“Bad Profits, rent-seeking, resource misallocation–it’s an upside down world, turning Ayn Rand’s dis-utopian world in Atlas Shrugged into reality one step at a time.”
“Manchin-Schumer leaves no special interest unrewarded,” wrote Robert Bryce. “The legislation is so broad and has so many carve outs that it has been lauded by Exxon Mobil and the Natural Resources Defense Council.”
The new law’s “lollipops” (Bryce) go to wind, solar, EVs, ethanol, carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen–all money losers on a real free market. Bad Profits, rent-seeking, resource misallocation–it’s an upside down world, turning Ayn Rand’s dis-utopian world in Atlas Shrugged into reality one step at a time.
It is a sad day when ExxonMobil, once a bastion of climate and energy realism and good business, goes all-in with the Inflation Reduction Act
of 2022.…
“… we agree with the urgent need to reduce inflation, but the ‘Inflation Reduction Act of 2022’ is a misleading label applied to a bill that would likely achieve the exact opposite effect.”
Philosophic fraud is a term to describe purposeful misdirection. It may not be prosecutable, but it is strategic deceit.
I was reminded of this upon reading (and signing) the Concerned Economists letter on the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which is scheduled for a vote tomorrow (Saturday). It’s all a rush with a bill so huge and laden with so many special interest giveaways.
The letter follows:
Dear Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader McCarthy,
The U.S. economy is at a dangerous crossroads. Forty-year high inflation is causing immense strain for households and small businesses, and it is prompting steep interest rate hikes that, while necessary to counter fiscal policy excesses, increase the chance of a deepening recession.…
“On Monday, wind was functioning at 8 percent, which is not unheard of,” so it was weird to be called out in the press release, because it’s something that we know happens so we should be ready for that sort of thing.” – Joshua Rhodes, Webber Energy Group, University of Texas at Austin. July 15, 2022
[Electricity] anxiety, coupled with misleading claims about the role of renewable energy in power outages, may also leave Texans disillusioned about the future of clean energy. – ICN, below)
We will see if Texas’s wounded electricity grid escapes conservation alerts and rolling blackouts in the next month. But a false narrative has been set: it is fossil fuels plants that are unreliable, since everyone knows that wind and solar are intermittent and will not show up at times.…