In It Takes a Village to Raise a Turbine: Making the Case for Community-Owned Windpower, Francesca Rheannon of Social Funds interviewed Dan Juhl about developing community-based wind projects. The federal policy side:
Francesca: Are there any subsidies out there to help this happen?
Dan: There’s the federal production tax credit for wind energy that's production based. So if you produce a clean kilowatt hour of electricity you get about a two cent per kilowatt hour tax credit. The problem with that subsidy is that it's more geared to the large C corporations, not to you and me.
The rules of the tax credit are that if you and I want to use it, it would be subject only to passive income and subject to the alternative minimum tax. You get the credit for the energy you sell, but you have to use that against your tax base. And if you can’t use it against your ordinary income, then it really is worthless.
IWe want to make it so that Americans can invest in their own energy using these tax credits and not just the big C corporations or the multinationals using these credits. That would really catapult community-based development into a real long-term economic development vehicle. So we're working on Congress to change the rules.
Francesca: Are there bills right now pending in Congress that impact on the ability to go forward with these community-based wind systems?
Dan: Yes. We've been working with our Congressmen Tim Walz and Collin Peterson who have introduced a bill in the House that allows the tax credit to be utilized by average Americans. Hopefully this next session after the election we will be able to get that bill out front and center.
Commenting about a different Walz tax bill, Glen E. Peterson evokes Warren Buffet's observations about rates of taxation in Walz plan fixes unfair taxes.
Jeff at Twin City Liberal crunches the voting data in Tim Walz’s secret to success in CD1. We think the up-and-coming blogger (catch him at Minnesota Campaign Report as well) is on to something:
Nonetheless, the point remains: in a district that leans Republican, Walz relies on voters’ willingness to split tickets. A Congressional candidate without Walz’s charisma and down-to-earth attitude toward policymaking might have trouble in this district.
Take, for instance, GOP endorsed candidate and ideologue Brian Davis (please) and his extremist statements about those nutritional "entitlements" in the Farm Bill. Logo-designer Tild posts about Physicians Against Nutrition. Centrisity eats it up with Dr. Davis, Anti Nutrition. Yep, he'll save the market from the terrors of emergency food relief for Midwest flood victims, WIC programs and other such policy staples.
Senator Coleman must really like Congressman Walz. First, he evoked his name at a campaign stop in Winona (we gather Brian Davis was in the room though he wasn't mentioned in the WDN report Coleman, Franken visit Winona). Now he's put Walz's words in one of his campaign ads according to the Strib's New TV ads: All sniping, no substance? Walz has endorsed Al Franken, so we're thinking that there's something to this observation by a Franken staffer:
Franken spokesman Andy Barr said: "From his too-cozy relationship with special interests to his falling in lockstep with George W. Bush, it's clear why Norm Coleman is desperate to distract from his record."
Walz is helping out Minnesota's other senator with her crusade for fairer Medicare funding. According to this release from the MMA, Klobuchar, Matson to stump for Medicare fairness, Congressman Walz joined the Senator and medical leaders in Rochester and Mankato to talk about Medicare funding formulas:
Klobuchar will [call] attention to the geographic unfairess of Medicare funding. In Miami, Medicare spends about $8,000 per patient per year, whereas Medicare spends about $4,000 per patient per year in Minneapolis. This happens even though the care outcomes in Minnesota are measurably higher.
More later.
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