Bacon's Rebellion

  • Coal Plants Going Out of Style?

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    James A. Bacon

    As recently as May of this year, U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build as many as 150 coal-fired power plants. But within the last few months, “plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high,” reports the Wall Street Journal today in a front-page story.

    Dominion, which recently highlighted plans to build a $1.7 billion clean coal facility in Southwest Virginia, appears to be an exception to the trend of canceled plants. But many of the same concerns apply: It may be possible to burn clean coal, but it’s darned expensive. (See “Another Inter-Regional Transfer of Wealth .”)

    The Journal cites a controversial proposal by Northern States Power Co. to build a coal-fired plant in Minnesota. A hearing judge at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is urging rejection of the plan.

    The judge concluded it would cost an extra $472.3 million, in 2011 dollars, to make the power plant capable of capturing about 30% of its carbon dioxide emissions, and another $635.4 million to build a pipeline to move the greenhouse gas to the nearest deep geologic storage in Alberta, Canada. Thus, $1.1 billion in pollution controls had the potential to inflate the cost of power coming from the plant by a whopping $50 a megawatt hour, making electricity from Excelsior twice as costly as power from many older coal-fired plants that simply vent their carbon dioxide.

    Dominion’s proposed plant in Wise County would sequester C02 in local coal seams, sparing the cost of building a long pipeline. But the facility would still cost some 60 to 70 percent more to build than the average new coal plant.

    The big question: With electricity demand soaring, what will take the place of coal? Nuclear power is the obvious alternative, but new nukes will take years to permit and build. Wind and solar offer only limited near-term potential, and don’t provide around-the-clock power. Natural gas is extremely expensive, and likely to get more expensive if the coal plants don’t get built.

    Implementing conservation measures to dampen rising demand is the obvious short-term way to plug the gap in supply and demand, but current goals, if met, would conserve only 10 percent by 2020. Virginia needs to set much more ambitious electricity conservation goals and create regulatory mechanisms — smart metering, peak load pricing — to incentivize savings.

    I don’t know how residential customers will respond, but I am quite certain that commercial and industrial consumers would move aggressively to cut their energy costs. I am judging submissions to the Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards right now, and I am impressed by the ongoing programs that several of Virginia’s largest manufacturers have put into place to curb energy consumption in general, and electricity consumption in particular. As a requirement for participating in the awards, they are required to share their best practices. We can achieve dramatic savings we just put our minds to it.

  • Good Idea: Deporting Criminal Aliens

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    James A. Bacon

    People make all sorts of excuses why we should let illegal immigrants stay in the United States. But there should be one thing most Virginians can agree upon: If illegal immigrants are already in jail — if we already have them in custody — we should go ahead and deport them. The logic is doubly compelling if they have been convicted of a crime.

    The State Crime Commission gets it. Virginia sheriffs would be required to initiate deportation proceedings against suspected illegal immigrants under a proposal announced Tuesday by the State Crime Commission’s illegal immigration task force, reports Tim McGlone with the Virginian-Pilot. If approved by the General Assembly, jailers would begin the deportation process instead of waiting for federal immigration agents to take custody.

    Writes McGlone:

    Jails have complained that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for taking deportees, sometimes does not respond to their calls. That means that a jail must release a suspected illegal immigrant after he or she has served jail time or gets out on bond. …

    Only a handful of Virginia sheriffs departments participate in a voluntary federal program that trains deputies to recognize illegal immigrants and initiate the deportation process. The plan announced Tuesday would make the program mandatory for every jail in the state. [State Sen. Kenneth] Stolle [R-Virginia Beach]said legislation would be prepared before the next General Assembly session in January.

    If defenders of illegal immigration want to go to bat for criminal aliens, not just hard-working paysans who slip into this country to make a living, let them go ahead. It’s a losing proposition.

    In related news… It turns out that there’s a 40-person cap on how many illegals Prince William County can deport each month. The Examiner quotes Board Chairman Corey Stewart as noting that more than 100 illegal immigrants could be deported each month if the Immigration and Customs Enforcement had the money.

    Hmmm. That may be an issue the State Crime Commission should consider. There may not be much point in cranking up the illegal-immigrant enforcement apparatus if the federal government can’t handle the volume.

  • Hey, Sometimes Democracy Works!

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    James A. Bacon

    Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R—Prince William, Fauquier, has called for the repeal of Virginia’s notorious abusive driver fees. As he wrote in his constituent newsletter today:

    I have done some soul searching on this bill in recent days and I’ve decided it would be best to repeal it and start over. It’s just too complex and the out-of-state piece would have taken major surgery. … This is a representative democracy, not a dictatorship. When we make mistakes, we must act to correct them.

    As Lingamfelter noted, however, abusive driving remains a real problem in Virginia.

    Some people think it’s their right to weave in and out of traffic, speed, drink and drive, drag race, and otherwise endanger innocent drivers. It’s a serious issue. But bad driving is in large measure a law enforcement problem. I think the focus should be there. If you want to use the money to improve traffic safety, fine. But the law should be focused on bad driving, not bad roads.

    Well said. Abusive driving is a real problem. And the way to deal with it is to consult with Virginia’s prosecutors and traffic judges, study the experience of other states, and devise penalties with the express goal of modifying dangerous behavior — not raising revenue. It’ll take a lot of study, deliberation and hard work. But the end result will be far superior.

  • Speeding Insurance

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    James A. Bacon

    Via Hit & Run, a new idea out of Denmark that just might catch on in Virginia: speeding insurance:

    For just 2.50 Danish crowns (33 euro cents) per day, the club will pay up to four speeding tickets and four parking tickets per year, up to a value of 10,000 crowns.

    The idea, Fartklubben founder Poul Winther told Danish daily Politiken, is not to give Danes license to put the pedal to the metal, but rather to protect motorists from over-zealous traffic cops.

    The Danish government isn’t happy and is looking for ways to shut it down (because it’s all about safety, or the children, or some such thing… NOT revenue. Nope, never about the sweet, sweet flow of cash into the treasury).

  • Dueling Methodologies

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    James A. Bacon

    Is the United States lagging other economically advanced nations in the deployment of broadband infrastructure? That’s the ineluctable conclusion of a study published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and cited by the blogger Groveton in a recent Bacon’s Rebellion column, “The Commonwealth is Flat.”

    In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece today, Robert M. McDowell, a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission, argues that the OECD methodology is “seriously flawed.”

    First, says McDowell, the OECD measures broadband connections per capita, not per household. Per capita metrics favor nations with smaller family units, like those in Europe, and punishes nations with larger households, like the United States. It doesn’t matter if you have one, two or six people living in a household — if the household is served by broadband, everyone in that household has access to it.

    Secondly, contends McDowell, the OECD does not include Wi-Fi hot spots unless they are used in a so-called “fixed wireless” setting. One third of all wireless hot spots in the world are located in the U.S. As an increasing number of computer users access the Internet through laptop wireless connections in hot spots, U.S. access to broadband may be significantly undercounted under the OECD methodology.

    As for the Asian countries like Korea and Japan, where broadband penetration is significantly, higher, McDowell argues that their dense, urban populations make them more economical to serve. Compare densely populated New Jersey with Korea, and guess what: New Jersey has a higher penetration rate.

    The United States has more telecommunications competition than most European countries, McDowell says, and the rate of broadband penetration continues to increase rapidly as video applications create market demand for higher bandwidth. Bottom line: We’re really doing OK. Our system works.

    Is McDowell taking a Pollyannish view? Darned if I know. His reasoning does seem to make sense. I just don’t know if his arguments have counter-arguments.

  • Is Gasoline Consumption Really Plateauing?

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    James A. Bacon

    In my recent column, “The Next Transportation Crisis,” I quoted Department of Transportation figures to the effect that federal gasoline tax receipts had declined slightly in the first few months of 2007, possibly foreshadowing a long-term slowdown in gasoline consumption.

    Reader Bill O’Keefe, a consultant who closely tracks the oil and gas industry, offers different numbers and a different interpretation. According to the American Petroleum Institute, he says, gasoline deliveries in 2007 set a first half record, averaging 9.2 million barrels per day — 1.5 percent higher than the first half of 2006. Gasoline imports set a record of 1.3 million barrels per day for the second quarter.

    On a month-to-month basis deliveries may not match up with consumption, says O’Keefe, but they do track closely over longer periods of time. Monthly comparisons are tricky because a number of variables, such as weather, can briefly skew the numbers. “For example, if last February was unseasonably warm and this one was colder, there would be less driving and less gas consumed. But that would be weather driven and not an underlying change in demand.”

    Let it never be said that I don’t entertain both sides of the story!

  • “They Would Just Be Poor Forever”

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    James A. Bacon

    Kudos to Tim Craig with the Washington Post for finally writing a story about Abuser Fees that should have been written long ago — and confirms every worst fear that I’ve been raising on this blog all along.

    Craig takes a look at the impact of Abuser Fee-like legislation where it has been tried in Michigan and New Jersey. The experience of those states shows that Virginia can expect: (a) an increase in unlicensed motorists, (b) crippling financial hardship on the working poor, and (c) less revenue than anticipated because so many of the fines go uncollected.

    Writes Craig (my italics):

    Numerous lawmakers, judges and social activists in both states have sought to either repeal the fees or make major changes in how they are collected. But once the programs are implemented, they are difficult to get rid of, because state lawmakers are unwilling to give up the revenue they raise, judges and lawmakers said.

    “I think it is a very destructive piece of legislation that is designed primarily for revenue purposes and is disguised as a highway safety measure,” said William C. Buhl, a Circuit Court judge in Van Buren County, Mich. “In my opinion, it increases the dangers on the highways because it creates an enormous, growing pool of unlicensed motorists.” …

    New Jersey issues about 800,000 license suspension notices a year, a quarter of which result when people are unable to pay the surcharges, according to the New Jersey Treasury Department. A 2001 study by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice found that the suspensions were creating a permanent underclass. …

    Michigan has issued 750,000 suspension notices for failure to pay the fees since they went into effect in October 2003. In December, Buhl and three other Michigan judges told a legislative committee that the state’s unlicensed motorists are increasing in number and are regularly fleeing police. Once caught, they face another round of fees they cannot afford.

    Several judges in Michigan are taking matters into their own hands by lessening the charges for some motorists so that the fees are not triggered. “We are trying our best to get them past this rather than impose another $1,000 fine on them, or they would never drive. They would just be poor forever,” said District Court Judge Roger J. La Rose, who presides in suburban Detroit.

    On the potentially positive side, the number of traffic fatalities in Michigan has declined since the abuser fees went into effect — a significant benefit. But the state police say it’s too early to say whether there is a causal connection.

  • Another Inter-Regional Transfer of Wealth

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    James A. Bacon

    Dominion recently announced plans to build a $1.6 billion coal-fired power plant in Wise County, in the heart of Virginia’s coalfields. The power company is billing the 585-megawatt “Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center” as a state-of-the-art clean coal facility. So far controversy has been muted. Some environmental groups have expressed displeasure, but their critique has gained little attention. What has escaped comment so far is the likelihood that the proposed location of the power plant in Southwest Virginia is driven by political considerations, and could well cost Dominion rate payers in eastern Virginia tens of millions of dollars annually in higher electric rates.

    To be sure, the power plant would be an engineering marvel, incorporating a number of expensive refinements to reduce the impact of coal combustion on the environment. According to Dominion, some of those elements include:

    • Carbon capture. “Carbon-capture compatible” design, meaning that technology to capture carbon dioxide could be added to the station when it becomes commercially available. Dominion is sponsoring research at Virginia Tech to see if it is possible to sequester carbon dioxide in coal seams in Southwest Virginia. Carbon capture technology is entitled to extra incentive premiums under Virginia’s regulatory framework.
    • Fluidized bed technology. The use of circulating fluidized bed (CFB) technology, a clean-coal technology for reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. The power station also will use an air filter called a bag house to remove particulates and mercury.
    • Waste coal and biomass. The capability to use a wide range of coals, waste coal, and up to 20 percent biomass. Piles of unused waste coal can lead to acidic leaching that causes environmental problems in Southwest Virginia.
    • Pollution controls. Additional controls to remove even more sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.
    • Water conservation. Air-cooled condensers to reduce water usage at the station by nearly 90 percent when compared to typical coal-powered facilities.
    • Ash recycling. The possible beneficial recycling of combustion by-products for the manufacturing of cement.

    These are all commendable. What’s missing from Dominion’s press release, however, is what all this gee-whiz technology will cost to install. I don’t pretend to be an expert, and I’m willing to stand corrected. But to get a basis for comparison, I refer to a National Energy Technology Laboratory document, “Tracking New Coal-Fired Plants,” dated May 1, 2007. On page four of the PowerPoint presentation, it notes that 151 proposed new plants would generate 90 million gigawatts nationally at a cost of $145 billion. That averages out to a cost of $1.6 billion per gigawatt.

    Coincidentally, $1.6 billion is what the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center would cost. But instead of generating a full gigawatt of electric power, it would generate only 585 megawatts — or 58.5 percent of the average. The balance, or roughly $650 million, represents an additional cost to Virginia rate payers.

    But that’s not all. States Dominion: “Under a state law encouraging the construction of the station, it would be powered by Virginia coal.” As it happens, Virginia has very high-quality, low-sulfur coal. But after 100 years of mining, Virginia’s remaining coal seams are either very thin or very deep, which means production costs are very high. Bottom line: Virginia electric consumers will pay more for their coal than if Dominion were free to purchase the fuel from any location. Thus, rate payers would pay more in two ways: for the up-front construction and for the fuel.

    (I haven’t even discussed the cost of transmitting the electricity from SW Virginia to the population centers in the eastern part of the state. How’s that going to work? What transmission lines will be used? Will Dominion need to add to its electric transmission capacity?)

    (Update: Dominion spokesman Jim Norvelle clarifies the transmission-line issue: “In our application with the SCC we identified the electrical switchyard at AEP’s Clinch River power station as our preferred intertie location. That is about nine miles away from our site in Virginia City, all of it adjoining an existing transmission line right-of-way belong to Old Dominion Power. The application says that PJM is performing its studies on possible intertie locations now. Of course, we would have to file a separate application with the SCC for the transmission line.”)

    The underlying motive for locating the power plant in Southwest Virginia and for burning Virginia coal is to boost the depressed economy of the Southwest Virginia coalfields. The station would employ up to 800 workers during construction. Once complete, it would have 75 full-time employees and support about 350 mining jobs.

    What is the legislative story behind this facility? I wish I knew. But I would be willing to wager that the origins of the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center project is intimately bound up with approval of the electric utility re-regulation legislation enacted into law earlier this year. One of the key lawmakers who shepherded electric re-regulation through the legislative process was Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, whose 1st district encompasses Lee and Scott counties, and parts of Washington and Wise counties. The Dominion power plant would be located in his district — or right on the edge of it. (I can’t find a detailed map of the 1st House of Delegates district. Perhaps someone can help me.) Also not to be overlooked is the influence of Sen. William Wampler, R-Bristol, one of the most powerful members of the state Senate.

    At a time when environmental and conservation groups are clamouring for a shift to conservation, renewable energy and a distributed grid, proponents of Big Grid electricity infrastructure contend that solar power, wind power, biomass-generated energy, cogeneration, etc. are impractical. Renewables just aren’t competitive with coal-fired electricity. Say what? Wind power is not competitive, but a coal-fired plant costing twice the national average would be competitive?

    Bloggers and the news media need to dig deeper, and do it fast — before the State Corporation Commission approves the project. I would approach the story with a working hypothesis: By costing rate payers hundreds of millions of dollars more than a conventional coal plant, the Southwest Virginia facility represents an extravagant, inter-regional transfer of wealth. I also would investigate the politics of the deal: Did Dominion agree to the project to gain the help of Southwest Virginia legislators in getting its re-regulation legislation through the General Assembly?

  • Development that Really Rocks

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    James A. Bacon

    There aren’t many developers with “rock star” status in Virginia, but the backers of the “Coal Tower” project in downtown Charlottesville are a genuine exception. The owner of the 10.7-acre, by-right development is the Dave Matthews Band. The band plans 315 residential units, offices, retail and several restaurants, according to the Daily Progress.

    City officials approve:

    The Coal Tower project, as it has been dubbed, fulfills the city’s goal of clustering high-density, mixed-use development near downtown. The result, city planners and the developer say, will be hundreds more residents who can get to the Downtown Mall for work and recreational purposes without having to use a car.

    “We said we wanted to put more people into the core of the city and that’s what this does,” said Jim Tolbert, director of the city’s Neighborhood Development Services.

    Of course, there’s always someone with a beef. Some neighbors are concerned that the eight- and nine-story buildings will be out of scale, and others fret about local traffic congestion. I haven’t seen the plans so I can’t speak to the specifics. But from a high-altitude perspective, urban infill and redevelopment is the very best kind of development that can take place. It takes advantage of existing infrastructure, pumps up the city tax base and generates less traffic per resident than greenfield development.

    The Dave Matthews Band rocks in more ways than one.

  • Fresh Ideas for River City

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    James A. Bacon

    Michael Martz with the Times-Dispatch on the charrette for the downtown Richmond master plan:

    Convert all one-way streets to two-way.

    Create a center for public transit, including trolleys.

    Make the James River the focus of life in a rejuvenated downtown Richmond where people do more than commute between work and the suburbs.

    There were plenty of ideas in the air and scrawled across maps yesterday as more than 175 people took the redesign of the city’s downtown into their own hands. They were encouraged, not blocked, by City Hall.

    The article is a good read. (For the record, I’m not endorsing any of the specific ideas — just the idea of holding a charrette.) My only disappointment: I wish the editors had given the story more space. Martz understands the land use issues better than most newspaper reporters. The newspaper needs to turn him loose.

    For a more authoritative account of the ideas generated by the charrette, John Sarvay’s reporting on Buttermilk & Molasses is must reading. John groups the ideas into major themes, including: the James River, community connectivity, transportation, green development, mixed use, public art, Jackson Ward and Manchester.

  • Raising All the Abuser Fees the State Could Ever Want in a Single Day

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    James A. Bacon

    Jon Baliles has an excellent solution for how the state can meet its abuser funding goals and at the same time, teach Richmonders a few basic rules of the road:

    Send police to any stoplight in Virginia (especially Richmond) when a storm comes through and kills power at the intersection (or just cut it off for kicks). You can write tickets and issue fees all day long and raise enough money to pave over the entire state.

    I saw so many idiots blow through inoperable stop lights yesterday (at just three intersections) rather than do what the law requires, which is treat such a light as a four way stop. People would blow through at regular speeds, some would think about stopping but keep going when Joe Moron flew on by, then the cars behind would keep the train rolling.

    Responsible drivers trying to get through waited out the idiots. It was like the last few seconds of a bumper car ride as they tried to nudge through. At Leigh and Boulevard some yo-yo almost T-boned a big Dominion bucket truck at 45 MPH and another intersection there was an accident but didn’t look serious.

    This happens all the time because people don’t know driving laws and regulations. And now our leaders say they are going to build roads based on a law that (in part) depends on us continuing to drive like the big final scene in the The Road Warrior.

    I saw the same sort of behavior on the way home. At the intersection of Cary and Malvern alone the abusive driving fees could have funded the end-to-end paving of Hanover County (by this morning, someone had placed a single stop sign…pointing only at eastbound traffic).

    And it’s ingrained behavior, too. God help you if you were on city streets after Isabel smashed the local power grid in 2003. Crossing an intersection required a leap of faith, nerves of steel and drag racer-like reflexes.

    If abuser fees were in place for just that week, the state could have built an eight lane highway to Mars.

  • Disclosure for Governors: Virginia Rates a “D”

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginians supposedly believe in transparent government. We don’t pass restrictive laws on how much money people can donate to political campaigns, or how and when they lobby legislators. But we do require everyone in the political process to report what they’re spending, and what their financial interests are. As the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

    However, the Center for Public Integrity is less than impressed with Virginia’s financial disclosure requirements for its governors, rating Virginia a “D”. We have plenty of company — 10 other states scored “D” and 21 scored “F” — but it’s saying something when you’re less transparent than New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. (See the state rankings here.)

    For specifics on Virginia’s financial disclosure requirements for governors, click here.

    (Hat tip: Jon Baliles.)

  • Best Line of the Day

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    James A. Bacon

    Paul Goldman in the Free Lance-Star on the Abuser Fees, which would not be levied on Virginians but not out-of-staters: “Now we have a new traffic offense called DWV: Driving While Virginian.”

  • The Abuser Fee Debate: When All Else Fails, Look at the Facts

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    James A. Bacon

    “Being for driver safety is a good thing. We need to study it in a deliberate way before we rush into it.”

    So said Gov. Timothy M. Kaine during a press conference he held with senior members of the General Assembly yesterday in defense of abusive-driving fees enacted into law this year. (Read Jeff Schapiro’s account of the press conference in the Times-Dispatch.)

    Yes, we can all agree that driver safety is a good thing. But where, pray tell, was the “deliberate” study? What empirical basis does Virginia’s political leadership have for stating that highly punitive fines will lead to safer roads?

    It just so happens that the Virginia Crime Commission published a study earlier this year, “Effectiveness of Existing Punishments and Recommendations for Additional Remedies for Driving While Intoxicated,” that examined the effectiveness of increased punishments for driving under the influence of alcohol.

    Del. David B. Albo, R-Fairfax, the leading advocate of the now-infamous Abuser Fees, introduced legislation in the 2004 session that increased penalties for DUI. Measures included (1) increased minimum sentences for second and third convictions, (2) lower blood alcohol levels to trigger mandatory minimum sentences, and (3) other penalties such as suspension of driver’s licenses, confiscation of cars and a presumption against bail under certain circumstances.

    The law went into effect July 1, 2004. The study’s conclusions (my italics):

    The data does show that there were fewer convictions for second and third offense drunk driving charges in 2005, as compared to 2004. Because this data reveals recidivism rates for only a one year period, it is possible that other factors are responsible for the lower numbers. Staff has concluded that it is not possible to definitively state, with methodological rigor, that the more severe punishments are causing recidivism for drunk driving to decline. Whether the lower numbers for DUI convictions will continue, or whether 2004 will come to be seen as an unusual year in which the number of DUI incidents was lower than normal, remains to be determined.

    Additionally, there are many factors that contribute to the total number of DUI incidents occurring during a given year. The number of law enforcement officers assigned to patrol for drunk drivers, the number of DUI checkpoints established throughout the state, and the number of public service announcements on radio and television cautioning people to avoid drunk driving, all may impact DUI rates. The types of counseling and treatment given to people convicted of a first DUI may have even more of an impact on their future behavior than the amount of punishment they receive. Attempting to objectively discern what precise variables are having the most measurable effects on lowering DUI rates is extremely difficult.

    While the initial data for the past year, with the lower DUI figures, is encouraging, it is too soon to draw any firm conclusions as to whether this is due to the changes made to the DUI statutes in 2004. Until data is available for at least four to six years, it is not possible to assess whether those changes are responsible for lowering recidivism rates. Nevertheless, the initial data is promising, and the Crime Commission intends to continue monitoring DUI rates on an annual basis to see if the downward trend continues.

    That’s the only relevant report to the General Assembly that I could find in 2007 or 2006. (Someone might want to go behind me and make sure I didn’t miss something.) Fact: No one studied anything related to Abuser Fees “in a deliberate way” before passing the law. Fact: There is no empirical basis for claiming that the higher fees for traffic offenses will translate into safer roads. There are only hints, based on one year’s of data, that increased penalties might reduce recidivism for DUI, but the study insisted that the data were inconclusive and pointed to other possible causes.

    If Gov. Kaine, House Speaker William J. Howell and other General Assembly leaders insist upon keeping the the fines, they should, at a minimum, do this: Fund mechanisms to measure and analyze the impact of Abuser Fees on drivers’ behavior. Let us not re-open the debate three or four years from now as ignorant of the facts as we are today!

  • Agree to Disagree

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    James A. Bacon

    The new “Agree to Disagree” columns from Thad Williamson and some other guy are now online at Richmond.com. Our topic this month is health care reform.

    Did I mention I was a high school senior in Colorado when Gov. Dick Lamm made his famous “duty to die” speech?

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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