Those who are not yet convinced that government is vastly less efficient than private enterprise should closely examine the nation’s transit industry. In 1964, the industry was mostly private and earned an overall profit. In that year, Congress gave local governments incentives to take over transit, and by 1970, the industry was nearly all publicly owned.
Today it loses nearly $40 billion a year.
In that time, the industry has seen a spectacular decline in productivity. According to data published by the American Public Transportation Association, the industry’s chief lobby group, between 1970 and 2008, inflation-adjusted operating costs more than quadrupled, while transit ridership grew by about 40 percent. In the same time period, the number of annual transit riders carried per operating employee fell by nearly 50 percent. As economist Charles Lave observed, “It’s uncommon to find such a rapid productivity decline in any industry.”…
Continue ReadingOne would think that by now Obama Administration officials would admit that “wind farms” do not provide large economic and job benefits. However, recent Administration statements suggest the delusion continues and, perhaps, that officials do not understand why their expectations are unrealistic.
False expectations may be due to the infamous “JEDI” model (Jobs and Economic Development Impact model) developed for DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) by a wind industry consultant-lobbyist. Unfortunately, this “model”( paid for with our tax dollars) has been widely promoted by NREL and DOE and outputs from the model are used by “wind farm” developers to mislead the public, media, and government officials.
Economic models often produce false or misleading outputs because (a) the model itself is faulty, and/or (b) unrealistic assumptions are “fed into” to model, with the result that the models overstate national, state, and/or local job and other economic benefits.…
Continue Reading“Hey America! Are you ready to get wonky on global warming? After a year that started with fallout from the “Climategate” e-mail release, saw the cap-and-trade bill die in Congress, and ended with a gang of Republican climate skeptics winning House and Senate seats, global warming experts are going back to basics.”
– Darren Samuelsohn, “Climate PR Effort Heats Up,” Politico, December 31, 2010.
And so we now know. “Environmentalists, scientists and lawmakers have renewed public relations efforts to put global warming plainly before Americans’ eyes and also rebut opponents who say nothing is happening.”
What? Nothing is happening? Who said that? Didn’t uber-alarmist James Hansen say the first rule of climate is that it changes–always has, always will. In his words:
… Continue Reading“Climate is always changing.