Exhibit A in my argument that Republicans are as bad as Democrats when it comes to energy policy is the goings-on in Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry and the Republican legislature are running that state into the ground with one of the most ill-considered renewable-energy mandates in the nation (exhibit B can be found in Alaska, but that’s a post for next week). My friend Rob Bradley puts the political and economic microscope to this madness over at the Master Resource blog today, where he notes that Perry is pushing hard to increase one of the nation’s most ambitious renewable-energy production mandates yet again. My colleague Andrei Illarnionov — former chief economic adviser to Vladimir Putin — is amazed to discover that Stalin-esque industrial production orders are being embraced in the United States of all places . . . and by Republican office holders no less!
Dear Republicans — either take your pro-market, pro-capitalism rhetoric seriously or put a sock in it.