Nothing says we love job creators and low-income working families like a federal intervention to rob them of their earnings. But guess what? That’s what’s New Hampshire’s Democrat congressional delegation just did.
They have asked the EPA to make you pay more for electricity. An act by the government that interferes with the market to make things cost more. A hidden taxes on the price you pay to “keep the lights on.”
Our Achilles Heel
Thanks to meddling and poor planning, New Hampshire has some of the highest electricity rates in the nation. A non-stop, never-ending tax on productivity. It saps resources from job creators inhibiting their ability to do more, pay higher wages, and hire more. It’s a disadvantage when courting companies to bring jobs or to keep what we have.
And it sucks limited resources from middle-and lower-income families. So, naturally, our congressional delegation wants the federal government to make that problem worse. Is that why we elected them?
New Hampshire’s congressional delegation is calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to level the playing field for producers of biomass energy.
The four-Democrat delegation wants electricity in the Renewable Fuel Standard program in time for biomass power producers to participate in the 2020 market. They say New Hampshire’s biomass power industry has been directly threatened by the agency’s failure to include electricity in the program.
We know biomass can’t compete. That any mandate to level the playing field will suck 100 million dollars out of the economy.
The letter signed by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan and Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas says the omission puts rural jobs and local government infrastructure at risk in farming, forestry, logging and waste-to-energy.
Economists, they are not. We’re talking about a few hundred jobs in a state with 2.5 percent unemployment in exchange for forcing the state’s electricity provider to pay more and charge more for a resource without which we can’t do.
But it’s worse than even that. Higher electric rates eat into every corner of the economy. Food, clothing, hospitality, service, transportation, even the cost of government gets more expensive. It’s not a tax on the rich – they won’t even notice. But everyone else will because it is a tax on everything.
So, it must be a sacrifice everyone, but members of congress will have to pay to save the planet? A real global hand up in the war on global warming. Not even close, which is why The Sierra Club hates it.
According to federal data, burning wood is one of the most expensive, polluting and inefficient technologies for producing electricity, exceeded only by garbage incineration. Both biomass and trash burning facilities emit more carbon dioxide, soot, and most other conventional air pollutants at the stack per megawatt-hour than even coal. They are also major sources of mercury and other heavy metals, volatile organic chemicals, and carcinogens, including dioxins and furans.
This is a bipartisan screwing, by the way. There are plenty of Republicans, especially in our State Senate, who want you over the same barrel with your pants around your ankles with big wood standing behind you.
It’s almost as if some influential local industry is applying pressure and resources to every politician they can find to force you to give up a chunk of your lifestyle so they can make money off waste wood.
Someone with the time should look into that.
| WCAX
