[Editor note: This is the second of a four-part series reprinting the January 15th letter of Mr. Schleede to the Senate Finance Committee concerning the Baucus tax-reform proposal dated December 18, 2013. Part I yesterday reprinted the executive summary and conclusions; Parts III and Part IV next week will cover the environmental wealth effect issues of current public policies favoring wind power.]
The Senate Finance Committee has ignored adverse economic impacts of the massive tax breaks and subsidies that have been provided to owners of wind turbines and “wind farms” and, in effect, has proposed continuation of large tax breaks for these owners – all at the expense of ordinary taxpayers and electric customers.
The economic impacts of the proposed tax breaks on electric customers is not even mentioned in the rationale for the Committee’s new tax break scheme – unfortunately, another indication of the wide gulf between thinking and actions of members of Congress and the interests of ordinary people outside Washington who are burdened by costly Congressional actions.…
Continue Reading“Clearly, the wind industry would be a huge beneficiary of [this] proposed tax break scheme…. Almost certainly, lobbyists for the wind industry were heavily involved in the drafting of the Committee’s proposal…. It’s time for the Congress to consider the national interest, including the interests of citizens, taxpayers, and electric customers, before again extending tax breaks for the wind industry.”
MEMORANDUM FOR: Chairman and Members the Senate Finance Committee
SUBJECT: Energy Tax Break Proposal announced on December 18, 2013,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the December 18, 2013, Staff Discussion Draft of the Senate Finance Committee’s Energy Tax Reform proposal.
Your proposal to repeal all existing renewable energy tax breaks is a good one and it should proceed. Your proposal to adopt a new renewable energy tax break scheme should be scrapped.…
Continue Reading“Climate Change. A term, which attempts to take the natural weather pattern and attribute it to the activities of humans. Heavily adopted recently for use to promote cave living, the idea that humans are a noxious virus on planet Earth, and the practice of greater separation between the rich and the poor. I know the weather pattern is natural and everything we’re experiencing now has been experienced before, but I still feel all warm, fuzzy knowing that electricity companies are responsible for Climate Change and are being taxed accordingly because of it.”
– Excerpt, UrbanDictionary.com (satirical).
A Wall Street Journal editorial earlier this month, “It Isn’t Climate Change”, makes a valid point that recent “polar vortex” of subzero temperatures in the Midwest, East Coast, and Southern U.S.…
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