Tuesday, June 19, 2012
To: Friends & Supporters
From: Gary L. Bauer
Contempt Compromise?
After 16 months, it seems that the House leadership finally has Attorney General Eric Holder’s attention. Unfortunately, it took the threat of a contempt citation to get it. We likely won’t know the full details until this evening, but it seems Holder may have blinked first in the standoff over Operation Fast and Furious.
With the House Government Reform Committee set to vote on a contempt citation this week, Holder sent a letter yesterday to the committee’s chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, asking for a meeting this morning. Issa counteroffered — demanding 1,300 documents be turned over this morning and he said no meeting would take place until 5:00 PM so that his staff could review the newly released material.
Meanwhile, Holder has another headache to contend with. Yesterday, the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing 17,000 Border Patrol agents, called on Holder to resign. Shawn Moran, a union vice president, told the Arizona Daily Star, “We take the risks that are out there naturally just being in law enforcement working across from Mexico in the condition it’s in right now. But what you can’t accept is when your own government is allowing weapons into the hands of the people you’re confronting.”
Green Energy’s Waste: Your Tax Dollars
Charles Lane, an editorial writer for the Washington Post, has an illuminating column today on the billions of tax dollars wasted by so-called green energy policies.
Lane notes that green energy subsidies have more than doubled in recent years: “U.S. energy subsidies — spending, tax breaks, loan guarantees — increased from $17.9 billion in fiscal 2007 to $37.2 billion in fiscal 2010, according to the Energy Department.”
But what are we getting for it? Not much beyond “a litany of clean-energy failures, from electric cars to Solyndra.” As we have repeatedly detailed in this daily report, the fundamental economics simply are not there. Now some on the left seem willing to admit it.
Lane cites a new study by three researchers from the Brookings Institution, which is generally viewed as a left-of-center think tank. They examined the rationale for green energy subsidies and were less than impressed with the results. The bottom line from Adele Morris, one of the Brookings scholar: “I’m not aware of a single peer-reviewed economic study that shows these programs create jobs in the long run, and on a net basis.”
Lane adds, “Solyndra and its 1,861 vanished jobs proves [Morris'] point.”
More Bad News
The economic news continues to be discouraging. New Labor Department reports indicate that job openings in April hit a five-month low and “showed their sharpest percentage decline in about seven and a half years.”
The Washington Examiner reports that nearly 7 million people dropped their cable TV service last year. When asked why, more than 70% cited “cost-cutting” as the reason.
Then again, fewer people watching MSNBC may be good thing for America.
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