Governor Jay Inslee Pushes for Increased Electrical Rates

The 2013 legislative year has just started and our new Governor, Jay Inslee, has become an advocate for higher electrical rates.  Governor Inslee denies that hydropower is green power, if not greener, than wind, solar, thermal, bio-fuels, et al.  The rest of the United States agrees that hydropower is green power.  I guess we know something they don’t?

Governor Inslee states, “promoting hydropower as green power would be a step backwards?”  How can someone achieve his level of political power and not understand basic physics?  Or, how can anyone deny that hydro-power (which the State of Washington has a lot of) meets green energy standards?  There’s no common sense in his thought process?  Is there an ulterior motive that we are not being told?  Could any of this be interconnected to the Native Indian’s push to shut down and remove dams in Washington State?  Could any of this be related to the Earth First, Re-wilding Project?  We must ask Governor Inslee why?  And, please do not accept answers that fly in the face of logic.  Wind and solar power, both require fossil fuels and precious metals to be extracted to produce their structures.  The amount of power they create is miniscule in comparison to hydro, natural gas, nuclear or fossil fuels.  Their mere existence for operation, wastes more beautiful natural landscape than I can imagine, kills birds, sterilizes the soil and wastes precious resources above and below the earth.  That doesn’t even begin to deal with its effect on the cost of power, one of our most basic needs.  We have the ability to deliver energy in plentiful supply, to insure that it is affordable and does not waste more power than it produces.

Please contact Governor Inslee and weigh-in on this issue.  While you’re at it, ask him to slow down on implementation of health exchanges in Washington State.  Everyday I read horror stories on the affect that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is having on health insurance costs.  The term Health Care means caring for peoples health and governments role in this process is just wrong.

YiT ~  Shelly

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New Western governor sets his sights on climate change solutions

January 18, 2013 | By David Horsey / Los Angeles Times

When we were classmates at Ingraham High School in Seattle, Jay Inslee was quarterback of the football team and a key player on the state champion basketball squad. I was a fledgling cartoonist and editorial writer on the student newspaper. On Wednesday afternoon, as I watched Inslee shoot hoops with his buddies under the new backboard he had just put up on his garage, it struck me that some things have not changed. It was still basketballs for him, cartoons for me.

But, in truth, the change is rather dramatic. My bio now starts with the phrase “two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner.” Inslee, as a congressman, threw elbows and blocked shots on the White House basketball court with President Obama. And now, that hoop and net he just installed is attached to the garage outside the governor's mansion in Olympia, Wash. As of Wednesday, his bio has a new top line: 23rd governor of the state of Washington. Click here to read the full story.

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Inslee says GOP going backward in Senate

Gov. Jay Inslee waded into the legislative fray Wednesday with his most pointed comments so far in state lawmakers’ 25-day-old session, taking aim squarely at ideas put forward by the Republican-dominated Senate majority.

JORDAN SCHRADER; staff writer Published: Feb. 7, 2013 at 12:00 a.m. PST

Gov. Jay Inslee waded into the legislative fray Wednesday with his most pointed comments so far in state lawmakers’ 25-day-old session, taking aim squarely at ideas put forward by the Republican-dominated Senate majority.

“I’m very concerned that the Senate already has gone backwards on two areas,” the Democratic governor said, citing workers’ compensation and clean energy – and then adding a third to his list, a GOP proposal to require parents be notified before their underage daughter has an abortion.

But Inslee stopped short of any veto threat. “I’m developing what I hope will be (a) good working relationship with legislators, and the third week of the session is probably a little early, too early, to start waving around red pens real vocally,” he said.

Inslee took office Jan. 16, two days after a coalition of 23 Republicans and two Democrats took power in the Senate and elevated one of the Democrats, Medina’s Rodney Tom, as leader of their business-friendly majority. 

GREEN POWER MANDATES QUESTIONED

“I had some businesspeople in here last week,” Tom told reporters in his office after Inslee’s news conference, “and they were talking about, it’s funny that Washington’s the only state in the nation that doesn’t recognize hydro as a renewable power resource, when we are kind of the front-runners on that.”  Click here to read the full story.