VA Sierra Club Releases Report on "How Virginia is Losing the Competition For Clean Energy"

I just got off a conference call with the Virginia Sierra Club (Glen Besa and Ivy Main), the topic being the release of their new report, "Power Failure - How Virginia is Losing the Competition For Clean Energy Jobs."  The Sierra Club's press release is after the "flip," but here are a few quick notes from the call.*Virginia is way behind other states in clean energy and energy efficiency, due to a failure of leadership by Bob McDonnell and also previous governors. *Other mid-Atlantic states are ahead of us in clean energy incentives and jobs. *If "Bob's for Jobs" really wants to create jobs, the single best thing he could do right now would be to invest in energy efficiency. For every $1 invested in energy efficiency, we get $2 back. *There are huge opportunities for renewable energy and energy efficiency in Virginia, but we don't have the incentives needed to get there. *A well-crafted Renewable Portfolio Standard would be a superb tool for reaching our goals.  Right now, Virginia has a voluntary RPS that is basically worthless. We need a real, mandatory RPS. *Part of why this administration, and previous administrations, have failed is their close ties to Dominion VA Power, and the disproportionate influence Dominion and other utilities have on Virginia politics. *Coal is not the future. In fact, coal mining employment has plummeted in Virginia, thanks to mechanized forms of mining like "mountaintop removal." Also, "If coal's so great, than why is southwestern Virginia so poor?"

lowkell :: VA Sierra Club Releases Report on "How Virginia is Losing the Competition For Clean Energy"

Sierra Club report finds Virginia left behind, losing to East Coast states in realizing clean energy future[Richmond, VA] - The Sierra Club today issued a report entitled Power Failure - How Virginia is Losing the Competition For Clean Energy Jobs, that contrasts Virginia's actions and incentives promoting energy efficiency and clean energy with the efforts of neighboring states. "The Old Dominion can not remain wedded to old energy, but that is the course Governor McDonnell is pursuing," said Glen Besa, Virginia Director of the Sierra Club.  "Worse yet he appears indifferent or even hostile to clean energy and efficiency." The report notes that McDonnell earlier this year withdrew from the Governors' Wind Energy Coalition composed of Governors from 26 states, and that he has failed to make key appointments to activate a new Offshore Wind Energy Authority in Virginia. "The Governor continues to pursue offshore drilling to the detriment of other approaches that would create more jobs and a healthier environment," said Ivy Main, an author of the report and the Virginia Sierra Club's Renewable Energy Chair.  "This report offers a number of recommendations to get Virginia back in the race with neighbors like North Carolina and Maryland.  First and foremost, it calls on Governor McDonnell to support mandatory goals for renewal energy and efficiency." The Sierra Club is calling on Governor McDonnell to seek administrative and legislative actions to promote renewable energy in Virginia.  The group points to an April 2010 study conducted by the Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium that says development of offshore wind in the state could create more than 10,000 career length jobs. "If the governor is serious about making Virginia the Energy Capital of the East Coast, then offshore wind must be at the forefront of his plan to get us there.  Last week's announcements that the first offshore wind leases in the nation have been approved by the U.S. Department of Interior and that the Spanish wind firm Gamesa is partnering with Northrop-Grumman to develop a new generation of wind turbines in Virginia show that this technology is here and ready to be deployed," continued Main. "It's up to Governor McDonnell to seize this moment and invest in renewable energy and efficiency.  That is where the jobs of Virginia's future are."

Video: Complete Cooch Incoherence at Tea Party Convention

I was watching this video, and the main thought I had about Ken Cuccinelli wasn't even so much that he's a right-wing nutjob, but that he's just completely incoherent. For instance, the core of his anti-healthcare-reform argument is that "Obamacare" is unconstitutional because it was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, but the similar "Romneycare" is constitutional because it was put into place by a state government. Huh? Something's constitutional simply because it's done geographically "closer to you," but it's unconstitutional if it's done further away from you? So...let's see, for those of us who live in NOVA, federal health care reform legislation was passed and signed into law just a few miles up the road, while Richmond's much further away, so by that "reasoning," the state law would be less constitutional than the federal law? Yeah, uh huh. Whatever. Second, the argument that because the government can do some things, it can do "anything" - and the implication is that "anything" includes all kinds of bad stuff - may be true in theory, but that's exactly why our Founding Fathers put a system of "checks and balances" in place, including a court system to decide on the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress and signed by the President. It's also why we have elections. But put all that aside for a second and consider; Ken Cuccinelli is railing against government power to do "anything," yet at the same time is pursuing a government witch hunt against a scientist, Michael Mann, because Cuccinelli, in his official government role as Attorney General, disagrees with the scientist! If that's not tyranny, government doing "anything," I don't know what is. So where does that fit into Ken Cuccinelli's "first principles?" Again, whatever. Finally, Cooch correctly declares that Republicans, when they were in power, completely violated everything they purported to believe in. I agree with Cooch completely on that, whether we're talking government spending, fiscal responsibility, a decidedly non-humble and non-realist form of foreign policy, intrusions on our civil liberties, etc., etc. The question is, why should we trust Republicans now? Is there any reason to think that they have stopped violating their "first principles" now, or would stop violating them if they came back into power? Of course, there's absolutely zero evidence of that, and Cooch should say so if he wants to be intellectually honest. But of course he doesn't, and he isn't. All of which adds up to, as I said at the outset, complete Cooch incoherence. What else is new?

The Party of Denial

by Kindler

(Cross posted at Daily Kos) It's been said that conservatives have a more coherent ideology than progressives, which makes their views an easier sell to the public, and so on.  That may be, because when you look at all they have to say, it really does all boil down to one unique approach to the world - what Dr. Freud called "denial": reacting to painful and difficult truths by simply denying that they exist. Denial serves different purposes for the two basic classes that make up the Republican coalition.  For the Republican's tea party stooges and redneck cheerleaders, denial is a psychological phenomenon, a way to pretend that all the problems in the world that require us to change our ways are actually just illusions or lies created by vast conspiracies.  For the party's corporate owners and benefactors, meanwhile, denial is a convenient way to divert attention from the disasters brewing due to America's vast and growing imbalances of wealth and the outdated political, economic and social institutions that protect millionaires while imperiling the rest of us. You can run down the whole conservative agenda and find denial hiding behind pretty much every line of it.  So let's! -  Energy and climate change: The right wing has simply given up on rational discourse regarding the global climate crisis.  This is the purest example of denial, since rather than arguing policy, Republicans are now attacking scientists for daring to present findings that are too scary or require too high a cost to confront.  Al Gore was dead on when he called it an "inconvenient truth" - inconvenient psychologically for the masses and financially for certain vested interests.  But making jokes at Gore's expense will not be of much use to us as the oceans rise, the coral reefs bleach, the glaciers melt and polar bears become just a bittersweet memory.  And meanwhile, China is beating us on renewable energy, high speed rail and more.  It's a bleak situation that denial may make us feel better about, but can never solve.

kindler :: The Party of Denial

-  The national debt:  This is the closest thing to a real issue that the right wing has.  Yes, the national debt is too big and is growing too quickly, as it has pretty consistently since the 1970s.  But the denial comes in when the right wing claims that the budget can be balanced while the government continues to cut taxes, shower trillions of dollars on the military, and protect every political interest that Republicans shield as fiercely as Democrats (farm subsidies, space exploration, etc.).  This is one issue area where I have to admit that Democratic politicians are largely in denial too - no one is showing the courage to present real solutions, which involve looking at such touchy issues as Social Security, Medicare, health care, taxes and military spending.  And it involves cutting off the subsidies to all the corporations sucking at Uncle Sam's teat - which is why they find denial on this topic to continue to be so useful.  Better to pretend that it can all be fixed by cutting benefits to seniors, the poor, the environment and other vulnerable parts of society.- The military-industrial complex: While the tea party rails against big government spending, the biggest government program of all, the military, gets a free ride.  As writers such as Andrew Bachevich and William Greider have demonstrated, our military has long ago gone well beyond any concept of "defense" - instead, we are playing world policeman at 761 bases in over 150 countries.  In denial, conservatives think the issue is whether we "support the troops" or not.  Well, of course, we pray for the safety of the brave young men and women put in harm's way.  But the question is whether we benefit from this vast projection of force and mind-boggling explosion of money (over half a trillion a year to the so-called Defense Department - but actual wars cost extra), or whether it is pulling us down the path that too many empires have faced, of overextension and decline.  A scary thought - pushing too many people toward denial rather than rational approaches to keep America genuinely strong and secure. -  Immigration:  There are twelve million illegal immigrants in the US.  This is yet another one of these problems that has been crying out for leadership since...well, basically throughout my lifetime.  We all know that it is impossible, logistically, politically, ethically, and yes economically to kick them all out.  But our conservative friends refuse to consider anything along the lines of what they call "amnesty."  Which only leaves the non-solution of pretending we're going to round up and expel a dispersed group greater than the population of the L.A. metro area.  Denial rearing her ugly head again. I could go on and on, of course, and I'm sure you can add many more examples.  But what's striking here is the pattern.  At a time when America, and the world, face so many enormous challenges, the Republican/Tea Party approach is to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that it's the 1950s, "Father Knows Best" is on TV and everything we'll be all right if we just keep on doing what we've always done. Psychologically, it's not hard to understand why so many people are in denial.  If you grew up in another time and see a vast array of changes around you (Gay couples getting married?  A black president?  Terrorist threats?), it's easy to get scared and want to fold up into the fetal position. But that is the road to national extinction.  We need to look our problems squarely in the face, confront them and move on.  Sadly, if we allow Republicans to take over either house of Congress, all we will get is more denial, diversions and delays, rather than any actual problem solving.  Which is why we need to work like dogs over the next three and a half weeks to make sure that situation doesn't come to pass.

Should a Democratic Delegate Have Attended the Virginia Tea Party Convention?

(UPDATE: Mark Keam Has a bunch of thoughts on all this at his blog. I think he makes a few good points, but overall, we're just gonna have to "agree to disagree" (strongly) on this one. - promoted by lowkell) Over at his Facebook page, Del. Mark Keam (D-Vienna) writes, "Spoke on a bipartisan panel on 'transparency in government' at VA Tea Party in Richmond. I'll write up my thoughts on my website tonight." To my knowledge, Del. Keam is the only elected Virginia Democrat to attend the Virginia "Tea Party" convention, along with numerous Republican elected officials - Bob McDonnell, Bill Bolling, Ken Cuccinelli, several others.  The question is, should a Democratic elected official, or Democratic candidate, be attending a "Tea Party" event?I checked with a few Democratic activists and long-time Democratic Virginia political operatives, and have their comments after the "flip." But first, for an "official" view, here's DPVA Chairman Dickie Cranwell: State Democratic Party Chairman Richard Cranwell of Vinton said the GOP leaders' embrace of hard-line tea party activists raises questions about whether they can be consensus-building political leaders."What my basic instincts are telling me is that what you're seeing is the real Bob McDonnell, the real Bill Bolling, the real Ken Cuccinelli and the real George Allen, not the people who run around in campaigns and say, 'We're moderates,' " Cranwell said. I strongly agree with Dickie Cranwell about the Republican elected officials. But what about Democratic electeds attending this event?  Let's see what some long-time Virginia Democratic activists and operatives think, after the "fold."UPDATE: I received an on-the-record statement from Gerry Connolly for Congress campaign manager James Walkinshaw (bolding added by me for emphasis). I couldn't agree more. Democrats attending the Tea Party convention are merely allowing themselves to be used as props to create a false patina of legitimacy for what is in reality a radical right-wing organization dedicated to turning back the clock on progress.  Tea Party values are not Northern Virginia values, and moderate Northern Virginia voters do not want to see their leaders associated with it in any way, shape, or form. UPDATE #2: Former Arlington County Democratic Committee Chair Peter Rousselot stated on the record that he completely agreed with the Connolly campaign's statement. Rousselot added that the Tea Party does not represent Virginia values anywhere in the state. UPDATE #3: I received the following statement from the Jeff Barnett for Congress campaign. I cannot speak to Delegate Keam's motivations for attending the tea party convention. I can say that he is a strong Democrat and a great public servant. Having spoken to a tea party group myself, I admire any Democratic politician who is willing to stand up for Democratic ideals and values in front of any group of Americans. The tea party platform is wrong for America. We lose ground to the tea party movement when we refuse to engage them instead of standing up for our values.

Arlington "Artisphere" Opens Its Doors

Yet another great reason why Arlington, Virginia is one of the best communities in the nation -- "Artisphere" has opened. Here's a bit of video from earlier this evening, at the facility's "open house," which continues tomorrow.

On 10.10.10, the first of a new breed of American cultural centers opens its doors to the DC region: ARTISPHERE. Combining the newly-renovated former Newseum space with the existing Spectrum Theatre next door, Artisphere's multi-disciplinary cultural offerings will permeate this 62,000 square foot cultural campus seven days a week, 12 hours a day, offering more than 100 events per month! A departure from the traditional "arts temple" one visits sporadically to see a big star, Artisphere is a true "third space" -- a place between office and home where the cultural experience is a multi-optioned conduit for patrons to connect with and create community. With a broader diversity of offerings than most traditional cultural centers. On a typical evening, you can finish up some work in the Wi-Fi cafe, take a break and view the exhibits in any of three galleries, then "tweet" some friends to join you later for an experimental film in the Dome, or dance to regional and nationally-known live bands in the Ballroom. The resident companies include Washington Shakespeare Company and National Chamber Ensemble; Artisphere will also include a retail outlet for the Artisan Center, Arlington's official fine craft purveyors, a Wi-Fi Town Square with a two story video wall, a cafe and bar, an outdoor terrace, and a 4,000 square foot art gallery.

A great new facility, in the old "Newseum" building right near Rosslyn Metro, it seems that there's going to be something for just about everyone at this facility. Check it out!

Andrea McGimsey Fights for Energy Efficiency in Loudoun County

Superb work by Loudoun County Supervisor Andrea McGimsey on making Loudoun County more energy efficient, creating jobs, saving money, and protecting the environment.

The possibility of losing the Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, which supports projects and outreach efforts such as the ones outlined in the Loudoun County Energy Strategy, has mobilized local leaders across the country to petition the White House and Congress for support.

, launched the Energy Block Grants Climate Communities, a national coalition led by 15 local government officials, including Loudoun County Supervisor Andrea McGimsey (D-Potomac) Work! campaign on Capitol Hill last week to try to save the program…

[…]

The project that McGimsey found “the most exciting” involves applying integrated energy solutions to the Moorefield Station project — a 400-acre, mixed-use development in southeastern Loudoun — where the  waste heat from the development’s data center cluster will be recovered and used to heat nearby residences and businesses. Beyond the benefit to the environment, McGimsey said, the projects  save money, improve efficiency and create jobs. Calculations based on methodology provided by the Department of Energy show that the combined projects will create an estimated 70 private-sector jobs and save more than $125,000 in annual energy costs, she said. “I come out of corporate America. I’m a businesswoman, and I look at these energy issues as  being pro-business and also pro-environment,” McGimsey said. “If you save energy, you put that money toward the bottom line of your company.“

This is exactly what we should be doing in this country, and it demonstrates how badly we need leaders like Andrea McGimsey – people who “get it” on energy efficiency, by far the biggest “bang for the buck” when it comes to energy – in this country. Thank you, Ms. McGimsey, for your leadership in turning Loudoun “green!”

Chris Zimmerman Speaks "Frankly and Honestly" About "Secure Communities"

Last night at the Arlington County Democratic Committee meeting, County Board Vice Chair Chris Zimmerman gave a powerful speech on immigration, and specifically on the program called "Secure Communities." Check it out.

Washington Post Blasts Cooch for Witch Hunt, Part II

The Washington Post nails it on this one. The attorney general's logic is so tenuous as to leave only one plausible explanation: that he is on a fishing expedition designed to intimidate and suppress honest research and the free exchange of ideas upon which science and academia both depend -- all because he does not like what science says about climate change...What is this farce costing? To defend itself from Mr. Cuccinelli's investigation into the distribution of a $214,700 research grant, the University of Virginia has spent $350,000, with more to come, and that doesn't count the taxpayer funds Mr. Cuccinelli is devoting to this cause. Sadly, though, that's the smallest of the costs. The damage to Virginia's reputation, and to its universities' ability to attract and retain top-notch faculty and students, will not be easily undone. Can we please impeach this lunatic before he damages

Caps Practice at Kettler Iceplex in Arlington

The Washington Capitals start their season this Friday against the Thrashers. Hopefully, this will be the year they take home Lord Stanley's Cup. In preparation for that, the Caps are training hard at Kettler Iceplex in Arlington, Virginia. Here's some video from this morning's workout. Go Caps!

Krystal Ball Fires Back: "This is incredibly sexist...outrageous"

As you probably know, photos of Krystal Ball from a party several years ago, where she is "posing suggestively with a sex toy," are now all over the internet. For more, see NBC 12. Also, see after the "fold" for more video from the interview. Among other things, Krystal Ball notes that Scott Brown posed nude as a centerfold, and he's in the U.S. Senate. UPDATE: Ryan Nobles tweets, "get ready for the Krystal Ball national media tour. She is scheduled to appear on the @TodayShow later this week." Talk about making lemonade out of lemons! What will Krystal Ball's name ID be after this week? As high as Christine O'Donnell's nationally? Stay tuned! UPDATE #2: Ryan Nobles tweets, "Rob Wittman's campaign asking GOP bloggers to take down photos of his opponent, Krystal Ball circulating on the internet." I sure hope that's true.