Free Republic

Wealthy Californians would like to thank you for buying them expensive automobiles. Didn’t know you that generous, eh? In fairly recent political history, left-of-center ideologues and other special needs people have advocated “public/private partnerships”. Once opposed to anything corporate, alleged progressives now embrace funneling tax funds to corporations of every ilk that sustain their ideology, regardless of how insane the plot sounds to common folks with common sense. No less of a man than Bill Clinton (and given his serial freelance philandering, there is no lesser of a man) has focused his face into television cameras proclaiming that government funded...

Great news for consumers who are considering buying General Motors' green wonder car, the Chevy Volt. I know how excited those environmentally conscientious Volt enthusiasts can get, but a little patience can pay off big time if potential buyers hold off for a year or so on their purchase. According to GM CEO Dan Akerson and following another dismal month of Volt sales (1,306 in April), the car that defies logic will soon be available for up to $10,000 less money. The good news extends to shareholders of GM as the next generation of the Volt will supposedly be profitable...

While hindsight may always be 20/20, foresight should be pretty clear in many instances as well. The Fisker failure was one of these times. Many saw the folly in spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to support the green debacle. In fact, the Associated Press has reported that even the Obama Administration had warning of the Fisker loan risks back in April of 2010 when the Energy Department began emailing their concerns. Congress will be holding hearings starting today to address the scandalous waste of taxpayer money on Fisker. Reuters states one of the goals of the hearing, "'The...

A Washington company intends to moor five wind turbines off the Oregon coast, and hopes the project dovetails with a separate proposal for liquefied natural gas.

Earlier this year, I reviewed General Motors' first quarter earnings report and annual results . My take-away from the report was that GM relied upon shady accounting techniques and a build-up of US dealer inventories to produce some rosy-looking results. Channel stuffing to the tune of an over 20% increase in inventory from year end 2011 provided for GM's revenue growth. The trend continues as GM has further pumped-up inventory for quarter one. The reason that dealer inventory figures are so important is that automakers record revenue when vehicles are shipped to dealerships, not when they are actually sold to...

It appears that the Mainstream Media folks may finally be starting to expose one of the worst cases of taxpayer abuse that this country has ever seen. Kudos to Deepa Seetharaman who wrote a piece for Reuters which questions the feasibility of the government-subsidized, lithium-ion based battery technology behind electric vehicles (EVs) like the Chevy Volt. While Seetharaman acknowledges the limitations of lithium-ion batteries, what remains unchallenged is the continued waste of billions of taxpayer dollars to support the failing, pseudo-green technology. The evidence that the Obama Administration's EV subsidization has been a costly fiasco (particularly regarding the Chevy Volt...

When a company wants to go public and offer shares of common stock, it must fill out an S-1 form, a background document used by investors for research before an initial public offering (IPO) is filed. Because they have a direct financial interest in the performance of a company, individuals and groups that invest are smart to look closely at this document before pledging their money. If only the government was as careful. Last summer, Michigan Capitol Confidential covered the “green” energy company Mascoma Corp., which has received more than $100 million from the federal government and another $20 million...

The Chevy Volt has inarguably been the poster child for President Obama's push to electrify America's auto fleet. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent to produce and subsidize the plug-in electric car. For years we have heard about the supposedly amazing technology for the Volt which would lead America to energy independence, be a "game-changer" for General Motors and provide a multitude of new green jobs. Proclamations were made that supply for the wonder-car could not keep up with the demand. Well, March's sales figures are in and give further confirmation that the lofty claims were all lies. March's...

Michigan subsidizes up to 32 percent of expenditures for film, television, music video, video game and other media projects done in the state. Essentially, this means that select qualified ventures receive a check from the state treasury for production. I recently debated Michigan's film subsidy program on Fox 2 in Detroit. I gave several reasons why the state should not be spending taxpayer money on this private enterprise. Here they are: The Michigan film subsidy program does not create jobs. As James Hohman, a fiscal policy analyst at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy reported in 2010, the initial program...

When the third "Transformers" movie was shot in Michigan in 2010, then-Michigan Film Office Director Carrie Jones boasted of the state’s "one-of-a-kind locations" during the filming. However, Michigan wasn’t the only state paying for that feeling. "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" also spent $24 million for filming 30 days in Illinois and received about $7.6 million in film tax subsidy money from our neighbor state. The movie also got another $621,000 from Florida's film office for eight days of filming in which it spent $2.4 million. That was on top of the $6.1 million it received from Michigan taxpayers for...

The Michigan film subsidy program is a perfect example of how the traditional media can play into the hands of the government and elected politicians. While virtually no economist or researcher who has looked at the program finds a net benefit for citizens, the media rolls out story after story of positive parts of the program while almost never mentioning the costs. For example, MLive has done dozens of stories about the Disney film, "Oz: The Great and Powerful," but I am unable to find a single recent article that discusses the nuances of the program. The Detroit News and...

The Disney blockbuster, "Oz: The Great and Powerful," opens today. The film cost the studio about $200 million to make, but Michigan taxpayers chipped in substantially for the production through the state’s generous film subsidy program. In fact, the state paid more per taxpayer than the average price of a movie ticket — Michigan residents should be seeing the film for free. Michigan has 4.5 million individual taxpayers, and the state gave the film studio $39.7 million to shoot the movie in Pontiac. That works out to a subsidy of $8.82 per taxpayer while average ticket prices nationwide are $7.96....

Not so long ago in this republic, most parents of school-age children would frequently visit grocery stores where they would use their own money to buy things like peanut butter and jelly, and bologna and cheese to make lunches for their kids to haul to school in brown paper bags. It was an American tradition. Now, like other great things about America, brown-bag lunches are being driven to extinction by politicians seeking inordinate government control over our lives. In fiscal year 1969 (which started in 1968), there were approximately 47,906,000 American children enrolled in elementary and high schools,

The Federal Reserve's latest round of stress tests for the banking industry showed only one bank remaining on a shaky financial foundation . That bank was government-owned Ally Financial (the bailed-out company formerly known as GMAC), which also happens to be General Motors' prime source for financing. GM divested itself of GMAC so that the struggling lender could be classified as a bank holding company and receive billions of taxpayer dollars. In a move to distance itself from GM, the company was renamed Ally Financial. The government maintains majority ownership of Ally Financial, which in turn has helped GM by...

If the White House and Congress are looking for a place to cut, how about ending the $7,500 electric vehicle (EV) tax credit for those making over $200,000 a year? The Congressional Budget Office recently reported that federal EV subsidies will cost taxpayers about $7.5 billion over the next few years . The majority of those buying costly "green" vehicles, like General Motors' Chevy Volt, are making far more money than the average American. Why should those that can afford to buy these green toys get reimbursed $7,500 each as the nation is going broke? Does anyone really think that...

This comes as no surprise to Hot Air readers, who learned about the value of the Obama administration’s $150 million subsidy investment of LG Chem last fall. After furloughing its workers at their Grand Rapids plant without having a single one of their batteries installed in a consumer vehicle, the local NBC affiliate produced this report on the way taxpayer money got spent:

Undoubtedly alternative energy and transportation innovator Elon Musk (Flickr photo: Jurvetson) – like his competitor for the taxpayer-funded, six-figure electric automobile market Henrik Fisker – is a smart guy. But will economic and technological realities humble him, or worse, make him look like a fool? After the experiencerecounted last week by New York Times journalist John Broder, who test drove the Tesla Model S in frigid conditions that required frequent unplanned recharging stops throughout the Northeast, humility is out of the question for Musk. The jury is still out on inanity. The Times published Broder’s devastating account on Friday. The...

The Baker County Development Commission lured in Wal-Mart by giving it the land, valued at about $1.5 million. Then the county tapped Florida's Economic Development Transportation Fund to help pave the corporate park, of which Wal-Mart would be the only tenant. The distribution center is on the edge of town, and so the federal government chipped in $1.9 million worth of government-funded water infrastructure. A federally subsidized nonprofit called WorkSource helped train Wal-Mart's new employees, and the state of Florida kicked in hundreds of thousands for worker training. Wal-Mart also pocketed a $2.9 million Qualified Target Industry tax break. All...

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday quietly raised the 10-year cost of ObamaCare's insurance subsidies offered via the health law's exchanges by $233 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office review of its latest spending forecast. The CBO's new baseline estimate shows that ObamaCare subsidies offered through the insurance exchanges — which are supposed to be up and running by next January — will total more than $1 trillion through 2022, up from $814 billion over those same years in its budget forecast made a year ago. That's an increase of nearly 29%. [snip] The CBO also expects 7 million...

According to Toyota Vice Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, "Because of its shortcomings - driving range, cost and recharging time - the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars; we need something entirely new." Uchiyamada is considered the "father of the Prius." An article by Reuter's exposes the limitations of EVs and focuses on Toyota's, along with Nissan's, change in strategy, which is now moving away from EVs. Even the most ideological and extreme green energy proponents and backers of the Chevy Volt will have to open their eyes to the sad truth uncovered by the latest report....

SOUTH BAY, Fla. -- From a distance it looks as if tornadoes are churning in the fields. But as you get closer, you see that the dark plumes are clouds of black smoke. And if your smell is keen enough, you realize it's sugar cane that's burning. Trucks hauling trailers full of cane stalks crowd the northbound lanes of Route 27 for a stretch just south of Lake Okeechobee. In the southbound lanes the trailers are empty. They're running between the cane fields that dominate this northernmost part of the Everglades and the Okeelanta sugar mill, owned by the Fanjul...

January's dismal numbers for Chevy Volt sales may give a clue as to how successful (or not) President Obama will be in reaching his goal of having a million electric vehicles (EVs) on American roads within the next few years, a goal that is increasingly becoming unlikely. It also gives us a glimpse into a bizarre strategy General Motors has had by focusing so strongly on plug-in cars while they lose market share elsewhere. The numbers are in, and GM can proudly say that they are the market leader in an insignificant field with a paltry 1,140 Volts sold in...

With the revelation that All Nippon Airways replaced defectivelithium ion batteries 10 times,Japan Air Lines replaced“quite a few,” andUnited Airlines replaced “multiple batteries,” in the months preceding the smoke emergency that grounded their Dreamliners, is there anything that can be said about the technology that can overcome its now-horrible reputation? Boeing has worked on the 787 for 10 years or so, with an ample amount of time to determine what kind of battery technology would be functional with the“super-efficient” jet with “exceptional environmental performance.” Had the Chicago-based manufacturer –and its airline customers – concerned themselves more with achievable plans that...

Industrial policy: After lithium-ion batteries caught fire on Boeing's new Dreamliner, stories popped up about how dangerous they are. Turns out they're the same kind of batteries President Obama is forcing into U.S. cars. This month, a Boeing 787 battery caught fire while the plane was sitting at Logan Airport in Boston. Another 787 was forced to land while flying over Japan, forcing Boeing to ground its fleet of state-of-the-art 787s. In the wake of these events, the press suddenly took notice of the risks posed by lithium-ion batteries. USA Today complained that the FAA should have been more cautious...

With record numbers of college graduates underemployed in jobs that don’t actually require degrees, economists are joking that even aspiring janitors may soon have to get master’s degrees to compete for jobs. A study released Monday by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity found that 37 percent of employed graduates didn’t need to attend college at all to successfully perform their current jobs. The study was co-authored by Dr. Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University and director of CCAP; Jonathan Robe, a CCAP researcher; and Christopher Denhart, an economics student at the university. “Just as a bachelor’s...

Higher Education: A new study finds almost half of Americans with college degrees are working at jobs that don't require one. It's the latest example of how federal subsidies are creating a massive higher-education bubble. The study, by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, found that an incredible 48% of college graduates — about 13 million of them — hold jobs that don't require a bachelor's degree. About 5 million have jobs that don't even require a high school diploma. There are, for example, roughly a million sales clerks, 300,000 waiters and 100,000 janitors with college degrees. This mismatch...

I recently came across a report written by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which estimated the cost to taxpayers for "federal policies to promote (aka subsidize) the manufacture and purchase of electric vehicles (EVs)." The piece also predicts the short-term benefits of the subsidies and includes the effects of rising federal requirements for fuel economy (known as CAFE) standards. The outlook is that federal subsidies will cost taxpayers $7.5 billion over the next few years for little or no benefit (even when including the impact of CAFE) to total gas consumption or emissions. The CBO is a non-partisan federal agency...

The leaders in both parties on the House and Senate Agriculture committees have agreed to a one-year extension of the 2008 farm bill that expired in October, a move that could head off a possible doubling of milk prices next month. But House leaders have yet to say whether they will allow a vote on it.

House leaders have prepared three bills to deal with the looming "milk cliff" for floor action this week. The three bills are aimed at preventing a spike in dairy prices looming in the new year. Because Congress has failed to renew farm programs, an underlying 1949 law is slated to kick in. This would force the government to buy up American milk at inflated prices and the purchases are expected to possibly double the price of milk at the grocery store as supplies dwindle. Late Saturday night, House Republicans posted the three bills on the House Rules Committee website, setting...

The mystery of the trainload of biodiesel that crossed back and forth across the Sarnia-Port Huron border without ever unloading its cargo, as reported by CBC News, has been solved.

In a major blow to the taxpayer-funded green energy movement, a government audit reveals that a California plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by using more “renewable” sources will damage the environment and increase electric bills. This clearly defeats the intended goal of saving mother earth from the evils of man-made pollutants that are contributing to the global warming crisis. The story involves California’s massive transformation in the way electricity is produced and distributed. By 2020 the Golden State plans to be a green zone with a clean-energy economy that drastically slashes greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the impact of...

THANKSGIVING IS behind us. The fiscal "cliff" looms ahead. And in less than six weeks, Massachusetts will have a new senator. Let's try to link them all in a single column. As a candidate for the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren showed a livelier interest in raising federal revenues than in cutting government spending. But about one spending target the senator-elect has been admirably blunt. When asked to name some items in the federal budget she'd like to see slashed, the first program she cites is one of the most indefensible: agriculture subsidies. To be sure, it's easier to oppose welfare...

We are less than 50 days away from the fiscal cliff, and Congress returns to Washington today with a mission to avoid a fiscal and economic crisis that would easily spin the country into a new recession. Peter Ferrara blasts Obamanomics in general at Forbes today, but also explains the stakes involved for the lame-duck session: Last year I wrote a short book for Encounter called “Obama and the Crash of 2013.” I predicted then that Obama’s policies of increased top tax rates for nearly all major federal taxes, soaring new regulatory burdens, and loose, cheap dollar monetary policies, would...

President Barack Obama appears to be doubling down on his policies of using taxpayer money to finance green energy investments despite an increasingly spotty track record. “We’ve got to control our own energy, you know, not only oil and natural gas, which we’ve been investing in, but also, we’ve got to make sure we’re building the energy source of the future, not just thinking about next year, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now,” he said during Tuesday night’s presidential debate. “That’s why we’ve invested in solar and wind and biofuels, energy-efficient cars.” The controversial stimulus package passed...

Remember this moment from the Romney-Obama debate last week? Mitt Romney hammered Barack Obama on green-energy subsidies and the futility of government intervention designed to distort markets:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO ROMNEY: Â… to oil, to tax breaks, then companies going overseas. So letÂ’s go through them one by one.First of all, the Department of Energy has said the tax break for oil companies is $2.8 billion a year. And itÂ’s actually an accounting treatment, as you know, thatÂ’s been in place for a hundred years. NowÂ…OBAMA: ItÂ’s time to end it.ROMNEY: And in one year, you provided $90...

Perhaps coincidentally, Proposal 3, a ballot measure to impose a mandate on Michigan utilities to obtain 25 percent of the electricity they sell from “renewable” sources — read wind turbines — will come before voters just seven weeks before another taxpayer wind subsidy is set to expire. It’s a federal “production tax credit” that gives windmill operators a $22 tax break for every megawatt hour of juice they produce. According to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, this is so generous that during hours of low demand wind producers actually pay grid operators to accept their power, just to get...

President Obama called for a "new economic patriotism" during last night's presidential debate. Well, hold on to your wallets as this new buzz phrase seems to be a euphemism for "wealth redistribution." Just ask old General Motors bondholders or non-unionized Delphi retirees about how Obama's so-called "shared sacrifices" are more about cronyism than patriotism. President Obama is campaigning on a platform that constantly touts everyone "paying a fair share and having a fair shot." Unfortunately for those that do not belong to a politically-favored class, the Obama Administration gets to determine what is fair. This was evidenced during the GM...

General Motors reported that it sold 2,851 Chevy Volts in September. The number is sure to be touted as a great success, even though the annualized rate of sale is still well below initial sales goals for the vehicle and no where near what conventionally-powered, mainstream cars sell. What is sure to be less publicized by the media is that the majority of the Volt "sales" were heavily subsidized leases that are costing taxpayers millions of dollars. GM spokesman, Jim Cain, told me that a full two thirds of Volt sales were leases. Backing out leases and fleet sales, about...

It’s the battery. Contrary to the excuses that Nissan has supplied about the loss of capacity for owners of the all-electric Leaf in the desert Southwest – especially super-hot Phoenix – a tightly-controlled test of a dozen of the vehicles showed that all of them experienced reduced range. Even a month-old Leaf could not recharge to 100 percent. GreenCarReports.com revealed the dismal development this week. That the power reduction came so rapidly and so quickly debunked the claims of Nissan executives Carla Bailo and Andy Palmer, who suggested the problems could lie either with owners who were charging their...

Space Shuttle Discovery sailed off into the sunset and the United States for the first time in a half century has no proven ability to put men into space. Thank President Obama. Or maybe, thank SpaceX founder Elon Musk. (See Rand Simberg’s very different take on things.) SpaceX is getting federal dollars that NASA would otherwise use. .......While NASA dollars have moved into the pockets of SpaceX, we now know that Elon Musk is an Obama bundler. Yesterday I had a conversation with a Congressman who revealed to me that Musk is a big Obama friend and bundler. Musk has...

Ever since the Obama administration’s rollout of its space policy two and a half years ago, conventional ideological wisdom has been turned on its head. An administration that had seemed eager to increase government involvement in everything from auto companies to health care proposed a more competitive, privatized approach to spaceflight, and people claiming to be conservatives blasted it, demanding that the traditional (and failing) NASA monopoly continue. Jim Muncy, a former aide on space policy to California congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R.), put it cleverly: “Democrats don’t think that capitalism works within the atmosphere, and Republicans apparently don’t think it...

After a year full of victories for big government legislation in Congress, the forces of statism seemed to have met their Waterloo with the farm/food stamp bill. The more people learned of the profligate food stamp spending and the market distorting, risk-inducing agriculture programs contained in the bill, the more they spoke out against this monstrosity. Speaker Boehner has refused to bring the bill to the floor so far. Seeing their political stock rapidly diminish, the bipartisan coalition of government-run agriculture took a page out of Rahm Emanuel’s playbook and decided not to let the crisis of the summer drought...

LAS VEGAS — As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prepares to host his fifth annual National Clean Energy Summit on Aug. 7, a Nevada Journal examination of Nevada’s renewable energy sector shows that over $1.3 billion in federal funds funneled into geothermal, solar and wind projects since 2009 has yielded and is projected to yield just 288 permanent, full-time jobs. That’s an initial cost of over $4.6 million per job. Despite this, Sen. Reid continues to hype Nevada as the “Saudi Arabia of renewable energy,” even though the renewable energy subsidized with federal dollars and mandated under Nevada’s Renewable...

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life. Chinese Proverb. ————————————————————-You know what irony is? Irony is the first “black” president enslaving massive numbers of Americans by increasing their reliance on earmarks, subsidies and entitlement programs. More Americans are reliant on the federal government for their sustenance than ever before. Do you think this is a coincidence? Guess again!!!!

Solar-cell manufacturer Solyndra became a household name when it collapsed, taking $627 million in American taxpayer dollars with it. It’s the poster company for the government picking winners and losers—or really, just losers—in the energy market. But there are 12 more “green energy” losers that have declared bankruptcy despite attempts to prop them up with taxpayer money—and the list is growing.There’s a reason why these companies could not rely solely on private financing and needed help from the government. They couldn’t make it on their own; they couldn’t even make it with extra taxpayer help.These green government “investments� take from...

The latest spin is that when President Barack Obama put his foot in his mouth saying :“If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” he didn’t really mean it. Yeah, and if you believe that, you probably think he was talking about voluntary charitable donations when he said, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” ...

Last we checked, about half of Americans don’t pay income tax. Is it surprising then that so many Americans want to receive benefits paid for by income taxes? When a benefit is offered at little or no cost to the one receiving it, how many people have the strength of character to turn it down on principle? Yes, we know, some people are flummoxed by the mere raising of “principle” as a basis for turning down something of value provided at little or no cost to them. What principle might that be? Might we suggest independence? As opposed to dependence...

One test for economic conservatives is whether they are willing to oppose constituent business interests looking for government favoritism. On that score, two recent contrasting votes by Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Marco Rubio of Florida are instructive. The political habit of favoring big business is bipartisan, as the sugar and Ex-Im Bank votes show. If Republicans want the political credibility to reform middle-class entitlements, they had better be prepared to eliminate corporate welfare too. Kudos to Mr. DeMint for understanding this.

Enthusiasts can’t overcome their amazement at the innovation of electric cars – technology that is 100-plus years old. In Friday’s edition of the Vancouver Sun, writer Andrew McCredie – who is tooling around in a modern, all-electricNissan Leaf and blogging about it – marveled at the 1912 electric car produced by the Anderson Car Company, which was on public display at the local “Electrafest” over the weekend. McCredie, seemingly blinded by the nostalgia surrounding the car, ignored the obvious: that its cost, range, and efficiency illustrate that there has been no significant technological advancement, in practical terms for American...

Every once in a while, Democrats and Republicans can work together. Witness Thursday's 90-8 vote to bring a "bipartisan reform" farm bill before the Senate. In the expectation that the bill will garner the necessary 60 votes, the House Agriculture Committee has changed its schedule to allow a floor debate on the measure in July. The White House applauded. This is Washington's version of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. There's just one little problem. Somehow, whenever the two parties work together, they end up spending a lot of other people's money. The Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act...