DOWNSIDE OF SOLAR ENERGY

Lovell’s old Town Hall was packed, standing room only. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived but energy permeated the room. If any present supported the proposed location of 170,000 solar panels in rural Lovell, Maine by Walden Renewables LLC, they were silent. Five people representing the company were the only ones to utter anything positive, but then they were paid to do that. No one spoke in favor. 

From the Portland Press Herald

No one spoke against solar energy either. Rather, they objected to where Walden Renewables wanted to put row after row of their big, ugly, black panels. In the 100 square miles of Lovell, the company chose a venue that would ruin one of the nicest mountain views in our picturesque town. One hundred eighty acres of carbon-consuming trees would be clearcut and replaced with 170,000 solar panels, ostensibly to mitigate climate change.  It would also mar the vista along Christian Hill Road where I happen to live. The photo above depicts only 30,000 panels. The one proposed for Lovell would be five or six times that.

My backyard - Solar panels would fill the hillside below the mountains

It was gratifying to hear how many people describe how beautiful the views are from Christian Hill — how when traveling north or south through Lovell, they choose to drive our road instead of Route 5, the main north/south thoroughfare through town. It’s a slower, less-direct path but more scenic and relaxing. That path would also would take one over Hatch’s Hill, which is part of the old “‘Scoggin Trail,” an ancient north/south path used for centuries by the Pequawket Indians to go from the Saco River Valley to the Androscoggin River Valley. The views from Hatch’s Hill have not been tended and are being gradually obscured by vegetative growth.

Looking at 180 acres of hillside covered by 170,000 solar panels would render the viewer an entirely different feeling than what it would replace — hillsides of forest that change with the seasons and with the time of day. Walden Renewables tries hard to balance that with hollow verbiage about forestalling global warming and providing clean energy, but it doesn’t wash. Aside from the visual ugliness there are other issues. An acquaintance recently sent this along:

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium-diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Posting the above paragraph in a web search produced several links. Typical was a link called: “Debunking the debunkers/Andrew Tobias” in which Tobias contended that some of the article from which the paragraph came contained errors. The errors he cited, however, were minor and he was forced to let most of the article’s claims stand on their own merit.

All 170,000 solar panels Walden Renewables would erect here would be made in China, America’s biggest enemy. Although Walden promises to fund the decommissioning of their panels after they’re obsolete in 20-30 years, what happens of they go bankrupt in the meantime? Would the landowners who leased their land to Walden be stuck with them? Would the Town of Lovell be? Would China take them back? Fat chance. According to an article in Discover Magazine: “It often costs companies more to recycle a solar panel than to produce a solar panel.”

Particularly grating on me is that I’m involuntarily paying for the solar panels that Walden would install to destroy my view. The solar industry is heavily subsidized by state and federal tax credits, tax exemptions, sales tax exemptions, rebates, and grants. Do you pay taxes? Then your money goes into these things whether you like it or not. If it didn’t, Walden Renewables wouldn’t exist. Without taxpayer subsidies, solar arrays like this wouldn’t be viable business ventures.

People testifying at the Lovell Planning Board meeting overwhelmingly said they were blindsided by this project. Many, including me, were angry about that. When a moratorium was called for to give citizens more time to consider the 600-page application however, the board voted 3-2 against recommending the moratorium — not on its merits, but because the board lacks legal counsel at this time. Citizens in opposition to the siting of the solar project are afraid the Planning Board will vote to accept the 600-page application and thereby commit itself to a specific timetable for acting on it.

Lovell citizens felt blindsided by this huge, Walden Renewables application and declared they need much more time to consider it. Commensurately, Lovell’s Planning Board seemed taken aback by the vociferous citizen reaction. Now we'll have to see what they do at their next meeting January 5th.

GOVERNMENT DRIVES UP COST OF COLLEGE

Having worked very hard to put myself through college and then taking out loans to help my wife and children do the same, and then working many years to pay them off, I surely do not want to pay on other people’s loans as well. If Democrats follow through with their promises to “forgive” $1.5 trillion in student debt, I’ll be very pissed — and I won’t be alone.

A WWII vet I knew told me he could work his way through the University of Iowa just by working summers. His summer jobs paid all his tuition, books, and fees just prior to Pearl Harbor — and then he joined the Army Air Corps as an officer. Then he finished graduate school on the GI Bill and finally retired as a Professor of English at Boston University.

I too was able to pay my own way through college by working. My parents couldn’t afford to help me other than letting me live with them through my first year. After that I was on my own. I worked summers and also after school during the year, so it was harder for me than for my WWII friend. While my fellow students lived in frat houses and dorms, did sports and partied, I paid rent for a tenement apartment and worked full-time. Thus I finished undergraduate and graduate school with no debt.

By the time my own children were going to college, it had gotten more expensive. For many years I was writing checks for two daughters and my wife to earn degrees. I told the kids I could pay them what it cost for tuition, books, and fees at a state university in Maine but if they wanted to go somewhere else, they had to make up the difference. I worked three jobs; they all worked too, but it still wasn’t enough. I had to take out loans and so did they. 

For years after they had all finished I was still making payments — my last one about fifteen years ago I think. One daughter still has payments but then she chose to attend college out west. So, why have college costs gone up so much since my WWII friend and I went? Because they could. And why could they? Because government started “helping.” That began with Sputnik in 1957 when our federal government panicked and started lending money to promising STEM students to help Americans catch up to Soviet scientists. That program paid off all around, but subsequent student aid programs are what really drove up costs.

Those programs started in 1965 with the Higher Education Act. Other subsidies too numerous to mention piled on from there. Before government got involved, college tuition had remained fairly stable for decades. Ordinary people could work their way through as I did, but when virtually every student could get federally subsidized loans, colleges could get away with jacking up tuition and fees. In competition with each other to attract students, they added expensive frills unrelated to learning. In the fifty years between 1969 to 2019, the price of a college education in America went up over 3000%! Why? Because it could.

Maine is among the poorest states, usually competing with Alabama or Mississippi for the lowest per capita income in the country, yet the median salary for college president in Maine is almost $300,000 a year. When Senator Elizabeth Warren of neighboring Massachusetts ran for president, she complained about college costs, yet she made over $400,000 for teaching part-time at Harvard. Some claim she taught only one class, but her apologists like those at Politifact say: “[University] salaries are determined principally by research output and associated reputation, rather than the number of students the professor teaches,” and “she taught two classes, not one.”

While numbers for teaching staff have remained fairly stable over the past forty years, the number of university administrators has skyrocketed. So have their salaries — especially “diversity coordinators” who average over $103,000. There were no “diversity coordinators” when I went to college, but they’re everywhere now. The University of Michigan alone has nearly 100 working full time and one has a salary higher than President Biden’s.

With Covid 19 restrictions over the past year, few students actually attend classes, yet tuition charges have not gone down. I suspect salaries haven’t either. Academic rigor, however, has certainly been reduced from its already declining pre-Covid levels. As college costs have increased astronomically during my lifetime, academic standards has declined precipitously. As we pay more and get less, students, their parents, and taxpayers are suspecting college isn’t worth the cost anymore.

With the exception of STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering & Math] programs, and perhaps law school, many conclude that it isn’t. Government should consider eliminating grants and loans to students who want to study anything else — and never even think about forgiving loans already made.

INDOCTRINATING OUR TEACHERS

There’s a movement in public schools across the country from Maine to California which purports to improve race relations. To this retired teacher, however, it’s more likely to make them worse.

A week ago the Washington Free Beacon reported: “The San Diego Unified School District required teachers to attend a ‘white privilege’ training session in which they had to say they were racist and ‘confront' their privilege.” And it’s not just in California that teachers are being instructed like this. Similar things are happening right here in Maine. “Diversity Trainers” from several places across the country are becoming millionaires as they collect enormous fees for telling teachers they’re racists and “You [teachers] are upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies.”

The Free Beacon article didn’t say whether any teachers objected. Nowhere could I find reports that any San Diego teachers spoke up in opposition to this “training.” I certainly would have spoken up. When I was subjected to previous politically-correct “in-service training” regimens and the presenter asked: “Are there any comments or questions?” I always had some — and I was always the only one. Public school teachers are not what anyone would call courageous. Never was a I forced to say I was racist though, because the “training” hadn’t regressed to that point ten years ago. It has now.

A typical response to today’s inservice indoctrination would be this one from North Carolina teacher Laurie Calvert who said: “I was a racist teacher and I didn’t even know it.” I did multiple searches looking for “teachers object to anti-racist training,” and all I got were hits from teachers who endorsed the brainwashing and self-flagellated the way Laurie Calvert did in 2017.

Ever since the George Floyd video went viral, however, this brand of “diversity training” has become a big money-maker for “Diversity Trainers.” According to a November report in Realclearinvestigations:

“The nation's K-12 schools have been incrementally adopting multiculturalism and ethnic studies for decades, but such courses have been the exception rather than the rule. This summer’s Black Lives Matter protests have sparked new level of commitment, a newfound urgency, and a new trend: anti-racist pedagogy.”

Here in Maine, SAD 51 Superintendent Jeff Porter attended a diversity session run by Boston-based Community Change, Inc. which is another money-making “diversity training” institution where Maine resident Shay Stewart-Bouley works as executive director. Superintendent Porter had attended one of her workshops, was troubled by the rhetoric at first, but then thought it was wonderful and wanted all his teachers to take it He budgeted $30,000 to pay Steward-Bouley’s organization, until there was a community backlash last June.

The fallout began when the Cumberland/North Yarmouth district’s “Equity Committee” sent out a statement to the community last June. It read, in part:

“As a majority white school district, we stand in solidarity with Black Movement leaders… In a culture that continually reinforces white supremacy, justice can only be achieved when we confront and repair the anti-Blackness woven through every aspect of society—in our homes, schools, workplaces, communities, places of worship, and government… We cannot move forward until we reconcile the intentional barriers white people have built to harm black people… Black people experience violence every single day because of our white supremacist society….We will work to assess our curriculum, educate our community within and outside of our school campus, dismantle the anti-Blackness all of us have internalized by living in a society built on white supremacy, and provide tools to interrupt anti-Black racism.”

On her Facebook page called: “Black Girl In Maine,” Steward-Bouley declares: “Racism is not just about personal feelings; it is woven into the fabric of this nation,” and “White women benefit from the status quo… Change would require burning down that system and building a new one — one where [white women] and their children might lose the shared superiority and protection they get by being attached to powerful White men.” Steward Bouley claims her movement is world wide and “Wherever there are Black people, there is a fight.”

She capitalizes White and Black and that’s clearly how she sees the human race: Whites are racists and Blacks are victims. That’s quite different from Martin Luther King’s dream of not judging people by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. It’s also pretty clear why some SAD 51 taxpayers objected to paying Steward-Bouley tens of thousands to “train” their teachers. They don’t want students trained to believe themselves racist if they were born white.

According to a November 23rd Portland Press Herald article, the SAD 51 School Board has decided to drop Steward-Bouley’s organization, Community Change, Inc. and will instead hire the University of Southern Maine for its “equity work.” To that, Steward-Bouley said: “I am entitled to my own opinions that I can share on my personal social media.”

True enough, Ms. Steward-Bouley, but you shouldn’t be “training” teachers.

WILL IT HAPPEN AGAIN?

Regular readers of this column know where I’ll be putting my X on November 3rd. Four years ago, however, I was wasn’t thrilled about voting for Donald Trump. His personality was repulsive. His gratuitous insults were off-putting. It didn’t bother me, however, that he called his final opponent “Crooked Hillary,” because she was crooked. During one of their debates, Hillary said it was a good thing we didn’t have Donald Trump in charge of the law in our country.

“Because you’d be in jail,” said Trump. His timing was exquisite and I was thinking, “Who is this guy?” I could have kissed him.

It bothered me, however, that he had badly trashed his fellow Republican candidates in the primaries. Most of them were decent people and didn’t deserve it. During the ensuing campaign against Crooked Hillary, I agreed with nearly everything Trump said he would do, but doubted he would follow through. Politicians all make promises… you know the rest. Meanwhile, the Democrat media — and that’s just about all of it — gave him enormous attention. Trump charged up their viewership because no one who talked like he did had ever become the nominee of a major political party.

If mainstream media knew then how much they were helping his election chances with the exposure they gave him, they never would have done it. Against all odds, he won, making fools of media pundits. Hillary lost and “charitable” contributions to the Clinton Foundation dried up immediately. Liberals were in shock. They cried openly. Me? I found myself cheering, and that surprised me. I had to sit down and think about why I was so happy. Part of it was the shock on the faces of smug mainstream media pundits. They didn’t know what to say. They never saw it coming. Neither did I actually, but I liked it.

The day after Trump won, Democrats and their media allies began plotting to reverse the election and overthrow Trump, by hook or by crook and mostly the latter. Obama was still in office, so he and his lackeys in the intelligence agencies continued what Crooked Hillary was doing — working with Russians to smear Trump. They used the Steele Dossier which was bought and paid for by the Clinton Campaign and the Democrat National Committee and tried to convince us all that Trump was a Russian asset.

Trouble is, they had no evidence. Nothing in the Steele Dossier was true, but that didn’t stop them. Trump haters in the deep state conspired to appoint a special prosecutor to dig up evidence.  There was none to dig up, but it took Robert Meuller and his huge staff two years and over $30 million before he was forced to admit it. They lied; they spied, and Trump was still standing. After Democrats won control of the House in 2018, they impeached him for a phone call he made to Ukraine about Biden family shenanigans, but he was found not guilty in the Senate.

Then, ironically, Hunter Biden left a laptop with a computer repairman in Delaware and forgot to pick it up. On it are emails indicating that both Hunter Biden and his father, Joe, were indeed involved in shenanigans with Ukraine — and elsewhere. Also on it are videos allegedly showing Hunter Biden having sex with minors. A further irony is that, four years ago, Anthony Weiner’s laptop fell into the hands of the NYPD pursuant to their investigation into Weiner exposing himself to underage girls online. Also on it were over 30,000 of Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump remains in need of a personality transplant — but he has followed through on his campaign promises. I don’t have to like him, but I am going to vote for him without misgivings. Why? I’ll quote a nameless young lady whose video explaining that in less than a minute was posted on Gateway Pundit here. A partial transcript follows:

Here she is

“If you are liberal and can’t stand Trump and can’t possibly fathom why anyone would vote for him, let me fill you in.  We can’t stand you.  You’ve done everything in your power by trying to destroy this country by tearing down our police, our borders, our history, systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into thinking socialism is the answer to everything. Demonizing religion and faith and glorifying abortion, violence and thug culture.  And calling us racists… We are voting for Trump because of you!”

Maybe it sums up why you too vote for Donald Trump. If he’s reelected, I’ll enjoy watching mainstream media pundits go nuts again, but I’m afraid of what their followers will do in the streets. Meanwhile, those pundits are trying to blame Russia for the Hunter Biden laptop scandal they're trying desperately to contain. Will it work?

THE MAINE DIVISIONS

There are more “Impeach Mills” signs visible on Route 302 as I leave Oxford County, Maine and travel through Bridgton in northern Cumberland County. Every week I pass through on my way to South Portland where I  encounter no such political sentiments. Left-wing Democrat Janet Mills has been our governor here in Maine for the past year and a half. They love her around the leftist bastion of Greater Portland, but folks out in the hinterland of Oxford County and northern border region of Cumberland County have had enough and are obviously plotting her demise.

Also visible in rural Maine are “Bring Back [former governor] LePage!” signs and other evidence of left/right political polarization. In Greater Portland one sees lots of “Black Lives Matter” signs on the roadsides, on buildings, bumper stickers, and elsewhere. Also common are professionally-made lawn signs with multiple messages which would, taken together, convey coded progressive political sentiments.

For example, a very common lawn sign in Cape Elizabeth, Maine has: “WE BELIEVE” at the top followed by seven lines, each of different font size and color. One proclaims: “BLACK LIVES MATTER” followed by: “NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL” which would seem to be a paean to open borders. Next comes: “LOVE IS LOVE” in lavender font which probably is a pro-gay, LGBT slogan. After that is: “WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS” which, given that abortion is most prominent in a list of women’s rights proclaimed by feminists, could transmit a pro-abortion sentiment.

Then comes: “SCIENCE IS REAL” which likely pertains to the controversial, progressive claim that 99% of scientists believe in anthropomorphic climate change. Following that comes: “WATER IS LIFE” but I’m not sure what progressive cause to which that might pertain. Last comes: “INJUSTICE ANYWHERE IS A THREAT TO JUSTICE EVERYWHERE.” Not sure of that one either, except maybe a belief that every injustice can be eliminated by a big government — with a resultant utopia.

Further along Route 302 another, anti-Governor Mills sign proclaims: “HEY JANET, IT’S A GOVERNORSHIP, NOT A DICTATORSHIP; OPEN MAINE NOW!” Which would pertain to her restrictive economic shutdown over the Covid virus. Another sign nearby says: “EVERY BUSINESS IS ESSENTIAL; END THE SHUTDOWN NOW! Near that sign, another says: “HOW MAINE SPELLS IDIOT: J-A-N-E-T  M-I-L-L-S”

Maine is very blue, along with every other New England state and so is adjoining New York state, but within each of those states is a divide between urban areas and rural areas. Each is a microcosm of the entire United States within which exists a similar dichotomy. Urban coastal areas of America are overwhelmingly leftist, while the rural interior is mostly conservative. Red/Green political maps of our country have reflected this for several presidential-election cycles.

 Jameesa and Bryan Oakley of Portland, Oregon

The progressive signs described above contain the logo of a Portland, Oregon company called https://www.signsofjustice.com. Visiting it, I saw they also made many of the individual “BLACK LIVES MATTER” lawn signs, bumper stickers, and T-shirts so visible around Greater Portland, Maine. The biracial couple who established the Oregon company states:

“Like many others on election night 2016, our family was left in shock and disbelief. How could a man who campaigned on hate become President of the United States?  What would this mean for our values of love, decency and inclusion? How could we rise above the oppression and make an impact?”

Another barometer of Maine’s political divide might be mask-wearing. It’s relatively rare in Oxford County, but ubiquitous in the greater Portland area, even on beaches. Last week, Governor Mills ordered business owners in Cumberland, York, and Androscoggin counties to enforce mask-wearing in their establishments. All employees and patrons sport masks, but several have pulled them down to their chins inside the store.

To deal with uncooperative Maine citizens like these, Governor Mills put up a tattletale web site for other Mainers to turn them in. Should you wish to do so, go here: https://appengine.egov.com/apps/me/non-compliance. It’s titled: “Reporting on Alleged Non-Compliance with Executive Orders,” and further states: “If you wish to report a potential situation of non-compliance to the guidance relating to COVID-19, you may report those details using this form. The information will be reviewed by appropriate agency or agencies and responded to as needed.”

Rural Mainers see that as Orwellian and wonder: what’s next?

POINTLESS CMP CORRIDOR REFERENDUM

“The End Is Near!” was a recurring theme in the old Mad Magazine which ceased publishing last summer after a 67-year run. As a kid I read it religiously and was surprised it stayed around that long as I hadn’t seen a copy for decades. Turning pages of each new edition in the fifties and sixties, I’d see caricature variations of a gray-bearded man in a robe carrying a sign warning of impending apocalypse. MAD satirized everything; it was totally unserious and that appealed to me.

Some of that unseriousness is still in me, especially when hearing leftist Democrats preach variations of their “The End Is Near” rhetoric. They’ve long sermonized about doom from “global warming” or “climate change” during which the polar ice caps and alpine glaciers will ostensibly melt, flood the oceans, and kill millions unless we “Repent Now!” by abandoning fossil fuels, buying carbon credits, and totally switching over to windmills and solar panels.

Used to be they included hydroelectricity in their “clean energy” pantheon, but it seems to have fallen from grace. Nearly everywhere I’m seeing “NO CMP CORRIDOR” lawn signs after a referendum campaign put the question on Maine’s November ballot. Central Maine Power has plans to construct a powerline in western Maine to carry electricity from Hydro Quebec to Massachusetts.

Twice I’ve questioned champions of this movement about their reasons for opposing the line. Their biggest arguments were that, one: it would be unsightly, and two: it would cut trees along its route from the Canadian border to southern Maine. “What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Well, trees absorb carbon dioxide and help prevent climate change,” was their answer.

I should disclose here that I’m not a believer in human-caused climate change and have written numerous columns over the years refuting it. When discussing the corridor issue, however, I didn’t proselytize; I just tried to understand the opposition. I’ve read the literature on their web sites like: https://www.nocmpcorridor.com and others and I’m still confused. The New England region needs more electricity and no combinations of solar panels and windmills can produce enough no matter how heavily they’re subsidized.

But this column isn’t about the deficiencies of “renewable energy.” It’s about trying to make sense of leftist/environmentalist opposition to hydroelectricity from Quebec. If they’re so worried about carbon emissions and global warming, what sense does it make to oppose hydroelectricity which doesn’t emit carbon? Yes, some trees would be cut down in a corridor for a new powerline, but other green things will grow there. Look at older power line corridors all over the landscape. There’s plenty of growth under the lines and it absorbs carbon too. 

Go to nocmpcorridor.com and look at the arguments; they’re the weakest I’ve ever seen in a political campaign:

“A 53 mile corridor the width of the New Jersey Turnpike would cut through western Maine, crossing some of the country's last native brook trout habitat, fragile wetlands, deer yards and ruining pristine scenic views,” it claims. Trout streams are not endangered. Neither are deer yards, or fragile wetlands. I concede that views would be compromised, but that’s it.

“Countless jobs in the biomass industry and related forest products industries would be put in jeopardy” the site claims. Really? How?

“Tourism is the number one industry in Maine, and this corridor will jeopardize those jobs,” it says. Really? Seasonal homes need electricity. So do campgrounds, hotels, restaurants, and just about all other tourist infrastructure. How, exactly, will a power line jeopardize those jobs? I can’t imagine.

The only plausible reason leftist/environmentalist groups oppose the CMP corridor is hinted at: “This corridor would jeopardize Maine’s renewable energy sector, which could lose hundreds of millions of dollars over the next fifteen years as a direct result of this project.” I guess they’re afraid that lots of clean electricity coming down from Canada would negate any need for additional “renewable sources” and, hence, the need for further taxpayer subsidies of their cherished wind and solar projects.

Wind and solar industries can’t survive without taxpayer subsidies because they cost more than they deliver and don’t produce energy on calm, cloudy days. To this writer, it looks like the NO CMP CORRIDOR movement is mostly afraid of losing its continued access to the government teat.

The whole campaign is tailor-made for a MAD Magazine spoof. Too bad it’s not around anymore.

ADDENDUM: Maine’s CMP Corridor was proposed after the “Northern Pass” project was rejected in neighboring New Hampshire.