Not A Denigration, But A Reasonable Suspicion About "Green Energy?"

I have often said, and commented yesterday, that it’s no good use and even counter-productive to make assertions about moral or intellectual deficiencies like the low-rent MSNBC criticisms of conservatives, when we aren’t in position to be unquestionably certain. So this is not such a denigration. But, it seems to me a quite reasonable suspicion and I’d like to hear a better explanation. Here’s what seems to me a clear picture of what I see from here.

It seems quite reasonable to me to suppose that Obama’s ardor for “green energy” has nothing to do with the environment or independence from foreign oil producers. It’s about money and power. The power is to control yet one more sector of American industry. And, the money is to develop one more large revenue stream to satisfy the appetite for federal spending.

The pose is that the government needs the money to develop alternative “renewable energy” technologies. But of course, the government hasn’t the expertise or the motivation to develop squat. No, they will pay off political allies to do that at whatever the cost. That’s why they need coerced rather than voluntary money. If there was a way to develop an alternative energy source at a competitive cost, someone would do it privately to reap the multiplied billions of dollars that it would bring.

Tuesday night, Bill O’Reilly opined that he didn’t think the oil companies would do that because “they’d rather keep doing what they’re doing.” As I’ve said before, only liberal knotheads imagine that O’Reilly is a conservative, because they don’t know which end is up. In every case, O’Reilly thinks that federal government angels with the power of force, have to hold those craven private companies to account, whether they are oil companies, insurance companies, financial institutions, or whatever. After all, they only care about money. Of course they do, but you make money by providing the market with a product or service at a competitive price. I like O’Reilly’s aggressive interviewing, and I’m sure he’s a smart enough man. But he’s a reporter, and when it comes to how markets operate, he has confused something with a hole in the ground.

As an incomplete list, the worldwide petroleum market players include Exxon, Phillips, Tenneco (US), Shell (The Netherlands), BP (Britain), Citgo (Venezuela) PeMex (Mexico), and the OPEC Middle Eastern nations. If the engineers of one of them came up with a cost-effective way to market an alternative renewable fuel, it would patent it and trounce the others in the energy market. Bill O’Reilly still probably wouldn’t be fazed. He knows more than God.

But, there is a company in the energy business that has put a lot of chips on alternative energy technologies. But it seems that anymore, General Electric doesn’t have the moxie for the market. No, that’s their feet sticking out from under the sheet with the Obama administration [smack!]. They were riding it all on the passage of a cap & trade bill by which the government would raise the cost of other fuels and force consumption of alternative energies. Just a few months ago, the hopes of the happy couple seemed all but dead. But lucky for them, along came the BP oil spill and Barack Obama is hard at resuscitating the lifeless body. Is it a little too suspicious to wonder twice about why Obama didn’t immediately welcome offers of help like the Dutch ships offered to vacuum up millions of tons of fuel immediately after the accident? Oh, I’m such a cynic, right?

Oh, and since I mentioned MSNBC, I’ve long found it funny that those scourges of greedy corporations are in fact themselves, corporate tools. NBC is owned by Disney which is owned by…GE! And have you by any chance looked at the Nielsen ratings for MSNBC? Let’s just say that an accurate description would involve the word, “toilet.” Glenn Beck at 5:00 Eastern Time on FOX News, draws 4 or 5 times the audience of MSNBC’s prime time programs!

If MSNBC was run on the merits of its own profit, the whole evening lineup would be fired into the ocean! But, MSNBC just coincidentally operates as a shrill shill for the Obama administration and its policies. Do I think Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are disingenuous charlatans? No, I think not. I think they are true believers, heads in the clouds and all. But maybe like I said, they are corporate tools. In that case, they would not be “hucksters.” The word would be, “suckers.” But maybe I’m wrong. I’ll wait and see if someone provides a better explanation for this whole picture. But, I won’t hold my breath.