Remember VHS? Imagine this: VHS has been a staple of the American way of watching television and movies. VHS has supported countless manufacturing jobs, and even though there are better products out there, let’s face it: We need a variety of ways to watch our programs. The states and local economies that have VHS production facilities have experienced and benefited from VHS production, but without a little help from the taxpayers, jobs will be lost and the industry will atrophy. VHS production has bipartisan support, will be good for American …
The year 2012 marks a monumental yet depressing milestone for the wind energy industry: 20 years of tax credits. The federal renewable energy production tax credit, which allows wind producers to take a 30 percent investment tax credit or receive a 2.2-cents-per-kilowatt-hour production tax credit, has been around since 1992. The tax credit expires at the end of 2012, and the wind energy advocates are already ramping up their efforts to include an extension in any end-of-the-year must-pass legislation. It’s time to let this wasteful, unnecessary subsidy run out. The …
The Grumpy Troll Restaurant and Brewpub is one of over 22,000 companies that received $16,000 cash grants from the federal government to install solar panels on their roofs as part of the 1603 Treasury grant program, a 2009 stimulus bill provision that provides cash grants to help foot the bill of renewable energy projects, mostly wind and solar but also biomass, landfill gas, fuel cells and geothermal heat projects. The 1603 program was set to expire at the end of 2010 but was extended another year. The government has doled …
Solyndra’s bankruptcy has put federal spending for green projects under the microscope—and rightly so. Green jobs programs have been a profoundly wasteful use of taxpayers’ money and are doing more harm to the economy than helping it. They don’t even provide the promised grand environmental benefits. It’s important to keep these points in mind when discussing green jobs. 1.) Government spending does not create jobs. Government spending will “create” jobs in the sense that subsidies will allocate labor and capital to build windmills and solar panels. But the government is …
Last week, Solyndra became the third solar company in recent weeks to go belly-up, but the Fremont-based solar manufacturer made the most noise—because it lost more than a half a billion dollars in taxpayer money. Solyndra received one of the first stimulus loan guarantees, a $535 million loan. During a visit to the plant last year, President Obama said, “Companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.” In 2010, Solyndra closed one of its facilities and canceled its initial public offering, and last week …
Video chat rooms at Ustream The Bloggers Briefing is a weekly policy discussion hosted by The Heritage Foundation. You can watch the live feed (above) via Ustream.tv beginning at noon today. We have three guests speaking at today’s briefing: Cal Dooley, president of the American Chemistry Council, will discuss how the NAT GAS Act would impact U.S. businesses. Heritage Action has documented growing opposition to the bill, which expends billions of dollars for failed energy subsidies. Fourteen lawmakers have already withdrawn their support for the legislation. Alex Cortes, executive director of Let Freedom Ring, …
As Americans across the country gas up their cars for their Memorial Day getaways this weekend, their wallets will take a bigger-than-usual hit. That’s because gas prices are up $1.06 from last year according to a study by AAA. In fact, prices have more than doubled since President Obama took office. And while the media has been slow to demand answers of the President, he has been busy trying to deflect attention away from his incoherent energy policy with a number of gas price-related myths. Our latest video takes several …
Randall Stilley has witnessed firsthand the Obama administration’s job-killing agenda. As the president and chief executive of Seahawk Drilling, he had to lay off 632 employees before filing for bankruptcy — a direct result of President Barack Obama’s anti-energy policies. Stilley’s company owned and operated 20 shallow-water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The lack of energy production — a consequence of Obama’s drilling moratorium and subsequent “permitorium” — led to Seahawk’s demise. Now he’s speaking out, sharing Seahawk’s story in a new video from Heritage and the Institute for …
Ethanol. Henry Ford called it the “fuel of the future” in the 1920s. Decades later, policymakers put laws in place to increase the amount of ethanol in our fuel supply. Environmentalists and the Midwest sold it as a way to decrease American dependence on foreign oil and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s accomplished neither and instead become an industry reliant on subsidies, mandates and protectionism. Washington needs to reverse these policies and Senator Coburn’s (R-OK) amendment to repeal the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) is …
Global Environment Fund founder and chief executive Jeffrey Leonard (not 1987 National League Championship Series MVP Jeffrey Leonard) wrote in The Washington Post last week: If Obama wants to set us on a path to a sustainable-energy future – and a green one, too – he should propose a very simple solution to the current mess: eliminate all energy subsidies. Yes, all of them – oil, coal, gas, nuclear, ethanol, and wind and solar. This is a fabulous idea which we genuinely hope President Obama adopts. Subsidies distort market signals …
