Media Matters has offered up a ridiculous post that tries to distort the fundamental facts about Barack Obama’s green energy program. I hesitated whether to even comment on it because they fail in the basic tenets of honest journalism. George Soros is a large contributor to Media Matters. In my book Throw Them All Out, I point out how Soros has received millions in taxpayer money via the green energy program. And I also devote an entire chapter to Soros’s crony capitalism as it relates to the stimulus. Does Media Matters disclose this blatant conflict of interest? Of course not. Media Matters is displaying blatant cronyism, pure and simple.

Since my book Throw Them All Out is about cronyism and conflicts of interest, I guess now I’m going to have to include a new chapter on Media Matters for the paperback edition.  I will respond to their criticisms now. But until they release the names of their large donors who have received green energy taxpayer money, I will not respond more in the future. It’s a waste of time to exchange arguments with an organization that claims to be interested in the truth but runs from it. Failure to disclose these names shows a complete and total lack of integrity. Full disclosure: my source of support is apparent in my title. I am the William J. Casey Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Financial support comes from the William J. Casey Foundation. And just so Media Matters doesn’t try to distort matters further, this foundation is not connected with the oil industry. Now, Media Matters, it’s your turn.

First, let’s see what they don’t dispute: that at least 10 members of Barack Obama’s 2008 National Campaign Finance Committee are large investors in companies that received Obama stimulus money and that at least one dozen campaign bundlers did the same. How many of these individuals are financial supporters of Media Matters? We will never know, because the organization would never be honest enough to reveal them to us. They also never dispute the fact that Obama-linked lobbyists have served as intermediaries to get money for green tech companies. And finally, they never dispute the criticisms that the Department of Energy’s own Inspector General has raised about how the various green energy stimulus programs have been run. (more…)

Recent revelations about the way that president Obama’s plan to weatherize U.S. homes has gotten off to a less than stellar start symbolize what’s wrong with so-called “green jobs.” Green job programs depend on government subsidies and mandates, require government oversight and, as a result of those two factors, are slightly less efficient than your average Rube Goldberg machine.

One year into the $5 billion program, the government has weatherized five per cent of the target number of homes overall, and less than fifty per cent of what was expected for 2009. The problem? Government rules, believe it or not. Gosh, who could have possibly foreseen that glitch in the plan? But, it seems that it’s difficult to figure out how much to pay contractors, how to protect historic homes and how to solve the nuances of a host of other problems for which government needs to formulate policies and procedures.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a system in which some responsible party – say, the homeowner for example – could make those decisions and save the United States the time, expense and trouble of having to do so? Wait, I seem to remember that we used to have a system something like that. It was called “capitalism,” or some such. (more…)

Let us forget, for a moment, that “Earth Hour” is a pointless exercise serving only to make environmentalists feel better about themselves by marginally reducing electrical demand for 0.01% of the year. Let us disregard, for a moment, that the basic reason for having an “Earth Hour” in the first place is fatuous, because global warming alarmism has as much to do with actual science as alchemy does. Instead, as the MSM pushes this stupidity down our gullets once again, let us consider the effects of “Earth Hour,” in terms of power production and that environment. Indeed, a sober analysis suggests that “Earth Hour” doesn’t do anything to save a planet that doesn’t need saving and that it may in fact rather increase air pollution instead of reducing it.

Let us begin with a question: why is “Earth Hour” scheduled for the evening hours?  Answer: you couldn’t do it during daylight with any credibility. Electric demand is highest during the daytime hours, therefore it’s only then that peaking units (generation assets that only operate during times of high demand) kick in to fill the gap. If “Earth Hour” were held when the sun was out, utilities would respond to the drop in demand by kicking the most expensive generating assets off of the grid. This would surely include one of our more expensive sources of power: wind turbines. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA, a part of the Department of Energy) the cost of wind power is about 50% to 100% more than the cost of coal-fired electricity. It’s obvious that, in times of peak demand, a responsible public utility looking out for consumers’ pocketbooks (and their own profits) will shut down a wind farm in deference to a more efficient, less expensive coal plant. (more…)

Juan Williams is the titular liberal on Fox News and he tries very hard to maintain the impression that the news panels are fair and balanced. To do that he routinely parrots the Democrat mantra du jour on all issues and ofn a recent Fox News Special Report he defended President Obama’s call for new energy policies and cited the need for the government to explore alternative means to reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

I’m a decade older than Williams so maybe he doesn’t recall the Carter administration as well as I do but the Department of Energy was established for that very same purpose and it has produced absolutely nothing towards that aim in over 32 years.

The energy crisis of 1973 was the impetus for President Carter to propose creation of the DOE and the enabling legislation was passed and signed into law on August 4, 1977. The DOE began operations on October 1, 1977.

On its website, this department lists all its awards and achievements but the fact is that hundreds of billions later with a budget of $24.2 billion a year, 16,000 federal employees and approximately 10,000 contract employees, we are no closer to being independent of foreign oil. That’s how a bureaucracy operates — it produces nothing except a mechanism to drain money from taxpayers. Now the banking, healthcare and auto industry are scheduled for the same ‘fix.” Heaven help us! (more…)