Rationing? That's what we will also do with health care, too, huh?
Anyway, carpooling is good, yes, but many people either have children or are caregivers for parents, carpooling is out because you have to be available at a moment's notice to leave.
Taking the bus can get good, however, CDTA service is so bad. Coworker of mine takes buses mostly. The 55 (route 5 between Albany and Schenectady) rarely is on schedule and generally is standing room only he says. And because the buses aren't on schedule, then one gets to Schenectady and misses the connecting bus to other areas of the city and that makes people late for work and for many, that could mean losing their job. So much for their slogan "connnect to a better job"
Optimists close their eyes and pretend problems are non existent. Better to have open eyes, see the truths, acknowledge the negatives, and speak up for the people rather than the politicos and their rich cronies.
And the buses in Schenectady only run once an hour. So, one cannot meet the connecting bus. Who wants to wait almost an hour for the next bus, especially if it's bitter cold outside?
Optimists close their eyes and pretend problems are non existent. Better to have open eyes, see the truths, acknowledge the negatives, and speak up for the people rather than the politicos and their rich cronies.
Sorry guys/girls, I enjoy my 'alone' time in the car on my way to and from work. That is the last thing that I want to do is be standing all the way to and from work while people are sneezing and coughing all over me. I DON'T THINK SO!
Not to mention that is when I either 'choose' to listen to morning talk radio or to my favorite music or nothing at all. And there are times that I have to stop at a store on my way home.
Also if an emergency arises at home I want to be able to jump in my car and get home asap as opposed to waiting for a bus.
Some may call it greedy, I call it 'choice'.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Homeowners in a recently completed federal study saved an average of 10 percent on their monthly electricity bills when they were able to monitor their power consumption moment by moment and change consumption levels accordingly. The study, subject of a story in Thursday’s New York Times, indicates that the use of socalled smart metering could reduce air pollution and obviate the need for dozens of new power plants if adopted nationally. The study of 112 homes by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacifi c Northwest National Laboratory found that those equipped with “smart” meters, which allow the owners to see how much power they’re consuming at any given point during the day, took a more active role “managing their load” — lowering their thermostat in winter, for example. As a result, their power bills dropped. And according to the story, the homeowners weren’t even shown how much the price for their electricity varies moment by moment over the course of a day, as it does for the utilities and most industrial users. If such information were provided, people would probably be even more conscious about cutting consumption at those peak times — typically between 3:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. Residential electric rates typically reflect the utility’s average cost, not the minute-by-minute fl uctuations, but smart meters would make such pricing — and power management — more sensible. Fortunately, New York is headed in the right direction: Plans have been submitted to the state Public Service Commission by all utilities, and a few pilot programs have been approved while others are pending. The meters aren’t cheap — under a proposal by New York State Electric & Gas, they will raise ratepayers’s bills 32 cents a month for 20 years — but the potential for reduced power consumption and savings are worth it.
Homeowners in a recently completed federal study saved an average of 10 percent on their monthly electricity bills when they were able to monitor their power consumption moment by moment and change consumption levels accordingly
That's funny, do we think we can apply that to National 'health care'??? Well, to save $$ we would have to monitor our own bodies and choices---micro chip anyone??
So given this line of thought--I recall someone that I was an aquaintance with years back, who worked for NYS(may apply to any company with HMO), they decided to go to the eye doctor just because they had the insurance coverage. They did not need glasses.
If we have National 'health care'(I quote-the term is a misnomer, they actually mean insurance coverage(slight lie), who will monitor the costs?? Certainly NOT the government. With BILLIONS OF DOLLARS on the line the zeros get lost.........
So let's hand over our $$ to the government to manage our 'heath care' and our insurance $$ so we dont have to monitor ourselves......this discussion based on fear and poor stats is a conversation that is just blinding to the human mind.....IT'S GETTING DARKER OUT THERE
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Homeowners in a recently completed federal study saved an average of 10 percent on their monthly electricity bills when they were able to monitor their power consumption moment by moment and change consumption levels accordingly.
Right now it is a study. And right now the homeowner is monitoring their power consumption moment by moment and making their own choice to change their level of consumption. I would be concerned that in the future it would be either the government or the utility companies monitoring our consumption and they would then change our level of consumption.
California is trying to implement a plan where the power company ,PG&E, would be able to do that and cut back power at certain areas/houses in order to avoid blackouts or programed rolling blackouts.
They want to be able to do it from outside your home, without your consent.
Because they know what is best for us right? Just like China folks!!!
The past generations worked hard and went without to give the future generations the privelege of living free and WITH instead of WITHOUT! They were encouraged and pushed by the government and big business to move this country ahead. Now that we are there, they want to monitor, control or take it away.
Some people call it greed and perhaps it some circumstances it is. But for the average working Joe, it's just plain old working hard for what you want!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
This IHT.com article has been sent to you by: youngdes@cot.net Here\'s an article about energy control! ------------------------------------------------------
California wants to control home thermostats By Felicity Barringer The New York Times Friday, January 11, 2008
The conceit in the 1960s show "The Outer Limits" was that outside forces had taken control of your television set.
Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.
The proposed rules are contained in a document circulated by the California Energy Commission, which for more than three decades has set state energy efficiency standards for home appliances, like water heaters, air conditioners and refrigerators.
The changes would allow utilities to adjust customers' preset temperatures when the price of electricity is soaring. Customers could override the utilities' suggested temperatures. But in emergencies, the utilities could override customers' wishes.
Final approval is expected next month.
"You realize there are times - very rarely, once every few years - when you would be subject to a rotating outage and everything would crash including your computer and traffic lights, and you don't want to do that," said Arthur Rosenfeld, a member of the energy commission.
Reducing individual customers' electrical use - if necessary, involuntarily - could avoid that, Rosenfeld said. "If you can control rotating outages by letting everyone in the state share the pain," he said, "there's a lot less pain to go around."
While the proposals have received little attention in California, the Internet and talk radio are abuzz with indignation at the idea.
The radio-controlled thermostat is not a new technology, though it is constantly being tweaked; the latest iterations were on display this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Pacific Gas and Electric, the major utility in Northern California, already has a pilot program in Stockton that allows customers to choose to have their air-conditioning systems attached to a radio-controlled device to reduce use during periods when electricity rates are at their peak. But the idea that a government would mandate use of these devices and reserve the power to override a building owner's wishes galls some people.
"This is an outrage," one Californian said in an e-mail message to Rosenfeld. "We need to build new facilities to handle the growth in this state, not become Big Brother to the citizens of California."
The broader stir on the Internet began when Joseph Somsel, a San Jose-based contributor to the publication American Thinker, wrote an article a week ago on the programmable communicating thermostat, or PCT. Somsel went after the proposal with arguments that were by turns populist ("Come the next heat wave, the elites might be comfortably lolling in La Jolla's ocean breezes" while "the Central Valley's poor peons are baking in Bakersfield"), free-market ("PCTs will obscure the price signals to power plant developers") and civil libertarian ("the new PCT requirement certainly seems to violate the 'a man's home is his castle' common-law dictum"). Word of the California proposal hit the outrage button in corners of the Internet, was written about in The North County Times in Southern California, and got a derisive mention on Wednesday on Rush Limbaugh's radio program. The fact that similar radio-controlled technologies have been used on a voluntary basis in irrigation syste ms on farm fields and golf courses and in limited programs for buildings on Long Island is seldom mentioned in Internet postings that make liberal use of references to George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984" and Big Brother, the omnipresent voice of Orwell's police state. Ralph Cavanagh, an energy expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview that at a time of peak electricity use, "most people given a choice of 2 degrees of temperature setback and 14th-century living would happily embrace this capacity." Somsel, in an interview on Thursday, said he had done further research and was concerned that the radio signal - or the Internet instructions that would be sent, in an emergency, from utilities' central control stations to the broadcasters sending the FM signal - could be hacked into. That is not possible, said Nicole Tam, a spokeswoman for PG&E who works with the pilot program in Stockton. Radio pages "are encrypted and encoded," Tam said.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Tyranny grows in the Golden State By Walter Williams ------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: January 16, 2008 1:00 a.m. Eastern
In December, President Bush signed an energy bill that will ban the sale of Edison's incandescent bulb, starting with the 100-watt bulb in 2012 and ending with the 40-watt bulb by 2014. You say, "Hey, Williams, what's wrong with saving energy, reducing our carbon footprint and stopping global warming?" Before you get too enthused over governmental energy-saving efforts, you might ponder what's down the road.
The California Energy Commission has recently proposed amendments to its standards for energy efficiency. These standards include a requirement that any new or modified heating or air conditioning system must include a programmable communicating thermostat, or PCT, whose settings can be remotely controlled by government authorities. A thermostat czar, sitting in Sacramento, would be empowered to remotely reduce the heating or cooling of your house during what he deems as an "emergency event."
Say you disagree with the czar's temperature setting for your house, the California Energy Commission is one step ahead of you with the provision: "The PCT shall not allow customer changes to thermostat settings during emergency events." In other words, the thermostat must be configured in a way that doesn't allow the customer to override the czar's decision.
Some people might agree with this level of government control over their lives, but if these amendments become law, you can safely bet there are other intrusive energy-saving proposals waiting in the wing. For now California's energy Nazis are simply testing how much intrusiveness Californians will peaceably accept. I can easily imagine California's Energy Commission requiring remotely controlled main circuit breaker boxes that control all of the electricity coming into your house. That would enable the energy czar to better manage your electricity use.
Say you're preparing a big dinner. The energy czar might decide that you don't need so much heat in the rest of the house. Or, preparing a big dinner might mean the energy czar would turn off the energy to your washing machine and dryer while the electric stove is on.
There's no end to what the energy czar could do, particularly if he enlists the aid of California's Department of Health Services. Getting six to eight hours sleep each night is healthy; good health lowers health costs. So why not make it possible for the energy czar to turn the lights off at a certain hour? California's Department of Education knows children should do their homework after school rather than sit playing video games or watching television. The energy czar could improve education outcomes simply by turning off the television, or at least turning off all non-educational programs. Of course, there could be a generous provision whereby if an adult is present, he could use a password to operate the television.
You say, "Williams, you must be mad. All that would never happen." That's the same charge one might have made back in the '60s, when the anti-tobacco movement started, if someone predicted that the day would come when some cities, such as Calabasas, Calif., would outlaw smoking on public streets. Back in the '60s, had someone predicted that there'd be bans on restaurants serving foie gras; citations for driving without a seatbelt, that the government said would be unnecessary if cars had airbags; and school bans on kids having peanut butter sandwiches in their lunchbox, I'm sure people would have said that would never happen.
California's Energy Commission, along with its legislature, has the power to mandate that all existing - as well as new - heating and cooling devices have programmable communicating thermostats by 2009. After all, it's never too early to start saving energy or prepare for an "emergency event." The reason they won't is because they would encounter too much political resistance. Their agenda is far more achievable using techniques dear to all tyrants: There's less resistance if liberty is taken away a little bit at a time.
The changes would allow utilities to adjust customers' preset temperatures when the price of electricity is soaring. Customers could override the utilities' suggested temperatures. But in emergencies, the utilities could override customers' wishes.
And we are worried about immigrants and terrorists???? And the darkness comes ever faster.......
In Iraq the water and electricity are TURNED OFF so the government/military can use it.....Same in Russia....what the HELL are we doing????
HEEELLLLOOOOO....ANYONE OUT THERE AWAKE!!!!!!
I say just shut it all down, tear it apart and start over----there's a bunch of jobs for some folks.....
although the only folks who will think this is all okay are the immigrants from Canada, Europe, Mexico etc....sure let the government do it either: A.they did it in their country and they are used to it or B.the government doing everything for you is still better than the crap you came from as long as you can get cable, flat screen tv and McDonald's your okay with it........
The other folks that will okay with it will be the up and coming Reality TV generation who didn't get a great edumacation about freedom, choice and self responsibility....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
People will be pre-ordering the bargain basement car and wouldn't it be a hoot if WalMart did sell them?
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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