-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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The electric grid was established based on practicality and economics. Put windmills and solar farms where you may, but if it isn’t feasible to run a connection to it so what. This failure has Pritzker’s uninformed bullheaded thinking all over it. Some may say Pritzker lies all the time, but the truth of it is that he doesn’t really know anything other than bloviating and pandering for bailouts.
GREAT ANALOGY
Every once in a while, the Tribune still provides important information about a significant issue. It looks like Texas and California have found more effective ways to deal with this problem. (Of course the many other concerns with wind and solar aren’t treated here, but we already know about them.)
But I think the column is very incomplete and puts too much blame on PJM, which is facing an impossible morass. It’s a national problem and a fiasco, as we wrote earlier. https://wirepoints.org/with-no-introspection-but-statism-and-taxes-galore-illinois-journalism-task-force-delivers-its-report-wirepoints/. This will not be solved just by kicking PJM in the butt.
This is a massive scandal that is underreported. We’ve spent hundreds of billions building solar and wind projects but there is no way to hook them up. We wrote about this recently here: https://wirepoints.org/progressive-lawmakers-line-up-behind-costly-fix-for-error-they-made-in-renewable-energy-plan-wirepoints/. It will take perhaps trillions more to connect to the grid, and may not be possible at all.
This is a consistent feature of all progressive thinking. Scream about a problem, propose policies that will only make things worse, refuse to acknowledge failure, double down on the policies. Rinse and repeat.
There’s fraud at the macro level, and also fraud at the micro level too, from what I’ve seen, the incompetent, the fraudsters and straight up criminals have made the green energy business their preferred place to do business. yes, there are legitimate players in the green energy business, but there’s also a large number of bad actors throughout every level of the industry, from the top players, througout the investment sector and down to the residential installer who shows up at your door. It’s 100% buyer beware because everybody is looking to scam everybody.
Mark I have been involved in the power transformer business industry for 35 years.
The oil filled power transformers take on average 3 to 5 years to manufacture, depending on Kva size and options. This is only one part of the high voltage switchgear
Needed to interconnect with the grid.
The politicians don’t take this into
Account because it takes so long to
Manufacture, they like fast track projects.
They can’t speed this up for a variety of reasons and you are correct it may not
Be possible at all without jeopardizing the
Entire interconnected system.
Thank you. We will be writing again on this, so please feel free to share what you see. Robert Bryce is a respected voice on the transmission line problem and has done great work, such as here: https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/out-of-transmission-revisited