Obama insider, IBEW, SEIU, fire back at L.A. bloggers in solar war

[Omaha Steve]

http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/election/obama-insider-ibew-seiufire-on/

by LA Weekly
January 7, 2009 12:27 PM
By Daniel Heimpel

What do you get when the top chieftains at City Hall, plus Barack Obama's wildly successful California campaign director, plus one of L.A.'s most politically-connected government unions all pit themselves against a few gadflies whose power is their ability to blog and dissent?

Those are the two sides in a war over a solar power measure on the March 3 ballot. Heavy political hitters who back the solar measure have begun, without irony, attacking the gadflies who wrote a "con" ballot argument against it as "professional antagonists."

Wow, if guys like retired Los Angeles Daily News Editor Ron Kaye and neighborhood activist Jack Humphreville are "professional antagonists," what does that make players like former Obama campaign aide Mitchell Schwartz, or the cash-rich campaign givers/labor honchos who lead the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers?

In March, L.A. residents will be asked to vote "yes" on paying billions to install solar panels around L.A. Measure B has drawn extremely negative reaction on watchdog sites like Mayor Sam and City Watch and has been vilified by the pro-solar Los Angeles Times editorial board because of the virtual absence of serious planning that led to its hurried placement on the ballot. But now the war is getting really juicy.

The project's possibly unprecedented scope -- city workers would try to drape 1,500 acres of glass panels atop buildings -- is untried in the U.S., and the actual costs are utterly unknown. Former newsman Kaye has railed against it on his blog. His ally, DWP critic and uber-gadfly Humphreville, wrote the "con" argument against it for the ballot. They argue that it will be paid for by open-ended DWP rate hikes on Angelenos, to the benefit of the IBEW which will get most of the jobs, and that the measure was embraced by the City Council and mayor to scratch the IBEW's back -- because the union is a big campaign contributor.

Says activist and City Hall pain-in-the-neck Brady Westwater, "We are moving towards Kremlin-style politics."


FULL story at link.

[.... callchet ....]

1. Cost of the panels

alone, not including any other parts or switching devices, or storing devices or any other parts at all would be about one billion one hundred sixty million dollars. In addition to that the panels would generate temperatures of about 200 degrees during peak sun hours. Lot of things to consider before taking on an enterprise like that.