The legislature passes a policy that drives up the cost of a product or service to keep a favored business or industry afloat. Without this protection money, those who benefit may no longer be able to enjoy the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed.
This is the story of the green energy business. New Hampshire’s biggest player in this redistribution scheme is the timber industry which peddles “low grade” leftovers to biomass plants that convert it into expensive electricity the police-state forces on ratepayers.
Governor Sununu recently vetoed two bills passed by the legislature to foment this money laundering scheme and the “former” recipients of that plunder are not happy.
Related: The New Hampshire Legislature’s Latest Protection Racket
“The plants use low-grade wood, which is key to managing productive and healthy forests,” she says. “Without viable markets for low-grade wood, there is no incentive for timberland owners to practice sustainable forest management.”
Then there’s this, from the same article.
Matthews says he’s now moving around three loads of wood a day, valued at $2,400, compared to 15 loads for $14,000 before the veto. But he says he’s got debts to pay – with millions invested in new, safer harvesting equipment to supply the biomass industry.
He says he may have to lay off some of his five employees this summer if the plants don’t begin buying wood again.
I like the heart-strings pluck of “debts to pay” and “safer harvesting equipment,” but it is a venture built on someone else’s sand. The biomass industry has never been able to compete in the free market without the State passing laws that create wood welfare programs. The entire green energy revolution is based on the idea that government must advance policy that drives up costs until “favored” industries become competitive by force.
And free market self-interest sounds great when your job doesn’t depend on it.
But you are in a business that can’t exist without the government forcing the marketplace to pay for its existence. We don’t think that’s fair. Find a way to compete or find work in another part of New Hampshire’s multi-billion dollar timber industry.
But there’s more to it than that.
The vetoed legislation didn’t just rob Peter to pay Paul Bunyun. It would allow anyone burning wood, pumping solar, or capturing wind “power” connected to the grid to sell it to power companies who had to buy it. Think of it as the legislature calling you an uber you didn’t need to take you someplace you don’t want to go. You have to get in, and you have to pay, and it’s every single day. And this so-called competition pushes your price up not down.
Wood welfare adds to the cost of living and the cost of doing business, no more or less than should the experts in Concord use state force to decide the minimum value of an hour of labor. Employers have to do something about these added costs and the easiest solution is to cut someone else wages, benefits, or their job.
Municipalities are not immune. Higher electric rates drive up local taxes. The bigger the town or city, the higher the cost to taxpayers.
When you look at the big picture curtailing or ending these redistribution schemes has a marginal impact on one sector of one industry but to the benefit of every other sector of the economy in the state, every local government, family, and individual. That’s not how Matthew’s sees it.
While Matthews says he’s a “staunch Republican” who voted for the governor in 2016, he says he’d sooner vote for a Democrat this year.
At least we know why NHPR did this story but I’ve got some bad news for them. If that’s all it takes to flip him Matthews isn’t a staunch Republican. He might be an establishment Republican, a moderate, or a fine RINO candidate for the legislature, but staunch he is not. No principled Republican should support shadow taxes that hide welfare schemes.
Now if we could just end RGGI and RPS, which are no different at the core than the schemes Mr. Sununu just vetoed, we’d be making some serious progress.
Note: The legislature can still override the vetoes. Contact your reps to let them know you oppose wood welfare and government wealth redistribution. Tell then New Hampshire businesses cant compete if the legislature keeps driving up the cost of doing business in the Granite State.
Related: Winds of Change
