Written By : Dave Blount
December 26, 2012

By watching the “mainstream” media, you could get the impression that the crucial issue of the day is whether the government will be able to raise taxes high enough fast enough to avoid disaster. In reality, Big Government already has too much money if it has even a penny to waste on moonbat insanity like wind energy subsidies:

Since 1992, the federal government has expended almost $24 billion to encourage investment in wind power through direct spending, tax breaks, R&D, loan guarantees and other federal support of electric power. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that a one-year extension of existing federal subsidies for wind power would cost taxpayers almost $12 billion.

The costs of wind subsidies are extraordinarily high—$52.48 per one million watt hours generated, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. … Many states provide additional tax breaks, subsidies and mandates for wind power.

It isn’t that taxpayers get nothing for our money; we get less than nothing.

Subsidized, wind-generated electricity is displacing other, much cheaper sources of power. The subsidies are so high that wind-power producers can pay utilities to take the electricity they produce and still make a profit. … Donna Nelson, the chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission, warned in September that the market distortion caused by negative prices “makes it difficult for other generation types to recover their cost and discourages investment in new generation.”

The toll this takes on the economy is especially tragic when you consider the potential of natural gas. Due to abundant supply, the price of this clean but politically incorrect energy source has fallen by 75% in the last four years.

If unimpeded, the expanded use of cheap natural gas to generate electricity will raise living standards and attract millions of new industrial jobs back to our shores. A vote to stop wind subsidies from being extended is, therefore, a vote for cheaper, more reliable power, higher living standards, reindustrialization and fiscal sanity.

From the Democrat perspective, this would make Americans less dependent on our oligarchical collectivist overlords. That’s why wind subsidies won’t end any time soon.

On a tip from Varla. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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