From: "Michael Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: August 11, 2005 10:04:54 PM CDT To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[email protected]> Cc: Subject: Re: [Mpls] Mercury Destroying our Bodies and Fish
His plan, apparently, is to shift the "grants and rebates" (tax money, for the most part, though there certainly is private foundation money as Mr. Zimmerman has pointed out) from one energy industry to another. I'm not a big fan of subsidizing anything that can't make it on it's own,
Wrong. One role of government is to support innovation. If it doesn't, we stick with the lowest-cost solution, and other countries blaze past us in knowledge and technology. This means supporting promising industries early on, then withdrawing support when the industry matures. Thus, renewable energy needs support right now (not technology specific so we aren't picking winners), and the fully mature petroleum industry does not. That's called progress - from a source that's running out, to a sector that can provide energy for the foreseeable future.
Greg Reihardt's point still stands: there will be a tremendous need for capital outlay to implement Mr. Johnson's ideas, and no identified way to pay for them other than "grants and rebates" (read: tax hikes).
No, read: transfer current spending from a doomed industry to a budding industry.
I suspect those people with "Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota" signs won't mind ponying up the money, but my taxes are high enough.
So are my family's, but that's because the federal government taxes us on behalf of the petroleum industry's profits, the pharmaceutical industry's profits, nitwits who wants to build a coal powered plant in a state without coal, the military-industrial complex, and states that refuse to tax themselves enough to provide for the needs of their citizens. We'd be happy to give more of my money to the city and state, where we have some influence over how it's spent, and less to the federal government, where it's distributed under the influence of folks like Jack Abramoff.
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