The hypocrisy of the right wing
To the Editor;
The Jan. 8-14 issue of the Eastern Gazette had two contradictory articles on electricity generation that expose the continual hypocrisy of the right wing leaders in our business and political communities.
The first article tells how the owners of the Mayo Mill have applied for (lobbied), and our politicians bent over backwards to give them, a huge welfare payment in the form of higher-than-market payments for the electricity the business will generate. So when the “Standard Offer” is running 6.6 cents per KWH they will be paid 10 cents per KWH, a welfare payment amounting to $2.5 million, paid for by Mainers via inflated electric bills.
The second article talks about increasing waste disposal fees due to the ending of huge subsidies to the owners of PERC. I am not sure the figures of 16 and 2 cents per KWH are accurate, I’ve heard 14 and 4 cents. Either way we have been paying millions in inflated electric bills to subsidize a business and subsidize our trash disposal fees. This also motivated against increasing recycling by deflating the avoided costs savings.
Why does the Mayo Mill get a subsidy when PERC’s subsidy will be ending?! Talking out of both sides of their mouth. It also talks about the Municipal Review Committee complaining about Agri-Energy in Exeter getting subsidized payments.
Our Governor constantly rants of how he wants to lower electricity rates. But the rates are so low at the moment that two biomass plants in Maine are shutting down and hundreds are losing their jobs because they can’t get paid enough for the power they generate to stay in business. The politicians then complain about these job losses.
These low rates are due largely to the environmentally-destructive, climate-impacting, practice of fracking for natural gas. The corporations in that industry pay nothing toward the environmental calamity they are exacerbating. This is more welfare that the people are, and will continue, to pay dearly for as the planet continues to warm and severe weather events escalate their destructiveness.
Meanwhile, photovoltaic (PV) solar is cheaper today than all other sources of electricity and does not create greenhouse gases. Political puppets and their wealthy, elite owners want welfare to end, or at least that is what their rhetoric spouts. So end it. Absolutely all of it.
End every subsidy given to every business. Level the playing field. Create a truly free market, not one controlled by those with money to buy favors from our political leaders at our expense. They are fond of bragging about the pork they bring “home” (you and I never see it!) but never want us to know where the money came from: our taxes or the deficit spending they are so fond of decrying that our children and grandchildren will have to pay.
Does no one else see this blatant hypocrisy of our “leaders”?
John Albertini
Charleston