DOE Would Like to Grade Your Energy Efficiency!

Coming to a neighborhood near you...a smiling assessor, working with the Department of Energy (DOE) or affiliate (read, electric company), who would like come into your house and give you an “energy score” and tips on making your house more efficient! Are you biting? I didn't think so! ;-)

The DOE has come out with a delightful software called the Home Energy Scoring Tool. According to their press release, “The Home Energy Score allows home buyers to compare homes on an ‘apples to apples’ basis and provides recommendations for energy efficiency improvements. In addition, homeowners and home buyers receive a cost-saving estimate of how these improvements could reduce utility bills and improve a home's score.”

As CNSNews so chillingly and correctly points out, “Right now, getting your home scored is voluntary.”

The DOE thinks they can get you to both let them document your energy usage conditions and to purchase (possibly costly) upgrades that will increase energy efficiency. How low will it take for your to recoup your costs? The FAQ section tells prospective assessors, “The total savings estimate shown with the home's Score reflects the gross energy cost savings that would result over 10 years from completing all the recommended improvements.”

Ten years is longer than most people stay in their homes. The average has been 5-7 years. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) now says the number is closer to 13 years. However, the poor home sales of the last decade and withering economy may have produced homeowners who were unable to move, even if they wanted to.

Do they think after the public, having been subjected to health insurance costs rising 2-300%, has the stomach to run out and buy some energy efficient windows or new appliances?

Are they hanging with Toronto’s mayor?


I've seen this coming since they started installing “smart meters.” Next they try to get you to buy a “smart” thermostat that you can adjust online. But if you can adjust your temperature over the internet...what’s to stop your energy company from making their own adjustments? What happens when the energy grid is strained...or perhaps they just think you're cooling your house a tad too much for their liking, even  though you're paying your huge electric bill every month and it’s 99F in the shade? After all, we have a planet to save folks!

You’ve allowed the government into your private medical files. What will stop Big Brother from demanding you to get your home “scored” at some point? They are involved in residential code development. Seeing where the current administration is heading, it's highly likely they will want to add new building codes and regulations to force you to bring your home up to some set of standard scores for energy efficiency the next time you remodel or sell your home. 

Why Ask Bob Dole How to Fix GOP?

Why are we asking a failed presidential candidate how to “fix” the GOP? And, of course, I’m speaking of Bob Dole who went on FOX News to say that the GOP should put a sign out, “Closed for Repairs.” His point was the party had moved too far to the right.

Say what?

What have the last 20 years taught the GOP? Apparently it hasn’t taught them that every time they put up a squishy moderate, including Bob Dole, they get soundly trounced by the democrats. The last two primaries were engineered by the GOP to allow the selection of their preferred, moderate candidates, Sen. John McCain and former Mass Gov. Mitt Romney! The party machine kept the more conservative states, especially large ones like Texas, from voting in the primaries until most, if not all, the other candidates have been forced out when their fundraising dries up.

As far back as the 1980s, George Bush Sr. was elected off the coattails of successful and popular (except to the media) terms of President Ronald Reagan. However, with the exception of the first war in Iraq, he governed moderately and was easily trounced by a more charismatic Bill Clinton (with the help of Bush enemy, Ross Perot running as a spoiler, independent party candidate.) Even though his son, another fiscal moderate, Bush “43” was able to sustain winning two elections, both were by the barest of margins. It’s doubtful that he would have had a second term had the people not felt more comfortable keeping Bush in after the September 11th attacks and resulting war against terror.

Ironically, the press portrays any GOP candidate as radically conservative. In the primaries, the candidate himself often runs to the right, though his record shows otherwise. To paraphrase Sarah Palin, you can put lipstick on a moderate, and call him conservative, but that doesn’t make it so. The people know the difference and every time a squishy GOP moderate is put up against a liberal democrat, the democrat is going to win. Conservatives were not enthusiastic about either Cain or Romney and certainly liberals would never vote for even a liberal Republican. It's become a track record where many have begun to wonder what side is the GOP on? The future of the GOP, if there is one, is NOT with political has beens like Bob Dole, but with an actual conservatives who can articulate what it means to be conservative over the media's minutia.

I am seeing a few glimmers of hope from a few tea-party supported candidates that aren’t afraid to butt heads with the senior bulls. Newly elected Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have both come out swinging and damn the proprieties of being freshman senators. They are quickly becoming wildly popular with the public outside their home states and are tipping the GOP RINOs, as well as battling democrats, enough for McCain to label the pair, along with Rep. Justin Amash, “wacko birds.” For the left wing of the GOP, who was as hopeful as the democrats that the tea party was a temporary aberration, they’d be wise to heed the saying on their adopted flag, “Don’t Tread On Me!”

He LIES: Obama’s Extortion of America!

I’m BEYOND tired of the political blackmail that goes on. This is seen throughout the body politic, whether it's local government and schools are clamoring for more tax dollars, or now, as the President out and out lies about the sequestration and what the deadline means.

1)   Sequestration was proposed and supported by Obama. Congress did not dream this up and, in fact, was told that the president would veto any attempt to get rid of the automatic cuts.

2)    Sequestration does NOT cut the budget, it merely slows the rate of growth and spending! All the Chicken Little doom and gloom is a big fat LIE.

So why are the president and his minions screaming about all the services that will be cut? It is the EXTORTION of America! It’s the Chicago Way—you hurt my business, I hurt you back. Never mind that, even if there were actual cuts, there’s plenty of pork and redundancy that can be reduced. But no, they are threatening longer times in airport security, cuts in education and cutbacks in border patrol agents. Their threats are to whatever they can find to cause the most outcry from the public. As an opening salvo against the American people, the administration is releasing hundreds of illegal alien detainees. Never mind that these are FUTURE reductions in spending that haven't occurred yet.

“The last thing you would do to meet a budget cut of this size would be to voluntarily undertake actions that undermine the rule of law and endanger the public safety,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

But when you’re facing budget reductions, just open the prisons and then complain you don’t have enough money for police protection—it’s the Chicago Way!