Tom Zeller Jr. picks up on Romney policy madness coming out of Des Moines.
Shawn McCoy, a spokesman for Romney’s Iowa campaign, told The Des Moines Register, “He will allow the wind credit to expire, end the stimulus boondoggles, and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits.
“Wind energy will thrive wherever it is economically competitive, and wherever private sector competitors with far more experience than the president believe the investment will produce results.”
emphasis added
Yeah - Mitt Romney, well-known crusader for economic justice.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon
If you go to the Romney campaign web site and pick through the word salad on energy policy, you'll find such gems as:
MITT'S PLAN
As president, Mitt Romney will make every effort to safeguard the environment, but he will be mindful at every step of also protecting the jobs of American workers. This will require putting conservative principles into action.
Significant Regulatory Reform
The first step will be a rational and streamlined approach to regulation, which would facilitate rapid progress in the development of our domestic reserves of oil and natural gas and allow for further investment in nuclear power.
Shorter version: Drill Baby Drill! Nukes! Nukes! Nukes! We don't need no stinkin' regulations.
Increasing Production
The United States is blessed with a cornucopia of carbon-based energy resources. Developing them has been a pathway to prosperity for the nation in the past and offers similar promise for the future.
Because there's
no problem with burning more carbon, right?
Research and Development
Government has a role to play in innovation in the energy industry. History shows that the United States has moved forward in astonishing ways thanks to national investment in basic research and advanced technology. However, we should not be in the business of steering investment toward particular politically favored approaches. That is a recipe for both time and money wasted on projects that do not bring us dividends. The failure of windmills and solar plants to become economically viable or make a significant contribution to our energy supply is a prime example.
Yeah,
that stuff will never work.
And of course there's a simple reason things are so bad.
OBAMA'S FAILURE
Unfortunately, the first three years of the Obama administration have witnessed energy and environmental policies that have stifled the domestic energy sector. In thrall to the environmentalist lobby and its dogmas, the President and the regulatory bodies under his control have taken measures to limit energy exploration and restrict development in ways that sap economic performance, curtail growth, and kill jobs.
Talk about your
Big Lies!!! Facts are stupid things.
If you've got the stomach for it, there's more at the Romney misinformation center with action points - this is just the highlights.
Zeller at the Huffington Post has some pointed analysis of what Romney's energy policies as laid out in Des Moines really amount to: For A Fair Energy Market, Mitt Romney Targets ... Wind Power?
First, the Romney campaign has shown no commensurate desire to "level the playing field" by also eliminating lucrative and long-running tax breaks enjoyed by the fossil fuel industries. The campaign has, in fact, remained mostly silent on the issue when asked directly by reporters over the last many months, and repeated queries sent to the Romney campaign this week went unanswered.
And...
But there's another problem with this sudden interest in free markets and forcing all energy companies to compete without government assistance: It can't happen, because the market has already been wildly skewed by a very long and lucrative history of subsidies and tax breaks.
Indeed, even if all tax breaks and subsidies for everyone -- oil, gas, coal, wind, solar, nuclear, biofuels and so forth -- were eliminated tomorrow, fossil fuel producers, which have received lavish government support for nearly a century, would start this new, suddenly "fair" energy market competition with a mammoth head start.
...A Congressional Budget Office report from March noted that renewables currently enjoy the lion's share of federal tax preferences. But that shift in favor of clean energy is not only very recent, it has occurred right alongside continued government support for producers of non-renewable energy. That support has helped them to acquire not just a toehold in the marketplace over the last century, but near total dominance.
In the last decade, the top five oil companies alone have earned $1 trillion in profits.
And yet the Romney campaign and its free-market supporters have chosen to set their sights on an income tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years of electricity production from utility-scale wind turbines. That may not seem like much, but when combined with various state incentives, the tax credit has played a key role in helping the wind industry get off the ground over the last decade. This is true despite the fact that the provision -- originally enacted as part of the 1992 Energy Policy Act, signed enthusiastically by then-president George H. W. Bush -- has traditionally been given only a two-year lifespan before Congress revisits it. Over the last 20 years, legislators have sometimes renewed it, and other times they have let it expire.
lots of emphasis added
Some numbers from the Des Moines Register article:
The wind tax credit goes to those who build and operate wind farms, not the manufacturers of wind equipment — but it would be the manufacturers who feel the pinch.
Iowa has five major manufacturers: Acciona in West Branch, Clipper in Cedar Rapids, Siemens in Fort Madison and TPI and Trinity in Newton. Together they employ around 2,300 people. Counting suppliers and other wind-related smaller businesses, the job count is 6,000 to 7,000, industry representatives said.
The uncertainty of the wind tax credit’s fate has already caused orders for turbine production for next year to drop steeply. When Congress delayed extension of the tax break twice in the past, wind projects faltered and workers were laid off. Clipper laid off 90 people in 2009 when projected orders for turbines fell from 450 to about 200.
And...
The wind production tax credit costs the federal government less than the combined tax subsidies for oil, coal and natural gas by a 4 to 1 margin, wind advocates said. They expect the industry to need at least another five years of support.
Any time a Republican talks about 'fairness' - you know someone's about to get screwed. In this case, Romney's energy policies are all about protecting the oil/coal/gas and nuclear industries right to keep profiting at the expense of the entire planet. It's no wonder Mitt Romney hates to get specific about anything - the more you find out about what he really wants to do, the more it becomes clear his election would be
a global disaster.