Environmentalists who love crony capitalism - Granite Grok

Environmentalists who love crony capitalism

Because they can’t stand seeing their fellow citizens ignoring their bleats of “You shouldn’t do that” in some cases (like, you know, use electricity to live a modern lifestyle, or be allowed to drive a car that can, like, you know, can actually hold all of your family members and the grocery bags needed to feed them for a week – in 1 trip).  So, they’ve convinced elected politicians (or increasingly, the unelected bureaucrats that doing the pols’ job).  They certainly are in favor in taking away choice in little ways as in what kind of light bulbs you may purchase.

And when it comes to industries they like, like all things green, they are bound and determined not to let “green go dark” simply because the Free Market hates their ideas.  From that ever amusing, ever complaining, bastion of Watermelon Environmentalism (otherwise known as TreeHugger), the denizens are complaining about the Federal Venture Capital spigot being turned off (gee, and I thought ALL forms of conservation was good – including conserving our tax dollars!).

I did not know that a pant maker and a fast food coffer maker were experts on both energy production and tax law!  Rather, it seems that, as many big companies are, more expert at encouraging crony capitalism for picking Winners & Losers; certainly Brian Merchant (of the Guild of Enviro-wackos Who Lift Taxpayers Wallets Up Before Hoovering Them) is all in for yet another Power of Government known in the private sector as Venture Capitalism (who often lose most their “bets”):

Levi Strauss and Starbucks are among 19 major companies that signed a letter imploring Congress to renew the wind production tax credit that’s set to expire at the end of the year. Obama has voiced support for the credit, Romney’s against it, and Congress; well, Congress is doing that thing where it collapses in upon itself in a sputtering pile of stalemated dysfunction.

Phillip Bump points us to the meat of the well-intentioned letter that will almost certainly do next to nothing to change the fortunes of this all-important credit:

In the past decade American businesses have significantly ramped up their purchase of American wind energy. For consumers of wind electricity, the economic benefits of the PTC are tremendous. Electricity rates, which reflect marginal costs for power plant operations and fuel prices, consistently decrease when wind enters the market. Because wind prices can be locked in up front, businesses incorporating wind into their energy portfolios are better equipped to hedge market volatility in traditional fuels markets caused by supply shocks. We are concerned that allowing the PTC to expire will immediately raise prices for the renewable electricity we buy today.

Doesn’t matter; killing wind power is all dogma; an imagined reproach for the totally unrelated Solyndra debacle. A debacle, I might add, that the GOP is keeping alive with an iron lung. So, the letter; good for business, money-saving, smart policy–deaf ears. And since Senate Majority leader Harry Reid won’t take up the cause, and since the House is chock full of free market ideologues who support tax breaks only when they’re for fossil fuel companies, the PTC is pretty much sunk.

It’s now all but determined that Congress is going to kill the most important remaining policy tool we’ve got for keeping the American wind industry competitive. It’s going to lead to massive layoffs, and, clearly, it’s going to mean a major drop in wind power development in the states.

No, killing wind power is not all dogma – forcing ALL of us to fund it is purely ideologically driven. Note to clueless: Solynda IS related: a forcing of a market that Government should never have been in.   Of course, most of the commenters immediately went: Oh, those Republicans that hate jobs – even if they are not much more than extensions of the Government.  And one said as their last line:

And, yes, obviously we should end all subsidies for all mature technologies.

As in “ONLY the NEW energy technologies should get tax credits – those hydrocarbon based ones should be forced to PAY MORE!”.  Me?

“And, yes, obviously we should end all subsidies”

ALL subsidies – there is no good reason, nor enumerated power, as to why the Federal Govt should be playing Venture Capital! I’ve been through all this before in the 70s and early 80s. Don’tcha think that if a profitable way of using Alt Energy, it would have been found by now? After all, windmills have been around for, oh say, couple thousand years?

Both Occupy & TEA Party correctly identified a major problem: crony capitalism (companies of all stripes sucking at the taxpayer teat only because they gave money to greedy politicians).

These wondertwits think that every good idea they have immediately needs to have Govt support – create an industrial policy just for their lamebrain ideas that deal with schloky financial underpinning (like using untreated willow trees as piling for ocean piers).  These numbcakes have no sense of history – Govt has been used time and time again to “create” and then “bolster” alternative energy sources.  Each time, when it is clear that the $$s don’t make sense (or the ideologues are retired to build their own – oh wait!  They Don’t!), that market collapses.  As I wrote, I saw it happen back in the 80s.  It has happened more recently in Spain and in Germany and other countries that decided that “Green would make green” and found out that they only wasted billions.

The only long term decider of what is valid and valued by consumers is by….wait for it….consumers.  Govt has a poor track record of creating markets – I’d rather it stick to just plain governance and try to get that right first (yeah, like that’s gonna happen real soon either).

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