Opinion

DiLaura: Power to Prosperity Plan proposed by former FBI Special Agent

The Right Side

By J Gary DiLaura

FBI Ret.

About 85% of our power “was” produced by Fossil Fuel and 45% of that “was” coal. I lost count on how many coal plants Barack Obama closed, with no replacement power.

When Obama took office in 2008, our grid had 120% capacity, that’s means if all the  “AC units” were on, we had 20% reserve power on the grid.

Thanks to Obama‘s closing of the coal and oil plants we are now below full capacity.

That means if President Trump doesn’t take major action, brownouts and blackouts could become frequent.

When Obama started closing coal plants and his “stimulus, “shovel ready”, plan failed, I started writing about my Power to Prosperity [PTP] program.

Obama never ran a business, never had a payroll and didn’t seem to understand that, after the unions rebuilt the roads and bridges, the job stopped!

What did he spend … 1 trillion dollars? Why didn’t our economy ‘bounce” back? Simple answer…no cash flow!

If the president teamed up with Congress and pushed through the PTP program, it would solve a multitude of problems, for less than the trillion dollar stimulus bill. It will solve our power, our economic, jobs, and aging grid, power plant problems and earn interest on the stimulus money with a payback plan besides!

What more could you ask for?

How bad is our grid? There are a “handful” of enormous transformers on the grid that are critical to the entire grid. If just a “few” went down, the entire grid would fail! It takes two years to build one of these units and we do not have the ability to build them in the US! Military and industrial leaders begged Obama to build a few backup units, but he “refused”!

 The plan is simple: Direct all 50 States to participate in the PTP project, as National Security demands that. Build one new power plant in each of the 50 States with interest bearing, stimulus loans from the government utilizing, ‘Made in America’ materials and US citizens only!  No steel from Japan or drywall from China! When Republic Steel says, ‘”We don’t have the capacity”, provide interest bearing loans to build/expand steel plants and concrete plants and drywall plants but they too must use American materials and US citizens and “pay back the loans”! This is an interest paying, cash flow resolution and not a giveaway!

Put “all” environmental issues in the hands of the states with mandatory one year deadlines and penalties for noncompliance.  With input from the states, determine what resource will power their plant and where to build. Nuclear, natural gas, clean coal, oil, hydro, and when feasible, wind or solar, but the taxpayers, who are footing the bill, will have the final say via a citizen review board appointed by the president, with Congress and the president solving problems. We will use the greatest resources God gave us and build clean plants!

Then tackle the national power grid. Rebuild, update and bury the grid to make it “bullet proof” (IMP-proof).

When the power plants are completed, the States must sell the facility to private power companies and then repay the loans with interest.

The new owners must hire US citizens! No reason to tariff imports!  I believe the plan will snowball and put 500,000 Americans to work the first year construction starts alone.

The president should declare a National Energy Emergency and overrule, by Executive orders, any 9th Circuit attempted delays.

Cost? If we built 50 new nuclear plants, the most expensive to build, it would cost about $8B each. That’s $450B total, which is less than Obama spent on the stimulus and what did we get? Chinese auto workers back to work! Simply putting construction workers to work won’t solve our problems.

We must construct enduring cash flow projects and allow entrepreneurship to do the rest.

What business is more essential than the manufacture of electric power?

Russia has had the ability to destroy our power grid with three unstoppable EMP Nuclear devices since 1998. The only deterrent has been and continues to be our military.

Our Trident Submarines are so powerful and virtually impossible to detect, that no nation could survive a Trident Sub (one sub) attack. Not Russia, not China, not any nation. So when the president wants to build a new Trident Sub, say, “Yes sir, and thank you”.

The Tennessee Valley project worked and so will the PTP.