Kinsey Platform

ISSUE POSITION
War

I'm against war. As a veteran I know how bad it is.  Read more.

                

Nuclear Proliferation There are too many risks with our current system. Read more.
Economics and Environment

Bob Kinsey supports building sustainable infrastructure, tax incentives for wind power, organic agriculture, safe ranching practices, and mass transit, instead of huge tax breaks for rich corporate executives. We must rejoin the rest of the world in planning an economy that does not harm our world.

              

Economics and the care of the environment are linked in oppositional ways in a Capitalist system that focusses on short term profit rather than long term responsibilities.  Corporations work to keep profit privatized and costs as socialized as possible.  The following article is a wonderful description of how this works with coal plants where producers are looking for subsidies to put "new, clean coal technology in place".  It is clear from the article they worked to keep from being required to put it in place for the last 40 years.

Why are American coal plants still so dirty?
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-08-11-why-are-american-coal-plants-still-so-dirty/

by David Roberts

11 Aug 2010

Yesterday I published a brief overview of the U.S. power sector. In sum,
you've got a bunch of old coal and nuclear power plants built in the '70s
and nearing the end of their useful lives, some old but hearty hydro in the
West, a ton of new natural gas plants, and renewables coming on strong.
Aging coal plants are responsible for the vast bulk of the power sector's
pollution -- greenhouse gases, SOX and NOX, particulates (smog), mercury,
combustion ash, you name it. The power sector's pollution problem is
largely the problem of old coal plants.

What's the deal with that? Why are those plants still so filthy? Answering
that question requires a brief (but wildly entertaining!) foray into policy
history.

In 1977, a collection of major amendments were added to the Clean Air Act.
Among other things, they established a permitting program to insure that
every new plant meets the air quality standards established in 1970.
However, in a fateful policy compromise, existing power plants were
exempted from the permit program -- they were "grandfathered." The idea was
that they could just get their permits whenever it came time to make "major
modifications," which they'd have to do eventually, right?

Except, um, no. Think about it for a moment: You're an old, dirty coal
power plant. Your capital costs are paid off. You're cranking out cheap
power and making money hand over fist. Now EPA tells you that if you update
or upgrade, you're going to have to install expensive pollution scrubbers
-- new capital costs, increased operating costs, and reduced competitive
advantage. What are you going to do? Naturally you're going to avoid "major
modifications" like the plague!

Sure enough, utilities resisted upgrading old plants to more efficient
technology for fear of triggering new permit requirements. Oh how they
resisted! To this day, only about half the U.S. coal fleet has pollution
scrubbers installed. When utilities did modify their plants, they went to
court to argue that the modifications weren't "major" (a word that was,
helpfully, never clearly defined in statute). And of course they fought
like hell to preserve grandfathering, since it was in effect an enormous
subsidy to their oldest, dirtiest plants.

In other words, the grandfathering of old power plants created a massive
incentive for inefficiency, rent-seeking, and litigation. (For more, see: "
The Real Problem with New Source Review" [PDF], by Shi-Ling Hsu.)

The battle between utilities and environmentalists over old power plants
has been heated, vicious, and looong. It has consumed an enormous amount of
the environmental movement's time and effort. It has shaped the careers of
many individuals now in green group leadership, which in turn shapes the
way they approach new pollution challenges.

So what's happening with those old coal plants now? To understand what's
going on at EPA, you have to keep in mind what's happened for the last
eight years -- namely, nothing. Bush came into office in 2000 and
immediately dismissed the lawsuits the Clinton administration had filed
against a raft of old power plants. For the next eight years, coal
utilities were effectively allowed to regulate themselves; industry
representatives staffed and administered EPA air programs. Relentless
effort was made to weaken the law and enforcement was utterly gutted.

Nonetheless, Congress designed the Clean Air Act to be a living document.
EPA is instructed to periodically review the best science and determine if
new air pollutants have come to light or the dangers of existing pollutants
are greater than previously understood. That responsibility was utterly
disregarded under Bush, but science has, in fact, progressed quite a bit in
the intervening years! By now, just about every Clean Air Act rule is due
for major overhaul.

And that is what Lisa Jackson's EPA is doing as we speak: updating a whole
panoply of Clean Air Act and other pollution standards. That's what has
coal utilities terrified. More on that in the next post.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at
twitter.com/drgrist.

 It is clear that we need Senators that support EPA efforts to hold Coal Plant operators to using their profits to retrofit the old coal plants and we need stronger legislation in this one area alone to keep corporate short term profiteering from damaging our health
Health Care

Bob Kinsey supports single payer health care for every citizen through private care and public insurance, without cost increase. In addition, restoring a clean and safe environment will help to prevent illness and improve quality of life. Read more.
Nuclear Power

The inclusion of nuclear power as a part of the Denver Climate Action Plan is ill-advised. Read more.

Sustainable Agriculture

Big business priorities of the dominant parties are hurting family food producers and lowering the quality of organic standards. We need policies that support small farmers and organic growers sustaining the health of their land.
National Security

Preemptive war and unilateral action are not smart security. Instead, they paint a bull's-eye on our nation. The Bush Administration promoted the Iraq war with flawed analysis. Protection of human rights through international cooperation will bring about a safer world. Read more.
Marriage Rights for All People The U.S. Constitution is not about dividing us but ensuring our equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Bob Kinsey believes that marriage is a loving commitment by any two human beings deserving all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities which that commitment brings. Read more.
Science, Science Education and Technology Some politicians parrot the Bush administration pejorative of unsound science to discount any law or regulatory effort that attempts to manage our use of technology for the well being of our planet. They harp on the notion of freedom defined as limitless license for individuals and corporations to pursue undisciplined short term gain. For them sound science means only that which reaches conclusions that fit on their procrustean bed of anti-intellectualism and the simplistic mythology of another age. This anti-intellectualism under girds their work to undermine confidence in public education and flow tax money to religious schools. As a retired Colorado teacher I know the damage this work has done. Their faith is in an unregulated market-place as if such were God ordained, even though it fuels the disease of raging but deeply unsatisfying hyper-consumption.
Safe Food, New Jobs and the Kyoto Treaty Real jobs are vanishing from the American workplace due to NAFTA and other trade agreements. Large corporations like Walmart that produce goods cheaply overseas are driving local shops out of business. Bob Kinsey will support legislation which gives tax incentives for businesses that keep jobs and factories in the U.S. Read more.
Marijuana Issues Marijuana has been shown to be a very useful drug that has multiple theraputic applications. Several States, including our own Colorado, havelegalized its use as Medical Marijuana. This is not only beneficial but entirely within the power of the State.The so called "War on Drugs" has damaged American society and has massively contributed to the national deficit. It has filled our prisons with non violent offenders (mostly young black men) to their detriment and the enrichment of the prison-industrial complex. In its name we have escalated our role as the major arms dealer in the world thus adding to militarization and raising levels of violence. It has overridden the Constitutional separation of powers between Federal and State. We must end the war on drugs and federal "law" enforcement interference that threatens the individual states' rights to include the use of marijuana as a helpful drug.

I Support The Ten Key Principles of the Green Party.