Want to know why liberals aren't as "patriotic" as conservatives?
Because our mindset doesn't lend itself to "nationalism". Yelling "USA # 1" or "AMERICA FIRST" requires one to be prideful 1st, self-analytical 2nd...or 3rd...or never, from how I've watched this play out in America during my adult life. My idea of "adulting" in this world isn't to sit around and think about all the things I've accomplished and sit on my laurels and shout about them or talk about them endlessly. Reasonable people can only hold onto small life victories for small moments of time. After that moment of pride, it shouldn't take long to continue to have that drive that makes you ask "Yeah, but what have I done for myself lately?", or "What could I be doing better?" or "How can I help make other peoples lives better?". Because the only way you get answers to those questions is to ask them first. And then grow and move towards them. There is nothing different about how one should think about their nation. I could sit around yelling about how powerful our military is or how powerful our manufacturing sector was post WWII and attempting to take pride in that, but that is worthless. It accomplishes nothing. It does not move us forward, it does not set new goals or agendas. And it completely ignores the present context, or more global context of history, or similarly ignores the experiences of black America from that rose-colored moment in time people reflect on. So when you say "Make America Great Again" as if you are making a statement that should make me feel ashamed for not joining you in such a call to action, you need to understand we are standing across from you feeling ashamed on your behalf that you so actively choose to not understand the critiques and concerns over shouting such simple platitudes. I want to be "patriotic". But I've watched too many pridefully-ignorant people drape themselves in the flag as a form of deflection and self-preservation to ever know how to show it in the political climate I've grown up in. The current situation only brings this into focus once again. Police brutality is not something that gets fixed by talking about how awesome we are. Racial biases won't disappear in the heart of our people or systems by pretending they don't exist. I could keep listing the laundry list of what we could do better, but it's besides the point of this thread. The point is, one does not create a better life by sitting back and demanding people understand how good you think you are or once were. You get better by asking the right questions and taking action. I hope we do that as a nation ASAP. You have about 6 months to go solar in West Michigan before it gets less advantageous for the foreseeable future. And if you use most of your electricity at night or in the winter, it will get a lot less advantageous. It’s truly as simple as that. Here’s why: With solar power adoption growing at an exponential rate around the country, non-utility solar installation laws are in flux everywhere. In the final hours of 2019, over one-hundred environmental advocates, solar customers, solar installers and contractors in Boise Idaho attended the final public comment meeting of the year for the Public Utilities Commission. The local utility Idaho Power had new rates proposed regarding the price point at which existing and future solar customers could sell their energy back to the grid (“net-metering”). These changes would NOT make it more beneficial to go solar by any metric. Quite the opposite. The meeting did not end until almost a hundred public comments later and after 2am in the morning. The aftermath of that meeting was a hold placed on the planned net-metering changes the utility was assumed to have in place and functioning by January 1st of 2020. A victory for solar power advocates, if not a temporary one. My friends run a branch of Altenergy Incorporated there in Boise Idaho. That’s why I’m so familiar with this story. But I was curious to see how it was about to impact them not just because I’ve worked there and lived there myself, not just because I helm a branch of that same company here in Grand Rapids, but mostly because we are mere months away from the same fate here in West Michigan. If you want to read about what’s in store, all you have to do is google “Michigan Solar Tariffs”, or “Detroit solar rate changes”, or you could just read this nice recap from the Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association. Because this law has already passed here in Michigan. It’s already in effect for DTE customers. It just hasn’t taken effect in West Michigan yet due to some advantageous timing with our utilitie’s rate-case schedule (Consumers Energy). If you didn’t click the link or do your own google, here’s my quick breakdown: Every 2 years or so Consumers Energy proposes and gets approval from The Public Service Commission for it’s new electric rates for all customers (“rate case”). The last time they did this was right before the new law had gone into effect after being passed in December of 2016 by then Governor Snyder (in a lame-duck session, none-the-less). This new law authorized the electric utilities to change the buy-back procedure for how net-metering has historically worked in Michigan. At present for Consumers Energy customers, if you generate more electricity than you are using and send some electricity back to the grid during the day-time, but then use electricity from the grid at night when you are not producing electricity, what you sent back to the grid 100% offsets the cost of what you took from the grid at that later time. Energy-fee, delivery-fee and all. Which is about 14 cents per killowatt-hour for the average residential customer in West Michigan. And this is only tabulated on a monthly basis when you get your bill. So if you sent 130kwh of electricity back to the grid in the month of August, but you only used 96kwh of electricity from the grid in that time, you not only do not get charged anything for those 96 killowatt-hours, you would also bank 34kwh worth of net-metering credits. So now, later this year, our next Consumers Energy rate-plan will likely mirror what has already been approved by the Public Service Commision and gone into effect for DTE customers around the rest of the state. Under the new law and rate-plan, when they generate more electricity than they are using during the daytime hours and send back to the grid, they are only being credited for the energy-fee and at a lower rate of 7.44 cents. And to make it worse, this is being tabulated not monthly, but live. Second by second. This will be a pretty dramatic change in return-on-investment for anyone considering solar and not consuming a majority of their electricity during the daytime hours. But if you get solar installed before this goes into effect in late 2020, you are grandfathered in under the current 1:1 net metering for 10 years. Which is about the length of time necessary to get your entire return on investment as a residential customer. About twice as long as necessary to earn your returns on a commercial depreciable solar investment. So that’s why I’ve hit you with my sensationalized headline; because (I have an evident solar-leaning bias) if you are smart, you have six months to go solar in West Michigan! Written by Chad Becker, the current Branch Manager for Altenergy Inc. Grand Rapids. A Michigan State Spartan, who grew up in Jenison Michigan, and is a current resident of Walker, Michigan.
*All of the details mentioned for residential and small commercial projects was in accordance with current Tier 1 Solar Array sizing by Consumers Energy. Those are arrays sized 20kw and below. Bernie may have just dropped out of the 2020 election, but his campaign-closing message is more true than ever. More Americans need to believe we can actually make this country a better place to live for it to ever possibly happen. Because with the apathy of our current average American, no matter how wealthy or advanced our country gets, our countries continued economic power will forever be disconnected from advancing healthcare, education and wages for our citizens. As he says in the announcement he just made an hour ago: "If we don't believe that we are entitled to healthcare as a human right, we will never achieve universal healthcare. If we don't believe that we are entitled to decent wages and working conditions, millions will continue to live in poverty..." Truer words have never been spoken at a moment where millions are likely to be in healthcare limbo right as the nation is dealing with a pandemic. Truer words have never been spoken when many public-facing workers are held hostage to continue going into work for wages conservatives would usually argue are meant for teenagers, but suddenly they are deemed "essential". We won't achieve these goals if you never set them in your sites. Every other first world country has universal healthcare and pays less per capita for it. That may be a quick sentence you've heard many times before but please think about what is packed into that statement. Universal Healthcare eliminates medical bankruptcies. Universal Healthcare keeps people from denying an ambulance when they need one. Universal Healthcare allows growing small businesses to compete for and retain talent. Universal Healthcare eliminates people on their death-bed from having their final thoughts being about "how are we going to pay for this?". Universal Healthcare eliminates middle-men and paperwork and the profit motive from being the heart of our current healthcare industry. We like to think of ourselves as the wealthiest country in the world, but our compassion and understanding of the human spirit does not match. We have been an economy for a century that adds great wealth to our country year after year, but we have not seen shared equity of that wealth beyond the richest of the rich since the 1980s. This is fixable but we have to believe it as people, for it to happen. We are our only advocates! Businesses pay billions to lobby for their business. Special Interests spend billions to lobby for their interests. There is no billion dollar advocacy group on behalf of all of us people. That's what we are supposed to be doing for ourselves by voting for people who fight for ALL Americans and our shared interests. We are supposed to be voting for people like Bernie Sanders. But too many people don't believe. And we need you to believe! WE NEED YOU TO BELIEVE we don't have to watch our parents lose their retirement because one of them got cancer. WE NEED YOU TO BELIEVE we don't have to saddle children with tens of thousands of dollars of debt just to pursue an education. WE NEED YOU TO BELIEVE that not all politicians are the same. Because that's what they want you to believe so you continue to not care, continue to be apathetic, continue to just shrug. Because it is that void you leave behind that special interests are happy to fill. They fill that void with their money and lobbying and decades of understanding the game as we have allowed it to be played. Thank you Bernie. You have lit more flames in your direction than I'm sure you could have hoped for only 5 years ago. “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” - FDR May 2003. Pizza Hut - Jenison Michigan
I'm at what could almost be described as a normal day of work at Pizza Hut. I have worked here for over a year at this point, and it would be like any other day if not for the fact that I don't always work the Sunday Morning shift, and I don't always work after getting less than 5 hours of sleep. But it is with those facts that we set the table to this story. Our doors open at 11am, and around 11:05am we have our first "table" walk in the door. I sit them at table F1, a family of 4, two parents and two children, wearing their Sunday Bests. And by Sunday Bests, just for the sake of honesty, it was more like their "Amish Sunday Bests". I'm just painting the picture of the reality of this story, okay? Being on the more tired side of my existence, my more talkative animated server-self comes out as I serve this table alone in the restaurant for those first 40 minutes. I think nothing is out of the ordinary other than them seeming pretty reserved in responses to my pretty over-the-top slap-happy-tired Chad positive communications as I check in with them over that time. But that's about it. I would be lying to say I remember more about how I served that table than those basic facts. Facts I am being liberal with, and possibly self-deprecating with, just to attempt to understand what happened next in this story, as I've been digesting it since the day it happened. Another table or two walks in within the last 5 minutes of their being in the restaurant. Them, already having their bill and me tending to the other two new tables as they left was nothing out of the ordinary. But then one small surprise happened as I grab their billfold from their empty table. A small surprise that would have never registered in my memory beyond that week if it not for what lies ahead. The small surprise is that they simply left no tip. That sucks. And I was annoyed. But whatever, it happened from time to time. With thoughts of 'This hoity-toity church family must be super dutch.' or 'Maybe they really were Amish and this family Rumspringa was not the moment they would become aware of "tipping" as a common US custom.', I went on with my day recovering from a momentary annoyance. But it was at least 10 minutes later that the matriarch of the family walks back in the front door, where I was folding pizza boxes behind the counter since my duties as server were still a bit light at the moment. I see her walking in, set down my box, and walk towards the counter. As she reaches the counter, she says "Oh yeah. We realized we forgot to leave you a tip." . "Oh yeah. Wow. Thank you." or some such dribbles out of my mouth as I extend my hand to grab the 5 dollar bill she is extending me over the counter. As I make contact with the 5 dollar bill, she intently places her other hand on mine and throws a harsh stare at me and simply says "Are you on drugs?". To this I obviously recoil, and do little more than what anyone could expect to say in such a situation: "What? No. What are...." is about all I get out with a scowled look on my face as she continues: "Don't tell me. Tell yourself." And she walks out the door with me staring daggers and wrinkled forehead into the back of her head. If I wasn't animated BEFORE this happened that day, you better believe the manager got sick of me mentally working this out and telling this story out-loud and freaking out about what bullshit just happened to me - on repeat - the rest of the shift. Now, that's pretty much the end of the story. But the questions and annoyances that that self-righteous moment left burning in me for hours, then eventually days, and then occasionally over the next many months, could very well speak to some revelations I had about being comfortable with myself for years to come. Questions like: - "Did they sit in the parking lot for 10 minutes, creating some fictitious concerning back-story for me, with a savior complex for themselves, simply because I didn't fit their "norm" of what people should act like?". This question especially bothered me as I was someone who was labeled by small pockets in my high school as "stoner" even though I had never even tried weed at that point in my life. I didn't mind the label based on who it was coming from in high school because it was definitely not with malice. But this story...this lady...her intent? That's an entirely different dimension. - "Don't tell me, tell yourself!?!?!" That sentence was burned into my existence from that moment. For someone to be so confident, self-righteous and so wrong at my expense, was astounding to me. It was disgusting. It was my first taste of someone holding some subjective, projected bullshit moral-highground over my existence simply because of stories they are telling themselves. It wasn't a complete awakening or eye opening moment, but it was fitting a pattern I was already coming to terms with at that point in my life. - "All these extreme analytical thoughts and bewildered reflections I have been having, all because these people live a life where someone isn't allowed to be animated and cartoonish and spin trays on their finger and try to have fun at work?!?! Without labeling me as "on drugs!?!?" I'm kind of beating a dead horse, trying to flush this out with a third example of what questions ran through my head...but these questions bounced in my head in every iteration for months and months...and flashes for years and years... I've got a couple other stories that could easily fit this mold, but this one really sticks the landing without added variables or unknowns. And the lessons learned through this moment in time aren't universal, nor should I paint a significant portion of the population with the actions of that one family in that moment. But it is through these moments that I eventually realized the larger lesson: Live and Let Live. You would be hard pressed to find someone who says they don't agree with "Live and Let Live" yet we see examples that run amok of it every day: Anyone who has a problem with someone-else's sexuality. Anyone who somehow has a problem with Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Anyone who attempts to take liberties away from anyone for their personal religious beliefs. Or in a really broad sense, as the above story suggests, anyone who would look at anyone for the kind of activity they enjoy, or country they are from, appearance they choose to have, appearance they did not choose to have, or socio-economic background they come from, and then broad stroke that individual's existence in any significant way as to act on it before you know them personally. So, until or unless you have good reason to believe someone is directly harming your life or others, take a moment to reflect on WHY you feel the way you do, and probably STFU. |
The Author
is a thirty-something guy who hasn't been able to look away from politics since 2010. Around the time he got tired of staring at religion. Archives
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