Who Killed California's Economy? | Newgeography.com

3. The Environment

Obama holds up California's environmental policy as a model for the nation. May God protect the rest of the country. California's environmental activists once did an enviable job protecting our coasts and mountains, expanding public lands and working to improve water and air resources. But now, like sailors who have taken possession of a distillery, they have gotten drunk on power and now rampage through every part of the economy.

In California today, everyone who makes a buck in the private sector--from developers and manufacturers to energy producers and farmers--cringes in fear of draconian regulations in the name of protecting the environment. The activists don't much care, since they get their money from trust-funders and their nonprofits. The losers are California's middle and working classes, the people who drive trucks, who work in factories and warehouses or who have white-collar jobs tied to these industries.

Rural Cooperatives Add Wind, Cautiously - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com

Rural electric co-operatives across the country are adding more wind power, but it is not always easy.
tristate Tri-State, a Western utility serving a number of rural co-operatives, just announced its first utility-scale wind investment.

“These rural electric utilities sit on top of a gold mine — some of the best wind resources in the country,” said Jeff Anthony, the manager of utility programs at the American Wind Energy Association, in an e-mail message.

If it's really a gold mine, why must we so heavily subsidize wind power?