Timothy P. Carney: Congress gives your money to T. Boone Pickens
By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist | 7/10/09 9:57 AM
T. Boone Pickens, like any good businessman, can read changing economic conditions. While he spent the 1980s as a “corporate raider” and oilman, in this age of Barack Obama and Henry Waxman, he has shifted his focus to lobbyists, feel-good green messages, and technology that depends on government subsidies. The result: Taxpayers will now be subsidizing T. Boone Pickens, a billionaire—and Republicans and Democrats in Congress tell you it’s for your own good.
This week, three senators proposed special tax credits that will subsidize Pickens’ latest business venture, which he calls “the Pickens Plan.” Like his previous undertakings, Pickens has launched his plan as a way to get richer. Unlike his previous undertakings, the Pickens Plan is completely dependent on government subsidies—and this has ingratiated him to politicians and media.
The Pickens Plan, in short, in this: We should get more electricity from windmills and power our cars with natural gas. Pickens happens to be a major investor in windmills and natural-gas cars. Both of these energy sources are heavily subsidized, but not enough for Pickens to profit from them, apparently.
This week, Senators Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Harry Reid, D-Nev., at Pickens’ urging, sponsored a bill to double the huge subsidies natural gas cars already receive, and to provide a $100,000 tax credit for the construction of a natural-gas filling station.
Pickens’ company is the leading builder of natural gas fueling stations, and thus the leading beneficiary of this subsidy. [...]
So while our government is running a trillion-dollar deficit, which will lead to tax hikes and inflation that make us and our children poorer, Congress is thinking of creating subsidies and a private tax cut to a man on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com …
other links to T. Boon Pickens
http://junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20081211.html
http://junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080911.html
