Funniest Advice I've Received

Prompted by Long & Short Reviews... 

It's not really funny, but the most ridiculous advice I've received recently has come from the Appalachian Power Company.

APCo has installed "smart meters." Nobody really likes them but, in a rural area like mine, people think about those poor old meter readers floundering on our icy banks in winter, overexciting the dogs some of us keep, being panicked by the other animals whose company some of us enjoy, and, y'know, if a chip in the meter can deliver the same reading of kilowatts used to the company, it's not as if we ever enjoyed subjecting the meter readers to All That.

But these "smart meters" have some vague idea of what kind of device is plugged into each circuit and they can report to the company...

Actually they could have reported to the company, in my case, "Only the office circuit has been consistently active since the smart meter was installed. Old, oversized refrigerator and deep freezer, both of which the company promised to haul off, pay for, and help replace with a decent one-person fridge, neither of which the company has ever had the gumption to touch. Toilet and water heater, plugged into inactive circuits, running on solar power only. House is several times more 'energy-efficient' than what company has been calling 'efficient homes.' Company can either admit company has something to learn from the writer known as Priscilla King, or not presume to advise anybody about 'energy-efficiency,' to avoid public ridicule," if these meters were actually very "smart."

But they're not. They are remarkably thickwitted pieces of spyware. 

So in some months, like this one, I get pieces of junkmail--at my own expense mind you--advising me to save energy by setting my air conditioner to a higher temperature. (Air conditioner? ??? Where? There's one on the porch but it was bought for resale and I'm not sure that it's ever actually run...) 

"Smart meter" reckons 40% of my electricity bill has been spent on "cooling." The Lasko fan has been running almost continuously for a few weeks, this being what is known as high summer, but seriously? It occupies 12% of the active electrical sockets, which is to say one socket. It draws fewer kilowatts than the desktop computer, its monitor, and the laptop computer--separately--and they're all plugged in more of the time than the fan is. The fan is not a solid-state appliance that sucks energy when it's not running; the computers are. Going by the difference between what even the 250-watt electric heater did for the bill in winter, and what the Lasko fan does for it in summer, I think the fan is to blame for maybe 5% of my electric bill. Though each computer and the monitor has its own little internal fan, and I suppose running those for "cooling" purposes does run up the bill in summer.

"Smart meter" also had some smartypants ideas about how to make the water heater more efficient than it is on solar power alone. 

I think there might have been a few more tips, even more irrelevant, if that one hadn't made me fall about and cackle like Candidate Dowdypants. (I try to laugh as long and as loud as possible, for health reasons, thank you very much.) Then I said to myself, "Self, you sound like a person who has never even learned that trousers are supposed to reach the tops of the shoes! Get a grip!" I got a grip on something--I suppose it was the junkmail--and thought soberly about the fact that, in previous years, when people have received these letters of commendation for low consumption of electricity, they have mysteriously been billed more per kilowatt-hour next winter. When I remembered that I had been reading junkmail, all that remained was a crumpled wad of sweat-drenched paper (I had not been holding it directly in front of the Lasko fan, which is aimed mainly on the desktop computer, pampering the venerable thing--the desktop computer I'm using today is the one my late husband built in a college workshop). 

I think APCo needs the advice I usually give writers who are tempted to try using so-called artificial intelligence: Don't. 

Morgan Griffith on Electric Power Plants

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

Supreme Court Slaps EPA – Did They Learn Anything?

As you may recall, last week the Supreme Court found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must consider costs of regulations of the Clean Air Act before deciding to adopt Mercury and Air Toxics (MATS) rules requiring power plants to cut emissions of mercury, etc.

I am of the belief this ruling stands for principles under the Clean Air Act which, if the EPA has learned anything, means the EPA at the very least ought to delay the Clean Power Plan until they are able to do an extensive cost-benefit analysis.  Perhaps such an analysis would be best conducted by an outside group not controlled by ivory-tower bureaucrats.

In her February 8, 2012 opening statement before my colleagues and I on the Energy and Power Subcommittee, then-EPA Assistant Administrator (now Administrator) Gina McCarthy testified, “The analysis projects that, as a result of MATS, plant operators will choose to retire less than one half of one percent (4.7 gigawatts (GW)) of the more than 1,000 GW that make up the nation’s electric generating capacity.”

But in February 2014, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA, an agency that collects, analyzes, and disseminates energy information) projected 60 GW would retire by 2020, and attributed 90% of that to MATS.  Thus, EIA found that the actual effect of the MATS rule was about 54 GW retired.

As was reported last week in the inside-the-beltway news publication POLITICO, “For utility giant American Electric Power and others in the power sector, the [Supreme Court] judgment on the mercury rule that started to take effect in April comes too late to save the dozens of plants that already closed, or are slated to in the next several months.”

“‘We’re not bringing them back,’ Nick Akins, AEP’s CEO, president and chairman told POLITICO. ‘Once that ball gets rolling, it’s not going to change.’”

Sadly, AEP’s Glen Lyn plant in Giles County will remain closed.  Additionally, in part because of EPA regulations, one of the three electric generation units at Appalachian Power’s Clinch River plant in Russell County will be closed forever.  The other two units were converted to natural gas.  Because natural gas does not burn as hot as coal, those two units will produce about half the power the plant was producing before the MATS rule.

We won’t get those jobs back, nor will we have the electricity once provided by these facilities, which were important especially at peak periods.

If the EPA has not learned its lesson and goes forward with the Clean Power Plan without a proper review, they will shut down more facilities like Glen Lyn and Clinch River.

The EPA should delay its final rule until it can properly conduct or has conducted a legitimate cost-benefit analysis of the Clean Power Plan.  The Supreme Court’s ruling last week underscores this: the EPA needs to do its job, which does not include merely making regulations to eliminate coal without looking at the costs to American manufacturing jobs and American businesses and families who pay electric bills.

"

Editorial comment: Agreed. "Amens" from the choir. Still, EPA or no EPA, the supply of minable coal is finite and shrinking. This web site would like to see more news of True Green alternatives being studied and implemented, preferably by groups that include a few coal miners or former miners. This web site is not talking about "fracking." This web site is talking about improvements in garbage-burning technology, and/or harnessing natural energy, including human energy. No technology will ever be perfect, but this web site would like to see Virginia take the lead in developing technology that might at least be sustainable, after the coal and the gas and the oil are gone.

Morgan Griffith on Coal Energy

Part 3 of 3 from Congressman Griffith's E-Newsletter:

"Annual Coal Conference

On Monday, May 18, I joined Congressman Roe and others at the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance's annual conference at which, among other things, the Obama Administration’s so-called "Clean Power Plan" was discussed.  Regular readers of this column are familiar with my strong opposition to this plan, as it threatens our Constitution, jobs, and affordable, reliable energy.

"When government picks winners and losers, everybody loses," Congressman Roe stated at the conference. "I’ve driven up through Eastern Kentucky (coalfields) and what they have created is a wasteland ... When you take the business of coal away, you take away the car dealership, the donations to the Little League, how you pay for your schools ... The young people leave and go somewhere else and never come back."

To reiterate my remarks at the conference, with the Administration’s proposed "Clean Power Plan" here in the United States, other parts of the world look very inviting for those seeking to build new facilities and create jobs.  Sadly, what we have at this Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a small group of ideologues who seemingly do not care about jobs, a reliable all-of-the-above energy portfolio, or the Constitution of the United States.  They are embedded in the EPA's bureaucracy, and they seem to hire those who agree with them.  Further, I would submit to you that they are working to do away with carbon-based fuels, which is not practical in a world economy.

Dominion Resources Public Policy Manager William Murray, who has served then-Governors Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Mark Warner (D-VA), said, "We cannot have an all-natural-gas future or an all-anything future.  We've got to have coal as the backbone of electric power generation."

I agree.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671.  To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.  Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives."

[Editorial comment: In Virginia's Ninth District, Scott County made a successful transition to a post-coal economy long ago. Courage, lurkers in Lee and Wise County and elsewhere...it can be done, given time.]

Audit This!

Years ago, friends who worked for the IRS told me that, when people have no taxable income and the refunds due for any taxes that have been paid on their behalf are small, the IRS actually prefers that those people not file tax returns. Saves time! Saves hassle! Saves paper! (And, of course, filing on paper saves security risks...to everybody!)

A frugal person can live quite well without having a taxable income. More years than not, I've not had one. Last year, when I was not living well, I certainly did not have a taxable income. I didn't expect that there'd be any need to file a tax return.

Last winter, though, a neighbor's child really wanted me to take over an online job for which she'd applied, during a desperate job search, and then decided she wasn't naturally well suited. I was willing to take over the job. I was also skeptical about the willingness of a company that hired a 25-year-old credit card junkie to replace same with a 50-year-old frugal champion, especially when we reviewed the job description, which mentioned that "the successful candidate uses" about a half-dozen web sites for which seriously frugal people have no use. Well, did the company need to know which of us it was paying? We decided it probably did. Well, personal information about me--the kind the IRS uses to identify taxpayers and identity thieves use to sneak into the United States for purposes of espionage and terrorism--is not available via the Internet. Period. But information about the Online Bookstore is available, of course; it's just not linked to anybody's real name, home address, working phone number, or any e-mail address other than salolianigodagewi @ yahoo. So why not set up a business account for the Online Bookstore at irs.gov? It seemed like a good idea at the time; so far the Online Bookstore has functioned entirely to advertise a few very small sales in the real world, but if we do start actually selling books online the IRS will of course have a right to know about that.

So we set up the account, and the company didn't work with us. So then, seeing that I was likely to be making only enough money for me to live on, not enough for babygirl to live on as well, at the hack writing site where I currently e-work, babygirl didn't want to share her computer with me. So I went back to public-access computers for the time being. The business officially to be known as "Priscilla's Internet Portal" still exists strictly as a theoretical construct that may or may not reappear in the real world later this year. It didn't exist even in that sense in 2014.

Nevertheless, someone prompted me to ask a professional tax preparer, who said I'd better file taxes. It was the fourteenth of April. "Apply for an extension," she said. I printed out the form, filled it out, and took it to the post office on the fifteenth of April, but didn't have the official tax ID number for the business. Getting that involved some late-evening drama with a sick, hostile child--I mean, babygirl has been around for twenty-five years or more, but her mother had warned me she wasn't feeling well, and she was carrying on like a five-year-old losing its first baby tooth, whining and distracting and failing to explain exactly how she'd messed up her computer...

So then I went over such records as I'd kept of my finances last year. Although information that evildoers could use against me or others is not available to the general public, the facts about my income aren't confidential at all. I write about frugality, and recently I received a bit of airheaded advice from a real lightweight in this field, +kathleen wallace , showing just how much some people don't know about what serious frugality means. So I thought I might as well take the opportunity to spell it out for you. I'm aware of people who do more with less than I do, but not in any part of North America. I believe I really am the most frugal person on this continent. I've made it an art form.

When filing for the extension I'd estimated my income to have been US$2375.00. On closer examination, I was off by $30. My income during the past year was US$2345.00. This includes barters of benefits to me, but does not include donations of food, medicine, or vaccinations directly to the cats at the Cat Sanctuary.

More specifically: $1560 for a weekly cleaning job.

$160 for small knitted items I carried around, displayed, and sold in casual conversations with people I met on the road or in public places.

$15 for books sold at the Tree of Fashion store during its last month in operation.

$50 out of the $170 Bubblews was supposed to have paid me.

$25 (as a gift card) out of the $50 this survey site was supposed to have paid me. Another gift card was supposedly mailed out to the Tree of Fashion store and was probably lost in the mail.

$10 in plumbing supplies, and $90 paid directly to the county tax office on my behalf, for one day's work at the official standard price of $100.

$165 in shopping sprees at stores friends were trying to boost.

$45 as a phone card from someone who felt guilty for wasting my prepaid phone minutes.

$15 for an antique window pane.

$50 for a load of metal.

$20 for casual help with moving.

$140 paid directly to a utility company on my behalf, balance paid in 2015, for two days' work at $100.

What some people who think they know something about frugality might want to know, at this point, is how on Earth a person can live on this kind of income. A few pointers:

* I inherited the house, and a bit of land on which I've encouraged useful plants and discouraged grass for many years.

* About the only electric-powered things I used regularly were the modem-free computer, a fan, a space heater, and a few fluorescent lights. From time to time I used a cell phone charger, turned on a burner on the electric stove, or plugged in the toilet (the Sun-Mar electric-powered toilet was discussed here last winter). I did not use a refrigerator, freezer, any kind of climate control system, any kind of TV, a water heater, or similar luxuries, in 2014.

* I didn't use a home phone.

* I didn't buy any new clothes in 2014.

* I didn't own a motor vehicle.

* I did manage a few donations to good local causes...but I kept them very few and far between.

* I did not eat every day. This was primarily unplanned and dictated by unplanned, uncomfortable reactions to unlabelled genetically modified food products; I spent almost half of 2014 feeling sick. I do not recommend this, either as a way to reduce food expenses, or as a way to lose weight...but I did both of those things.

* On several days, what I ate was what was growing near my home. (I'd like to take this opportunity to mention Grandma Bonnie Peters' persimmons. GBP grew up in a place that cherished the legend of Jonathan Chapman, an eccentric preacher of the early nineteenth century, as "Johnny Appleseed" who planted apple trees wherever he went. She liked our local species of wild persimmons and hoped to be remembered as "Bonnie Persimmonseed," but, for twenty or thirty years, saw no evidence that any of the seeds she'd planted had become a fruit-bearing tree. Some trees mature slowly...and although they produced a few fruit in 2012 and 2013, 2014 was the year when I actually gathered pints of wild persimmons from the trees GBP planted. I like persimmons, and made several days' meals of them.)

* I did not use any kind of medical care in 2014. I've resigned myself, very unhappily, to the fact that until the United States comes to our senses and prunes the parasites out of our medical system, no medical care is going to be available to me as I grow older. (Ironically, the fifteenth of April was a day when another of my elders reported another way another insurance scheme was cheating her...) I don't want to waste any money feeding the parasitic insurance industry; I believe it's immoral to feed parasites. I don't want anyone feeding any parasites on my behalf, either. If I break a leg and can't pay cash to have it set, which is what I've always planned to do, then I'll just go through the rest of my life with a crooked leg.

* I reflected at considerable length on the reality that, if any more of our insane "progress" toward socialism/chaos drives the U.S. economy any further down, such that I do become unable to support myself in my own home, I do prefer death to slavery. No food stamps, no housing projects, no bogus disability pension for me. Far be it from me to tell other people how they should answer the question, but for me, personally, if I can't market what I do well enough to feed myself, then it's time to stop eating.

This web site does of course realize that extreme frugality isn't doing the U.S. economy much good; this web site encourages those who don't have to practice extreme frugality to distribute their money in ways that will do good. (Send some of it to us.) This web site also wants everybody to be aware that poor Americans do have the option of practicing extreme frugality and, at least, not doing the U.S. economy any positive harm. Even if our bloat-crippled government is failing to ensure that you receive payment for what you've done, and our plague of social workers and bureaucrats is discouraging any prospective new clients from hiring you to do anything further, there are still honest and ethical alternatives to becoming a welfare recipient and dragging the economy further down than it's already gone.

That Bad Old Transportation Tax

Patricia Evans shared this e-mail from Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall. Why is it tagged with "electric car, energy-efficient, car-free"? Because the bill included extra taxes on electric cars and mopeds, presumably to discourage anyone from simply selling their gas-guzzler to avoid paying higher taxes...

"

Remember that huge Virginia transportation tax increase that we were promised would ONLY be used for transportation?  Now they want to pave the way to use the taxes collected for something else.  All too familiar.

From Delegate Bob Marshall:   View this email in your browser

I need your IMMEDIATE help to ensure that the transportation taxes passed in 2013 will only be spent on transportation and if diverted, the taxes would cease.  I also need your help to block the Virginia gas tax increase which starts on January 1. 
 Please contact your Virginia Delegate and Senator no later than noon on Monday about my amendments!

Ask them to vote to restore the transportation "kill switch" provision, and to vote to prevent the fuel taxes from rising automatically.   Demand that they go on record with a “yes” or “no” vote on these questions and not duck these amendments. 

Click here:  Virginia delegates and senators  Then click your location on the map to get your legislators phone numbers and emails.

More information below:

Road Tax Detour:  Please ask your Delegate and Senator to support my amendment to restore the transportation tax “kill switch” to the budget bill, HB 5010, which will be considered Monday, November 10th.

Although I voted against HB 2313, the huge transportation tax increase passed in 2013, supporters of the tax increases promised that every dime would only fund transportation.  To prove it, and because there had been previous raids on transportation funds, HB 2313 mandated that if the transportation funds raised by HB 2313 are ever diverted, the transportation taxes would end. 

However, the budget bill which passed March 25th (HB 5002) neutered the transportation tax “kill switch” and authorized spending $30 Million of the new road money for other purposes!   I voted against the HB 5002 budget.  When the General Assembly met in September to discuss Medicaid expansion, a provision of the new budget bill (HB 5010) delayed depositing almost $50 million into the transportation fund.  Again, I voted “No” in the House of Delegates.

The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority Bond Counsel asked Governor McAuliffe to amend the HB 5010 budget bill to make it clear that if money is diverted in this or future budgets from the transportation fund, that diversion would not flip the "kill switch" to end the taxes.

The Governor has offered an amendment to kill the “kill switch" to allow the new transportation taxes to be used for other purposes.  However, as it would prove embarrassing to say one thing and do another, the House Republican Leadership will ensure that the Governor’s Amendment will not be voted on.

Instead, when we meet on Monday, November 10th, we will vote on another version of HB 5010 which will reinstate the $49.8 Million into the transportation fund (which I support) but will leave untouched the provision to allow future diversions of the new transportation money to non-transportation purposes. 

Therefore, Delegate Mark Berg and I will offer an amendment to HB 5010 to reinstate the “kill switch” to ensure that transportation taxes will cease if diverted by the state or localities in Northern Virginia and Tidewater.  Unless our amendment passes, Virginia and/or localities will be free to divert future transportation funds to other non-transportation projects. 
 
Gas Tax Increase January 1:  The 2013 tax increase provided that if Congress did not enact the Marketplace Fairness Act, a nationwide Internet sales tax collection mechanism, by December 31, 2014, that there will be a 1.6 cents per dollar tax increase at the wholesale level, which translates to even higher increases at the pump.   Also, diesel tax rebates will be reduced from 2.5% to .9% which will increase costs on everything transported by truck including food and other household items.

I intend to offer amendments to prevent these fuel taxes from increasing.  It is very likely that members will use a parliamentary procedure to avoid a direct up or down vote on these amendments.

Please contact your state Virginia delegates and senators and ask them to restore the transportation "kill switch" provision, and prevent the fuel taxes from rising automatically.   Demand that they go on record with a “yes” or “no” vote on these questions and not duck these amendments.

Thank you for your help!
Sincerely,

 
Delegate Bob Marshall



--

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."  - Thomas Jefferson"

Will Technology Be the Enemy Within?

A few common-sense observations about computer technology:

1. Any task computers are used to simplify, malfunctioning computers can complicate.

2. Any computer can be made to malfunction by exposing it to the right sort of electromagnetic energy.

3. Most of our high-tech gadgets are made in other countries.

4. When people build their lives and work around gadgets that can easily be sabotaged, especially by people in the not completely friendly countries where the gadgets were made, immense destruction can be wrought just by sabotaging those gadgets.

Logical conclusion: If you're one of the people, like me, who expect power outages every week or two, stock up on canned instead of frozen veg, at least try to print out everything you've done on the computer so you'll be able to work on it without relying on the computer, have a way to get water out of your spring or well that does not depend on an electric pump, keep your woodshed full and your chimney clean, and generally maintain the ability to survive completely off the electric/electronic power grid, you're more likely than the average American to survive the next national military crisis.

I'm not saying "Go Amish and don't take advantage of the Web." (Though I am saying that it might, in case of a military crisis, be prudent to use communally owned electronic gadgets that are stored in a place that is nobody's home.) I am recommending that everybody out there make a regular practice of unplugging everything, going totally wireless/disconnected/e-free, I mean not even a refrigerator, say one weekend a month...just to motivate yourselves to structure your work in such a way that you'll be able to survive an attack on the power grid. Or a plain old power outage caused by plain old wear and tear.

And, need we mention? We do not want a "smart grid." For home safety purposes a dumb, slow, oldfashioned power grid is better.

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton has some of the discouraging facts that support this conclusion:

http://noisyroom.net/blog/2013/08/04/waking-up-to-war/

I'm not suggesting that we all go into panic mode and interpret every power outage as an act of war; I'm saying that, if we're all prepared to carry on with hardly a blink when an ordinary broken tree limb or playful squirrel causes a power outage, it'll be less tempting for malcontents at home and abroad to try creating power outages as an act of war.

Local Warming, and How to Control the Urge to Laugh at Al Gore

(This is an updated version of a book reaction piece I posted on Associated Content in the winter of 2010-2011. AC liked articles with local interest, so my reaction to Hot, Flat, and Crowded focussed on Bethesda, Maryland, where the book was presumably written.)

In the 1970s, Republican Dixy Lee Ray wrote an allegedly scientific book that supposedly proved that we didn't need an environmental movement. Several of her facts have since been disproved. Still, older Republicans like Rush Limbaugh refuse to admit that polluting the environment is a crime that has human victims...though younger conservatives, including Michael Savage and Rand Paul as well as me, are advocating that large-scale pollution be prosecuted as the violent crime it is.

More recently, Democrat Al Gore lent his celebrity status to allegedly scientific "proof" that we're bound for a whole planetary apocalypse of environmental disasters caused by "global warming." Any casual agreement that it's been more than hot enough for anybody, during several recent summers, has triggered rants about the hypothetical (and sometimes mutually exclusive) horrors "global warming" was expected to produce. Some of the facts on which global warming theory relied have been disproved, and on the day when the original version of this document was published a Yahoo search of "global warming" material online uncovered three and a half million web pages gloating over the refutation of the global warming hoax.

Sites like www.junkscience.com, http://www.drroyspencer.com/, and http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/ continue to present evidence that global warming theory is not fully supported by the facts. Does it need to be? Does the absence of missing links to support the theory that any species ever "evolved" into a really different species make the fact of microevolution less valid, or less useful to farmers and gardeners? Pollution may or may not be causing long-term global warming. Pollution is indisputably causing local warming and on a day like this one, July 19, 2013, everyone in my part of the world is feeling it...ouch!

The last full-length book I read about global warming was Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded. (Click here to visit the author and/or buy the book.) It was written before some of its supporting research had been discredited.

But I can see where Friedman got his ideas. He wrote from Bethesda, Maryland. Always considered a nice neighborhood even before it became a wealthy one, Bethesda is too close to Washington to be the home town of many people. For most of its residents, whether diplomats or Upwardly Mobile Professionals, living in Bethesda is an achievement. I'm duly impressed.

I'm also aware that the phenomenon of local warming was sudden and drastic for Bethesda. Since the early 1980s, when "developers" tore up all those gracious lawns, porticoed houses, and massive oak trees, close to the shopping district, and put in high-rise buildings with dozens of air conditioners churning hot air out of each building all summer long, Bethesda's climate has changed drastically. Whatever it was in terms of nineteenth-century politics, Maryland is a Southern State in terms of climate. Adding local warming factors by turning acres of green space into a heat-generating machine is not a change most people would have imagined any part of Maryland would ever want or need.

It's reasonable that people who used to enjoy summers in Bethesda with unscreened windows, fans, lots of iced tea, and frequent trips to the beach, now feel uncomfortable enough there to become believers in global warming. This is something even residents of Hyattsville understand. Early twentieth century novelist James M. Cain may have been the first to document that Hyattsville is normally warmer than most of Virginia, but Cain could not have anticipated that sweet watermelons, cacti, and palm trees would be among the plants people could raise in back yards in Hyattsville...as became the case in the 1990s.

Bethesda's transition from comfortably warm to miserably hot is an example of local warming, and of what's headed toward most of us if we listen to talk about "growth and progress." Personally, when I hear talk about "growth and progress" for communities that are about the size they need to be, I think of malignant tumors. In 1980 Bethesda was a nice, comfortable size. Now it is suffering the agony of malignant, uncontrolled, destructive growth. And if Maryland isn't careful, Bethesda's growth could metastasize.

Local warming is an indisputable fact to which many of us can relate in a close and personal way. Local warming means your cherry trees die, but watermelon seeds that have been dumped in the yard sprout and grow. And your roof starts to leak because your oldfashioned asphalt shingles melt in the heat. And nobody wants to sit on the porch any more.

Local warming can be reversed. Cities and neighborhoods can change zoning laws to reduce population density, requiring a reasonable amount of green space between houses and outlawing future "towering infernos." Individuals can unplug machines, walk instead of driving, and move their beds and desks into the basement to take advantage of the natural insulating and cooling down there. Everyone may not be able to telecommute and home-school, but communities can encourage everyone who can do these things to do them, reducing traffic and greenhouse gases.

How effective are these methods of preventing local warming? Bethesdans can make local phone calls to find out. If you want to be convinced, make it a summer project to compare temperatures, on the same days and at the same times, in downtown D.C., in Takoma Park, in Bethesda, and in Olney. (If you're on another side of town, you could do this experiment with local phone connections in downtown D.C., in downtown Hyattsville, in Laurel, and in Columbia; or D.C., Arlington, Fairfax, and Manassas.) You're comparing neighborhoods that are within an hour's drive, and you will get temperature readings that suggest different climate zones.

Although Friedman seems more interested in promoting bigger government than in the ideas you can use, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is packed with ideas you can use to change the fact of local warming. Some of these ideas may not sell overnight, but they should sell easily enough. Nobody wants to replace all the big, expensive appliances in the house at once. Sooner or later all the appliances will have to be replaced. When we buy new refrigerators, does anybody not want to look for models that are more efficient than the ones we have now?

Friedman complains that what stands between us and the Green future is the need to "find a source of cheap electrons." He doesn't have much to report on my favorite Green idea: the pedal generator. Devices that trap the energy generated by pedalling a bicycle and use that energy to boost the bicycle up hills have been around for at least fifty years. They've not been perfected and mass-marketed because Americans have attached ourselves to the idea that, when people are serious about getting somewhere, they drive cars.

Bethesda is one of the few places where I've seen expensive gym equipment actually in use. Right in the shopping district, whole classes of people in search of a healthy alternative to caffeine can be seen pumping and pedalling, early in the morning. Granted, harnessing that energy wouldn't power all the computers and air conditioners in Bethesda, but it would be a step in the right direction. Some Bethesdans prefer to do their morning workouts at home, and with a little help from science and technology, this could also become a source of cheap electrons...that would make it much easier to cope with the inadequacies of Pepco.

When people like Thomas Friedman or Al Gore prefer, instead, to dream about "smart meters" to tell people whether they were using electricity that comes from a hydroelectric plant or a coal-burning plant, laughter is an appropriate reaction. How much faith do you have in the people who "estimate" your energy consumption when an actual reading is not available? Don't we all know how, during the month when our power lines were buried in snow for a week, the electric company needed the money so they "estimated" that we somehow managed to consume more kilowatts than we consumed in the previous and following months together? Of course, since actual readings were available, these "estimates" were corrected with refunds a few months later. Along with the other possibilities they offer to large-scale evildoers, "smart meters" could make it harder for legislators to order the utility companies to issue those refunds.

Friedman worries that, if Green changes don't hurt us private individuals, "it's not a revolution, it's a party." Need he be reminded that this country began with a revolution in which relatively few private individuals were hurt...and the revolution began with a party? In a True Green revolution, the only casualties will be bank accounts, but we might as well enjoy the party anyway.

Bicycles in Business

For any entrepreneurs seeking inspiration...cheap, fun, kid-friendly, summery...here are four cool bicycle-based ventures that have actually stayed in business for a few years.

http://www.goodnet.org/articles/1015

Coal-Burning Cars?

Thanks to +Congressman Morgan +Griffith for sharing the link to this +Fox News report:

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/02/27/could-clean-coal-power-cars/

Could coal be processed in ways that produce reusable metal instead of pollution? Sounds like the stuff of great science fiction, and even greater news if the technology turns out to be viable in the real world.

Makes me wonder whether existing coal could even be used to manufacture more coal. We know that coal is made, not "born." Some of us synthesized coal in our fifth grade science classes...well, peaty, low-grade "lignite" coal anyway. (What comes out of my +Sun-Mar toilet is one grade below peat on the way to becoming completely carbonized, or becoming coal.) The reason why we still have coal mines rather than coal factories is that, so far, the process of synthesizing coal is not energy-efficient. But I've never completely lost hope that this could change.

(What's with the little + signs in this post? Well, theoretically, Google has "improved" Blogspot such that typing in + signs before the names of people or businesses automatically gives them a Google+ boost. We highly recommend Sun-Mar toilets, respect Congressman Griffith, and figure that somebody out there has to have set up a Google+ account for Fox News, so why not test the system on these names? If you're seeing four little + signs instead of links to Google+ pages, this is an indication that the system isn't working. If you're seeing some + signs and some links, this is an indication that the system is working but not all four names are in the system.)

Pro-Life Pris Feels Prodded...

Am I pro-life? Of course I am. I'm not anti-choice. I think the reasons why any woman would make a choice that's not pro-life have to be too horrible to be discussed here. But with all this current legislative activity going on, that some e-friends continue to focus on an issue that was basically decided forty years ago does annoy me. Just a little.

Also annoying is the way State Senator Carrico, otherwise a pretty good legislator I'm proud to say, listened to the road hogs last year and seems to have listened to them again this year.

So these two annoyances came together as I looked for guidance to the most urgent bills in today's e-mail, and this is the e-mail I sent to Mathew Staver's group and to Senator Carrico. I've removed some front-and-end matter, but left the text of the Liberty Counsel e-mail intact, in case anybody out there has time and energy to support what they're doing as well as what this web site's doing:

"Dear Mathew and Friends,
The abortion debate has been generating more heat than light for as long as I've been able to read. It's unwinnable. I was tired of it fifteen years ago, when I helped friends triangulate a solution that we hoped new medical discoveries would make feasible. Now I'm merely sad that second-trimester fetuses aren't as viable as we hoped.

But recent developments in the Virginia legislature have turned my attention to a whole new way of being pro-life. This way of saving lives doesn't depend on an unwinnable debate about whether people want to count fetuses as having lives of their own. I'm concerned about the lives of people who are moving around, commuting to jobs, paying taxes...who are being killed by the thousands every year, while so-called pro-lifers say nothing.

Specifically, about the victims of automobile "accidents."

This class of endangered lives is a hot potato nobody wants to touch because, let's face it, most of us like to drive; most of us are competent drivers, most of the time; and far too many of us have killed or injured, or will kill or injure, someone "by accident." As my drivers' training teacher used to say, there are very few real accidents. Most crashes are caused by someone's not having taken appropriate action while or before driving. Nevertheless, the odds against people's being able to take all the appropriate action, every time they drive, throughout their driving lives, are astronomical. We are human. We rush out to work at the last minute. We blink. We sneeze.

Why am I repeating this depressing fact? We can't do anything about being human, but we can do something about the number of lives that are lost to automobile "accidents" each year.

Specifically, as individuals, we can choose safer means of transportation. Slower, less expensive transportation devices save lives whenever we choose to use them. Plenty of "accidents" involve bicycles, mopeds, scooters, Segways, and four-wheeled small-motor golf-cart-type vehicles, but very few of these accidents are fatal; very few are even serious; and very few injure anyone but the operator of the vehicle.

You probably think that this is a personal choice that people make based on things like the weather, the distance they have to travel, and the condition of any lower-impact vehicles they happen to own. Until this week, I thought so too.

This week, my State Senator backed a vile bill intended to keep all but the deadliest motor vehicles off interstate highways.

To "see" how vile this is, you need to know that there are just two real roads in and out of my home town: a two-lane state "highway" with NO paved berm or shoulder, and a four-lane interstate highway with a paved berm and smooth gravel shoulder. Try walking or driving a pro-life vehicle on both, and I guarantee you'll agree that the berm on Route 23 is where you feel much safer than when you're right out in traffic, or picking your way through the shrubbery, on Route 58.

Plus, if you're commuting from my town, Gate City, Virginia, into Kingsport, Tennessee, which is approximately a ten-mile trip and I walk it fairly often--the only way to do that without using a four-lane interstate highway is to detour--thirty miles from Gate City to Bristol, then almost thirty miles back to Kingsport.

[Please see my CORRECTION: http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/02/correction-highway-system-more.html]

Basically, the effect of anti-alternative-vehicle legislation would be to ensure that nobody in my home town could rely on a pro-life means of transportation to and from a regular job, unless of course they were lucky enough to be employed in Gate City, in which case they could walk to and from work anyway.

For a few weeks, about twenty years ago, I lived in Gate City and commuted to work in a conventional 3500-pound car. I loathed that car; I drove it because it was the cheapest conventional vehicle I could get--and I still couldn't afford it, working three days a week. The last time I drove it, one of those preventable "accidents," a flat tire I was too inexperienced and ignorant to deal with, caused me to veer out in front of another car heading the opposite direction. A little girl was in that car. She might have been five or six--old enough to be terrified as her Daddy wrestled their car out of my way. I can see her face yet.

I've not owned a car since then. When asked why I walk in weather like we had today, I tell people the most obvious reason is that I don't own a car. Why don't I own a car? One of the reasons is that little girl.

Some people aren't as lucky as I was when I had my "accident." After being swerved around by the little girl's Daddy, I proceeded down a ramp, rolled across a lane, landed in a ditch, and was able to crank down the window and vault out of the car. Nobody was hurt. I know a lot of people whose last "accident" with a lethal-sized motor vehicle has left them unable to walk. These people, and others with disabilities that make it hard for them to walk ten miles, are the market for the mopeds, scooters, and other smaller, slower, safer vehicles.

I'm not saying that State Senator Bill Carrico hates people with disabilities, or people from Gate City, or any other class of people. Actually he seems to be a decent guy who generally represents our part of Virginia well. I'm saying that he's listening to the wrong sector of his constituents--he did listen to me, last year, when the road hogs in our part of the state were trying to ban walking on Route 23. He needs to hear from more people who are seriously PRO-LIFE.

So...as activists, I propose that we start thinking of pedestrian and alternative-vehicle access, and safety, on all America's highways and byways, as a Pro-Life Issue. I think it will be much more successful than this endless bickering about abortion.

Still opposed to abortion? Well, aren't we all. I feel too sorry for the women who "choose" abortion to want to say much to them, except for "There are people who would give that child a loving home."

But we all can make pro-life choices on behalf of healthy children and active citizens.

Priscilla King

--- On Thu, 1/31/13, Liberty Counsel wrote:

Subject: Christianity on trial in America: We're fighting back!

Liberty Counsel

Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman

Priscilla,

Who would have ever thought that in America it would be illegal to counsel people who want to change from a dangerous, ungodly lifestyle to a healthy and righteous one?

Or, that it would be legal to…

force Christians to pay for killing another human being, or

force Christians to act against their Freedom of Conscience, or

force Christians to call good evil and evil good?

Yet, all of these wildly improbable propositions are at the heart of cases Liberty Counsel’s legal team has been battling in January, along with many others.

++The new California “change therapy” law is a total outrage.

At the onset of 2013, Liberty Counsel filed its opening brief at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against the California ban on change therapy (SB 1172), which would ban any counseling to minors seeking to diminish or eliminate unwanted same-sex sexual attractions, behavior, or identity.

Under the new law, Christian counselors are by force of law prohibited from counseling against the homosexual lifestyle – even if the client sought help to break free!

Thankfully, in late December, the Ninth Circuit granted Liberty Counsel's Emergency Motion to temporarily block the law from going into effect on January 1, 2013, as previously scheduled.

Please continue to pray that the Lord moves on the hearts of the judges in this case, and this Orwellian “thought police” law is struck down and never implemented.

++Liberty Counsel continues its vigorous defense of natural marriage.

This month, Liberty Counsel filed two extensive amicus briefs with the United States Supreme Court on a pair of enormously significant marriage cases – the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8, the well-known state marriage amendment.

Liberty Counsel has been deeply involved in legal advocacy on both of these crucial cases for many years now. The High Court will decide both cases by the end of the term in June 2013.

++We will not allow pro-homosexual activists to destroy the sanctity of marriage in America!

Priscilla, we are at a pivotal point in our nation’s history. Nothing will define the future of America more than the Court’s upcoming decisions on marriage.

It is no exaggeration to say that America’s very existence is at stake. Marriage is not simply an artifact of law needed to regulate government benefits and determine domestic rights and duties.

Rather, it is an institution ordained of God to nurture mankind and rightly order procreation through the generations. The natural family is fundamental to our very existence!

That’s why our intense legal advocacy for natural marriage is so important and why Liberty Counsel will never stop fighting for this vital institution!

++We aggressively fight against any attempt to squash the right to publically share the Gospel!

. Last September, Doru Neamtu was peacefully passing out Christian tracts in front of the post office in Tempe, Arizona, when a police officer accused him of "Aggressive Solicitation." His constitutional rights were further violated when the police officer arrested him on a bogus “Failure to Provide Identification” charge.

After Liberty Counsel intervened, this month the Tempe City Court dismissed the outrageous charges against evangelist Neamtu.

We defended Doru, the son of a Romanian pastor who was also jailed for sharing the gospel in their native land. Who could have imagined that what happened to the father in Communist Romania could also happen to the son here in “the land of liberty”?

Yet, that is what it has come to in an America that seems to have forgotten what it is to be a “shining city set upon a hill.” May God help us!

++Christians must now pay to kill others’ unwanted children.

Encouraged by Barack Obamas’ radical advocacy for abortion, Americans have been forced to fund a “Hitler-like killing machine” through the hundreds of millions of federal taxpayer dollars given to Planned Parenthood each year, and now a direct payment-per-month through ObamaCare’s heinous “abortion mandate.”

At a time of exploding government borrowing and debt, as states slash spending to get their own fiscal houses in order, it is outlandish that the federal government would give Planned Parenthood, the largest participant in America’s abortion industry, $542 million last year alone.

Liberty Counsel has been a leading advocate of defunding Planned Parenthood – and we will continue working hard to lawfully stop the public funding of their abortion mills.

++Obamacare and the HHS mandates must not stand!

As I’m sure you know, Liberty Counsel has the most comprehensive lawsuit in the nation to rid the country of the scourge of ObamaCare.

We are in intense preparation for our upcoming appearance before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, and have an excellent chance of getting the President’s healthcare “reform” law declared unconstitutional. Among other crucial aspects of Obamacare, we will be directly confronting provisions that force employers to pay for abortifacients, regardless of the firm’s standards, beliefs, or principles.

Please mark these dates on your prayer calendar: February 27 and May 14-17, 2013. These days may well signal the beginning of the end of ObamaCare as our case heads back to the Fourth Circuit and eventually the United States Supreme Court.

++Liberty Counsel can’t win these cases without your help!

Priscilla, please let me encourage you to make a special month-end gift to help cover the cost of Liberty Counsel’s extensive litigation work.

What I’ve shared with you today is just a small portion of the legal work that we performed in January 2013. The majority of our cases are actually settled out of court – about 95% of the time in most years – but still require my team to do the necessary work to achieve a non-litigated victory for our clients.

Right now, our litigation docket is full of crucially important cases. We need your help now more than ever! Please click here to give a substantial gift to help Liberty Counsel win these battles:

http://www.libertyaction.org/7082/offer.asp

Liberty Counsel is committed to advancing life, liberty and family, and we have certainly been called upon to do that in this first month of 2013. And the fact that this month marks the beginning of the Obama administration’s second term has added a certain urgency to our vital work of defending the Constitution!

Please, give a special gift today and stand with us as we take on the leftist organizations and individuals who want nothing more than to squash our inalienable rights as Americans. Every gift – whether large or small – helps us move forward:

Thank you in advance and may God richly bless you!

Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman

Liberty Counsel

P.S. Again, please mark these dates on your prayer calendar: February 27 and May 14-17, 2013. Those are crucially important dates for our case against ObamaCare and for the future of America!

For information on the multi-faceted work in which the Liberty Counsel family of ministries engages – or to make comments – please visit our new website: www.libertycounsel.com.

Liberty Counsel, with offices in Florida, Virginia and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit litigation, education and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and family. Liberty Counsel . PO Box 540774 . Orlando, FL 32854 .800-671-1776