Free Republic

[snip]Brazen story... ordinarily trigger a front-page news story or an outraged editorial — a bunch of rich individuals asking Congress to write them a law that would give them better negotiating power against other rich individuals. [snip]Bezos, Slim, and Buffett need Congress to help them negotiate with Google.

THE DEMOCRATIC DIALOG ODE TO THE WELFARE STATE a 1949 poem Father, Must I go to work? No, my lucky son. We’re living now on East Street. On dough from Washington. We’ve left it up to Uncle Sam So don’t get exercised. Nobody has to give a damn – We’ve all been subsidized. But if Sam treats us all so well And feeds us milk and honey, Please, daddy tell me what the hell He’s going to use for money. Don’t worry, bub, there’s not a hitch In this here noble plan – He simply soaks the filthy rich And...

The rising burden of student debt is weighing on interest rates in the U.S., and it would be a “reasonable conversation” for policy makers to explore making college tuition free, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley said. The growing pile of student debt is “obviously one headwind to economic activity” that “probably pushes in that direction of lower equilibrium real rates” because it limits households’ spending power, Dudley said Monday during a press briefing in New York.

January 27, 2014 | http://nypost.com/2014/01/27/obamacares-insurance-company-bailout/ “...John Q Public is about to get clobbered again, thanks to a taxpayer bailout of the insurers written into the ObamaCare law. Section 1342 of the Affordable Care Act forces taxpayers to make insurers whole for most of the losses they incur selling policies on the ObamaCare exchanges through 2016. The bailout is meant to hide the full failure of the president’s signature health law until after the next presidential election.” “... insurers who opt not to participate in the exchanges can’t get bailouts and don’t get subsidies for their customers, so you won’t have...

Many dairy farmers work long hours though their pay is dropping and a growing number of farms are going bankrupt. They have a low opinion of subsidies. […] Michael Greshake is struggling with low market prices for the dairy products put out by his farm in Velbert, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. His main buyer, a Dutch company, has contractually agreed to buy a set amount of milk. However, Greshake’s farm assumes the risk for overproduction. If contracted farms such as Greshake’s suddenly produce a surplus — and demand fails to grow — purchase prices sink. That is why...

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet agreed Wednesday to set aside some €600 million ($675 million) of taxpayers’ money to encourage people to buy electric cars — via an “environmental bonus.” The costs of the scheme will be shared with the auto industry, which is also putting up €600 million. New car-buyers stand to get a €4,000 ($4,500) subsidy if they buy a purely electric car, and €3,000 if they opt for a hybrid car, which combines a battery and a small combustion engine. Not only that, electric cars will be exempt from motor vehicle taxes for 10 years. Economy Minister Sigmar...

Saudi Arabia’s water minister sacked after complaints over tariffs April 24, 2016 Updated: April 24, 2016 07:10 PM RIYADH // Saudi Arabia’s King Salman fired the water and electricity minister following public complaints over a surge in prices less than six months after the government cut generous utility subsidies. Agriculture minister Abdel Rahman Al Fadhli will take over the water and electricity post from Abdullah Al Hasin, the official Saudi Press Agency reported on Saturday, citing a royal decree. Saudis turned to social media to express their anger after the increase in prices of water and the consumer protection association...

Germany plans to subsidize electric cars in a bid to help the country’s auto industry compete in the global market for the growingly-popular and environmentally friendly vehicles. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble says starting May buyers will get €4,000 ($4,514.80) to buy an all-electric vehicle. Plug-in hybrids will receive a subsidy of up to €3,000. The cost will be shared equally by the government and industry. …

When Obama carried out his Solyndra con game, he broke the same law that Martha Stewart went to prison for breaking In 2009 the Obama administration gave $535 million to Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs. However, instead of creating those 4,000 new jobs, the company went bankrupt. It was later revealed that the company’s shareholders and executives had made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign, that the company had spent a large sum of money on lobbying, and that Solyndra executives had had many meetings with White House officials. It was also revealed that the Obama administration had...

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates lead the Gulf Cooperation Council in raising energy prices and cutting subsidies in response to fiscal pressures created by the slump in crude oil prices, according to Arab Petroleum Investments Corp. (APICORP), Dammam, Saudi Arabia. While welcoming the trend as "a step in the right direction, APICORP warns, in a review of reforms introduced so far, that "the path for energy-pricing reform will be long and fraught with risks." Increases in energy prices traditionally kept low by governments reduce household welfare and increase input costs of industries, the group notes. It urged governments...

Domestic fuels have been heavily subsidized, but Riyadh has been under pressure to bring its spending under control as its budget deficit in 2015 ballooned to Riyal 367 billion due to lower revenue from crude exports. Jadwa estimated the cost of energy subsidies at USD 61 billion this year, of which diesel accounted for USD 23 billion and gasoline for USD 9.5 billion. The deficits represent a sharp turnaround from just a few years ago, before oil prices tumbled in mid-2014. Riyadh maintained high spending this year, and launched a military intervention against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen, by tapping into...

...Senator Ted Cruz, already under attack in Iowa for opposing government support for ethanol, has won the support of an out-of-state conservative leader, Ken Cuccinelli II, who on Tuesday aimed an unusually blistering attack on "Big Corn"......"The Governor of Iowa is a Big Corn cheerleader, and his son is running a super PAC hitting Cruz for not bowing to worship Big Corn..." wrote Mr. Cucinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia.He described an agricultural forum in Iowa early in the year attended by presidential hopefuls as a "Big corn kiss up confab."Mr. Cruz is leading Iowa polls of likely Republican...

In a recent Washington Post article, author Griff Witte laments how the British government has cut renewable energy subsidies. This policy change has alarmed some across the world because of climate change fears. Britain is not, however, casting away a bright future of renewables; it is facing harsh realities. British policymakers have cut subsidies because, frankly, they have realized that some renewable energy sources are not reliable, and the costs to make them more reliable are astronomical. One of the problems with some renewables is that they don't produce consistent baseload power like fossil fuels. Wind and solar power, two...

After this week's vaporization of $29 billion of liabilities ($230 million of which was owed to the US Taxpayer) amid Abengoa's bankruptcy (Spain's 'Solyndra'), we thought it worth reminding the world's greater fools just how "green" energy works... As Pater Tenebrarum noted, oh so eloquently, Businesses that cannot possibly survive without subsidies are ipso facto not economically viable. In spite of all the high-minded pronouncements about the “need to save the planet” and how this valiant effort can allegedly be “combined with economic growth”, their existence serves primarily one function: to distribute money looted from taxpayers and consumers to assorted...

California's aggressive push to increase renewable energy production comes with a catch for people with solar panels on the roof: You don't count. If a home or business has a rooftop solar system, most of the wattage isn't included in the ambitious requirement to generate half of the state's electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind by 2030, part of legislation signed in October by Gov. Jerry Brown. That means rooftop solar owners are missing out on a potentially lucrative subsidy that is paid to utilities and developers of big power projects. It also means that utility ratepayers...

Patricia Scalabrini, whose husband works for a local wind turbine manufacturer, wanted to know if Trump supports subsidies for the industry. The company that employs her husband, TPI, moved into a factory that was abandoned when Maytag moved its operations to Mexico. TPI employs about 800 people in Newton. It is helped by subsidies, in the form of the "production tax credit," which gives energy producers tax breaks based on how many kilowatt-hours of electricity they generate using renewable methods. The PTC has been continually renewed for short periods, meaning that it often becomes a political bargaining chip. It is...

The government is going to pull the plug on the solar industry’s key tax credit as evidence mounts that the often touted renewable source cannot compete with traditional energy. “Solar power’s value as a grid resource is limited because we simply can’t count on it to meet peak demand in the evenings,” Travis Fischer, economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “In fact, solar power could cause major problems if implemented on a wide scale due to its daytime-only production profile.” Solar power has been on the rise in the U.S. and is often...

DES MOINES | Voters who wish to pick a presidential candidate and at the same time support a federal renewable fuel program that benefits Iowa corn growers have at least nine options, according to an advocacy group’s new report. America’s Renewable Future, an Iowa advocacy group that promotes the federal rule that mandates a certain amount of corn-based ethanol be placed in the nation’s fuel supply, on Tuesday issued a midterm report card on the 2016 presidential candidates. Nine candidates — six Republicans and all three Democrats — earned the report’s top grade for their expressed support for the federal...

sub•si•dy: (s?b′s?-d?) n. pl. sub•si•dies 1. Monetary assistance granted by a government to a person or group in support of an enterprise regarded as being in the public interest. 2. Financial assistance given by one person or government to another. The oil and gas industry is suffering through a severe and prolonged slump due to collapsed oil prices resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs worldwide and the destruction of billions, if not trillions, of dollars in shareholder value. Governments in oil-producing jurisdictions, including Alberta, find themselves in severe financial difficulty because cash flow generated by first...

A new report reveals that Germany is subsidizing coal with more than €3 billion in public funds a year, even given the country's commitment to cutting carbon emissions. EU states are subsidizing climate-harming coal to the tune of €10 billion ($10.7 billion) a year, according to a German study due to be released next week. In Germany alone, the coal sector receives €3.7 billion of public money annually, according to the study by think tank the Heinrich Boell Foundation and environmental group Friends of the Earth, which gave excerpts to AFP. ...