{"id":1325,"date":"2009-02-15T17:12:28","date_gmt":"2009-02-15T22:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/?p=1325"},"modified":"2009-03-11T22:20:29","modified_gmt":"2009-03-12T03:20:29","slug":"legislative-looney-toones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/15\/legislative-looney-toones\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislative Looney Toones"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brett Bursey<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director, SC Progressive Network<\/a><\/p>\n

Upon our state’s preparing to secede from the Union, James Petigru<\/a> observed, “South Carolina is too large to be a lunatic asylum and too small to be a republic.”<\/span> True to form, it seems our legislators insist on swimming against history’s tide and holding fast to all manner of lunacy.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Feb. 19, the legislature will be holding hearings on bills that may prove Petigru wrong about limits on the size of an asylum.<\/p>\n

The Senate Agriculture Committee is taking up (again) a bill (S-232) at 10am in 406-Gressett, to include nuclear\u00a0power as a “renewable” resource. While it is a fantasy of the nuclear industry to catch the renewable energy wave by painting nuclear fusion green, there is not a damn thing renewable about nuclear power except the industry’s audacity. (Remember in the 1950s when radiation was measured in “sunshine units”?)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These same lunatics run the asylum that passed legislation last session to let private corporations charge rate payers – up front – to build nuclear reactors. SCE&G predicts a 37 percent increase in your utility bills over the next decade to subsidize construction that can’t get private financing or insurance. It’s likely that the final bill will be twice what SCE&G claims.<\/p>\n

A rational legislature, concerned about our energy future, could have put a similar golden carrot on the stick that led to the development of real renewable resources.<\/p>\n

How many of us would install solar panels if we could pay for them incrementally over a decade? How many good and enduring jobs could be generated if we put support behind real renewables? The $4.5 billion dollar reactor is predicted to provide 500 jobs after construction. That’s a cost of $9 million a job.<\/p>\n

At the same Senate Agriculture hearing Thursday, Sen. Robert Ford will be pushing a bill (S-44) that opens our coast to offshore drilling and expedited DHEC licenses. It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will remove federal prohibitions on coastal oil and gas drilling.<\/p>\n

Ford, you may recall, is the black legislator who said America isn’t ready for a black president. At the time, Ford was on Hillary Clinton’s payroll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brett Bursey Director, SC Progressive Network Upon our state’s preparing to secede from the Union, James Petigru observed, “South Carolina is too large to be a lunatic asylum and too small to be a republic.” True to form, it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-network-newsevents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1386,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions\/1386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}