True Freedom - Guest Opinion - the original

True Freedom

Every time you hear your furnace kick on that's money and energy being wasted. With efficiencies and retrofits, we would not "need" anywhere near the amount of energy projected by those who come up with every reason why renewables will not satisfy our needs.

Renewables absolutely will meet our needs when we stop wasting it. NYSERDA has a Deep Retrofit program that can lower energy costs by at least 70% but it can cost around $70,000 per house, depending on age. A lot of people can't afford that. Deep Retrofit is not just blowing in insulation into walls and attics but also layering additional panels on external walls, plus moving out old boilers, furnaces and water heaters, replacing with instant-on heaters or solar hot water heaters. You could end up with not having the need for any heat/cool appliances in the basement and close to zero heating/cooling bills. That's real freedom.

Deep Retrofits can reduce costs and thus improve the bottom line, can improve the economy with more jobs, reduce carbon emissions, and create energy security.

We must move federal, state and local subsidies and tax breaks from oil, gas, coal and nuclear now and transfer those taxpayer dollars to Deep Retrofit incentives and grants as well as solar on every single and multifamily residence and on all public buildings, thus lowering our taxes. New York could meet 15% of its power needs and 100% of its electricity needs with rooftop solar.

Every new high rise must first dig a geothermal trench before they start building. They have to dig a deep hole anyway. Both geothermal and solar installation companies are in New York State and growing, including in Broome county. Check out the New York State solar Industries Association. The state and the Southern Tier should be open to business to these companies and others like them, not to giving tax breaks for polluting gas pipelines, noisy compressor stations, puzzled about what to do with fracking waste fluid, taking the chance of illegal dumps of radioactive waste into fields and streams in the middle of the night, etc., etc.

Hydraulic fracturing's sole purpose is to burn fossil fuel, the greenhouse gas emissions of which have brought us global warming. Methane, i.e. natural gas, is worse than CO2 for heating up the planet. Formerly rare downpours, floods and heat waves are now common across the U.S. and will come to dominate our climate in our grand-children's lifetime.


Let’s stop hiding our heads in the sand and get to work on this. Call and write your legislator and demand a change. If he or she refuses to budge or fudges, vote him or her out of office in 2012. Get together with community members and start your own community energy initiative like in Maryland and Washington State. States that have more insulated buildings and solar have lower electricity bills, including cold mid-western states. New York State is not one of those states. Let's change that.

Identity theft

A thief based in a post office mail box in a building in Scottsdale, AZ, has stolen my name, educational credentials, experience, etc. by picking up my url at cecilelawrence.org so as to hawk snake oil crap of colon cleanse etc. This url, which Green Party NY used for my 2010 campaign as a volunteer on their behalf, was released by one of their web people, without explaining to me the potential threat to me. DO NOT under any circumstances click on cecilelawrence.org. It's a fraud and theft. I'm in the process of bringing this identify theft to the attention of the feds and others.

Thank you.
Cecile Lawrence, Ph.D., J.D.
The REAL one

Earthquake in eastern U.S.

This afternoon, shortly before 2:00 p.m., the heavy solid wood chair in which I was sitting at the computer, began to rock from side to side for about 30 seconds. I figured it was either the woman next door in her driveway slamming her truck doors repeatedly, which she likes to do, setting up vibrations, or it was an earthquake. It was an earthquake. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/se082311a.html

It's now mid-August in upstate NY without any sign of any activity by anyone to protect any part of Tioga, Broome, Chemung counties from the hazards of hydrofracking, spefically a town ban on this toxic process as part of a larger ban on heavy industrial activity. Not even one town is doing the work necessary (i.e. door to door outreach and the collection of signatures, as well as feeling out incumbents) except for a potential effort in the city of Binghamton. Will we be fracked, come 2012?

Disaster deal

Green Party of NY Alert - Vote No on Debt Deal
WWW.GPNY.ORG
The debt ceiling deal struck last night does not tax the rich or even allow temporary tax cuts on the rich to expire. Nor does it defund any wars. Yet it requires cuts of $1.2 trillion now and $2.5 trillion over a decade. This so-called deal boxes US policy into a relentless program of domestic spending cuts, economic stagnation, and growing poverty when we need increased public spending to create jobs and build a sustainable economy that meets the people's basic needs and restores the environment.

Call your Congressmembers and urge them to vote no on the deal and demand that the President use his constitutional power to raise the debt ceiling, raise the funds, and pay our nations' bills under the 14th Amendment, Section 4 of the US Constitition ("The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,...shall not be questioned.)"

Call the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121

You can send an email message at: http://bit.ly/nWsr7q

From Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist:

"The deal is a disaster. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America's long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.... Obama could and should have demanded an increase in the debt ceiling back in December. When asked why he didn't, he replied that he was sure that Republicans would act responsibly. Great call. And even now, the Obama administration could have resorted to legal maneuvering to sidestep the debt ceiling, using any of several options."

From Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Clinton: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/01-2

"The deal does not raise taxes on America's wealthy and most fortunate - who are now taking home a larger share of total income and wealth, and whose tax rates are already lower than they have been, in eighty years. Yet it puts the nation's most important safety nets and public investments on the chopping block. It also hobbles the capacity of the government to respond to the jobs and growth crisis. Added to the cuts already underway by state and local governments, the deal's spending cuts increase the odds of a double-dip recession. And the deal strengthens the political hand of the radical right."

From Glen Greenwald, constitutional lawyer (http://www.commondreams.org/glenn-greenwald)

"The reported deal on the debt ceiling is so completely one-sided -- brutal domestic cuts with no tax increases on the rich and the likelihood of serious entitlement cuts in six months with a "Super Congressional" deficit commission -- that even Howard Kurtz was able to observe: "If there are $3 trillion in cuts and no tax hikes, Obama will have to explain how it is that the Republicans got 98 pct. of what they wanted," while Grover Norquist, the Right of the Right on such matters, happily proclaimed: "Sounds like a budget deal with real savings and no tax hikes is a go." The same White House behavior shaping the debt deal -- full embrace of GOP policies and (in the case of Social Security cuts) going beyond that -- has been evident in most policy realms from the start.

Three days ago, Democratic Rep. John Conyers, appearing at a meeting of the Out of Poverty caucus, said: "The Republicans -- Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor -- did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that"