Udall still slippery on energy

Sen. Mark Udall, D-CO, is reported to be twisting arms for Senate votes on the economically ruinous cap-and-trade scheme already passed in the U.S. House. Hollywood leftie Henry Waxman’s is one of the names on the House bill, and few could name a Member of Congress who deserves more “credit” for laws burdening the U.S. economy and restricting the individual rights of U.S. citizens. Leftist Members of Congress like Udall are exempt from mainstream media criticism for conflicts of interest. However, Udall has one here in spades. His wife, Maggie Fox, is CEO and president of something called Alliance for Climate Protection, founded by Al Gore with money from his global warming horror movie. Typical of Big Enviro’s big bucks “charitable” [i.e., organized under Sec. 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code] organizations, the Gore/Fox alliance has a companion lobbying organization, the Climate Protection Action Fund. Fox is CEO and president of that as well.

Gore is reported already to have amassed a huge fortune in a market for trading carbon credits, and that’s before any law has been enacted limiting carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, the purported reason for any such limits — the claims that the climate is warming and that atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide from human activities is the cause — has been reduced to pseudoscience making mischief comparable to eugenics.

Just for the sake of changing the course of the argument, however, why not inquire of Udall and others in the global warming camp as to what sources of, say, electricity they propose as alternatives? “Renewables” like solar and wind is the stock answer. After decades of subsidies, and now laws mandating their use, these sources remain well under one percent of national electric output, and they obviously cannot run 24-7 even when they work.

The correct answer, of course, is nuclear. Udall has whispered that word somewhat approvingly. However, deep skepticism is warranted since most of Udall’s energy talk comes out of the Big Enviro side of his mouth. Despite its unequalled, half-century record for safety, Udall always raises that “issue” and can be expected to hide behind it when the chips are down and Big Enviro says, “No way, Mark.”

Click here for my op-ed on this subject in The Denver Post on July 27, and click here for the senator’s limp response. It’s time, as they say, to get down to brass tacks, so here’s an open letter:

Dear Sen. Udall: Many friends and I were happy to read your letter-to-the-editor in The Denver Post on July 29, responding to my op-ed published two days earlier. I had been attempting communication with your office for nearly eight weeks before I received two e-mails, slightly different but with substantially the same “boilerplate” I referred to in the op-ed.

It should surprise no one that you have supported WIPP. It commenced operations about two months after you took your seat in the U.S. House and now holds thousands of tons of TRU waste from your congressional district (Rocky Flats). My reference to Udall family complicity in delaying WIPP and adding huge sums to its cost was about events going back more than a decade before you were in Congress and needs no further elaboration here.

However, I’m reminded of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. I find at this website that your father was a sponsor. That was 27 years ago. My understandings are that, under this legislation, utilities (read, ratepayers) have now remitted about $30 billion to the federal fund it created; about $10 billion of that has been spent, largely or entirely on the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada; not an ounce of spent fuel has left temporary storage; and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., now intends that the Yucca Mountain project be deep-sixed.

I reminded readers of my op-ed, “Preserving the myth that radioactive waste cannot be safely disposed has been a major goal of organized ‘environmentalists’ for decades.” A Denver Post article on Aug. 25 quotes you on Yucca Mountain, “a dead project.” Have you just rolled over and died for Sen. Reid?

Your claims of concern about anthropogenic global warming are not credible without a great deal more support for expanded nuclear power than this from your l-t-e: “I am more than open to expanding our use of nuclear power and recently said so on the floor of the Senate.” Frankly, sir, that’s not even a starter. The aforementioned Denver Post article about the bipartisan photo-op you and Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., held in front of trees killed years ago by pine beetles has a terrific headline, “Udall, McCain united in call for nuclear power,” but I hope you’ll excuse my skepticism after experiencing a decade or more of safety-shrouded doublespeak on the subject by Bill Richardson.

Perhaps as a red herring, your letter raised cost as an issue unfavorable to nuclear power. Nuclear power plants are delivering electricity cheaper than any other source today. Your “cleaner sources,” solar and wind, are the choices that have failed for decades on account of cost whenever they aren’t underwritten by direct government subsidies and/or laws like Colorado’s essentially mandatingtheir use without regard to cost. Uncertainty associated with the licensing process, and “leadership” such as you are getting from Sen. Reid, are the primary reasons I’d suggest for any reluctance by utility company boards and executives to build nuclear power plants we need.

Lastly, about global warming. People chasing money mostly from government grants and agency appropriations have now spent many tens of billions on “proving” that global warming continues, is a very bad thing, and is largely the result of increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by human activities. Others who simply observe the world around us shake our heads in disbelief, wondering what planet you and these researchers live on. The climate is cooling, not warming, and the researchers among the crowd laughably claiming consensus about warming can’t make their expensive, complicated – and might I also suggest falsified in some cases? – models jibe with real world measurements.

I believe global warming is to the late 20th and early 21st centuries what the pseudoscience eugenics was to the early 20th. For a cogent discussion of eugenics and the historic mischief of politicized science, look here.

Isn’t it well past time for you to level with the people you represent and tell them the truth? I wouldn’t suggest that’s a decision that can be reached and implemented easily. You have been prominent among global warming alarmists for a long time. Further, I acknowledge the awkwardness of, uh, breakfast table talk and all if this were juxtaposed against your wife’s prominent position in the propaganda end of Al Gore’s carbon-cap-and-trade crusade.

But wouldn’t a mind change now be better than having most of one’s constituents look back in a couple of years, wondering what kind of fool would defy what was so obvious and vote to accelerate his country’s economic tailspin? You got elected to lead us toward sound public policy. In my experience, that’s occasionally neither easy nor comfortable. Honesty, however, sure makes for better sleeping.

I look forward to receiving a reply that addresses directly what is said in this letter. Respectfully, John Dendahl

Bill Richardson, politician on the make

Editor: New Mexico scion John Dendahl was the 2006 GOP nominee against Gov. Bill Richardson, recently dropped from Obama's cabinet under a cloud of scandal. We asked Dendahl, now a Coloradan, for his candid impressions of a 30-year acquaintance with Richardson. Here they are. LEAVING EMPEROR BILL'S REALM Years of Buyers’ Remorse over Richardson Lie Ahead in the Land of Enchantment

Moving away from New Mexico in early 2007 was neither easy nor fun. The state calls itself “Land of Enchantment,” an apt description in many ways. The lovely city of Santa Fe had been my family home for about 130 years. I am among the third of four Dendahl generations born in Santa Fe and had spent most of my 68 years there.

However, perhaps hearkening to the echo of Ayn Rand’s fictional hero John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, my wife and I decided to leave. New Mexico has long carried a rap for political malodor on account of corruption growing out of patronage. Under the “leadership” of Gov. Bill Richardson, political corruption had grown from several traditional pockets to envelop the entire state.

Richardson’s combination of pay-to-play and ruthless retaliation have dragged to the level of prostitute or whipped dog too many citizens who should be principled civic leaders. Something bordering on a cross between a brothel and a pound no longer felt like home!

I’ll explain how one can make such an accusation, but first an important disclaimer.

In mid-2006, the Republican candidate for governor withdrew and the party’s governing committee designated me as his successor on the ballot for the general election in November. I was decisively defeated by the incumbent Richardson. Some would like to attribute my move a few months later to that loss. I had had no expectation of defeating a man who had been in public office for most of a quarter of a century and would spend at least 40 times what I did in a 20-week campaign.

I loved my state, found Richardson disgusting, and went into this campaign determined to expose for voters the dismal conditions into which they were being plunged. Let the electoral chips fall where they may.

Richardson and I “met” via a phone call from him in 1979. I was a NM business executive whose name was periodically in the papers as a nuclear energy advocate. He was a recent carpet-bagger who picked the state as a good prospect to elect him to the U.S. House and was looking for campaign support. When that 10-minute call ended, I thought to myself the man is a pandering liar. I met him personally at a friend’s home a few weeks later, where he and his wife were passing out palm cards. The first “promise” on the palm card was directly opposite to the main point he emphasized in our earlier conversation, thus affirming my first impression. I have never encountered another individual whose bad character was so instantly obvious to me yet so apparently opaque to many others.

Richardson lost that 1980 congressional race to the Republican incumbent, but New Mexico gained a new U.S. House seat one election later. Richardson won the new seat in 1982 and remained in it until early 1997 when Bill Clinton appointed him to be the U.S. representative to the United Nations. During 16 years’ service in Congress, Richardson continued to vindicate regularly my first impression – a pandering liar.

It wasn’t until his taking office in 2003 as New Mexico’s governor, however, that he revealed himself to be a dictator as well. Illustrative of his hubris was his immediate move to replace his predecessor’s appointees on boards (e.g., university regents) to which they had been constitutionally appointed to constitutionally set terms. He simply demanded their resignations, then replaced them with appointees who, again on demand, signed undated letters of resignation which could be dated and “accepted” if, as and when the dictator chose for any reason whatsoever.

An early embarrassment was administered by a university student-regent, Felicia Ybarra. She refused to vote as instructed for chairman of her university’s board of regents, then, alone in a face-to-face meeting with Richardson and some of his staff, refused to resign and accept an alternative appointment. Richardson quietly tucked his tail between his legs and let the matter pass. It must be added that Ybarra was alone in the meeting because her mother, who had accompanied her on the 300-mile trip to Santa Fe from Las Cruces, was barred from the meeting and made to remain in a reception area.

It should have come as no surprise that a man whose privileged youth was spent in his mother’s native Mexico City would govern like Mexico’s infamous PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) which, with a minor interruption here or there, has exercised one-party control of that country for nearly a century. That Barack Obama selected Richardson for a Cabinet position is clear evidence that 1) pay-to-play is fine so long as you don’t get busted, or 2) his vetting operation, having missed something so obvious in Richardson’s M.O., is utterly incompetent.

Pay to-play

No major New Mexico news organization has had a sustained effort to focus light on, and critique, Richardson’s pay-to-play, his profligate spending, or his ruthlessness. However, isolated reports have appeared, such as an early one on the large campaign contributions made by individuals who later found their way into appointive positions in state government or choice boards. No new ground being plowed there, to be sure, but a hint of things to come.

Organized Labor represents practically no one in the private sector in New Mexico, and lost its legal right to represent public employees when the relevant statute “sunsetted” during the term of Richardson’s predecessor, Gary Johnson. The Legislature didn’t have the votes to override Johnson’s veto of its bill to extend. With direct contributions and indirect expenditures, Labor lavishly supported Richardson’s 2002 campaign for governor. One of its most aggressive bosses, Brian Condit, was soon the Richardson transition organization’s apparent gatekeeper for appointive positions.

Labor got its big reward by immediate restoration of its collective bargaining statute without a sunset, then card-check recognition (that is, no secret ballot elections) of two unions for bargaining units spread around the state, then combination of the bargaining units into such large and ungainly wholes that employees have no chance whatsoever of mounting successful decertification campaigns. It won again when the Richardson lackeys on the University of New Mexico board of regents put a provision in a $185 million hospital construction contract – a “project labor agreement” – to eliminate any possible cost savings through awards to non-union contractors.

Among Richardson albatrosses around New Mexico’s neck is a so-called commuter train, heavy rail no less, running about 100 miles in a corridor having fewer than a million people. A billion dollar boondoggle. Richardson obliged the Burlington Northern Santa Fe by buying and taking over about 300 miles of BNSF track that was probably more liability than asset (the 100-mile “commuter” corridor plus another 200 miles into southern Colorado). BNSF got $75 million taxpayer dollars from Richardson; tens of thousands came to Richardson’s campaign account from BNSF and affiliates.

A September 24, 2006 Albuquerque Journal article (I just found it again in three minutes on the paper’s Website) told the eye-popping story of approval by the Richardson administration of access to a major East-West limited access artery in Albuquerque for a real estate development by the family of Pete Daskalos. Access by other developers had been denied, as had access for a fire station. Soon, something like $130,000 made its way into Richardson’s campaign coffers from various Daskalos family interests. This fandango alone should have tipped Obama’s vetters, if they cared, that their man Richardson was too hot to handle.

PRI-style ruthlessness

The candidate I replaced on the ballot had been severely hampered in fund-raising on account of potential donors’ fear of retribution, reportedly including actual warnings to some. I was confident from my more than eight years’ chairing the state Republican Party and raising a great deal of money that I could get past that. Well, maybe not as it turned out.

Among my finance director’s first calls for support was to a close friend, a Republican real estate developer long prominent in the Albuquerque business community. She asked if he and his wife would host a fund-raising event. He called back promptly the following day to report that, much as he and his wife wished I could become governor, they couldn’t face the risk of Richardson’s retaliation when their name(s) showed up on public records as my supporters.

I couldn’t believe my ears when she reported this to me. So in a few days I called this friend. He not only confirmed, but reported a conversation that morning at a breakfast meeting of the Economic Forum (an association of Albuquerque business leaders) during which others had expressed the same intention: let someone else support Dendahl and bear the consequences meted out by our ruthless governor.

Ditto Hobbs in Lea County, an oil and gas producing area in the Permian Basin. Nearly all local officeholders are Republicans, and George W. Bush won decisively there in 2000 and 2004. However, I was told going in by a locally-prominent close friend that I would be able to raise zilch: reportedly, Richardson’s local enforcer and the chairman of his State Transportation Commission had the word out that economically important local activities – a horse-racing track/casino operation, a private prison, highway building and a budding uranium enrichment plant – could all be hurt by any showing of financial support for Richardson’s opponent. That well was dry.

So I went next door to Carlsbad, in Eddy County. When Richardson was in Congress, he was the single most effective opponent of a federal facility proposed in that county, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), designed to dispose of transuranic (TRU) waste produced by research and production in the Nation’s nuclear weapons program. The project was wildly popular in Eddy County, but miserably opposed by the usual anti-nuclear environmentalists in Richardson’s district hundreds of miles away around Santa Fe and Taos. Ironically, the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory near Santa Fe was one facility in need of WIPP to get rid of locally-stored TRU waste. But Richardson pandered to the enviros and lied to the rest of us: “I’m for WIPP as long as it’s 100-percent safe,” he said, knowing nothing, not even that lie, is 100-percent safe.

I had worked for years with the Carlsbad mayor and a couple of his predecessors, as well as the county’s delegation in the state Legislature, to counter the work of Richardson and his enviro allies. When I asked the mayor for help with my campaign, he acknowledged that Carlsbad owed me big time for all the WIPP help, “but I can’t put my city at risk,” Nothing coming from there.

In a community 25 miles north of Santa Fe is a prominent businessman known for damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead courage. During a visit shortly after my nomination, he pledged $10,000 to my campaign. After several weeks’ wait, a $10,000 check came in from a source entirely unknown to my campaign staff and me. I smelled a rat and called the pledgor to see if this were payment of the pledge and he said it was. I told him I wasn’t going to commit a felony (accepting a contribution from a donor with knowledge that the money came from another) and the check would be returned. Another day, another friend cowed by the specter of Richardson’s wrath.

And so it went all over the state. To be sure, there were principled, courageous people who provided generous support; however, the Richardson organization assured through brute intimidation that that would be a comparative trickle.

My wife and I now live happily near Denver. Since we moved here nearly two years ago, hardly a month has passed without news of some new or developing scandal among those ruling New Mexico, adding to the pile of vindication for our decision to move away.

It might be pointed out that, like New Mexico’s, Colorado’s recent electoral results haven’t favored my side, either. However, whether its governments trend left or right, I believe Colorado has the necessary critical mass of press and community leadership to squelch promptly the sort of corruption Richardson has made endemic throughout New Mexico. Sadly for New Mexico, formation of a similarly corrective critical mass seems light years away.

Dishonest denial of nuclear energy

Denver Post readers were recently treated to some of Ted Turner's advice to Obama ("Address causes of climate change", Nov. 30). Turner wrote as chairman of the United Nations Foundation, which manyColoradans will remember has as its president former U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth (D-CO).

So I went to the foundation's website to see what it has to say about energy. Right at the top is a recent article by Wirth, blather that could have come out of the environmental movement 35 years ago supplemented only by mention of the new bugaboo, that nasty carbon stuff.

In close to 900 words, this man who long ago drank the global warming Kool-Aid never mentions "nuclear." Nuclear-electric power has achieved a safety record unmatched by any other industry since the Industrial Revolution, and the plants do not emit any of the so-called "greenhouse gases" that are blamed (falsely) for global warming (that may no longer be occurring).

Here's the deal: Tim Wirth, Ted Turner, Al Gore, et al, have the resources to know that nuclear energy must be used far more extensively if they are serious about a transition away from fuels that produce carbon dioxide. Until they advocate nuclear energy, their worry about global warming should be considered a flat-out lie and ignored.

Xcel sticks us with green tab

I’m angry. Outraged! Coloradans were sold a bill of goods in 2004. Their primary supplier of electricity – Xcel Energy – has apparently been co-opted by a movement that will cost Colorado families untold millions of dollars and cheat the state out of who knows how many good jobs. And the gutless Xcel? It burnishes its image cost-free: the regulators have to give it whatever rate increases it needs for happily playing along with nonsensical policies. Want solar? Wind? Biomass? Carbon caps? Fine, suckers, we’ll be happy to just add those to your electricity bills!

Vincent Carroll’s recent column, “Nuclear’s new allure,” prompted me to write about an energy cost inquiry I made last year that should have taken 15 minutes, maximum. It remains incomplete and has nearly turned into an investigation.

Since early 2007, Xcel has bragged about a solar array in Denver’s Coors Field. Xcel’s ads report the system produces enough electricity to offset that used to operate the Rockies’ scoreboard. Yeah, just the scoreboard. Not the stadium lights and all the rest. About 14,000 kilowatt hours (KWH) per year.

Fourteen thousand KWH is produced in 13 seconds by the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix.

My cost inquiry? I wanted only to find out how much the Coors Field solar system cost – the price someone paid to be sweet, lovable and green. Should be pretty simple, no?

My inquiry went first to Xcel, which said I’d have to contact the Rockies. The Rockies said I’d have to contact the stadium authority. The stadium authority acted as if it didn’t even know what I was calling about. One statement among my files, obtained from a source at Xcel and embedded below, indicates the Rockies purchased the system, which “will inspire hundreds of thousands of fans per year.” Another, also embedded below, indicates that rebates from Xcel helped defray the Rockies’ cost. Yet another says it’s a Rockies-Xcel partnership. Who cares? All I want to know is how much it cost, which remains – to me, at least – a well-guarded secret.

On September 5, The Denver Post carried an column, ”Expect compromise on energy,” by former Lt. Gov. Gail Schoettler (oops, she now carries the title “ambassador” according to the bio on her website). In her piece, Madame Ambassador lauds Xcel for its recent turnaround to embrace 2004’s Amendment 37. She also cites the high and rising amount of energy used around the world and asks, “Where will all this energy come from?” Her answer, “Only solar power has the promise to supply massive amounts of energy …” with a caveat about making it more efficient.

Despite her ignorant omission of nuclear, I thought Schoettler could at least get my Coors Field solar cost question answered quickly, so I wrote to her. Shortly I had an e-mail from Joe Fuentes at Xcel, who said he didn’t have the information but had “some calls out.” He also wondered why I had asked, and I sent a responsive reply.

That was nearly a month ago. A follow-up inquiry this morning brought this from Fuentes: “I think this is a deal where you need check [sic] with the contractor. We didn't pay to play.” Isn’t this the step on the merry-go-round where I got on?

Amendment 37 so prized by Schoettler requires Xcel and other Colorado electricity suppliers to meet certain milestones in employing renewable energy resources to produce the electric power they sell. “Eligible renewable energy resources,” according to Amendment 37, “are solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and hydroelectricity with a nameplate rating of 10 megawatts or less. … A fuel cell using hydrogen derived from these eligible resources is also an eligible electric generation technology. Fossil and nuclear fuels and their derivatives are not eligible resources.” (Emphasis added.)

I don’t know anyone who opposes solar, wind and the others in concept. However, cost being of no small importance to most consumers, why won’t Xcel see that we get an answer to my question?

(Sorry, slight correction needed on the above "no one." Though radio, TV and robocalls are full of T. Boone Pickens promoting wind power, an article in the July 21, 2008 Newsweek issue concludes with this Pickens admission: "There are no turbines on my ranch, because I think they are ugly.")

By the way, enough nuclear fuel has already been mined and refined to generate all our electricity for hundreds of years using breeder reactors. Perhaps Ambassador Schoettler can tell us why nuclear was specifically banned from the Amendment 37 renewables mix.

On second thought, one really needn’t ask; Amendment 37 was sold to Coloradans by a political movement that pretty much began 40 or more years ago with opposition to nuclear power. Generally the same ilk that now also opposes development of Colorado’s enormous shale oil resources which, of course, are also excluded.

======================================= Below are the three mutually contradictory Coors Field accounts as communicated to the author in an e-mail from Joe Fuentes of Xcel.

(Version 1) This 10 kW PV system is the first commercial scale grid-tie PV system in any major league stadium. Utilizing SunPower all black 215 watt modules, this system is designed to produce more energy per year than the scoreboard consumes. This system was specified by Xcel Energy and purchased by the Colorado Rockies. An IPS custom all black racking system seamlessly integrates the modules into the stadium structure. This solar system will inspire hundreds of thousands of fans per year.

http://solarips.com/colorado.php?topic=featured_projects

=============================

(Version 2) DENVER -- The Colorado Rockies announced today that beginning on Opening Day, Monday, April 2, 2007, 46 solar panels have been installed to provide power at Coors Field. The solar installation, the first in Coors Field history, is a result of a partnership with the Rockies and Xcel Energy.

The 9.89 kilowatt solar array, installed by Independent Power Systems, will produce over 14,000 kilowatt hours of energy, enough to offset the consumption of the Rockpile LED board over one year. In the walkway just under the system, a flat-panel monitoring system will show fans the real time consumption of the Rockpile LED board as well as the real time energy production from the solar array.

Fans will also be able to learn more about solar energy throughout the season at an educational display inside the ballpark. Xcel Energy and the Colorado Rockies will also provide energy and money saving tips to fans during the game.

http://colorado.rockies.mlb.com/content/printer_friendly/col/y2007/m03/d29/c1868204.jsp

================================ (Version 3) http://investors.sunpowercorp.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=238809

Solar Power Raises the Score for the Colorado Rockies Coors Field Celebrates First Utility-Scale Solar Power Electric System in a Major League Ballpark

DENVER, April 20, 2007 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- This weekend, the Colorado Rockies will take on the San Diego Padres at home under a solar-powered scoreboard. The new 9.9 kilowatt solar electric system, which was installed by Independent Power Systems as a result of a partnership between the Rockies and Xcel Energy, is being celebrated on Earth Day, April 22. Comprised of 46 solar panels from SunPower Corporation (Nasdaq: SPWR), it is the first commercial- scale solar electric power system to be installed in a Major League Baseball ballpark.

The new system covers an area of 616 square feet and will produce more than 14,000 kilowatt hours of energy, enough to offset energy consumption by the Rockies' 'Rockpile' LED scoreboard for over a year. A flat-panel monitoring system shows fans at the ballpark real time system performance and scoreboard energy use, and the same data is available on-line at http://www.solarips.com/coors.

"This solar project delivers on the Colorado promise of the 'New Energy Economy' that I have been speaking about all over the state," said Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. "I congratulate the Rockies for their leadership and call upon Major League Baseball, the NFL, and stadium owners throughout the nation to follow the example we've set by deploying solar at Coors Field."

Independent Power Systems, a SunPower Premier Dealer, designed and installed the system in two weeks, just in time for the Rockies' season opener. "We designed the system to ensure that no glare from the solar panels will reach players on the field," said Independent Power Systems President Tony Boniface. "SunPower solar panels were the perfect choice for this project because they offer the highest efficiency on the market."

"Solar power is an essential component of our global energy mix, and companies such as Independent Power Systems and Xcel Energy are doing their part to ensure that it is an easy, affordable option for home and commercial use," said Tom Werner, chief executive officer of SunPower. "The Rockies have distinguished their organization as a leader, by bringing clean, renewable energy to a great American sport."

"We were pleased to partner with the Rockies on this project," said Pieter Leenhouts, director of strategic marketing at Xcel Energy. "This Earth Day, Rockies fans can celebrate their team's commitment to helping take America to a new level of energy independence."

Solar rebates from Xcel Energy helped offset the cost of the system for the Rockies. Similar rebates are available to both commercial and residential customers of Xcel Energy.

About Independent Power Systems

Independent Power Systems is a solar electric engineering and installation company in the Rocky Mountains. Based in Boulder, CO, the company has been installing renewable energy systems for 11 years in residential, commercial, and remote environments. To view projects please visit http://www.solarips.com

About SunPower

SunPower Corp. (Nasdaq: SPWR) designs, manufactures and markets high- performance solar electric technology worldwide. SunPower's high-efficiency solar cells and panels generate up to 50 percent more power per unit area than conventional solar technologies and have a uniquely attractive, all-black appearance. For more information on SunPower please visit the SunPower website at http://www.sunpowercorp.com. SunPower is a majority-owned subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY).

SunPower is a registered trademark of SunPower Corp. PowerLight is a registered trademark of PowerLight Corp. Cypress is a registered trademark of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE SunPower Corporation

Barton Churchill of Independent Power Systems, +1-303-443-0115, bchurchill@solarips.com; or Ingrid Ekstrom of SunPower Corporation, +1-510-868-1368, ingrid.ekstrom@sunpowercorp.com http://www.sunpowercorp.com Copyright (C) 2007 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Why Palin drives the media nuts

Wikipedia defines psychological projection as "a defense mechanism in which one attributes one's own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or emotions to others. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted subconscious impulses/desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them. The theory was developed by Sigmund Freud and further refined by his daughter Anna Freud, and for this reason, it is sometimes referred to as 'Freudian Projection.'" Bill Clinton liked to rail against "the politics of personal destruction." His party's leaders regularly point fingers at the opposition claiming they're "mean." Clinton was a master of exactly what he complained about and the others are right behind.

Take a close look at that definition of "projection" up there and ask yourself whether it doesn't fit today's liberals like a hand in a well-fitted kid glove. Consider, for example, their reaction to nomination of Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin's candidacy for vice president.

Politically aware Lefties had to know from the get-go that Palin would be an awesome force descending on their plans to dominate. Their reaction has been just what one with many years' experience watching liberal leaders would expect: a thermonuclear effort at personal destruction. Destruction of the governor and, not incidentally, her family.

Leave aside the ugly little e-mails allegedly from an individual Alaskan here or there that have gone "viral" on the Internet. Among the prices we pay for having the Internet is the ease with which an authoritative name, or invented credentials, can be fraudulently attached to any message. The more titillating the better. Plus, given the number of backsides Palin has had to kick en route to her 80% approval rating, it shouldn't be hard to find a local critic eager to retaliate - whether or not hiding behind a nom de plume.

Think about the mainstream media (MSM), which appear to collectively adore Sen. Barack Obama and generally display a distinct Leftist bias (think The New York Times and MSNBC). Two subjects come to mind: "gotchas" and experience. Consider the play on Obama's gaffes versus Palin's. He's the guy who skated away from a claim of having campaigned in 57 states and wasn't through all of them yet. Imagine the continuing din if Palin seemed confused over how many states are comprised by our country. That's just for starters.

Experience? "Everyone knows" Palin isn't qualified. Too young. Governs too small a state and for too short a time. Blah, blah, blah. Fair enough, Big Boys of the MSM, but what about Obama?

Let's see. Both are close to the same age. Obama wants the Oval Office. He has a bit of legislative experience remarkable only for its radical Left positions and, as part of the traditionally corrupt crowd that controls politics and patronage in Cook County (Chicago), his claim to be a reformer is difficult to believe. (See, for example, "Soldier for Stroger" by David Freddoso here.)

Palin has an 80% approval rating in governing a real state, and she won that governorship by challenging and defeating a tainted incumbent - a good ol' boy - of her own party. Following her election, she continued to take on political and business interests (e.g., oil companies) that are traditionally connected by liberals to her own party.

What about potential disqualifications?

For 16 years, Obama and his wife worshipped with a profane, ultra-racist, America-hating preacher man named Jeremiah Wright. Obama finally "threw Wright under the bus" after a nationally televised appeal to tolerate the intolerable failed to get Obama past his Wright wrong. That made everything for the Left and the MSM right once again.

Another important Obama distinction the MSM doesn't talk about is his long friendship with Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers. Not just friendship, but they worked together in advancing Leftist causes in the Chicago area. Obama's first political campaign began with a party in the home of Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, both former fugitives from justice from their Weatherman terrorist days who avoided prison on the technicality of prosecutorial misconduct. Great pals for Obama, the former lecturer on constitutional law!

As a governor, former mayor and member of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Palin has certifiable qualifications for public executive office, but Obama's the one running for president.

Going into her debate with Obama's veep candidate, Sen. Joe Biden, Palin was thought to have been totally softened up by relentless media criticism and satire. TV news anchors Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric conducted chip-on-the-shoulder interviews with Palin, which were followed up by others in the MSM feigning horror over errors and openly speculating that McCain would call on her to step aside.

Poor Biden. Palin was anything but softened up. Biden has been in the U.S. Senate for 34 years, three-quarters of Palin's life, yet she had him on the defensive for most of the 90 minutes. The outmatched Biden gave it the old college try, twice reminding listeners that his father addressed him as "Champ" and complaining no fewer than four times about some $4 billion tax benefit for Exxon Mobil. In the end, though, one could only agree with Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: "Biden sounded like the warmed-over has-been that he is ... hypnotically boring."

An aside: While Biden was mostly innocuous, I noted this very ominous comment in addressing a moderator's question about climate change, also known as global warming. He said, "I think it is manmade. I think it's clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden - Gov. Palin and Joe Biden. If you don't understand what the cause is, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade. That's the cause. That's why the polar icecap is melting."

Biden is right about the need to understand the cause. Unfortunately he quite obviously doesn't, and fixes growing out of his "understanding" will be both ineffective and economically ruinous. For too long Sen. John McCain has been wrong on this, too, but at least he has a running mate in Palin who has her head screwed on right.

The Obama campaign, its surrogates in the MSM, and leftists in the blogosphere have brilliantly displayed for all to see what "politics of personal destruction" means. In fact, we can hope that the raw partisan ugliness of media personalities like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann will create such backlash as actually to improve the quality of political discourse and reporting.

Many will remember with relish Dan Rather's demise, following discovery of fakery at CBS in Rather's reporting on President Bush's military service. I have on my office wall the original of a hilarious cartoon by the Albuquerque Journal's John Trever, titled "The CBS Defense" and depicting law enforcement personnel taking some manacled sap away from a printing press in a room festooned with drying counterfeit bills. The sap is saying, "Sure they're fake, but they're accurate!"

Olbermann makes Rather seem a paragon of objectivity and truthfulness.

The extensive cover story by Stephen Spruiell in the September 15th National Review discusses at length the threat to the very existence of NBC news on account of its subsidiary's Olbermann. Events subsequent, including reassignment of Olbermann and Chris Matthews, may indicate a return toward (distant) impartiality. In any case, reporters all over the country cannot fail to resent the smear of the Olbermann/Matthews betrayal of professionalism. We all have our biases and preferences, but most reporters - just like most of the rest of us - aspire to perform professionally. Few want to look in the mirror in the morning and recognize someone whose journalistic ethics are in the toilet with Keith Olbermann's.

Charlie Gibson, Katie Couric and Gretchen Carlson, please take note.