Monday, June 11, 2007

How to go green

I just did this so I can say that it's really easy to do. Go to this website http://www.nypirg.org/energy/green_electricity/table2.html and pick your energy provider and have them switch your electricity to green energy. It costs about a penny extra per kw/hour (usually from 15 to 16 cents) and it tells your energy company that you want to have the electricity coming into your home from renewable sources. The more people sign up the more your power company has to seek out green energy for growing demand rather than coal, gas, or oil burning plants. It's that easy.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Two Party System

The political showdown to '08 is here and since the debates have already begun the rant side of my brain has decided to reemerge and share a thing or two.
There are a lot of good things about having a two party system, keeping the other side in check being the biggest positive and it also keeps fringe parties that don't represent more than a small minority of the population from ruling. Of course both of those positives have shown their exceptions during these past 6 years. But a new negative side has just come to mind. The conservative party is for smaller government and smaller taxes. The liberal party is for bigger government and bigger taxes. But because of how the system operates, most of the time only the easy part gets done when a specific party is in power, i.e. when conservatives rule, taxes are cut but the government tends not to shrink that much and when liberals are in power more services are added but not as many taxes are to cover the cost. Therefore having this kind of two party system guarantees we will have an ever growing government with a debt that will never be paid off. Sure there will be great leaders every once and a while who can do the hard stuff that needs to be done but never enough to counter a trend that's built into the system. Any ideas how to fix this?