Issue Position: Energy

Issue Position

How were your energy bills this year? Gasoline prices? Affordable? Fair? What has Congress done to address our energy costs in the last 10 years?

Their answer is carbon credits.

You heard me correctly. Not hydroelectric or geothermal or nuclear facility expansion. Not breaking up electricity monopolies into free market competition. Not programs to solar panel your roof.

Congress wants to reach into your dwindling wallet and steal MORE money by taxing you on the energy you use. Then, when you have to cut back to nothing, let YOUR unused "credits" be sold on the stock market as securities. To make short-term fortunes on another phantom money bubble. Carbon credits don't even do us the small favor of improving the environment in the process!

We've committed lives and trillions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan and seen the cost of gasoline go up, not down. No new nuclear plants have opened anywhere. The jury's still out on fusion technology. Solar, wind and geothermal are a minute percentage of the market.

Meanwhile, we managed to steal at least $2 trillion from hard working Americans to bail our Wall St. friends out. Where is Wall St.'s contribution to reducing our energy costs? They want MORE from us in the form of "carbon credits!"

It's time to level the playing field. Energy prices are killing the middle class, a little more each year.

As your Congressional representative, I will make finding cheaper energy sources a priority. We must continue to explore for oil and natural gas until something better is in place. But we need to make something better a priority.

We need to take a long, hard look at oil company subsidies and ask why taxpayers are handing free money over with no reduction in pump prices. If refineries need more run time, then give it to them. But it's time gas prices returned to below $3 a gallon. Two dollars would be even better.

Just as importantly, we need to make sure energy providers are subject to the same free market conditions as the families and small businesses currently being forced to pay monopoly electricity prices. Crony franchise agreements are killing the middle class with cartel pricing and it has to stop. Bring back the free market.

Americans need choices that include fairly priced electricity, as well as solar solutions, wind and water generators, geothermal energy systems. Electricity companies haven't pursued those options because they can't find a way to monopolize and overcharge for them. Too bad. As your Congressional representative, I'll work tirelessly to make sure ANY energy company with a viable product has access to the free market…to create choices and to bring everybody's power bills down.

Any new energy plan must also include nuclear power. Nuclear is comparatively cheap, folks. It doesn't run out like oil or coal. And its price is not controlled by terrorists. We all understand that nuclear energy carries waste disposal responsibilities. But that's a far better place to put our tax dollars than Wall St. bailouts and unfair power company monopolies.

As your elected representative, I will fight for the kind of affordable energy solutions our community needs to promote healthy economic growth well into our future. Please help me by voting for John Krause in 2014.

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