May 2011

Abnormal Stock Market Returns for Members of the House of Representatives

Michael Giberson A few years ago we mentioned a study, “Abnormal Returns from the Common Stock Investments of the U.S. Senate,” finding that U.S. Senators as a group outperformed the market in their stock holdings. The researchers are back now with a similar examination of the U.S. House of Representatives, titled, simply enough, “Abnormal Returns …

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Future of Lubbock’s Power Supply Efforts Heads to Court, with Lubbock Citizens Paying Lawyers on Both Sides of Case

Michael Giberson In January I mentioned that a municipal utility agency created as a kind-of public-private partnership between the West Texas Municipal Power Agency and Republic Power Partners was taking off in an unexpected direction and leaving more than a few locals wondering what was going on. In brief, High Plains Diversified Energy Corporation, the …

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Massachusetts Wants $22.5 Million in Tax Breaks Back from Evergreen Solar, Company in Dire Financial Condition

Michael Giberson Politicians show up, grinning for the cameras at groundbreaking, they come applauding the expansion announcement (and why not, public tax breaks and other policy support for solar power manufacturers were chief among the reasons the plants were built in the first place), but where are the toothy smiles of supporting public officials when …

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Cheap Natural Gas Upsetting Wind Development Plans, and Other Energy Stories

Michael Giberson Energy stories from around the web. Financial Times, Gas threat to wind farm growth – “Construction of new wind farms in the US is set to decline next year because of competition from cheap natural gas for power generation, the country’s largest developer of new wind power projects has said.” Greentech grid, California …

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Waxman to Koch Industries: “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Capitalist?”

Michael Giberson From The Hill’s Energy & Environment blog, “House Dems: Koch brothers could benefit from oil pipeline approval“: Top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee want to know whether the Koch brothers stand to benefit from the approval of a controversial oil sands pipeline. Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, and …

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“How Social Influence Can Undermine the Wisdom of Crowd Effect”

Michael Giberson New in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a paper showing how the “wisdom of crowd” effect can be undermined when members of the “crowd” are given information about what the rest of the crowd predicted. Averaged or full information about others’ predictions tended to narrow the diversity of predictions in …

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Ercot Reliability Monitor Issues Report on the February 2 Rolling Blackouts

Michael Giberson The Texas Reliability Entity has issued its report on the ERCOT extreme cold weather events and rolling blackouts of February 2, 2011. Texas RE is the NERC regional entity for the ERCOT power system and contracted to the Public Utility Commission of Texas to serve as ERCOT reliability monitor for the state agency. In …

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Bonneville Power Administration Says No to Negative Prices Again

Michael Giberson The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) Administrator has adopted interim Environmental Redispatch and Negative Pricing Policies to deal with potential overgeneration conditions on the BPA power system. In brief, BPA plans to employ “Environmental Dispatch” rules for operating the power system in a manner conducive to BPA meeting various legal and regulatory constraints; the …

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Gasoline Price Gouging Complaints Spur Kentucky, Maryland Attorneys General into Action

Michael Giberson Image: MDOHKYgasprices_APR20_gasbuddy hosted on Flickr. Chart created at GasBuddy.com. Kentucky: Attorney General Jack Conway filed a motion last week seeking a temporary injunction to force Marathon Petroleum Co. to return its gasoline prices to April 26 levels, the date the state’s Governor declared a state of emergency due to flooding. From WLKY.com: Attorney General …

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