Vote Now! Greatest Energy Saving Videos via Facebook

Follow us on Twitter Become a fan on Facebook Have you voted in the Be an ENERGY STAR Video Challenge yet? If not, what are you waiting for?! Americans from across the country sent in videos of their energy saving actions during this year's Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR campaign. Now you get to check out their videos and vote for your favorites! This is an important job. The favorites will get to star in a nationally released video produced by the EPA! Click on the link and get ready to watch some awesome videos! And, because of all of your support, we are giving you—our campaign fans—an extra two days, until the end of the weekend, to vote on your favorite video. It´s our way of showing our appreciation for all of your efforts to save energy and change the world with ENERGY STAR! Don't forget to check out other cool stuff with our campaign! Check out what fun ENERGY STAR events are happening in your area with the ENERGY STARs Across America map. And, of course, don't forget to take the pledge! Even if you have taken it already, take it again now to include your latest energy-efficient changes! And forward this email on to your colleagues, friends, and family so they can do the same.     ENERGY STAR, a program sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and helps us all save money and fight climate change through energy-efficient products and practices. Learn more. Visit www.energystar.gov.

President Obama’s Plan-'Better Buildings Initiative'

 to Win the Future by Making American Businesses More Energy Efficient through the "Better Buildings Initiative"

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THE WHITE HOUSE

President Obama's Plan to Win the Future by Making American Businesses More Energy Efficient through the "Better Buildings Initiative"

In his State of the Union, President Obama laid out his vision for winning the future by investing in innovative clean energy technologies and doubling the share of electricity from clean energy sources by 2035. Alongside that effort, the President is proposing new efforts to improve energy efficiency in commercial buildings across the country. Last year, commercial buildings consumed roughly 20 percent of all energy in the U.S. economy. Improving energy efficiency in our buildings can create jobs, save money, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and make our air cleaner. The President's Better Buildings Initiative will make commercial buildings 20 percent more energy efficient over the next decade by catalyzing private sector investment through a series of incentives to upgrade offices, stores, schools and other municipal buildings, universities, hospitals, and other commercial buildings. This initiative builds on our investments through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and our continued commitment to passing the President's proposed "HOMESTAR" legislation to encourage American families to make energy saving upgrades in their homes.

The President's Plan for Better Buildings

The President's Budget will propose to make American businesses more energy efficient through a series of new initiatives:

• New tax incentives for building efficiency: The President is calling on Congress to redesign the current tax deduction for commercial building upgrades, transforming the current deduction to a credit that is more generous and that will encourage building owners and real estate investment trusts (REITs) to retrofit their properties. These changes could result in a ten-fold increase in commercial retrofit take up, leveraging job-creating investments.

• Achieve a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency by 2020: Under the President's plan, by 2020, we will make commercial building space in the United States 20 percent more energy efficient through cost-effective upgrades.

• Reduce companies' and business owners' energy bills by about $40 billion per year: By making buildings more energy efficient we will save business owners money by reducing their energy bills by about $40 billion at today's prices. That money that can be put to better use hiring more workers, inventing new products, and creating shareholder value.

• Save energy by reforming outdated incentives and challenging the private sector to act: The President is calling for an aggressive reform of existing tax and other incentives for commercial building retrofits and proposing a new competitive grant program. In turn, he is asking corporate leaders to commit to making progress toward his energy goals.

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• More financing opportunities for commercial retrofits: Access to financing is an important barrier to increased retrofit investment in some market segments. To address these gaps, the Small Business Administration is working to encourage existing lenders to take advantage of recently increased loan size limits to promote new energy efficiency retrofit loans for small businesses. The President's Budget will also propose a new pilot program through the Department of Energy to guarantee loans for energy efficiency upgrades at hospitals, schools and other commercial buildings.

• "Race to Green" for state and municipal governments that streamline regulations and attract private investment for retrofit projects: Much of the authority to alter codes, regulations, and performance standards relating to commercial energy efficiency lies in the jurisdiction of states and localities. The President's Budget will propose new competitive grants to states and/or local governments that streamline standards, encouraging upgrades and attracting private sector investment.

• The Better Buildings Challenge: The President is challenging CEOs and University Presidents to make their organizations leaders in saving energy, which will save them money and improve productivity. Partners will commit to a series of actions to make their facilities more efficient. They will in turn become eligible for benefits including public recognition, technical assistance, and best-practices sharing through a network of peers.

• Training the next generation of commercial building technology workers: Using existing authorities, the Administration is currently working to implement a number of reforms, including improving transparency around energy efficiency performance, launching a Building Construction Technology Extension Partnership modeled on the successful Manufacturing Extension Partnership at Commerce, and providing more workforce training in areas such as energy auditing and building operations.

Building on Progress

The Better Buildings Initiative will complement the initiatives the President has already launched for government and residential buildings, including the $20 billion in funding for building energy efficiency in ARRA:

• Through ARRA investments in programs like the Weatherization Assistance Program, Better Buildings, and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant, we will retrofit 600,000 residential homes.

• In last year's State of the Union, the President called on Congress to pass a package of incentives to encourage Americans to make their homes more energy efficient. We remain committed to the passage of the "HOMESTAR" program.

• The Penn State-led Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster is the winner of the federal Energy-Regional Innovation Cluster (E-RIC) competition. The E-RIC competition is a ground-breaking $129.7 million multi-agency grant program that delivers coordinated,

EMBARGOED UNTIL 6:00AM ET THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3

targeted grants to spark the growth of innovative, energy-efficient building systems and technologies. This effort involves extensive collaboration across agencies, including Commerce and the Small Business Administration.

• ARRA provided GSA $5.5 billion to improve the energy performance of existing buildings and to start building a new generation of energy efficient buildings.

• The President signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to achieve zero net energy by 2030 and employ high-performance and sustainable design principles for all new construction and alterations. At least 15 percent of existing buildings need to meet these guiding principles by FY 2015.

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*Scott's Contracting*

Green Me UP-Scotty
scottscontracting@gmail.com

http://stlouisrenewableenergy.com
http://stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://scottscontracting.wordpress.com
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VOTE HERE- Who is the Worst member of Congress?-

 Nominate Your Best and WORSTof Washing Here:

John Boehner and his Republican cronies have had one very clear mission this whole year: to stand in the way of Democrats and protect their millionaire bosses at all costs. All year we have had to fight tooth and nail against the Boehner agenda -- it's been tough.

Now, it's time go on the offense.

Today we're launching a nation-wide grassroots campaign to keep the Senate and take back the House in 2012. We're calling the campaign "Beat Boehner."

Help us start off strong by telling us the progressive Heroes in Congress you think we should work to defend -- and who the Villains are in Congress that we should defeat.

Find your Heroes and your Villains and cast your vote right now.

The members of Congress that get the most votes as "Heroes" will win DFA's endorsement and will be our top electoral priorities in 2012. We'll send the campaign 2,500 new grassroots donors and 500 pledged volunteer hours to help them win.

On the other hand, the members that get the most votes as "Villains" will win our "anti-endorsement." We'll run a TV ad against them in their district, and we will work to defeat them on Election Day.

Who should we help? Who should we defeat? Vote now.

Is your hero Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who led the fight to pass marriage equality in New York and is working hard to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act in Congress? Or how about Rep. Raul Grijalva who fought this year for a budget that would make corporations pay their fair share?

Who do you think is a villain? Is it Paul Ryan, who had a plan this year to destroy Medicare as we know it? Or is it Michele Bachmann, who actively campaigned to de-fund Planned Parenthood and said the organization engages in sex trafficking?

We're ready to win in 2012. We're ready to beat Boehner and all his cronies. Now all we need is your help.

Vote now for your Heroes and Villains, and tell us where to begin.

Let's win.

- Gregg

Gregg Ross, Political Campaign Manager
Democracy for America

Democracy for America relies on you and the people-power of more than one million members to fund the grassroots organizing and training that delivers progressive change on the issues that matter. Please Contribute Today and support our mission.

Paid for by Democracy for America, http://www.democracyforamerica.com/?akid=1346.1758181.x7WqJH&t=3 and not authorized by any candidate. Contributions to Democracy for America are not deductible for federal income tax purposes.

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*Scott's Contracting*

Green Me UP-Scotty
scottscontracting@gmail.com

http://stlouisrenewableenergy.com
http://stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://scottscontracting.wordpress.com
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Throw the Bums Out | Truthout

Throw the Bums Out | Truthout

Throw the Bums Out

Friday 16 September 2011

by: William B. Daniels, Truthout | News Analysis

Grover Norquist, president of a taxpayer advocacy group, Americans for Tax Reform, speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

With recent polls announcing the approval rating of Congress as a whole is below 20 percent, the implication is that the voters from each district and state should throw their bums out. It is the 276 members of the Norquist faction in the House and Senate who are committed by a private pledge to Grover Norquist to kill the president's American Jobs Act that should be shown to the door first.

Killing the American Jobs Act as well as the contrived debt ceiling shakedown of this past July are part of a broad agenda of the Norquist faction to destroy the public interest legislation that has empowered the people of the United States since the 1930s. The shakedown proves that the practice of American politics has changed from deliberative democracy to factional warfare. Politics is no longer policy diplomacy in houses of legislation. Now, it is gutter fighting in which the puppets of powerful godfathers make offers that leaders cannot refuse. No matter what our district, state, region, age, race, ethnicity, religion or political creed, all people of the United States must stand together to fight this Norquist faction.

Founding father James Madison understood the evil of factions. In the "Federalist No. 10," he defined factions as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common ... interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the.... aggregate interests of the community." Madison saw that the most common and durable source of factions is the unequal distribution of property. While the causes of factions cannot be removed by government, the task of government is to control their effects. The Budget Control Act of 2011 and their probable success in killing President Obama's jobs bill are the latest display of the failure of our government to control the destructive effects of the Norquist faction.

All members of the Norquist faction in federal, state and local government are committed to a pledge that states: "I will: ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates." The pledge requires faction members to oppose increased tax rates and reduced tax credits or deductions that would permit government to increase its revenue regardless of the crises facing the country. Implementing their pledge through debt ceiling extortion, the Norquist faction kept deficit reducing tax increases out of the Budget Control Act of 2011. They are bound to oppose the American Jobs Act of 2011 because it will require increased deficit spending and tax revenue.

The Norquist faction is committed to cut public interest spending and to block legislation to increase tax revenues that will prevent government investment to create jobs to bring us out of the Great Recession of 2008 in the way government investment brought us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. They want to cripple the power of government to collect revenue to pay for job creating spending. They want to kill our government's ability to increase payroll tax revenues by creating jobs that will sustain Social Security and Medicare at a time when jobs are being shipped overseas and unemployment is high.

For Social Security and Medicare to work, they must run a surplus and collect more in payroll taxes than they spend in recipient benefits. Over the years, the Social Security Fund has invested its 2.5 trillion dollar surplus in interest paying government debt obligations issued by The United States Treasury. In 2010, $100 billion dollars in interest paid on those debt obligations covered a short fall in the payroll taxes that Social Security received. In 2010, Medicare suffered a greater shortfall. When the debt ceiling is not raised and shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare payroll tax receipts are not covered, Social Security and Medicare cannot pay what they owe to seniors.

Americans of all ages must recognize our common interest and our collective power at the ballot box to rid the country of the Norquist faction at all levels of government. We must start talking about how to purge it from power. We must preserve our safety nets, bring our country out of recession though government spending and increased government revenue in order to restore the constitutional republic that James Madison envisioned.