Corporation Commission does not need bipartisan approach

In a recent editorial, Corporation Commissioner Paul Newman echoes the nauseatingly typical cry for a “bipartisan effort” with respect to subsidies for solar. For those who do not spend their lives in political activities, you need to know that those who call for a “bipartisan effort” always do so in the name of more government spending or some new government program. Neanderthal conservatives like me are admonished to get in line and authorize more spending of other people’s money. In Newman’s case he is decrying the reduction in spending for the solar rebate program.

Solar subsidies are one of the biggest boondoggles in government today. The waste of taxpayer money is never ending. In my Air Force career we used to say that you could make anything fly, including a brick, if you gave it enough thrust. Similarly, you can make any product “viable” with enough government subsidies.

Liberals like Newman think that they are smarter than the market and smarter than any consumer or any business owner and that taxpayer money (actually ratepayer money, but it’s the same thing in a government granted monopoly power company) should be used to encourage solar development because Newman and his liberal friends know it is better for us, even if the free market continues to signal us that it is more expensive.

Thankfully, a couple of the corporation commissioners have seen through this boondoggle and decided that there, at least, must be some limit. Commissioners should extend this logic and abolish all the subsidies and let market forces decide which type of fuel is used to produce electric power. Saving the taxpayers money really is a worthy bipartisan goal.