The New American Economy

Culture of Corruption by Michelle Malkin
Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming by Christopher C. Horner

News Snippets . . .
New industries, new jobs: MSNBC: Rather than emphasizing any impact on pollution or global warming, [Barak Obama] called the House legislation [the June 2009 energy bill] "a jobs bill" that will lead to the creation of new industries and "finally make clean energy a profitable kind of energy."
"It will create millions of new jobs," echoed Pelosi at a Capitol Hill press conference.

Utterly dependent on government subsidies: The Terrapin Biofuels Finance and Investment World conference held in London in November of 2006: some sobering macroscopic updates to our ongoing coverage of the biofuel phenomenon. One message coming from the Terrapinn conference was that the global biofuel industry is utterly dependent on government subsidies.

Developers get public money: The Financial Times reported on the green energy scandals in Sicily over the weekend. Italy has a very strong system of incentives for wind power, in which guaranteed prices of €180 ($240, £160) per kilowatt-hour are offered to producers. A normal European retail price for electricity is in the region of 10p.

These highly lucrative prices must often be paid even if no electricity is actually being produced - as when a wind farm exists but has no grid connection, or (in the case of Sicily) when power cannot be sold on the Italian mainland owing to limited capacity on undersea cables.

Meanwhile, with large sums of money at stake, no need in some cases to build a genuinely functional plant to qualify for the cash - and every project heavily dependent on local-government permits and votes - wind power is seen as a perfect Mafia opportunity.

“It is a refined system of connections to business and politicians. A handful of people control the wind sector. Many companies exist but it is the same people behind them,” Palermo anti-corruption prosecutor Roberto Scarpinato told the FT. "Developers got public money to build wind farms which did not produce electricity.”