Electricity Bills: Promises and Visions

Best articles I’ve read to date about the sharp rise in electricity bills are found in the Peoria Times-Observer on March 28 and a more condensed article in the WSJ on 2/22/07. Good going, DeWayne.

This situation is of the making of the lobbyists, the bureaucrats, the politicians and a gullible public. Messes like this are not likely to get better when you consider that the person that gets elected to the Presidency of the United States will spend approximately $400,000,000,000.00 dollars of OPM, roughly 80% coming from special interests. Don’t tell me that giving money doesn’t have some influence on the way legislation is passed.

All my last 5 successful efforts to be elected to the Peoria County Board, three Primaries and three General Elections, were funded by myself. Only except in the last election, a retired friend with no interests except good government donated my printing. My daughter, who lives in Edwardsville, donated $200 and a Democrat friend gave me $100. Total cost of my last successful campaign? – Approximately $1000. Beholden to any “special interests”? I think not. Concerned about the community I live in, absolutely, or I wouldn’t work this hard in my “retirement”; 15 years and counting.

Special interests groups and bureaucracies run too much of this country. If you read and follow carefully the events of the last few decades, the two major parties look a great deal alike in their spending. Their vote often depends on which special interest group to which they are listening; they should of course do that; just listen carefully and make the decision that best serves the “general good” of the people and the nation..

An article in the WSJ dated 11/5/1992 by the President of the Heritage Foundation, admittedly a liberal group back then and probably today, says “there were 125,000 regulatory bureaucrats and 67,000 pages of fine print in the Federal Register.” That’s 15 years ago!! A recent article in the Ft. Myers News Press says “government is vulnerable to flaws common to bureaucracies. Chief among them is a penchant for staff to avoid-risk taking and individual accountability. Take no risks-solve few problems and no one is accountable because it’s mostly been discussed and decided being closed doors.”

Politicians are expected to be transparent; bureaucrats and lobbyists work behind the scenes and are unusually most noted when some wrong doing is exposed.

In our current electricity crisis, everyone is passing the blame when all of us are to blame. We are easily led by promises and greed, instead of studying and being influenced by past history and paying closer attention to what is going around us on a daily basis. (It was said, that when President Bush went on vacation, he planned to read about past United States leaders like President George Washington.) He should have taken books that detailed the history of the Middle East for the past 500-600 years.

We are becoming a nation of non-readers (worry not, help is on the way when the new teachers come in from China to teach our kids the Chinese language.) Don’t our school leaders know that many of our kids can’t even read English?

Hispanics may soon be a majority in this country. When the day comes and it will; when English is no longer the official language, at least a few of our kids can speak Chinese when they move out of this community to “exotic” places like San Francisco. Our youths and adults are heavily influenced by TV and the Internet where many radicals hold sway; especially those with little common sense including an over abundance of Hollywood types whose lifestyles and opinions dominate the air ways.

Don’t miss the JSEB Editorial today. Promises, like made on our riverfront, are a penny a dozen. I have lived long enough to know and see that most are just “promises” by some special interest trying to win you to a cause on which they have sold themselves. They sell you into their causes, which they have bought into. These are often a causes in which they personally have spent little time determining whether it is best for the community or nation, right or wrong, just believe them. Or a cause they have seen that may or may not be working out as planned or causes that might work in Cincinnati but not in Peoria.

The JSEB hits the nail dead center. Caterpillar doesn’t object to it? Why would they object, based on their history? I know of no major project including the RiverPlex that they have objected to except they won’t build their museum unless the donors and taxpayers build the Peoria Area Museum first. Interesting when you consider John Deere, a much smaller company, built the John Deere Commons years ago and there is no museum close by the Commons. Have you visited it yet? It’s worth the 80 mile trip and easy to find off Rt. 74.

On August 6, 2004, I wrote a blog titled “Conceptions, Misconnection, Perceptions, Truths, Subtle Falsehoods and Outright Lies.” The truths and the outright lies should be the easiest to understand. Unfortunately, they are not. Reread this blog; it pretty well sums up today’s electricity dilemma and other dilemmas that have been “sold” or being sold to this community now and in recent years.

You might think I strayed from my subject, but everything said on this blog ties in to why we are now in an “electricity” crisis.