Electric City Weblog

A guest piece from UM Constitutional Law Professor Rob Natelson:

I looked over Prof. Seninger’s recent paper, “Expanding Health Care Coverage for Montana’s Uninsured Children.” The paper is basically a campaign document for I-151, an initiative on the November 2008 ballot.The federal government offers money to states to induce (bribe?) them to create “CHIP” programs, a kind of government-financed health insurance. Montana adopted CHIP a few years ago as a result of some shady maneuvering by the then-state auditor. The program has since expanded. I-151 would expand it more.

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Most of us remember when outgoing City Commissioner Diane Jovick-Kunz argued that Electric City Power is not losing money and, at the same time, argued that over the next 20 years revenues would make up past losses.

I hoped maybe this would be the year.

It’s not.  The budget shows the starting balance in the electricity fund to be <$1,750,926.00>, and the estimated final balance to be <$1,973,557.00>, reflecting a further loss of $222,631.00. (p. 27).

Not this year.

(Parts I, II, and III can be found here, here and here.)

The price of oil surged again into record territory.

Financial and other experts tell us there is no quick fix. They’re right. Neither Democrats or Republicans have a magic wand that they can wave to bring down gas prices or create a car that runs on dirt.

That does not mean, though, that there are no courses of action that we could take in the short term that would bring down oil prices between now and, say, August 1.

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The City Budget is available here.

I note that this version is scanned rather than exported to .pdf. Thus, it’s not searchable.

UPDATE:  It is searchable. I just needed the newer version of Adobe Reader.  Sorry.

UPDATE 2:  Try now.

I was unable to attend last night’s City Commission meeting, but I see that the City’s beloved fireworks display ($15,000.00) will be kicked to the curb in favor of the coal plant (it all counts, folks). I guess we’re also losing the DARE programs?

Did anyone get a chance to attend the meeting? Do tell.

$1,400,000.00 divided by $15,000.00 = 93.33

Check out the Montana Headlines interview with Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson. I am told Part II will be up today.

Below I posted a quote from a Democratic Congressman berating his colleagues for engaging in partisan grandstanding instead of problem solving. While I didn’t mean to pick on one party or another, here are Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2 supporting my position.

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Despite what some people might suggest, I do not really consider myself to be unusally bright. In all honesty, though, I consider myself to possess at least a reasonable intelligence.

I read this piece 4 times between this morning’s breakfast and right now and I have to admit that I still do not understand just what the writer was trying to say. I emailed him today, and he gave me this link to his white paper on the issue. (His white paper is the second report.)

I am going to try to read it and provide some further insight later.

While looking for some information for another post, I came across this post from the ‘old’ Electric City Weblog.  Something to keep in mind as we face the end of the world as we know it.

Democrat Congressman, Heath Shuler, gets my vote:

In surprisingly blunt language, U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler complained this week of “a lack of maturity” in the U.S. House.

The North Carolina Democrat accused some of his fellow lawmakers of thinking they’re “Hollywood stars” and said many of them spend more time playing politics than doing what’s best for the country.

“It’s quite embarrassing,” he said. “I mean, I wish all constituents could sit sometimes in the gallery and just see what goes on on the House floor.”

He’s on to something.  In the face of some very serious problems facing our nation, most of our ‘leaders’ seem to approach these issues in a very unserious fashion.  Do you really trust the likes of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) or Don Young (R-AK) to offer realistic proposals to address dilemmas in lieu of trying to consolidate their own wealth, power and fame?