Not Even Trying Anymore

When I realized that I wasn’t even freaking out about the most recent crony capitalism scheme from the current administration I’ll admit I was a bit disturbed. Generally, when government leaders implement a scheme that will harm the people they nominally govern, the country where those people live, or the world in general they will make some effort to explain or rationalize the move; when the scheme enriches their political supporters at the expense of everyone else in the affected industries they will go to much greater lengths to bury their tracks in order to avoid a very real risk of lawsuits. But in the case of the Federal intervention to keep obsolete coal, oil, and nuclear power plants operating for at least another two years which was announced on Friday, the administration doesn’t even seem to be trying to hide the corruption…

If you have an unusually strong stomach you can pick up the ABC News story about this action, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. As announced, the initiative will keep these elements of our national power grid active, regardless of local need or cost-effectiveness, as a matter of National Security. Why, exactly, power generation units that can’t be operated at a profit are critical to the security of the United States isn’t explained in the memo that turned up on Friday. The Department of Energy merely claims that nuclear, coal, and oil-fired power plants are a “critical” part of the national grid, and without them we might be vulnerable to… Well, to something; they didn’t specify what. You’d have to be a real cynic to suggest that this action is being taken solely to curry support from the people who own obsolescent power plants and coal mines – and the people who work in those industries, of course…

Regrettably, the people at ABC News are apparently that cynical, as are industry watchdog groups, government accountability groups, environmentalist groups, and the Energy Information Administration, all of whom have criticized the announcement as nothing more than a political move intended to make good on a campaign promise from the last Presidential election. The truth is that use of coal for electrical generation has been dropping every year for over a decade, decreasing by over 20% in just the last year, and it would be redundant to specify the costs of using oil for power, or the environmental consequences of nuclear power and nuclear waste. Requiring companies to keep those plants open, and (effectively) requiring utility companies to keep purchasing the output from those plants, will result in higher costs to consumers and benefit no one except the coal companies and whoever owns the obsolete power plants…

What makes this particular story so remarkably nauseating is that no one in the Administration has denied any of this, or offered any support for the contention that maintaining these facilities has some strategic or defense purpose. It’s not exactly surprising, given the other abuses of power for personal enrichment that we have seen from this Administration, or given the fact that our current Secretary of Energy does not believe that we need a Department of Energy, or given the fact that our current head of the EPA is openly an industry flak who (apparently) believes that air and water pollution are good for you. It’s just exceptionally brazen, even for American politics, and exceptionally lazy for anyone in this 21^st Century…

I normally stay away from political issues in this blog because, as previously noted, it’s not my area of expertise and I feel there are already more than enough blogs offering political opinions written by someone without any particular qualifications. I’ve also stated for the record that I believe that cronyism, corruption, and pork-barrel politics are an unavoidable part of any representative democracy, and as long as we can keep them down to no more than a slightly regrettable level we will still be doing far better than any other system of government enacted to date. But when the party that is nominally in favor of small government, free-market capitalism, and responsible fiscal policy starts doing things this blatantly self-serving I think we are all justified in complaining about the incompetence, if not the actual policy. Face it, folks, these people aren’t even trying anymore…