“Manhattan Institute scholar, Robert Bryce, recently reported that the wind industry has garnered $176 billion of crony cash here in the U.S. It’s no wonder the American Wind Energy Association spends over $20 million per year lobbying for more of the same!”

Who can be in favor of industrial wind blight, enriching the top one percent at the expense of taxpayers, ratepayers, and the rural environment? Yes, as Donald Trump has noted, “America is being auctioned off to the highest bidder.”

The reason for this travesty of concentrated benefits, diffused costs at the hand of government is half-truths and misinformation. A recent article, NY looks to the wind to replace its fossil fuel diet, by Joe Mahoney, is a case in point.

There is nothing “free,” “clean,” or “green” about industrial wind.…

“If implemented, this agreement will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States. The potential to add incremental gas sales, and additional demand for renewable technology is enormous. In addition, a carbon emissions trading system will be developed.”

– John Palmisano, from Kyoto, Japan (1997)

A Hall of Shame crony memo just turned 18 years old. Dated December 12, 1997, it was written from Kyoto, Japan, in the afterglow of the Kyoto Protocol agreement by Enron lobbyist John Palmisano.

Global green planners such as Palmisano were euphoric that, somehow, someway, the world had embarked on an irreversible course of climate control (and thus industrial and land-use control). His memo reflects the train-just-left-the-station mentality, as well as the specific benefits for first-mover ‘green’ Enron.…

This post reproduces a front-page story in the New York Times business section that excitedly reported a breakthrough with solar energy as represented by a heady energy company named Enron. Formed in the mid-1980s, Enron had just entered into the solar business and was destined to revitalize–if not save–the U.S. wind industry just a few years later.

Good press, for a half century now, has created an Enron-like illusion of the coming competitiveness and profitability of solar and wind energies for on-grid electricity. Basic energy physics explains why the sun’s (dilute) flow cannot compete against the sun’s stored (dense) energy embedded in natural gas, coal, and oil.

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“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.”

“The wind PTC is critical to President Obama’s recently finalized carbon regulation. One of the ‘building blocks’ used to determine state targets includes significant increased installation of renewable energy—especially wind…. Without taxpayer subsidies like the PTC, the President will be unable to achieve his arbitrary renewable energy target.”

It is time for Republicans and fiscally-minded Democrats to put up or shut up on the centerpiece of Obama energy policy: the Production Tax Credit (PTC). It is high time that cronyism be replaced by an energy policy that is taxpayer-neutral and government-neutral. Obama’s climate alarmism and world government plans can only benefit from a 10th extension of this grievous government subsidy to the Enrons and GEs of the world.

This week, the American Energy Alliance, Heritage Action for America, Club for Growth, and Americans for Prosperity sent a letter in stark opposition to the PTC to the House Ways and Means Committee.…