Did I Sign That
April 19, 2018
When I first meet people
They always ask…
So… what do you do…
We save companies money…
That normally gets a pretty positive response…
People like to save money…
Time for a quickie quiz…
How many of you have signed a contract…
Thought you got a good deal
And never looked at the paperwork again
Can I see a show of hands…
You…
Yea…. you over there
Is your hand up…
It looks like you wanted to put your hand up
Come on…
Admit it….we all have done it…
I believe that all of us are well intention-ed…
But… we just get busy
We are always putting out fires
The first thing we do with any new client
Is validate what are you currently paying
Are you paying the exact rate you actually signed for…
Believe it or not…
This is not always the case
I have clients tell me….
Yea… we signed a contract and they told me..
I was well below market prices
I am glad to hear that…
I hope you did get a great deal
But…
Do you mind if I see the contract…
And could we get a copy of your latest bill…
I can’t tell you how many times
We find that the client is being charged
More than what they had signed for
Note: there are times
That the state may approve an additional charge
Due to infrastructure upgrades
But this additional charge
Should be clearly noted on your bill
We always direct the client
To call the provider
And clarify…
Why are we paying this higher rate…
Our contract states we should be paying…
Guess what the response normally is…
Oh, we’re sorry
That was billed improperly
Let us correct that…
We can give you a credit
Or send you a refund
Our clients have received refunds for thousands of $$$
This is your money…
Don’t be afraid to ask for it back…
Always know what you are paying…
And if you are not sure
Give us a call
HBS leaves no stone unturned
In our search for savings
We find ways to save you money
Every Day is a Gift…
Thanks for the referrals
Paul Ryan’s Budget Proposal: Analysis Of The Numbers
April 5, 2011
Written by Jon Ward as reported in Huffington Post
WASHINGTON — The big numbers from Paul Ryan’s budget: It will reduce spending by $6.2 trillion over the next decade and reduce the deficit by $4.4 trillion.
It also cuts the top income tax rate by nearly a third, from 35 percent to 25 percent.
A big part of the House Budget Chairman’s plan rests on the assumption that President Barack Obama’s health care law will be repealed. Over the next decade, that would cut $1.4 trillion in spending alone, according to Ryan’s budget. Those savings, however, wouldn’t go directly to deficit reduction, because Ryan would also repeal the elements of health care reform that are aimed at raising revenue or reducing costs.
The Wisconsin Republican’s budget spends less on nearly every major category of the budget. Over the next decade, Ryan (R-Wis.) wants to cut $389 billion from Medicare, the public health insurance program for seniors. Over the same period, Ryan’s budget puts $735 billion less toward Medicaid, which benefits Americans too poor to afford private insurance. Discretionary spending on domestic programs is also reduced by $923 billion.
Two exceptions are security and defense spending and spending on Social Security, the public pension program for the elderly. Both are kept steady and relatively unchanged from Obama’s proposed budget.
A draft proposal from Ryan’s House Budget Committee says that under his plan, the national debt would be $1.1 trillion less than it would be over the next five years under Obama’s budget, and would add $3 trillion less to the debt than Obama’s budget proposal over the next decade. Ryan’s budget proposal would bring the debt held by the public to $13.9 trillion by 2016 and $16 trillion by 2021, compared to $15 trillion in 2016 and $19 trillion in 2021 under the president’s proposal. (The full national debt of just over $14 trillion also includes money owed to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, but the public figure is the one normally used for budget forecasts.)
Though Ryan’s plan would reduce the size of the national debt as a portion of the economy – which is the key factor when considering the country’s obligations to creditors – the addition of new debt in the short term shows the gap between talk of not raising the debt ceiling by many Republicans and fiscal reality.
The most fundamental difference between the competing budget proposals is seen in the way they envision the size of government’s imprint in the economy, as measured by spending and revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product.
Obama’s budget plan would take spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), the total economic output of the American economy, from 25.3 percent this year to the 22 percent range for much of the next decade. But by the end of the 10 year horizon, his plan has spending back at 23 percent. Revenues, meanwhile, which are currently at an anemic 14.4 percent, would creep up to 19 percent by 2015 and then hit 20 percent in 2021.
It would be the highest amount of government spending since World War II. During the 12-year presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, spending went from 8 percent of GDP to 41 percent, driven by FDR’s New Deal but even more so by war spending.
During Harry Truman’s administration, spending was cut in half, from 41 percent of GDP down to 20 percent, and went down further to 18 percent under Dwight Eisenhower. It stayed at 18 percent of GDP through the John F. Kennedy presidency, crept up to 19 percent under Lyndon Johnson, and then went up to 20 percent while Richard Nixon was in the White House. Gerald Ford brought spending back down to 19 percent of GDP, it then went up to 22 percent during Jimmy Carter’s term, down to 21 percent under Ronald Reagan’s two terms and George H.W. Bush’s four years as commander in chief. Bill Clinton brought spending back down to 18 percent of the U.S. economy.
No president since FDR has increased spending as a percentage of GDP by more than George W. Bush, taking it from 18.4 percent of GDP to 22.8 percent.
Obama’s budget does not show what happens beyond the 10-year window. So, compared to George W. Bush’s spending, he seems to be about on par. However, projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show spending growing at its current pace will grow to more than 26 percent of GDP in 2022, over 32 percent of GDP in 2030, 38 percent of GDP in 2040, and 45 percent of GDP by 2050, with the bulk of that spending driven by ever-rising health care costs.
Revenues under CBO projections would not move above 19 percent of GDP, leading to a gap between spending and revenues that would be difficult to sustain.
Ryan said a computer simulation program of what would happen in the future “crashes in 2037, because it can’t conceive of any way in which the U.S. economy can continue because of this massive burden of debt.”
Ryan’s plan would move spending back to historic levels, keeping it at 20 percent of GDP through 2030, and actually reducing it to under 19 percent by 2040. Ryan’s plan predicts revenues growing to 19 percent of GDP by 2040, allowing the national debt to be reduced over time.
The proposal landed in the middle of a busy news cycle where Washington is consumed with a spending fight over the current fiscal year budget, a much smaller portion of government spending that nonetheless will shut down the federal government if it is not resolved by Friday.
“Right now we’ve got some business in front of us that needs to be done,” Obama told reporters Tuesday afternoon, declining to respond to Ryan’s budget.
The reaction to Ryan’s plan was predictably split along ideological lines, though even those who supported the broad contours of Ryan’s plan did not embrace it in all its detail.
Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America’s Future, delivered the harshest rebuke of the day to Ryan’s plan.
“This is being hailed as courageous. It isn’t courageous; it is corrupt,” Borosage said in a statement.
“Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan will push rising health care costs onto those least able to afford them – the elderly, the disabled and the poor,” Borosage said. “It will do nothing to curb the rising costs imposed by the powerful complexes – insurance and drug companies, private hospitals – that now force Americans to pay twice per capita of any other industrial nation for worst results.”
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who is Ryan’s foil as the Budget Committee’s ranking member, said the plan was a “lopsided approach” to deficit reduction that took too much from the disadvantaged and elderly in order to benefit wealthy Americans and big business.
“Behind the sunny rhetoric of reform, the Republican Budget represents the rigid ideological agenda that extends tax cuts to the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest of America – except this time on steroids,” Van Hollen said in a statement.
However, David Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general and founder of the Comeback America Initiative who is generally a fiscal hawk, said Ryan “should be commended for having the courage to lead in connection with our nation’s huge deficit and debt challenges.”
“His budget proposal recognizes that restoring fiscal sustainability will require tough transformational changes in many areas, including spending programs and tax policies,” Walker said.
Among the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls, only former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was quick to comment on Ryan’s plan.
“Thanks to Paul Ryan in Congress, the American people finally have someone offering real leadership in Washington,” Pawlenty said, but he otherwise steered clear of the details and focused on the coming fight over the debt ceiling.
“President Obama has failed to lead and make tough choices his entire time in the White House. While the budget is going to be debated for several months to come, the more immediate issue we face is President Obama’s plans to raise the debt ceiling next month. That’s a really bad idea,” Pawlenty said in a statement.
“With over $14 trillion debt already, we should not allow Washington’s big spenders to put us further in the hole. We must get our fiscal house in order with real spending cuts and with real structural reforms that stop the spending spree before it bankrupts our country,” he said.
Even the conservative Heritage Foundation, which heralded Ryan’s plan as “a monumental budget proposal for monumental times,” dinged it for insufficient levels of defense spending and for not addressing Social Security.
New Jersey Customer-Sited Renewable Energy Rebates
March 18, 2009
Last DSIRE Review: 02/02/2009
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Contact:
Should you want to know more about how to incorporate Federal and State incentives into a viable alternative energy solution for your organization or business; contact Hutchinson Business Solutions. You may email george@hbsadvantage.com |
Geothermal Energy Gains Steam
March 17, 2009
As reported by triplepundit
Geothermal is the bastard child of renewable energy.
Constantly overlooked in articles and headlines in lieu of the much sexier solar and wind, which have become the go-to cleantech representatives, geothermal energy use could quietly double in the next six years.
It requires no fuel, can provide baseload power, and is emissions-free after initial plant construction. Yet not many people know about geothermal’s immense advantages and capabilities.
Here’s to changing that.
Without getting all Wikipedia on ya’, geothermal energy is basically using the natural heat below the earth’s crust to generate electricity–hence geo and thermal.
Though there are many ways to do that, the most common is to inject water into a pre-drilled hole. The naturally heated water is then introduced to heat transfer fluid. The hot water vaporizes the fluid, which drives a turbine, creating electricity.
That two-step process is intuitively called a binary cycle plant.
Gaining steam (pun intended) in the geothermal world is a process called enhanced geothermal systems, in which a heat transfer fluid is heated directly by being injected down hold drilled deep in dry rock.
For individual household applications, geothermal heat pumps pass air through a pipe below ground that stays a constant 50 to 60 degrees, heating in the winter and cooling in the summer, saving boatloads on utility costs in the process.
Not as exciting as getting power from giant wind turbines or panels that take in the sun’s rays, but clean, efficient, and deserved of our attention nonetheless.
And it’s much easier to get excited about geothermal power once you see the growth numbers.
Geothermal Energy Forecast
Global geothermal energy capacity will grow 89% between now and 2015, according to the most recent information available from GlobalData. Capacity will surge from 11,0007 MW at the end of 2008 to over 20,800 MW in the next six years.
Here’s the chart:
And in case you’re interested, here’s how the market share shakes out by region:
- Asia-Pacific, 47.6%
- North America, 42.3%
- Europe, 10.0%
- South America, <0.10%
Here in the States, forecast growth is on par with global growth on a percentage basis, with an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.5% each. In the next six years, geothermal energy capacity in the U.S. will grow 89%, from 3,112 MW to 5,884 MW. That’s a world-leading sum.
Notable mentions in the geothermal growth category include Indonesia (3,200 MW by 2015), the Philippines (3,246 MW by 2015), and Mexico (1,481 MW by 2015). Iceland’s success with geothermal almost goes without saying.
As you can see, geothermal energy is no slouch, and probably deserves a bit more attention and respect, as does the investment potential of the sector.
Geothermal Energy Investment Forecast
Like most other market sectors, geothermal stocks have lost significant value over the past year. Here’s the visual:
That’s a two-year chart of Ormat Technologies (NSYE: ORA), U.S. Geothermal (AMEX: HTM), and Raser Technologies (NYSE: RZ), three of best pure play public geothermal companies around.
Losing 50% of your value in two years is no joke. But indicators are pointing to a rebound in the geothermal sector that will coincide with growth in geothermal capacity. It only makes sense, right?
The recently-passed stimulus did its part to ensure investing in geothermal energy remains attractive. The bill extends the production tax credit (PTC) until 2013, allowing project developers to recoup 30% of a new plant’s cost. The stimulus creates a cash grant program to support the industry as well.
It’s a win-win according to Geothermal Energy Association executive director Karl Gawell:
We estimate that the geothermal power industry has doubled its workforce in the US in the past two years, and the economic stimulus bill provides a framework of support that will continue if not accelerate growth in this industry adding tens of thousands of new jobs with even greater positive effects across the economy.
Federal incentives will lure private capital to the sector, allowing financing to go through for new projects. Banks will be more likely to lend given a 30% credit that gives stability to and reduces payback times.
Here’s Karl Gawell once again: “All of this adds up to making significant progress towards expanding our use of this largely untapped energy resource, which is good news for the environment and the economy.” A double bottom line. . . you don’t say?
What’s more, positive financials are once are once again returning to the sector.
Ormat recently reported strong fourth quarter results, beating even the high-end of estimates despite ongoing global financial recession.
This trend for Ormat, and other geothermal stocks, will only continue as western States move toward more aggressive renewable portfolio standard with targeted geothermal carve-outs. And Asian countries are also making a strong push to exploit geothermal energy, as noted earlier.
Most analysts have a price target on Ormat above $40.00, which implies a near doubling of price–in line with global and U.S. capacity growth estimates.
That should be enough to get anyone excited about geothermal.
Geothermal energy, despite its lackluster reputation, is gaining steam both as a clean energy source and investment catalyst.
Be sure to spread the word.
To learn more about Geothermal opportunities and the financial models available to make this investment affordable email george@hbsadvantage.com or call 856-857-1230
Preparing for a Flood of Energy Efficiency Spending
February 26, 2009
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — To the casual eye, the basement of this city’s Firehouse 9 looks like a jumble of old hydrants, Dr Pepper cartons, rakes and random gear. To specialists in energy efficiency, the 1960s-era building is a mess of a different sort: wasteful hot water heaters for the firefighters’ showers, ancient refrigerators and outdated lights.
Wrapping up an elaborate energy audit, Knoxville is about to find out which of 99 city buildings are wasting the most energy. It hopes to begin repairs this summer, just in time to catch a tsunami of federal stimulus money earmarked for such unglamorous tasks as replacing light bulbs and fixing leaky insulation.
Knoxville’s timing is excellent. The city began the arduous work of cataloging deficiencies before the stimulus bill passed, and it is well along in planning its next steps. But experts worry that other beneficiaries, especially cities, are not ready to oversee the huge sums of energy-efficiency money about to come their way.
The money in the bill is enough to pay for a tremendous expansion of efficiency efforts across the country. But as with other parts of the stimulus package, the efficiency plan is creating tension between spending the money quickly, to get rapid economic stimulus, and spending it well, to do the most good over the long run.
“There’s enormous opportunity here for expansion of energy efficiency in this country,” said Lowell Ungar, the policy director for the Alliance to Save Energy, an advocacy group. “But there is certainly the potential for waste.”
President Obama signed the stimulus package into law on Feb. 17, hailing it as a shot of money big enough to help shake the economy from its lethargy while advancing many of his campaign priorities. Accelerating the country’s energy transition is at the top of his list. Many experts in the field agree with him that carefully chosen investments in efficiency will ultimately save more than they cost, by cutting energy bills.
At least $20 billion in the stimulus bill was earmarked for programs like improving the efficiency of government buildings and the homes of poor people, and trying to find better ways to save energy. That is far more, advocates say, than any bill in history. Within a few months, the money is likely to start landing in the bank accounts of thinly staffed state and city agencies that are accustomed to scraping for a dime here, a dollar there.
Utah expects that its state energy office will receive $40 million for energy efficiency, renewable energy and related programs — 123 times the size of the office’s current budget, said Jason Berry, who manages the four-person unit. He is about to go on a hiring spree.
The package contains $5 billion to weatherize low-income homes through the Department of Energy, enough to give the state programs that manage that work 10 to 30 times the money they received last year, said Christina Kielich, a department spokeswoman.
For advocates of this relatively obscure program, “it’s like they finally got to the other side of the desert and it’s pouring rain,” said Seth Kaplan, a vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental group.
The stimulus package also contains $4.5 billion to modernize federal buildings and $2.5 billion for research into energy efficiency and renewable energy. The biggest chunk, $6.3 billion, will be distributed by the Energy Department in grants to state and local governments, which can spend the money on things as diverse as thicker window panes for state capitols and rebates for homeowners who change their light bulbs.
Homes and commercial buildings account for 39 percent of national energy consumption. Experts say that improving their efficiency is not only cost-effective but also a good way to reduce the nation’s emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
But figuring out how to spend the money effectively — learning which university buildings need their doors caulked, for example, or which firehouse walls have insulation that is too thin — can involve time-consuming, tricky analysis by skilled technicians.
“People are very conservative about their buildings,” said Donald Gilligan, the president of the National Association of Energy Service Companies, a trade group. “Nobody wants to put a failed technology into the school buildings or have the lights not work.”
In Knoxville, a team of auditors hired by the city is spending six months peering into the grimy nooks of fire and police stations and even the convention center, where one employee referred to the downstairs boiler area as a “money-eating room.”
In the Southeastern region of the country, where Mr. Plack works, low electricity prices have often made saving energy an afterthought, unlike in California and much of the Northeast. For example, Nashville, nearly 200 miles west of Knoxville, has not conducted an energy audit of its city buildings, though it hopes to use stimulus money to look through its own stock of fire stations and libraries.
“There’s a lot of municipalities out there who are completely unaware this is moving forward,” Mr. Kaplan said, referring especially to smaller cities. “They just don’t have the infrastructure in place to deal with this.”
The Energy Department, which is doling out most of the grants, has been assailed on Capitol Hill for delays in disbursing other types of assistance for clean energy. Ms. Kielich said in an e-mail message that the department hoped efficiency grants would begin flowing to city and state energy offices within 120 days, and that it planned to begin disbursing weatherization money “expeditiously and responsibly.”
On the receiving end, absorbing the huge increase in money for weatherization could be particularly challenging, said Ian Bowles, the secretary of energy and environmental affairs for Massachusetts. Though he contends it can be done, “the weatherization folks are going to have to quintuple their effort in order to put that money out,” he said.
In some cases, the managers of efficiency programs may not need to look far to find ways to spend the money.
In Knoxville, the Community Action Committee, whose operations include helping poor people weatherize their homes, works from a building with a $14,000 monthly utility bill — some of it because of an enormous skylight that lets in too much blistering Tennessee sunshine in the summer.
“It’s embarrassing,” said Barbara Kelly, executive director of the committee. “We do better for our clients than we do for us.”
Our Perspective:
I applaud the stimulus but I am always nervous when large sums of money is out into the government’s hands. Responsible spending is the key to this stimulus spending. Investing in the infrastructure ( roads, bridges, rails and energy), is an investment in our future. This will only make us a stronger nation.
Irresponsible spending and earmarks will only tarnish our efforts and be counterproductive. The United States is poised to lead the next great energy evolution.
Let’s be sure to hold our elected officials accountable!
Let us know your thoughts? You may leave a comment or email george@hbsadvantage.com