T. Boone Pickens’s Mighty Wind

Well, leaving Perot out of it, the "It's beginning to feel like 1992, and not just because economic woes are dominating the presidential campaign," could also be "It's beginning to feel like 2000." Why? We were having an energy crisis, the 2 1/2 year Bear market was not yet one year old, and we were entering a recession. Now, the great news here, is that, even if one does not like Pickens ideas, this makes for a powerful stepping stone for the country to, at long last, have a meaningful discussion of what we must do, immediately, for the short term and for the long term to address all of theses issues. Unfortunately, what we can count on here is for our national media to quickly put an end to any of this conversation, if they find it does not meet their own self serving agenda.

Well, leaving Perot out of it, the "It's beginning to feel like 1992, and not just because economic woes are dominating the presidential campaign," could also be "It's beginning to feel like 2000." Why? We were having an energy crisis, the 2 1/2 year Bear market was not yet one year old, and we were entering a recession. Now, the great news here, is that, even if one does not like Pickens ideas, this makes for a powerful stepping stone for the country to, at long last, have a meaningful discussion of what we must do, immediately, for the short term and for the long term to address all of theses issues. Unfortunately, what we can count on here is for our national media to quickly put an end to any of this conversation, if they find it does not meet their own self serving agenda.

Many Americans do not understand that drilling for more oil will not solve our immediate dependency of foreign oil problem from countries that hate us. Why can we not develop alternate green energy. Small countries such as France, germany, Begium, Holland, etc. are so much more advance than we are in green technology. Solar, wind turbines, and nuclearproduced in some of the countries produce up to 80 % of their energy needs. Brazil is 85% ethanol! The problem with the American mentality is that as soon as the oil prices go down again, people have a tendency of forgetting and purchase gas gussler vehicles again! it happened in the 1970's during the oil embargo!

The best thing that can happen is to keep the oil prices high in order to give the inventors an incentive to develop alternative energy. Finally, our government must get involved in giving out research grants and rewards to innovators on a crash program, like we did on the apollo project by landing a man on the moon in less than 10 years!

Wind generation is unsuitable for the modern power grid. One windmill will not reliably operate one home and 1,000 windmill farms will not reliably operate one home. Spinning reserves of 100% redundancy are required as back up . Inefficient natural gas turbines are employed for this purpose. These are jet engines connected to a generator. Overall grid reliability and efficiency decrease due to the presence of wind generation. The Texas power grid has experienced power shortages and rolling blackouts due to the unreliability of wind generation.

Thomas Boone Pickens has approached Texas state government officials for multiple sweetheart deals. His government wish list includes several billion dollars in rate subsidies, free transmission line enhancements and unfettered eminent domain privileges. He is attempting to monetize rapidly depleting water wells in desert regions of the state. Texans refer to these grandiose schemes as Boone-doggles.

In Las Vegas.. it is windy as hell... but putting up a wind turbine takes an act of congress because the city just doesnt want them... solar too is a never ending hassle taking more than a year to get approvals. Sure it's good... sure people want it... but the local governments make it impossible to do.
Richard Francis - N. Las Vegas Nevada

Do we really believe anything good can come from Texas, except music?

Okay, till more folks understand that electric cars are the easiest route corporate congloms bury year after year in order to keep the oil men happy we will keep (de-) barking up the dying tree. Hydrogen technology is a pie in some deluded eye. I dare you to watch "Who killed the electric car", for an easy history lesson. But I do beleive in wind farms.

The Pickens Plan has many "pluses" to it. It focuses on a single economic problem - reliance on foreign oil, and our need to reduce that reliance dramatically. By doing so we go a long way to solving trade deficit problems, creating new jobs domestically, and continuing U.S. economic growth.

The plan is not "perfect." No plan can be. But it is worth checking out, at www.pickensplan.com.

What is most intriguing about PickensPlan is that it may well signal the start of a grass roots effort to change public policy, as well as to influence businesses (big and small) to make investments in wind and other technologies. Not five years from now, but now. If Pickens does indeed build an "army" - it will be a tough one for politicians to ignore, especially in the first 100 days of the new administration's tenure.

It is easy to be critical of any plan. I encourage you to check out the plan, and the grassroots efforts it has inspired in other areas (biofuels, solar energy, conservation, etc.), at the www.pickensplan.com web site.

Natural Gas will never work. Have you SEEN the prices of natural gas? Freeing up 20% isn't going to solve anything, although it might help lower natural gas home heating prices. However, the plan COULD work IF we take the electricity produced by wind and solar and use that electricity with the process of electrolysis to generate HYDROGEN instead. Car companies aren't researching natural gas. But they're starting to release hydrogen fuel cell and even hydrogen internal combustion engines and the former is in the equivalent 80mpg range and the latter in the 40mpg range but the BEST part is you can EASILY generate hydrogen from electricity and water. So you can even get hydrogen from coal and nuclear. There are even fuel cells that will convert gasoline into hydrogen until the infrastructure changes! All you have to do is change the fuel cell to change the source of energy that goes to hydrogen.

So WHY IN THE WORLD is this T. Boone guy talking about using incredibly high priced and limited natural gas, which requires engine conversions that no one will use and we have no internal infrastructure for running on natural gas and more to the point, it's STILL a fossil fuel! Heck, we IMPORT natural gas just like oil now! Here's another solution. How about subsidizing the installation of modern solar power on the roofs of every house in the US? It'd cost around $1 trillon, but that's almost what it costs us in loss of revenue to foreign countries each year and it only has to be done ONCE. That would bolster the power grid and reduce power needs by 40-60%, which could then be used to generate hydrogen for the new generation of hydrogen powered vehicles, which are zero pollution. The best part is THAT power is pollution free and renewable. If they are SERIOUS about getting off oil, it all has to be combined to produce electricity and move that to hydrogen, not natural gas. Use the reduction in natural gas to lower home heating costs for those that have natural gas furnaces. Those won't just turn into electric systems over night, you know.

T BOONE PICKINS for President!

A man with a plan.

Congress: guilty of emissions of deadly gas

Bravo, Mr. Pcikens! You are a true American.

Know why McCain wants to distance himself from former Senator Phil Gramm? It's not because of Gramm's obnoxious remarks calling Americans "a nation of whiners" who are in "a mental recession." Those remarks were so ascerbic that they may've been made just to give McCain an excuse to distance himself from Gramm. This issue is a lot deeper than it looks on the surface.

When Gramm was a Senator he was Chairman of the Banking Committee. He pushed through the legislation known as the "Enron Loophole." This loophole allowed US investment banks to bypass Federal regulations governing futures trading, and is the reason why investment banks were able to falsely inflate the prices of oil, wheat, corn and other commodities through massive futures trading, causing your costs of gas, heating oil and food to go through the roof.

Gramm also created the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act, which got rid of the laws that seperate banking, insurance and brokerage activities in America. The Gramm Act was touted as a new way to protect consumer privacy, but the real meat on the Act's bones was banking deregulation. Essentially, this Act did away with laws written after the Great Depression to protect us from another Wall Street/Banking Industry collapse. That's right, Gramm stripped the system of it's safe guards nine years ago, and guess what? The value of the dollar has nose-dived, four major economic institutions have failed, Wall Street is unstable, and we are in a worsening recession.

Notably, the US investment banks that gained the most from the Enron Loophole and from the Gramm Act contributed more than a million dollars to Gramm's campaign.

Currently Gramm is Vice Chairman of UBS, the Swiss Bank that came up with the idea of "death bonds." Worse, though, UBS is involved in a scam where they sold auction rate securities to American customers. Auction rate securities are supposed to be as safe as cash, but the way UBS did it, the fees garnished by their in-house investment bankers were intentionally higher than the return on the securities, ripping off their American customers. The Massachusetts Attorney General has already filed charges against UBS, and private brokers world-wide have dropped UBS stock. UBS is forecasted to lose 82.91% of it's value in 2008. We are talking about the corporate bank where Gramm is Vice Chairman. Looking at his track record there and at the havoc he has wrought on the US economy through the Senate Banking Committee, it's clear that either Gramm is a criminal or grossly incompetent.

Now McCain wants nothing to do with Gramm, wants us to forget Gramm has been a key player on McCain's team. Gramm was McCain's campaign CO-CHAIR and LEADING ECONOMIC ADVISOR. Previously, McCain had said that he planned to appoint Gramm as SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

With Gramm as McCain's leading economic advisor, now you know why economists and analysts say that McCain's economic policy plans are untenable.