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  • How India is winning the future with solar energy

    India set a goal to build 20 gigawatts of solar — an enormous amount — by 2020. The haters said at first that the country might not make it, but lately India's plan is seeming smarter than anyone imagined. Plus, it's creating jobs — both in India and in America! What's leading to its success? […]

  • Insane Disney WWII propaganda video boosts Big Ag

    Ever wonder why U.S. agriculture gets such huge subsidies for things like corn and wheat? It turns out it's because we're trying to smother Nazis under flour drifts and build a corn bridge from London to the Black Sea. At least, that appears to be the contention of Disney animators in 1942. This video illustrates […]

  • Will Congress keep paying the Koch brothers and others?

    As the congressional supercommittee continues to struggle towards an agreement on cutting $1.5 trillion over a decade from the national budget, cutting government handouts to the oil industry is an obvious and oft repeated target for the chopping block. Public support for removing subsidies to the oil industry remains overwhelmingly positive.  Even John Boehner and […]

  • Theft in progress: Big Ag raids the treasury — with help from Congress

    If the straight-up taxpayer swindle taking place in the supercommittee isn’t making you angry, you’re probably not paying attention. I’m talking about the attempt by agribusiness and a group of willing farm-state representatives to put billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of industrial farmers during the ongoing super committee Farm Bill negotiations. According to […]

  • NY Times needs a time out

    I recently turned 401.  But I didn’t start feeling old until this weekend — because that’s when I started yelling at newspapers2. On Saturday, the New York Times published a lurid, sneering, over-the-top piece on renewable energy that was riddled with errors and really missed the forest for the trees.  We’ve prepared a document rebutting […]

  • Energy companies get $24 billion of corporate welfare from taxpayers

    Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. Tax breaks and subsidies for energy companies have gotten so extreme that dozens of top companies have made billions in profits while having negative taxes — actually receiving taxpayer welfare instead of paying anything to the federal treasury. An analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and […]

  • The GOP brain explained: Why Cliff Stearns wants to subsidize successful companies

    Your brain on conservatism.Yesterday I sketched the sort of personality type most likely to identify as conservative: those who prefer stability to change, order to complexity, familiarity to novelty, and conformity to creativity. This sort of personality type is drawn to clear lines separating in-groups from out-groups, highly aware of social hierarchies, suspicious of change, […]

  • Critical List: Keystone company calls route change ‘unconstitutional’; Perry hates Iowa

    The Keystone XL company thinks changing the pipeline's route could be unconstitutional. Rick Perry appears to want to piss off Iowa. He's against ethanol and now wind subsidies. Fracking probably caused an earthquake in England. Michael Mann, one of the Climategate scientists, is still fighting off groups that want access to his email. Levi Strauss […]

  • Rep. Cliff Stearns doesn’t understand how government subsidies work

    Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.)Photo: Republican ConferenceCross-posted from Climate Progress. So far this week, four of the world’s top five oil companies have announced more than $24 billion in third quarter profits. And by the logic of Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), that should mean those oil companies deserve more subsidies, not less. Speaking at a town […]