Terrorism hit our family for a second time on 9/11/2001. This time our father’s godson, our cousin Steve Schlag was among the 3,000 murdered just after my brother and I commuted through the WTC and witnessed the attacks from our respective offices. Ironically, or perhaps not, the attacks of 9/11/01 happened just one day more than 2 years from when the Clintons, despite our warnings, released the FALN terrorists that killed our father.

God bless you Steve and all the innoscent souls and families shattered that day. We are trying to make sure you did not die in vein.

Here is my account of 9/11/01 written only weeks from that horrific day.

Tuesday, September 25, 2001

Bergen County, New Jersey
Danielle’s mother offered once again to come out from eastern Long Island to watch the kids, Frank 4 and Kathleen only 2. We needed the help. The last two weeks had been some of the most difficult of our lives together, but as we got dressed that morning we realized that in some ways this day may be the most difficult of all.

Checking the clock I realized that the world had changed forever exactly two weeks before. Once again our lives had been shattered as had the lives of thousands of others. Today Steve’s family and friends would meet in the clubhouse of one of his favorite golf courses. Some of us would speak, addressing the mourners. But were they really mourners? To know Steven Schlag let alone to be his cousin, was to think of his laugh, his antics, his zest for fun, for skiing, for his wife and kids, parents and sisters, for life itself.

Maybe Steve knew he would die young. After all, his grandfather, Johnny dropped dead of a heart attack in his early forties. Donald, his father, had his first heart bypass surgery in his early forties and even Steven had a run in with the heart doctor. Even his God father cousin, my father, Frank Connor, had died young, at the age of 33; having been killed by the FALN in a terrorist in attack in New York City. By age 41, we all agreed, Steve had done more living than most would do in two lifetimes.

My brother Tom and sister in law Regina would be here soon to bring us to the memorial service. My mother and stepfather would be there along with many friend and relatives. Grandma Connor would not be there this day. My beloved 97 year old grandmother, my father’s mother, the family matriarch had broken her hip and was confined to a nursing home nearby. We told her about the WTC attack but not about her nephew’s death. We knew she’d be with her son and Steven all too soon and there was no point in upsetting her last days with us.

As Danielle and I settled into Tom’s Volvo, I reviewed what to say about Steve. Should the tone be solemn, funny, stoic or emotional? I’d know what to say and how to act once it started. I least I hoped so. While we headed north toward Orange County New York that morning, in my mind I was heading back in time. Not too far back at first, just 15 days to a simpler time, a time when my immediate concerns were the Giants and beginning a book, or more accurately a story about my father, his life and death and our family’s fight against the unjust clemency president Clinton offered his killers.

I finally began writing my story on September 10, 2001 during my train ride home from work in downtown Manhattan. I have included in the preface the four paragraphs as I wrote them that afternoon. While they don’t seem to fit into the story as it played out, I felt the need to keep those lines in tact.

I was determined to begin my story that night but was concerned that I may be interrupted by my cousin Steve who also worked downtown. I often saw Steve on the train when leaving work early which I did that day for a 5:00 pm physical exam. As luck would have it, I didn’t see Steve that night and though I began my story, I will always regret not seeing him.

I had not been to the Doctor for several years but fortunately felt good and after the results of a few tests would be given a clean bill of health. I took this good news for granted and went home to my wife Danielle and the kids looking forward to watching my Giants open the NFL season at the new stadium in Denver on Monday Night Football. Like many people who work in New York, I went to bed late that night with my major source of stress coming from the Giants defeat to the Broncos.

A lot has changed since September 10, 2001.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was a beautiful day in the New York area. I rode my customary 7:39am train to Hoboken and the 12-minute PATH train ride under the Hudson River from Hoboken to The World Trade Center that morning with my brother Tom. As usual we talked politics and sports. The main political news that morning was Israel’s fight against terrorism and suicide bombers. Tom and I agreed that morning that Israel needed to declare and fight a real war against these fanatics.

I was scheduled to go to our Brooklyn office that morning to represent my department at a job fair. But having said good-bye to Tom in the mall under the World Trade Center at about 8:30, I walked to my office on Wall Street to plug in my laptop and check emails before taking the subway to Brooklyn with my colleague Jennifer.

The timing of the next events is only known because of how they have been reported since that day. I was standing at my desk on the 36th floor of 60 Wall St. plugging in the laptop at 8:46 am with my back to the large windows facing west behind me when suddenly more felt than heard the concussion of an explosion. I whirled around to look out the window and witnessed the side of the upper floors of the north tower of The WTC explode in a slow motion fireball. A plume of hideous black smoke emerged from the building like a terrible genie and what looked like a giant burning air conditioner tumbled in flames through the eastside of the building. I instinctively yelled, “A bomb!” Just then two colleagues whose view was to the north side of the floor ran around the corner and screamed, “No it was a plane, an American Airlines plane. We saw it buzzing low down Manhattan.”

Incredulous, I replied that it must have been a small plane to which one colleague Joe said. “No it was big, an airliner. It was a 727.” Thinking that 727s are not common these days, I thought Joe must be confused, it had to be a small plane. But as the fire roared and the reams of paper no different from the papers I had at my desk continued to float gently from the upper floors of the great tower, inside I knew it was not a small plane and something terrible was happening. Sensing there were hundreds or even thousands of people who may have already died or would die shortly, oddly, I was struck most by the indignity of the world seeing the victims’ private papers. Not only had they been killed horrendously but their thoughts and work were now being exposed to the world.

By now, the tower was burning with more intensity that anything I had ever seen before. I realized with horror that my cousin Steve worked on an upper floor of one of the towers but did not know which floor or tower. I called home right away and left a message on the answering machine for my wife Danielle that I was ok and that Tom, who worked on Broadway, closer to the WTC was probably at work and ok too.

It was the kids’ first day of preschool that fall and I figured Danielle was dropping them off. Frank was beginning his third year of pre K and Kathleen, only 2, was starting her first ever day of school. Danielle would likely wait with Kathleen who would be upset to be left for the first time, so I figured I might not hear from Danielle for a while.

I then called my mother and told her Tom and I were ok. She was unaware of what had happened but I reassured her. After the death of my father to terrorism, my mother as anyone would imagine, has been extraordinarily sensitive to the ramifications of these acts. She was inconsolable, afraid for the lives of her sons, during the first WTC attack in 1993. This time it would only be worse.

I asked my friend Julio (whose client, Cantor Fitzgerald was the company Steve worked for) if he knew what building Cantor was in. He thought it was the north tower and had been trying to get through to his friends there. Finally I found Steven’s number in my Rolodex and called him still not sure what floor or even what building he was in. His card said he was in One World Trade Center, but although I commuted into the complex every day for one day shy of 13 years, I did not know which tower was one or two. It was now about 8:50 am. My call to Steve just kept ringing. No one picked up. Very concerned and unsure, I left a message on his cell phone for him to call me. Steven Schlag, father of three young children, son, husband, big brother; funny, obnoxious, great skier, not athletic, generous, money conscious, loud, sometimes rude, thoughtful, and above all a great friend, father and husband, may already have been dead.

I then tried to reach Tom. But like with Steve, there was no answer for what seemed like forever. Finally at what must have been 9:00 am he picked up his phone. We talked about what we should do. What was really happening? Was it terrorists? Was it an accident? The north tower was now an inferno as I could see the fire rage from my window about one third of a mile from what is now called Ground Zero.

At what I know now was 9:03, as I spoke to Tom and watched the great tower burn, colleagues began to yell, “Oh my God, my God.” I did not know what they were screaming about. The tower had been hit, what possibly could be happening now? Then I saw it. Suddenly the south tower exploded. I said to Tom, eerily calmly (at least in my mind it was calm), “They’ve hit the second tower.” He hesitated as if he could not comprehend what I had said. Then it was suddenly clear. It was terrorism. Not the terrorism that we have seen before. Not the terrorism that killed my father, but terrorism brought to levels we could never have imagined. Were there other planes in coming toward us? What poisons were burning into the air? Was anthrax or ebola or smallpox being released from those planes? What should we do? Would we ever get home? Would we ever see our families again or would we be killed at work by terrorists no more than a few hundred yards from where our father was killed? We had to act. I had to get off the 36th floor of 60 Wall Street.

Tom suggested that we go to the east side, away from the inferno. We should meet at a Wendy’s on Water Street. I agreed and hastily announced to colleagues that I was leaving the building. Just as I grabbed for my cell phone and bag, the phone rang simultaneously on two lines. Two of my oldest friends, Fred and Brendan were calling separately to make sure I was ok. I quickly thanked them, told them I loved them and began to move to the elevator.

Many of my coworkers began to leave as well, but some decided to stay. I made a commitment to meet my brother and there was nothing or nobody that would stop me. I needed to find him and to get home. I did not want my children to grow up with their father’s murder following them, the way I did. When I got out of my building into the chaotic and crowded streets, I realized that I did not know where the Wendy’s was. Could I possibly find Tom among all these people? And if I didn’t what would I do? Approaching panic, but strangely at the same time, feeling out of body and therefore removed from the horror, I asked frantic people on Water Street were Wendy’s was until finally someone told me I was moving in the right direction. Suddenly there he was; my older brother.

Tom had seen people jumping from the floors above the impact. He was shaken but strong. He seemed to immediately grasp the gravity of the situation. He repeatedly said, “This is the worst day in US history, worse than Pearl Harbor…”

We quickly began to move north away from the black smoke that was being blown south. Recalling the terrorist plot to blow up New York landmarks, our plan was to avoid targets, though the Brooklyn Bridge (directly in our path) would be unavoidable, and head to the low buildings of Greenwich Village. Suddenly I turned and out of nowhere found a colleague, Yxa, standing alone among thousands. She had been in a cab when the attacks struck and was left off alone on Water Street. The three of us quickly ran under and past the Brooklyn Bridge and found a small park. Sitting on a bench still within view of the burning buildings, we tried to catch our breath and think of what to do. We now felt like soldiers in a war.

Heading north on foot, our cell phones not working, we searched for a phone to tell our families that we were ok. As we passed through China Town we stopped and prayed in St. Patrick’s; a small church. We left the church to more screams in the street and agreeing to get as much cash as we could from the next ATM and keep moving north. Upon finding an ATM in a small deli nearby we were horrified to learn that the screams we had heard while in St. Patrick’s were from witnesses to the collapse of the south tower. While we prayed for the horror to end, it just got far worse.

The deli owner turned over his landline phone to us. Tom and I finally got through to our wives. Danielle was shaken but coherent. I told her I loved her but did not know when I’d see her again and pleaded with her to get the kids at school. Bring them home. I needed to think the family was together. That was very important.

We were horrified to hear that a helicopter had hit the Pentagon and a 747 had gone down in Pittsburgh.

Not knowing where exactly to go, we, like many others as it turned out “camped out” in the village at a coffee shop connected to the Angelica Theater. Crowds that had gathered in the streets watched in horror as the north tower came down. Tom, Yxa and I listened intently to radio and TV reports that there were still 11 planes in the air and unaccounted for. There was a report about a suspicious plane over New Jersey. Were our families now in danger also?

We decided to wait at the coffee shop until after noon. Greenwich Village seemed to become a haven of sorts for refugees from downtown. The Village was at least a mile from the twin towers and did not have any tall buildings we instinctively believed were targets.

Inside, we met two very different men sticking together who worked together but probably did not know each other’s names. Both of the men worked for Brown & Wood an international law firm on the 49th floor of the south tower and were at their offices when the plane hit the building. One man was a middle-aged lawyer. White and polished, he was probably a partner who did not pay any attention to the man with whom he escaped. Black and stoic, the second man introduced himself as a messenger for the firm. Both men needed each other and were incredibly in control considering what they had just experienced. I often wonder if when they see each other at work, the mutual respect they shared that day is still there. Are they friends? Have they gone back to the lawyer / messenger roles?

Thinking that if there was another wave of attacks they may be planned for around noon (given the first attacks were at 9:00am), at 12:15 pm we left the coffee shop. Yxa headed east and north towards her apartment on the Upper East Side. Tom and I headed west toward the Hudson River and New Jersey. We thought we may be able to find a boat from Chelsea Piers across the river. Upon reaching the west side highway, we found hundreds of refugees like ourselves heading north as an endless stream of fire trucks, police cars and trucks, ambulances and emergency vehicles poured south toward what was now a massive black cloud obscuring all of lower Manhattan.

The city had already assembled aid workers who were passing out cold water and offering shelter from the hot sun to the desperate masses. Tom and I finally made our way to Chelsea peers and much to our relief, there were boats shuttling the thousands of people to New Jersey. When we got to Weehawken, there were busses at the ready to bring us refugees to the Giants Stadium parking lot. Some passengers cried, some to our horror were laughing and joking, but most were very quiet, perhaps in shock, or deep in thought or prayer about their own lives or the tens of thousands of lives that we believed were lost that day.

Route 3 West to Giants Stadium is usually one of the busiest roads in the area. On September 11, it was eerily empty; like a scene from The Day After. There were now reports of terrorists being chased through New Jersey and roads being closed down. When we got to the parking lot we encountered hundreds if not thousands of refugees. Fortunately, the cell phone was working now and our families knew we were almost home. Tom and I grabbed a ride into Rutherford from a couple in a SUV leaving the parking lot. There, Tom’s wife’s cousin Justin who had a twelve pack of Bud in the car picked us up and said, “there ain’t a cop in America who would give me a ticket for this today.” That was my first real laugh since 8:45 that morning.

I will never forget looking at all the cars in the train station as Justin dropped us off at our cars that afternoon. How many of them would stay there that night or get driven home by a grieving but hopeful friend or family member? Ironically, later that night, as President Bush addressed the nation, I sadly drove Steve’s car home from the train station.

Something else I will never forget was getting home that day; opening that door and hugging Danielle, knowing that the kids were safely napping in their beds. We just cried.

Shortly after being reunited with our families, Tom and I somberly drove the 10 miles to Franklin Lakes to Steven and his wife, Tomoko’s house to sit and wait for word on Steven. After witnessing the events of that day, we were sure there was no hope. Steven worked on the 104th floor of the north tower. His only chance of survival would have been, if by some miracle, he was off the floor when the first plane hit. But if that was the case, he certainly would have contacted home by that evening. While Tomoko, his parents, friends and sisters held out hope, Tom and I kept a positive face although we knew it was futile. Although horribly similar to the vigil for my father 26 years earlier, we knew that not only was there no hope, but as Cantor was all but wiped out, there would be no one left to deliver the news.

As the Volvo pulled on to Route 17 North that day on the way to his memorial service, Steven’s body had still not yet been found. He was missing and presumed dead like most of the three thousand other victims.

Steven Schlag’s body was found and identified the week before Christmas, 2001. His wedding ring and watch were in relative tact. At least he had been found. That gave some comfort to his wife, parents and sisters; cold comfort to his three little kids. God bless your soul Steven. You will always be in our hearts. Your laugh. That crazy, obnoxious, infectious laugh. Who could ever forget it?

Like most things in life and politics, guaranteeing certainty is a simple concept:

don’t change the rules in mid course
remove all arbitrary rules and those open for interpretation

Remember when you were a kid playing with your big brother and his friends and you got so frustrated because every time you were about to beat them, they changed the rules on you? And then to rub it in, they laughed at you. You played hard to win but all along, you had a knot in your stomach knowing that somehow they would do something at the end to screw you and you’d end up losing.

I think all us Americans have that feeling again right now from big brother.

If business owners know the rules and are assured that those rules will not arbitrarily change, they can adjust and overcome. Take for example Rick Hahn retired FBI agent, now a small business owner in Southern California (http://www.rhahninc.com/) challenged by the ever changing regulation and (increasing) tax burden, puts it this way:

Which is better: decrease loan rates through the Fed or decrease tax burdens on business?

These guys in OBAMA-Nation don’t get it. Cutting interest rates, which can arbitrarily rise at any time is no, NO encouragement to business. Can you imagine a football coach starting a game not knowing how many points a touchdown or field goal will be worth in the 4th quarter? That’s what today’s small business owners are up against.

These capricious policies and regulation also force otherwise honest business owners to find “creative” (and expensive) ways to get around the laws and regulations; like opening multiple businesses to avoid health care expense their business cannot afford. All the while those owners feel the same sickening knot in their stomachs they felt as kids, knowing that their new Big Brother will try to ruin them at any minute.

On top of that, business owners, instead of being lauded for providing goods, services and jobs are somehow made to feel guilty not providing health care; as if they have done something wrong or immoral. The Left preaches that they don’t want the Right pushing their morality, but that’s exactly what the Left does under the veil of government!

As Mr. Hahn points out, “New businesses are not starting up and existing businesses not expanding. Who would invest their lives, literally, in an enterprise that may be a loser in 5 – 10 years simply because the rules change? You’d have to be crazy to buy into that. But these guys don’t get it.”

Several months ago when I told a colleague at work that I was a member of the local Tea Party in NJ and was going to do a Tax Day speech he looked at me incredulously, bristled and while smirking asked something like, “Aren’t Tea Partiers radical? Aren’t they like way out there?”

I tried to explain that all the Tea Party members want is to defend America’s founding principles. He kind of looked around uneasily as I told him we are dedicated to promoting personal responsibility, individual liberty, limited government, free markets, strong defense, secure borders and property rights. Those goals are not exactly “way out there” to most Americans.

http://www.njteapartycoalition.org/Home.html

But you see my colleague is the quintessential purveyor of network TV news and local news radio stations. Like most of us, he can be intellectually lazy and all too happy for someone to tell him what to think.

Sadly, a couple of weeks ago he learned his job was being eliminated. As the market collapsed, he came over to my desk, face in hands and said, “It’s horrible out there. I will never get another job. Why doesn’t anyone do anything about this?”

I asked, “What should they do?”

To which he replied, “Why don’t people protest?”

It was my turn to look incredulously at him. I said, “That’s the Tea Party. That’s what the Tea Party does. That’s what we’ve been doing.”

He looked up with a sheepish look on his face and understood. He was always a Tea Partier. He just didn’t know it.

Stop being a sheep and take a stand.

We are all Tea Partiers now.

Conservatives want us to live.

These two statements, so similar on the surface show how diametrically opposed our visions for America are. We need leaders who believe in, live by and who can clearly articulate these simple concepts and differences. Its really not complicated.

As we can see from the unwillingness of congressional democrats to agree to any real budget cut, liberals see the old cradle to grave, nanny state vision for the American people. They envision a society where risk and reward are removed; where humanity is stripped of its will to succeed in the name of social justice; “fairness.” They encourage, not individual achievement in our lives, but a “shared sacrifice.” They see our lives sacrificed to the state or to Obama’s vision. That my friends, is not living.

One of our founding fathers’ greatest principles of “all men are created equal” by their God has been subverted to mean “all men exist equally” by the edicts of their government. We see this in the unconstitutionally government mandated ObamaCare, increased regulation and tax on some of our greatest industries like coal, oil, automobiles, aeronautics, Financial Services and the desire confirmed during the current deficit crisis to increase the punitive tax on society’s greatest economic contributors though it would have no impact on reducing the deficit.

Conservatives, Tea Party members, want Americans to live; as Sammy Davis Jr. said, “not merely survive.”

We want Americans to regain the spirit of success and failure; which by the way is a great motivator. We want to once again feel the knot of anticipation and dread of failure in our stomachs we felt as kids when the training wheels finally came off. The fire in our bellies as our fathers ran alongside our bikes, encouraging our success as we peddled faster and faster. We want all of us to experience that awesome sense of pride, that feeling of exhilaration, of pure freedom when we out raced fathers and felt their last push as they ultimately let go. We were finally on our own.

Americans also need to remember and learn from that feeling when we crashed our Schwinn Sting Rays into the neighbor’s bushes. We may have been bruised from our fall but we got back on our bikes and overcame our fall. No one bailed us out from our failure, instead the consequences of our failures motivated us to succeed. Like success, failure is part of life.

Like our fore-fathers who set the groundwork of freedoms for country’s success, it was our fathers who pushed us to our freedom as individuals. I don’t know anyone who recalls their nannies running alongside their two wheelers pushing them to succeed.

The biggest threat to our freedoms in our nation’s history is economic, is happening now and is coming from within. If we do not make this stand against the nanny state now we will cease to exist as the nation our fathers and fore-fathers knew. And it will be our fault.

We as a people need to make the choice between living and surviving by making our voices heard right now. Our lives depend on it.

Monday night, my family and I took a few minutes from our vacation to the awe inspiring state of Alaska to watch Obama’s less than inspiring plea to the nation on the budget and raising the national debt ceiling.

We were barely into the first course of his speech when we became more nauseated by what was coming out of his mouth than the bottomless pork chops, chicken nuggets, cheese fries and nachos going into ours and our fellow cruisers on the Lido deck buffet line. Gotta admit, I love those nachos and fake cheese.

Not even getting into the well documented lie that the United States will default on its debts, here are few of Obama’s other more notable cheesy nuggets from Monday night:

For the last decade, we have spent more money than we take in. In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts, while two wars and an expensive prescription drug program were simply added to our nation’s credit card.

I have bolded the phrase “the money was “spent” on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts.”

Mr. President, that tax money belongs to us, to we the people and not the government. That money is our private property. That money is the economic product of our labor. It is not yours to spend!

Karl Marx said, “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

Do we need any further evidence of Obama’s Marxism than his own words?

As a result, the deficit was on track to top $1 trillion the year I took office. To make matters worse, the recession meant that there was less money coming in, and it required us to spend even more – on tax cuts for middle-class families; on unemployment insurance; on aid to states so we could prevent more teachers and firefighters and police officers from being laid off. These emergency steps also added to the deficit.

Anyone who runs a household let alone a business understands that increased spending when revenues go down is a blueprint for bankruptcy. Keynesian economics does not and has never worked. Obama seems to be the only one who does not understand that. Or perhaps he understands it all too well. (Please see point above.)

The only reason this balanced approach isn’t on its way to becoming law right now is because a significant number of Republicans in Congress are insisting on a cuts-only approach – an approach that doesn’t ask the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to contribute anything at all. And because nothing is asked of those at the top of the income scales, such an approach would close the deficit only with more severe cuts to programs we all care about – cuts that place a greater burden on working families….What we’re talking about under a balanced approach is asking Americans whose incomes have gone up the most over the last decade – millionaires and billionaires – to share in the sacrifice everyone else has to make.
This is pure deceit. Our president is lying when he tells the public that the wealthiest are not contributing. In the US the wealthiest pay the largest percentage of tax of any industrialized nation.

According to the IRS, the top 1 percent of earners pays over 38% of federal income taxes. The top 10 percent pay over 69% of taxes.

Did anyone ever point out to Obama that even if his flawed premise that millionaires and billionaires need to pay more (a premise I flatly reject) there is quite an income difference between say someone who makes $1 million and someone who makes $1 billion a year?

1,000 times more to be exact.

Yet Obama somehow lumps these groups together. A millionaire to a billionaire is the same percentage difference as between a 12 year old paperboy who makes $80 a year and the successful American who makes $80 thousand per year. Obama lumping them together makes no sense.

And the difference in absolute dollars is astronomical. The millionaire makes $999,000,000 less than the billionaire, while the paperboy earns only $79,920 less than the successful $80 thousand per year professional.

What amount would be enough Mr. Obama? Please let us know. But you won’t, you can’t because the Federal Government is like the size 36 woman at the buffet line; jamming in every bit of pork they can fit with no regard for their health tomorrow or a thought as to what their kids and their grandkids will do when they spontaneously combust.

During this last week or so our family imbibed the clear sprit of honest America through the majesty, vitality, and beauty of Alaska. We inhaled the clear, fresh air and enjoyed the simple sense there that anything is possible.

Unfortunaely, we also experienced some of America’s gluttony and deceit of the human spirit, both at the buffet line and though Obama’s incessant bile.

It’s time for America to see clearly again, understand the truth and purge herself of the Obama junk food habit. I wonder if Michelle would approve?

I recently received a mailing from my local utility company (PSE&G), touting this hip sounding “Cool Customer Program.”

http://www.pseg.com/home/save/manage_costs/cool_customer.jsp

Sounds great right? Who doesn’t want to be a “cool customer?” After all, the king of cool, our president Obama was elected in large part by young people who thought he was cool: not so much anymore. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1395009/Obama-loses-youth-vote-poll-finds-white-students-dont-think-hes-cool-anymore.html
But I digress.

Being a Cool Customer becomes very uncool when you read into the program details. “At the same time, it will help customers conserve energy, save money, and help protect the environment. Once you enroll, PSE&G will install a new state-of-the-art programmable thermostat with a large touch-screen digital display (a $250 value) at no charge to you. If summer energy demand in our service area is extremely high, PSE&G may cycle your air conditioning compressor on and off to limit demand on the electric system. In return, you will receive credit on your electric bill of up to $50.”

So in return for a few shekels; a $50 credit and programmable thermostat you can get at Home Depot for under $100, by enrolling, the Cool Customer sells his right to control the climate in his own home for his own family.

The funding to PSE&G for this credit and thermostat (and the other utilities for their versions of the scheme)comes courtesy of you, the taxpayer through $3.4 billion in stimulus money granted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Please see the link to KEMA below.

http://www.kema.com/services/consulting/utility-future/smart-grid/follow-the-money-stimulus-funding-begins-to-flow-into-smart-grid-section.aspx

Isn’t that great? We hand over control of our home environment to government and we get to pay for it too!
But don’t worry. It’s ok to give up your right, your responsibility to take care of your family and manage your home as you see fit. You see, ceding your rights to government is a small price to pay to “help protect the environment” as PSE&G’s material puts it. Xcel Energy even has a catchy “green” video and website (responsiblebynature.com) for their version of the scheme.

http://www.responsiblebynature.com/save_energy_money/nd

We have already offered up too many of our private property rights (via increased costs of regulation) at the altar of environmentalism through among other things onerous government Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, increased fossil fuel and Cap and Trade regulation and subsidies to “green energy sources.” We have all seen how well those sacrifices have turned out.

So when you hear the coolest customer of them all preaching about the shared sacrifices we have to make, remember what he really means is he wants you to sacrifice more of your rights to him.

And that my friends, like this sinister promotion, is not cool.