Tag: wyoming
'More Than A Little Stupid': Republicans Try To Kill Renewable Energy

'More Than A Little Stupid': Republicans Try To Kill Renewable Energy

Wyoming is the second windiest state, after Nebraska. It's obvious why the wind power industry is investing $10 billion there. And it's hard to see why any state politician would oppose this. But some have. Wyoming is one of those fossil-fuel producing states in which so-called conservatives feel obligated — or are paid — to stop competition from clean energy. Texas is another.

Wyoming State Sen. Larry Hicks proposed a temporary ban on renewable energy projects. "It does one thing: puts a moratorium on wind and solar for the next five years," he said. "It's a simple little bill."

A "simple," five-year plan? How do you say, "Aw, shucks" in Russian?

Hicks swiftly diverted blame to California: "Our friends on the 'left coast' with their renewable portfolio demands, eliminating fossil fuels and moving in a direction that's unsustainable."

We can't untie this knot of confused ideology. But let's point out that renewable energy is the only kind of energy that is, by definition, sustainable. Wyoming may have coal, oil and gas. But it has wind forever.

This hostility toward wind power is even weirder in Texas. Texas harvests more electricity from wind than any other state, or nearly 28 percent of all wind-generated electricity in the U.S. In one recent week, nearly half of Texas's electricity came from solar and wind power.

The key for these renewables is batteries that can store power when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. Texas has been crowned "ground zero" for a U.S. battery boom. Last year it switched on more power stored in batteries than California did.

Texas was expected to double its storage capacity this year — that is, until Donald Trump slapped huge tariffs on China. More than two-thirds of imported batteries come from China.

In March, the Texas Senate passed a mandate that half of all new power capacity come from sources other than battery storage. In other words, at least 50 percent of all new power plant capacity had to be produced from coal, natural gas, and oil. (The natural gas industry needed propping.)

Back in Wyoming, lawmakers wedded to fossil fuels are complaining that large wind and solar projects are fundamentally changing the look of Wyoming's wide-open spaces. That's ignoring the aesthetics of Wyoming's coal pits, wide open craters that stretch for miles.

Wyoming is over 63 times the size of Rhode Island, with less than half the population of the Ocean State. There are dozens of wind turbines in Rhode Island, onshore and off. More are planned with minimal complaint. Wyoming could easily accommodate new wind projects under its big sky.

There does exist public support for clean energy in Wyoming, which is why Hicks' initiative failed. Gov. Mark Gordon tried to bridge the differences by endorsing an "all of the above energy strategy." He wants to keep Wyoming as "the energy state" but also to address climate change by developing clean renewables.

The far-right Freedom Caucus went after Gordon for acknowledging climate change. It introduced a bill designed to stop the state from pursuing any carbon reduction targets and titled it "Make Carbon Dioxide Great Again."

A pragmatic Republican, Gordon called such proposals as "a little bit stupid."

The bottom line is that Wyoming continues to develop wind energy projects. The Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project, now under construction near Rawlins, will be the nation's largest wind farm.

Much of what happens from here on in depends on Washington. The recently passed House bill strips away subsidies for renewables. How it fares in the Senate remains to be seen. Suffice it to say, slowing America's move to cleaner and also cheaper energy is more than a little bit stupid.

Froma Harrop is an award-winning journalist who covers politics, economics, and culture.She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Donald Trump: America’s Sore Loser

Donald Trump: America’s Sore Loser

Donald Trump is not here to make friends.

Following a devastating defeat this weekend in Colorado’s state convention, in which Cruz won all 34 delegates, Trump immediately lashed out at the state’s voting procedures on Fox and Friends. According to Trump, “people out there are going crazy, in the Denver area and Colorado itself, and they’re going absolutely crazy because they weren’t given a vote. This was given by politicians — it’s a crooked deal.”

Trump failed to mention, of course, that his team handed out flyers at the Colorado convention that were filled with mistakes, including listing incorrect ballot numbers for key delegates. Still, details like this don’t seem to matter.

Donald just wants you to know that it’s not his fault.

After the Louisiana primary in March, in which Trump narrowly won the popular vote, but ended up getting the same number of delegates as Cruz, Trump cried foul. Tactfully claiming that Cruz got his “ass kicked,” he ranted about a “very sick system” to thousands. Manafort, Trump’s new de facto campaign manager, accused Cruz of using “Gestapo tactics” to siphon delegates away from the frontrunner in multiple races.

At this point in the primary season, Trump’s platform is one big complaint. Last week, he tweeted “Isn’t it a shame that the person who will have by far the most delegates and many millions more votes than anyone else, me, still must fight.” He’s recently mentioned Bernie Sanders’s against-the-odds delegate tie with Hillary Clinton in Wyoming on Saturday, saying they were both “ripped off” by their respective party establishments.

Shortly after the announcement of Cruz’s clean sweep in Colorado, a few of Trump’s supporters there posted videos of themselves on social media burning, apparently, their Republican registrations.

“I’ve been a Republican all my life, but I will never be a Republican again,” said one form-burner. “Goodbye, GOP. I will not be forced to vote for somebody that I don’t want to.”

With each setback, Trump desperately clings to the role of the noble victim, or else he knows he will quickly become another one of the “losers” he’s always mentioning.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

States Use Cameras To Crack Down On School Bus Scofflaws

States Use Cameras To Crack Down On School Bus Scofflaws

By Jenni Bergal, Stateline.org (TNS)

MaKayla Marie Strahle was only 11 when she stepped off a school bus, started to cross the road and was struck and killed by a pickup truck in west central Wyoming just days before Christmas 2011. The driver, who had ignored the stopped school bus’ flashing lights, was later convicted of three misdemeanor charges, including homicide by vehicle.

MaKayla’s death sparked calls for change, and spurred the legislature to take action. Last year, Wyoming became the first state in the nation to mandate that every public school bus have cameras attached to catch drivers who illegally pass.

“It’s quite a different approach,” said Douglas Shinkle, a transportation policy expert for the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). “Wyoming has taken a pretty big step requiring this statewide, and appropriating the money to do so.”

While Wyoming is out front, a number of states have enacted measures that would allow the use of cameras to target the dangerous action of “fly-bys” or “pass-bys” by scofflaw drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses.

At least 12 other states — Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia — have laws that authorize the use of cameras on the outside of buses to catch fly-by drivers, according to the NCSL. And at least seven states, including New Jersey, New York, and Tennessee, are considering bills this year that deal with school bus monitoring cameras. They range from providing grants to school districts to buy and install the equipment to authorizing that the cameras be allowed statewide.

Two other states, Virginia and Indiana, took up school bus camera bills this session though neither passed.

Republican state Representative Edmond Soliday, who authored the Indiana bill, said it received overwhelming support in committee and from the public, but he withdrew it after some of his colleagues expressed strong opposition, citing privacy concerns.

“When it comes to legislation like this, you have to have patience,” said Soliday, who chairs the House Roads and Transportation committee.

Soliday said this was the third attempt (and his second) to pass a bill in Indiana authorizing outside school bus cameras. But in some states, he said, it has taken several years to get this type of law enacted. “We’ll try it again, if we have the votes,” he said. “Perseverance is the only path to victory.”
___
ILLEGAL PASSING

Nearly half a million school buses are on the road every day in the U.S.

State laws typically require motorists from either direction to stay stopped if a school bus’ flashing red lights are deployed and its stop signal arm is extended, unless it’s at a divided highway or there’s a barrier. In that case, cars may be allowed to travel in the opposite direction of the bus.

But some drivers who are impatient about waiting for students to board or exit choose to ignore the warning signals and zoom around the bus. In many states, they face hefty fines for doing that — if they’re caught.

A 2014 survey by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS) of more than 97,000 school bus drivers in 29 states found that an estimated 76,000 vehicles illegally passed buses on any given day.

“When children are getting on and off buses in the loading zone, that’s when they’re the most vulnerable,” said Charlie Hood, the association’s executive director.

Between 2001 and 2013, nearly a dozen children between the ages of six and seventeen died in school bus-related crashes involving another driver charged with illegally passing the bus, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Hood said states have adopted a variety of measures to tackle the problem of fly-bys, such as improving motorist education, hiking penalties, and beefing up law enforcement, including mounting cameras on both sides of buses.

“It’s a very complex problem. Cameras can definitely help,” Hood said. “We think they have a deterrent effect. They certainly have an educational effect. It’s one tool in the safety arsenal.”

School transportation officials say that bus cameras shouldn’t be compared to red light and speed cameras, which a number of cities and states have jettisoned recently after drivers complained of stiff fines, and controversy erupted over the reliability of the equipment, enforcement, and the amount of money paid to vendors.

Many state legislators have a different attitude when it comes to using cameras for pedestrian student safety.

“These bills authorizing school bus cameras are much more targeted and they continue to pass year after year,” said NCSL’s Shinkle. “Overall, the cultural tolerance for illegally passing a school bus is about as low as it gets. I think that you can find a lot of bipartisan agreement on protecting children.”
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WYOMING’S LAW

In Wyoming, which does not use red light or speed cameras, members of both parties supported the school bus cameras, said Republican state Senator Hank Coe, who chairs the Senate Education Committee.

Coe said the state’s joint House and Senate education committee sponsored the school bus camera legislation in large part because of MaKayla Strahle’s death.

“I think it had an effect on the legislators,” Coe said. “There are lots of complaints about cars just blowing by school buses every year. Even in a small, rural state like Wyoming, it’s a big issue.”

Many legislators did oppose the bill, calling it another form of government intrusion or saying that drivers’ privacy would be violated by the video recordings — arguments that have been used in other states to defeat legislation allowing outside cameras on school buses.

“I had major concerns about this bill,” said former Republican state Representative Matt Greene, who voted against the legislation. “We were not only allowing, but we were requiring spying on Wyomingites by passing this. Big Brother is watching.”

But the measure ultimately passed, and the legislature agreed to provide up to five million dollar to reimburse school districts 100 percent of the cost of installing cameras on the state’s fleet of 1,511 buses.

“When you put the cameras on there, if a car does drive by, it’s recorded and the license plate is recorded and charges can be pursued by law enforcement. It’s a pretty important deal,” Coe said. “This makes the public more aware that if they blow by a school bus, they’ve got a good chance of getting caught.”

While the mandate requiring outside cameras technically doesn’t become effective until the 2016-17 school year, some districts have already used the state funds to install equipment on their buses, said David Koskelowski, the Wyoming Department of Education’s program manager for traffic safety and pupil transportation.

Koskelowski said the cameras photograph the vehicle model, color, and front or back license plate. The bus driver then calls in the incident on the radio or marks it on the video, which contains the date, time, and GPS location. A supervisor then makes a copy of the video and contacts police, who can review it and decide whether to pursue the case and issue a citation.

But it’s left to police agencies and prosecutors in each county to decide whether video evidence is acceptable as the sole standard to determine whether a driver illegally passed a school bus.

Koskelowski said that in some school districts, police don’t come and get the video, so nothing happens. That’s because they believe that unless the driver is positively identified, a citation can’t be issued.

“We’re working to build those relationships with law enforcement to pursue these cases,” Koskelowski said. “We can’t get 100 percent positive facial recognition on every video. It’s unrealistic to expect that.”

Photo: Jay Cross via Flickr

A Natural Bridge To Nowhere But Beauty

A Natural Bridge To Nowhere But Beauty

The United States has some of the most glorious natural formations in the world, and some of those are the bridges and arches formed over millions of years by the forces of water, wind, and the earth’s uplift. CNN takes us to 15 of the world’s best, many of which are right here in the lower 48 in Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, California, and Virginia.

But just what is the difference between and arch and a bridge?  “The Natural Arch and Bridge Society, whose Indiana Jones-like members go hunting for these rock formations around the world, makes this distinction: A natural arch is made of rock, with a hole formed by natural forces, they say. A natural bridge is a type of arch, where water is the natural force making the hole.”

And yes, all the erosion that went into forming these natural wonders will someday result in their destruction.  But right now just go and enjoy them.

Photo: Wikimedia

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