The American Spectator

The administration has now mis-stepped in defending its waste of billions of your dollars, and setting of the table for tens or hundreds of billions more wasted.

I see in an E&E News story here (subscription required) that the administration (and Hill allies), in their defense of ‘green’ porkulus, now are saying these funds ‘jump started’ companies and industries.

That’s a dicier ploy for them than just calling out ‘jobs!’.

It begs the question. Let’s pressure test it: to have been ‘jump started’, they are viable.

Oh, and, doesn’t that acknowledge they aren’t to come to the trough again? They’re cut off?

Cite companies and industries made viable. You are the one who said this. So support it. Cite who and what was not merely set on a lifetime of demanding more or they’ll disappear. That’s not ‘jump started’.

Call them on that. Show us examples of ‘jump started’ entities or an industry, which means that don’t now depend on the subsidy to exist.

This is also to pre-butt the mewling ‘but everyone else gets subsidies…’; yep, most energy sources do of some sort, and that’s too bad. But you do incorrectly style energy industry depletion allowances as somehow special compared to the depreciation all are allowed.

And, more important, not everyone else needs these wealth transfers and prop-ups to exist. By saying these funds robbed of Peter to pay Paul to run his uneconomic shop for a while, until he needs more, have ‘jump started’ companies and industries  you’ve begged us to see if you really gave the needed boost to propel a now-viable entity or industry.

Show us you have. Show us that this wasn’t all wasted. It was you who made this claim to justify it — possibly because people are catching on to of course it created (temporary) jobs…everything does. As P.J. O’Rourke has noted, shooting convenience store clerks creates jobs, too; and in the inner cities where they are needed most.

Tsunamis create jobs. Bouncing checks creates jobs. That’s a stupid thing to say. It’s not really an argument in support. Your jobs happen to have been created at enormous per job expense, for temporary gigs, and demanding higher energy costs to boot in many cases simply to keep your bubble inflated.

Calling them on this is a good way to break out of the ongoing back-and-forth with no progress being made to expose these, but just criticizing them.

Support your new claim, or admit you’ve just created a new, vast scheme of corporate welfare, even more wasteful than that to which we have sadly become accustomed. Back it up.