the issues involved in building a new type of economic structure in the country. This means that the dominance of the financial institutions in the political decisions affecting the majority must be defended openly against misrepresentations and manipulations which we all now know come from the unsupported defense of government that gives primacy to capital accumulation whether it be finance capital or industrial capital.

You do not have to embrace socialism. That is not the ideological position that put you in power. You were put in the White House with a promise to govern in the name of the working majority. True, you would like to have support from all sections of political and economic forces, but YOU WILL NOT GET IT.

If you continue to move along supporting the program of the financial circles in our country, your presidency is DOOMED. Listen to the needs of the majority and cater to it.

You can announce openly that you are not for socialism but you are for correcting the ills of the capitalist system and to relinquish domination of other countries allowing them to move independently as their people desire.

The Republican Party is pressing for the continuation of the kind of economic distortions that has dragged the world down. Openly facing this fact will help you reshape our country’s goals.

We are in an epoch of change. We must remove barriers and encourage each nation to resolve their day to day problems created by greed and distorted wealth accumulation. It does not make you a socialist to talk for Main Street but they need a spokesman in high places that will act for them.

You are in an enviable yet complicated position. Exposing the negative effect of unregulated finance capital which dominates humanity today would memorialize you for the next thousand years. The Bush Administration preempted the first move to deal with the economic crisis by bailing out the perpetrators who squandered every cent in bonuses and bashes. You are now faced with additional steps to bail out the industrial capitalists who have the responsibility of reshaping these enterprises into a new technological and green economy whose purpose is to raise the living standards of all.

The fulfillment of your promises requires that you take an ideological position. You will go down in history as having broken the racial barrier but it will end at that if you continue to be consumed by the economic crisis. OUR SYSTEM NEEDS CHANGE. Do what you can within that system. This means openly opposing the Republican Party’s program already on the road to capturing the presidency and congress in 2010 before they bring us further down. Don’t let them bully you with the “socialist” label.

The ball is in your court to change the situation. In your most diplomatic way you must take an ideological position to correct the problems of the system as you promised and restore true democracy which favors the needs of the majority.

Sincerely,

Sidney J. Gluck

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Sunday, October 30, 2005

Energy rip-off

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An Open Letter to President Barack Obama from Sidney J. Gluck