In the past month, we have been treated to two of the premier Washington-establishment media outlets making our case (however inadvertently), with stories — pitched during an expensive lobbying frenzy from the PR machinery of the “renewable” industry — that admit the fact that the renewabubble is bound to burst, given that it is wholly a ward of the taxpayers.
First was late October’s Washington Post piece, “Clean energy industry keeps eye on funds that sustain it.” It devoted a few dozen paragraphs to explaining how the “green-energy” jobs wouldn’t exist but for taxpayer support. The jobs created by the stimulus (at just under a half a million dollars per job) would not be around next year unless more taxpayer support was pumped into the bubble. Yet the article somehow concluded by quoting the administration as saying that this outlay was an “unqualified success,” and proof that green jobs “are ready for prime time.”
Just curious but, erm, is it possible for anything to qualify as a failure?
Today, as Greg notes, National Journal treats us to “Clean energy proponents pin hopes on tax package,” the opening paragraph of which reads “After cap-and-trade legislation died this summer and with a renewable electricity standard facing a similar fate, clean energy advocates are lobbying Congress on a last-ditch hope to keep their industries afloat: tax incentives.”
I’m sorry; what was that again?
These reporters won’t go so far as to write the obvious — but they’ve still managed to convey the obvious. What we are paying for is corporate welfare — yet another bubble. Ethanol, redux. Transferring wealth for phony industries that would not exist but for politicians robbing Peter to pay Paul, at a net loss to the economy.
If Republicans fall for more of this as their “look at me, I ‘did something’” gesture, we will know they haven’t mended their ways.