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Published on July 16th, 2017 | by Guest Contributor

July 16th, 2017 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on Nexus Media. By Molly Taft

Imagine youre packing for a Florida vacation. A swimsuit, shades and a few gallons of sunscreen are probably the first things to go in your bag. If youre driving south from Georgia to Disney World, youll see a big, blue sign when you hit the state line: Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine State.

Apparently, not everyone in Florida has gotten the memo.

The states chief power regulator, Art Graham, told an audience at a 2014hearingon solar power, I think the whole Sunshine State is just a license plate slogan. Grahams not alone. For years, state lawmakers havesaid intermittent cloud cover would make solar unworkable in Florida.

And yet, Florida generatesless solar energythan several far cloudier states, including Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. When it comes to solar, policy is key. And there, Florida is sorely lacking.

Solar resources available across the United States. Florida ranks among the sunniest states. Source: NREL

Floridas big electric utilities are the major sunblock. The four largest investor-owned utilitiesFlorida Power and Light, Gulf Power Electric, Tampa Electric Company and Duke Energysupply power to around75 percentof Florida ratepayers.

On your drive to Disney World, you might peer out your car window at the Mickey Mouse-shaped solar farm near Epcot. You would guess the array belongs to Disney, but you would be wrong. Disney merely owns the land under the installation. Duke Energy owns and operates the array, and sells the power it generates to the resort.

Effectively, four companies control Floridas power market, dictating how and at what price residents get their energy. Floridians generally dont get to choose which power provider they use to run their homes.

Its like saying only one person gets to sell you coffee for the rest of your life all across the state of Florida, said Tory Perfetti, chairman of the advocacy groupFloridians for Solar Choice. I dont drink coffee, but I think that would be kind of crummy.

Utilities in Florida also earn an unusually high return on power. They want to supply as much electricity as possible to consumers. Rooftop solar threatens their bottom line. [Utilities] dont want to sell less energy any more than McDonalds wants to sell fewer hamburgers, said Susan Glickman, Director of theSouthern Alliance for Clean Energy. Thats just their business model.

Clean energy advocates say Florida utilities wield outsized influence on state politics. Utilities rank among the largest campaign donors in Florida politics. A 2014reportfrom watchdog groupIntegrity Floridafound that the states four utilities spent more than $12 million on lobbying between 2007 and 2013, registering at least one lobbyist for every two legislators each year during that period.

Notably, its Florida ratepayers who are footing the bill for utility lobbying efforts. Everybody lobbies from every side of the aisle, said Perfetti. But utilities are using the money they earn from a noncompetitive market to lobby to keep that market noncompetitive.

This table shows how much money Floridas largest utilities spent lobbying the state legislature between 2007 and 2013. Source: Integrity Florida

This table shows how much money Floridas largest utilities spent lobbying the state legislature between 2007 and 2013. Source: Integrity Florida

Utilities also enjoy an unusually close relationship with the government. The Integrity Florida report details a revolving door between power companies and regulators. And it finds that the Public Service Commission, including regulators like Graham, routinely side with utilities over consumers.

For this reason, solar was practically untouchable in Florida politics until recently. If you were a politician trying to open up solar through the free market you were going to have every door shut in your face legislatively, said Perfetti. If you were going to take a stand at all, you were going to have a pretty tough time.

But the tide is beginning to shift. Utilities now face opposition from an unlikely source. In the spring of 2014, Perfetti and Debbie Dooley recruited Tea Party activists and influential Florida conservatives to join a new pro-solar advocacy group,Floridians for Solar Choice.

Dooley and Perfetti united libertarians and pro-business trade groups with environmental organizations. Last year, they pushed toamend the state constitutionto allow Floridians to sell solar power to their neighbors.

Utilities put forward a competingamendment, known as Amendment 1, that could be used to raise fees on rooftop solar owners and block small solar farms from selling their power to consumers. The companies created an advocacy group, Consumers for Smart Solar, withfundingfrom organizations connected to the Koch Brothers.

Consumers for Smart Solar vastlyoutspentFloridians for Solar Choice, and succeeded in making Amendment 1 the only solar-related option on the November ballot. Its official title, Rights of Electricity Consumers Regarding Solar Energy Choice, led many to believe it would expand access to solar energy. In reality, it would strengthen utilities ironclad grip on the power grid. Those who signed the petition to put Amendment 1 on the ballot later told theMiami Heraldthey felt scammed.

This chart shows which utility and fossil fuel groups funded Consumers for Smart Solar. Source: Energy and Policy Institute

While Floridians for Solar Choice failed to gathered enough signature to get their measure on the ballot, they nonetheless managed to demonstrate the broad support for solar. The success of that effort, which created such noise and attention, put pressure and pushed the legislators towards pro-solar policies, Glickman said.

In response to these efforts, lawmakers created a ballot initiative that wouldamend the state constitutionto waive property taxes on solar panels installed on homes and businesses. Amendment 4, as it was known, passed with73 percentof the vote in August 2016.

Amendment 1 would meet a different fate come November. The measure earned national coverage,most of it critical, and a series of gaffes plagued the campaign in its final weeks. A utility-friendly policy director was caught on tape praising the amendments deceptive language as political jiu-jitsu, while the Florida firefighter union publiclywithdrew its supportfor the amendment days before the vote.

We are engaged in a David vs. Goliath battle, a retired fire captain wrote in a letter to the union chief, and having a phony firefighter on TV ads hoodwinking the public that they should support this fraud is so repulsive to me, words do not suffice.

Florida ultimately rejected the measure at the ballot box. Talk about sending a message, laughed Glickman.

Perfetti said the deceptive tactics of the anti-solar coalition were a wake-up call for voters. I would have people call me up who dont pay attention to normal politics, and they knew what was going on. They knew the utility industry was trying to fix and rig the game for their own profit, said Perfetti. Youre talking about an enshrined industry that had total dominance in a state, that was trying to pass an amendment to give them more dominance.

Despite their resounding defeat at the ballot box, utilities have continued to undermine solar. The legislature recently authored a bill implementing Amendment 4. In the first draft, Rep. Ray Rodrigues (R) snuck in language written by Florida Power and Light. The added text would have saddled solar companies with new financial disclosure requirements, but theMiami Heraldexposedthe move, and legislators cut the offending language from the final version of the bill.

Whats next for solar in Florida? Advocates dont know, but one thing is certain. Utilities wont back down when it comes to blocking the sun. Im sure there will be battles coming up in the future that we cant even predict yet, said Perfetti. We are not going anywhere.

Reprinted with permission.

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Tags: Florida, Florida solar, tea party

Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. 😀

See more here:
Florida Utilities Try To Stymie Rooftop Solar, While Tea Party Conservatives Try To Save It - CleanTechnica

I wore my best summer dress bright yellow to the tea party the 7-year-old girl in our family gave for my birthday. Peonies and snapdragons in profusion. What more could I ask on a Tuesday afternoon in July?

Well, the company.

There were six of us at the lavish table: my mother and father, a sister, and her son and daughter. We were home away from home: in the Midwest house my grandfather built when he was a tall young man in Madison, on his first job in the Wisconsin Highway Department.

My mother grew up in this house, this village. Her summer job was teaching kids to swim in Lake Mendota. Every night, her father played ragtime on the piano, until he was very old. He died at 99.

Lush green grass was still rolling outside the window, where my grandfather bird-watched with binoculars. The raspberry patch has seen better days.

What an uncanny child to know Im an Anglophile at heart. I never told her about the storm-tossed London chapter of my life in my 20s. The British man I married told me, in all seriousness, that there was no calamity on land or sea that could not be calmed by a cup of tea. I grew fond of Earl Grey.

The birthday tea party was all the girls idea as we admired my grandmothers teacup collection, each adorned in a different flower design. Ive loved those teacups for a long time, but they stayed on a living room shelf for decades, even after my sweet Wisconsin grandmother died in the 1990s at 93. She grew up in a small town in Kansas.

Sterling, Kan., have you heard of it? Her large Kilbourn family lived in town but had a ranch, too, where she spent summers. The men worked from early in the morning and needed hearty meals.

So I got to choose the first teacup. Primroses please, to remind me of storybook Primrose Hill in Northwest London (of 101 Dalmatians fame). We were going to put these cups to work, by Jove.

This turned out a matrilineal thing, based on the female line. The girl had connected to my grandmother Eleanors spirit her great-grandmother. She was born 20 years after my grandmother died.

For the party, I made cucumber sandwiches, thinly sliced cukes on trimmed white bread with a bit of butter, cream cheese and, yes, salt and herbs if you wish. The English knew how to cope with the midday sun in India and Africa, a cricket match picnic at home.

The Championships at Wimbledon also create an English garden character. Elderflower cordials, a well-kept secret, are perfect on a summer day.

The boy requested Bengal Spice tea and coffee cake. He and my father were sports for this light-hearted affair. It gave me a magical contrast to the heat where I live.

Now Im back in the boiling cauldron and smoking guns of President Donald Trumps Washington. Im wearing my press pass to go to the Capitol. Must I go? Washington is one harshly masculine world after my Wisconsin tonic.

The scene here feels like The Mad Tea Party given by the Hatter in Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Its far less amusing, of course, and more sinister.

Fresh from dairylands sanity, the latest father and son Trump ties to Russia, apparently disclosed through emails, does not surprise. Like father, like son. What surprises me is all the powerful people on our shores who tolerate his utter nonsense. The British word is appalling.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., uses the Russian story to deflect the news media and people from the health-care repeal he means to ram through the Senate this scorching summer.

Trump talks, but McConnell moves, all day long.

Watching all these spinning Washington teacups has me yearning for my stable Wisconsin table.

The centerpiece was the lemon citrus cake. As you see, a tea party can be just the thing. A present from a prescient girl.

Jamie Stiehm writes about politics, culture and history as a weekly Creators Syndicate columnist and regular contributor to U.S. News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter: @jamiestiehm. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.

Go here to see the original:
Jamie Stiehm: The Tea Party Takes the Cake - Noozhawk

Most people have been told not to take free things from strangers in a white van, Guisepi Spadafora joked. But thats exactly what I am.

Spadafora known to some as the tea man travels around the country, serving free tea and offering conversation to anybody who stops by and sits in one of the camping chairs set up around his parked 1989 Ford/Thomas bus.

For the past 11 years, Spadafora has been the man behind Free Tea Party. In that time, he estimates he has served over 30,000 cups of tea across 35 different states.

It all started when he was a recent college graduate, living in Los Angeles and working as a film editor for no pay. He was living out of a truck and found that his interactions with people didnt fill his need for genuine human interaction, he told Travel + Leisure.

After work, I started going to Hollywood Boulevard, Spadafora said. I opened up my tailgate, put out camping chairs, and turned on my Coleman stove to cook dinner. After a while, people would ask what I was doing and I would say Care to join?

A diverse group of people would join Spadaforas dinners college professors, tourists from around the world, street punk kids, etc. When the food was all done, Spadafora would put on a kettle of tea and people would stay to continue their conversations.

Spadafora said he was impressed by what happened when he took money out of the equation people from all different walks of life would sit down and have meaningful conversations about universal human topics.

It was never a conscious act to make a community, Spadafora told T+L. I was never like I am going to fill this loneliness by going around the country and making people tea. I just found that when I took money out of the equation, it made interactions much more genuine. It all happened pretty naturally.

After a few years, Spadafora took his van up and down the west coast. After about seven years of that, he started to criss-cross the rest of the country from coast to coast.

In the late afternoon, he will pull up to a random street and unpack his party: camping chairs, a giant kettle, and a sign that says free tea. Hell brew a large pot (generally non-caffeinated, herbal teas) and wait with his bus, named Edna Lu.

It may take a while, but eventually one brave person will sit down for a cup of tea, Spadafora said. Then another will join. Then more and more will join until its a party, with an eclectic group of people sitting around and talking about subjects as varied as hometowns, funny stories, or the economy of the world. Spadafora said the Free Tea Parties are reclaiming public space for noncommercial use.

While traversing the country, Spadafora takes a slow travel approach. He may only stay in certain cities for one night, but he may stay elsewhere for a few months, often helping with renovation or building projects and always serving free black, white, green, or oolong tea.

Because of the Tea Bus, strangers in the communities where Spadafora stops are no longer strangers. People exchange information and stay in contact. They have fallen in love, made friends, and even formed bands because of conversations in the Tea Bus.

His goal is to remind people that before currency was invented, humans had a sharing culture. Relationships are the highest form of value, Spadafora said.

Those questioning the bus's anti-monetary business model can learn how the project sustains itself on the Free Tea Party blog.

Spadafora and Edna Lu are currently on a writing hiatus in Arkansas. Later this summer, they will start serving free cups of tea again en route to Colorado.

Read more:
This Man Is Traveling the US and Hosting Free Tea Parties From His Van - Travel+Leisure

To read more on this years Comic-Con, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, orbuy it here now. Dont forget to subscribefor more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

Horror fans first met everyones favorite demented doll with pigtails in 2013s The Conjuring, and since then, Annabelle has gone on to star in her own 2014 standalone movie. Now, the prequel Annabelle: Creation is investigating her origins, and unsurprisingly theyre not exactly tea parties and rainbows.

Creation centers on a couple in the mid-1950s (Anthony Lapaglia and Miranda Otto) who turn their rural farmhouse into a girls orphanage. It isnt long, however, before their late daughters doll Annabelle starts wreaking havoc, and director David F. Sandberg (who helmed last years horror hit Lights Out) says he wanted to take advantage of the films eerie, isolated setting.

First of all, its great when you can make a horror movie and there are no cell phones, he says. But I just like the idea. Period movies, for some reason, just feel more ripe for horror movies. Lights Out was all shot on location, but this time, we shot on a soundstage at Warner Bros., and we were able to build this entire house and design it just the way we wanted it this old farmhouse that was sort of dilapidated and sort of worn down.

As for Annabelle herself? Shes just as creepy as ever even when the cameras arent rolling.

There were journalists interviewing me in my office when we were working on this, and they had to cover up the Annabelle doll that was sitting there because they were freaking out, Sandberg says with a laugh. And the same thing now, we have [an Annabelle] doll at our house that we have to hide away because people freak out when they see her.

Annabelle: Creation will hit theaters Aug. 11.

Continued here:
New Annabelle: Creation photo introduces the world's creepiest tea party - EW.com

Johnson City real estate agent Kay White alluded in a July 8 Facebook post that she would announce the launch of her campaign on July 22.

The avid Tea Party advocate issued the informal statement in response to a friend who had posted on her page.

I am making an official announcement on July 22nd at 5 p.m. at the Jonesborough Courthouse steps followed by a celebration at the Barn just off Boones Creek Road on to Old Gray Station Rd. There will be signs! Bring everyone with you. It is time that we have representation for upper East TN. Some people seem to think that East TN. stops in Knoxville! Many blessings, Kay White, the post read.

The announcement comes as a bit of a surprise considering, just a few months ago, White was a staunch supporter of Mount Juliet Sen. Mae Beavers bid for governor.

In a March Facebook post, which has since been deleted, White said Beavers is known for standing up for what is right against all odds.

She opposed the fuel tax, transgender bathrooms and has a bill ready to require all immigrants here on avisa with a drivers license to have those stampednon citizen to prohibit them from voting until they have gone through the proper channels and are legal citizens with voting rights, the posting said about Beavers.

Think about that, we would have our own Margaret Thatcher and Jan Brewer wrapped into one!

White did not answer a Johnson City Press reporters calls on Thursday.

On Wednesday, White told the Nashville Scene, which first reported Whites aspirations to become governor, that Beavers wasgreat but that some people affiliated with her campaign have caused me to doubt her judgment, which concerns me as far as who shed appoint should she win.

The social media-savvy Hawkins County native is a vocal proponent of President Donald Trump and served as East Tennessee chairman of his campaign during the 2016 election. White also attended both the 2016 Republican National Convention and Trumps inauguration ceremony.

Wow what a wonderful speech our President Trump gave to Americans tonight, White posted on July 1. If you missed it, watch the rerun! God blessed America when he allowed us to elect this man!

Whites politics were quite different in the 1990s, when she ran as a Democrat for the Tennessees 1st District U.S. House seat.

In 1998 and 1996, White lost both general elections to former Republican U.S Rep. Bill Jenkins. She did taste victory during the 1996 Democratic primary, earning 3,276 votes to defeat three other candidates.

If White follows through with the announcement, she will join Beavers, businessman Randy Boyd and Franklin native Bill Lee as Republican candidates.

Email Zach Vance at zvance@johnsoncitypress.com. Follow Zach Vance on Twitter at @ZachVanceJCP. Like him on Facebook at Facebook.com/ZachVanceJCP.

See the article here:
Local Tea Party leader, Trump delegate to run for governor - Johnson City Press (subscription)