“All solar power plants examined in this study show electricity costs two or more times conventional sources of ‘reliable’ electricity provided by coal, natural gas, or nuclear power. Overly enthusiastic promotions of solar energy by government officials, environmental groups, and those selling solar energy has led to grievous losses to taxpayers in the Southeast.”
A recent report by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA), “Filling the Solar Sinkhole: Billions of Bucks Have Delivered Too Little Bang,” found:
… Continue ReadingIn spite of government’s best efforts to encourage innovation by solar energy companies and encourage Americans to rely more heavily on solar electricity, solar power continues to be a losing proposition. American taxpayers spent an average of $39 billion a year over the past 5 years financing grants, subsidizing tax credits, guaranteeing loans, bailing out failed solar energy boondoggles and otherwise underwriting every idea under the sun to make solar energy cheaper and more popular.
“While political capitalism as an economic system has barely been recognized, the building blocks that form a theoretical foundation for political capitalism are firmly in place and well-accepted. In political science and sociology, the ideas of elite domination and biased pluralism are mainstream concepts that are a fundamental part of political capitalism.”
Political capitalism is an economic and political system in which the economic and political elite cooperate for their mutual benefit. While the essential idea of political capitalism has a long history, it has not been recognized as a distinct economic system.
In part, this is due to the 20th-century vision of economic systems as capitalist, as socialist, or a mixed economy that contains elements of both capitalism and socialism. It has also been due to the frequent vision of government as an institution that acts in the public interest, corrects market failures, and controls the activities of business.…
Continue Reading“I was asked to draw a state highway map that would win the votes of a majority of the members by placing roads [so] they could take them home with them as pork wrested from Portland…. This map ran in front of the farm homes of enough legislators that . . . 37 representatives joined in introduction of the bill…. It took all day . . . to get the map changed so a majority of the Senate would vote for the bill…. My poor map was almost unrecognizable, but it served its purpose.”
– C. C. Chapman, “father of the gasoline tax,” on Oregon’s passage of motor-vehicle fee in 1917, which became a gasoline levy two years later.
History informs the public policy debate. Generally, messy politics contradicts the textbook ‘romantic’ view of government as being a high-brow exercise of selfless leaders weighing the common good to help the rest of us.…
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