Energy efficiency initiatives that reduce electricity and gas usage could save consumers and businesses up to $168 billion, says the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). The report comes on the heels of the Campaign for an Energy-Efficient America: a group of business leaders, industry groups, and environmental advocates calling on Congress to enact a federal energy efficiency target.

FUENTE – CleanTechnica – 23/03/09

“Energy efficiency is one of the most effective ways to address our nation’s energy and climate challenges while creating jobs and saving Americans money,” stated Steven Nadel, Executive Director of ACEEE. “In these difficult economic times, investment in energy efficiency makes more sense than ever and should be a top priority for our nation’s leaders.”

ACEEE’s report, Laying the Foundation for Implementing a Federal Energy Efficiency Resource Standard, analyzes both 2008 economic and energy data. If a federal energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) were adopted, one that demanded a electricity reduction of 15-percent and a natural gas reduction of 10-percent, 262 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions could be prevented. That is the equivalent of taking 48 million cars off the road for one year.

Other benefits include 220,000 net permanent jobs and 390 power plants that won’t need to be built.

The Campaign for an Energy-Efficient America supports a federal EERS, included in both House and Senate versions (H.R. 889 and S. 548) of the Save American Energy Act, introduced by Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY).

“As this coalition shows, the idea of a national energy efficiency standard draws support from a wide range of business and environmental groups in order to save money for consumers, create long-term jobs that cannot be outsourced, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Reid Detchon, Executive Director of the Energy Future Coalition, a nonpartisan public policy initiative that seeks to speed the transition to a new energy economy.

Currently 19 states have adopted individual EERS programs, but the real potential comes from a federal implementation. ACEEE analyzed the benefits of a federal EERS for each state by 2020. For example:

Florida will create more than 19,500 new jobs and save $14 billion in energy costs.

Illinois will create more than 6,500 new jobs and save $3.6 billion in energy costs.

Indiana will create more than 5,000 new jobs and save $3.6 billion in energy costs.

North Carolina will create nearly 6,500 new jobs and save $3 billion in energy costs.

Tennessee will create more than 5,000 new jobs and save $3.5 billion on energy costs

Author: J.J. Stone

Now they’re using the word “trillion” … again. Only this time in a new place.

Sure, they can write “beefier” and “meatier” – because that makes it sound so substantive, so industrious. 

Michelle Malkin uses the words “crappier” and “boondoggle.” 

Throw in a “pathetic” and a “just wait, they’re not finished yet” from me, along with any number of expletives and synonyms for “monumental waste” you can come up with and you’ve got the latest stuffer for the deficit stocking – the Stimulus Package!

As Malkin points out, the size of it has grown “from $300 billion to $500 billion to $600 billion to $1 trillion in less than a month.”

If there’s any indication that it will stop metastasizing, I’m not seeing it.

Besides, what difference does it really make at this point when the word “trillion” has been raped of its enormity? Too many Americans are numb to it all by now.

“Economic Downturn” this.

“Recession” that.

People are at the point of saying, “Just take care of the damn thing already. One trillion, ten trillion, who cares anymore? Just fix it.”

I’ve heard it. More than a few times.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

With the unemployment rate now expected to hit 9% without aggressive intervention, Obama aides and advisers have set $600 billion over two years as “a very low-end estimate,” one person familiar with the matter said. The final number is expected to be significantly higher, possibly between $700 billion and $1 trillion over two years.

Transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter denied any decisions have been made on the scope of the plan. “Any speculation on size or scope is premature at this time,” she said.

Anyone who believes that, stand on your head.

Actually, to be fair, there is probably some truth in what Cutter is saying. It’s a safe bet that the team is simply not sure at this time exactly how many trillions they may be looking to use to “stimulate” the economy.

The general sense among economists being canvassed by the Obama team is that “every day there’s a new bad number,” one of the people familiar with the matter said. “And people’s sense of what the appropriate stimulus is rises” with the news.

Recall the extraordinary success of President Bush’s big stimulus package back in February. $168 billion were spent in the form of stimulus checks sent out to taxpayers.

What a collosal waste.

Yet, the growth of this latest stimulus package has been very quick … and something to behold.

Recall Obama’s campaign trail rhetoric when he talked of a $175 billion rescue plan.

Last month, a gang of executive bigwigs – from Time Warner, Wachovia and Goldman Sachs – told Big Bam that the package needed to be more than $300 billion to be effective. That number more than doubled the figure being proposed by congressional Democrats at the time.

Only a few days later, talk of a stimulus package in the $500 billion neighborhood ensued. ABC commentator George Stephanopoulos said he had spoken to New York Senator Chuck Schumer who thought the package needed to be in the $500-$700 billion range.

Wow, where did that come from?

Then, only a couple of days ago, U.S. News and World Report had a story titled: Barack Obama: How He Will Spend $600 Billion on Stimulus.

ricky, defeated by rice

Yet another jump.

It reminds me of a very famous episode of I Love Lucy - the one where Lucy gets a job in a candy factory. (It was one of those “men and women switching roles” storylines so prevelant in those days). In it, Ricky tries to cook four pounds of rice on the stove to feed four people. Four pounds! 

In a matter of minutes, madcap hijynx is breaking out in the Ricardo kitchen as the room begins filling up with rice overflowing relentlessly from the pot. It just keeps coming … and coming … and coming … pouring over onto the floor in exponential quantities, endlessly …

This is the image conjured up in my mind as the Obamacrats continue to toss around a trillion here, a trillion there. It just keeps coming. The pile of falling rice keeps growing.

In fact, I think I’m going to refer to this stimulus package as “Ricky’s Rice” from now on.

And now – just like with all the bailout plans, in all of their various incarnations and configurations - the “t” word has officially been attached the so-called stimulus pacakge.

Hello, ceiling?

This is a game that is as dangerous as it is moronic.

I just don’t understand why the concept of letting Americans keep more of their own money just doesn’t sink in as a viable option? No Obamalicious redistribution would be necessary. No crushing multi-generational tax burdens would have to be created.

Why not create a genuine “new deal” and devise a massive tax cut program as an incentive to stimulate the economy? Allow a one-time aggressive tax holiday of some kind to allow people the opportunity to pay off some debt, infuse their own money into the economy, or even put some into the bank?

Use that as a stepping stone.

A plan involving public works and infrastructure programs is not the way the economy will be brought around, despite O’s wish to revamp FDR’s America.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”

Yup.

Anyway you slice this, it is astonishing. This is a trillion dollars in stimulus package money we’re talking about here.

A trillion.

Unreal.

-

Well, it’s hotter than hell around this part of the southwest right now. The heat sets in a little bit everyday, bit by bit, slowly scorching my chilled reservations towards this damned state (Arizona). I can’t remember why I awoke in a manic, cold sweat a little while ago… Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was some godforsaken wartime flashback or those awful nightmares I’m sometimes plagued by. No. It must’ve been America. Yes. I’m quite sure. I’m worried for the world, our world, our conservative world. Our blanketed freedom. Protesters picketing against the Patriot Act. Wire taps and mini-cameras wired into our eye sockets and ear canals. Living and breathing dead folk. I’d like to think that’s still just science fiction, but Verichip has certainly cornered the market. 666. Ye fallen angels. Flock to the damned, you wayward sheep.

Anyways. Away from that revelatory mess, let’s discuss last night. Wandering aimlessly through my house around midnight, hankering for some good ol’ stimulus (not the checks, not yet, we’ll get to that in good time my sweet little paupers) when I turned on that idiot box of a television and saw Arizona Sen. John McCain sitting there all swollen and aged on the Daily Show. Why god damn are the front runners for our primary elections, our soon to be leaders of the American country on a politically inane comedy show? What’s next MTV? Oh shit. Happened. Fuck, we are so far from gone when good publicity is air time on Comedy Central or E. Is that how they win the youth votes? Sweet Mary, this is decadent. Stupid, trashy, listless, brainless, spineless, gutless.

I thought that bastard was a POW? What the fuck is he doing cracking jokes with the likes of proprietal sloths? God, get some courage and stay out of that lime light, America needs war – not Hollywood.

Oh, and no heinous loss of accountability goes un-noticed… Barack Obama, the spineless twig, was on the same show several weeks prior. Claiming nothing of course and standing for even less than nothing besides renouncing liberal clergyman. BAH! Stand up for something, miserable coward.

Now to the heart of the beast. Pulsing black blood.

One Hundred and sixty-eight billion dollars.

What does that mean to you? That number, far sided and dim lit, it looms over us. Waiting to arrive in the mail to be cashed. Debasing Economy? Sure. Gee, wouldn’t that be a swell thing for our already diminshed treasury. All of these dollars we recieve, and in turn spend, become fiat currency. We are putting ourselves into such a dismally depressing hole that in six months time we will be flat on our face, third world style with birth defects and skinny children. Swatting flies away with our bulgy fists and empty stomachs. By then, our eyes will still not have opened and we will all have possibly degenerated to the level of some unorthodox children of some lesser state of being. It’s too late now.

This rolling stone, although never moving upward and always losing steam, has began to see its destination. Recession. Depression. Drought. Plague. Famine. War shelter. Sqaudrons of…. Damn it. No. I refuse to give into that biblical propaganda. Rebirth? Renewal? I can only hope.

For now, anyways, I bide my time with the many vices life has to offer, penning away nearly every day minding my own business. It doesn’t matter any more. Some genius once said something along the lines of ‘Live free or Die’. Who can argue when that becomes the ecclesial, national ultimatum? The lines skewered so strangely that freedom becomes acute dominance of free will and well being.

See you in the yard.