Stamford CT is home to major financial institutions as well as other large corporations. They’ve also been getting too many blackouts during the summer as the inadequate power grid can’t handle the load. Even the mayor admits “we’re just kind of a Third World country here. We have to expect interruptions in our power.” But too much of this and businesses will start leaving. Hey, in a globalized Internet world, those companies can be anywhere.

So, the plan is to create micro grids, an idea already in practice in Europe, the UK, and Walt Disney World. Businesses and neighbors team together to produce their own power, sharing it as needed.

For example, a hotel and office building might team up, with the hotel needing electricity more at night and the office building needing it more during the day.

They can use fuel cells, solar, geothermal, whatever is available to create power, and try to stay off the grid as much as possible. This not only helps the users in the micro grid, it helps the community at large because it takes load off the main grid.

Micro grids and power generation is, I think, the coming trend. Produce power in small amounts locally and use it locally, that’s the way to go.

Connecticut Energy Blog has full details.

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Anyone here having problems leaving comments here? A couple of people have mentioned problems. Please leave a comment (if you can) or email me. Thanks!

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Let me tell you a story of a man named Casey
Thought he could flip real estate but was really quite spacey
Then one day while seeking that big score
A bunch of foreclosures walked through the door

Bankruptcy, that is. Big time debt. No way out.

Casy Serin, a 24 yr old wannabe real estate magnate, bought eight homes with no money down near the top of the market, did nothing to fix them up, then as sat stupefied as his little fraudulent kingdom (he admits to falsifying loan docs on his blog) collapsed. His final home will be sold at auction soon, he is millions in debt, yet still resolutely and determinedly refuses to actually do anything to extricate himself. Hey, he could have spent 15 minutes putting Google Adwords on his blog and made 2k a month easy. Lots of folks suggested he do just that. But no, apparently that would involve actual work.

He started a blog, IAmFacingForeclosure which has been getting huge hits, has been interviewed and profiled in media as the poster child for real estate cluelessness and incompetence, and apparently spends most of his days blogging, alternating between manic plans of real estate glory and black depression. He will chronicle in detail what he needs to do then steadfastly not do it.

A veritable cottage industry of blogs have popped up around all this. ExUrbanNation delights in mocking him while RobertCoteSux ridicules ExUrbanNation. It’s not unusual for posts on these blogs to get dozens, sometimes hundreds of comments, so clearly there’s lots of readership.

I admit to tuning in to watch the ongoing train wreck. It’s not often you get to see stupidity combine with such a startling ability to ignore reality.

There will be many more self-inflicted road kill like Casey as the real estate bubble continues to collapse. Many have tried to give him advice, but it appears to bounce off a concrete wall. As Fohorn Leghorn said to the Henery the Chickenhawk, “is any of this getting THROUGH, son?” Apparently not.

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Not at all, says Lenin’s Tomb, making it clear that those who say Bush is fascist are really trying to move dissent into the corpse that is the Democratic Party where it will be rendered harmless.

Naomi Wolf, a Clintonite feminist, on Bush’s ten steps toward fascism. I don’t doubt the existence of fascist potencies in the United States, but to speak of it as a clear and present danger is misleading, to put it blandly. If you ask me, it’s part of this ‘Anyone But Bush’ politics that is destroying the American left and drawing the antiwar movement into the frigid Democratic Party graveyard. The politics of MoveOn.org, Howard Dean’s fan club, and such alignments, are to divert mass disaffection with Bush’s wars into the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Wolf rightly criticises Bush’s openly repressive measures, including the Patriot Act. However, there is no mention of Democratic complicity.

Just look at the Democratic Congress now, elected on an alleged antiwar platform they’ve done nothing to stop the wars except to enact toothless resolutions that make it appear they oppose the wars, but in reality allow them to continue. This is precisely the process of co-optation that Lenin’s Tomb speaks of. The Democratic Party to often pretends to champion change and social justice but in reality just perpetuates the existing system.

As often blogged here, The Avocado Declaration by Peter Camejo (who ran for US president in ‘76 for SWP and often runs for governor of California as a Green) details how the Democratic Party exists to co-opt dissent. It remains a classic on the subject.

One important value of the Democratic Party to the corporate world is that it makes the Republican Party possible through the maintenance of stability essential for business as usual by preventing a genuine mass opposition from developing.

That’s why an independent people’s movement, separate from the Twin Parties of Militarism, is needed. That’s what will end the wars and reverse global warming. Don’t cede the power to the Democratic Party, this is something only the people can do.

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Russian skinhead immigrants are attacking and beating Jews in Israel. (The skinheads may have, say, a grandmother who was Jewish, but they don’t consider themselves to be Jews.) The reaction of the government to all this appears to be complete denial.

Gilichenski says the authorities turn a blind eye: “Israel is very swift to criticise anti-Semitism abroad but remains silent in the face of anti-Semitism within.”

I wonder how much of the enormous immigration that Israel encourages is in part due to wanting to keep the (at least nominally) Jewish population as the majority over the ever-increasing numbers of Palestinians.

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