The Village Idiot

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page keeps columnist Thomas Frank on board to serve as a sort of court jester: he's the liberal whose arguments are so stupid they make conservative arguments look brilliant. He's there as the village idiot, who makes every one else on the page look good in comparison.

Yesterday he delivered on both counts.

His piece bemoans the fact that the left has meekly surrendered the mantle of the freedom fighter to the right, even though, according to Frank, liberals, statists and collectivists are the true freedom fighters in this society. The founding fathers were wrong, he says; it's just not true that expansive government is a threat to freedom. For support, he cites no less an authority than the painter Norman Rockwell. His other authority is of course Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose "Four Freedoms" established the predicate for the nanny state we live under today.

You'll want to read the whole piece, for the same reason you gawk at car wrecks. But here are the key passages:

"Any increase in the size or duties of government, the right tells us, necessarily subtracts from our freedom. Government is, by its very nature, a destroyer of liberties; the Obama administration, specifically, is promising to interfere with the economy and the health-care system so profoundly that Washington will soon have us all in chains.

"What we're going to end up with is higher taxes, bigger government and less freedom for the American people," House Republican Leader John Boehner said on Fox News in July. "We're going to have a real fight for how much freedom we're going to have left in America." . . .

. . . That our ancestors could ever have understood freedom as something greater than the absence of the state would probably strike protesters as inconceivable. But they did. You can see it in that famous Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting from 1943: "Freedom from Want," an illustration of one of Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms." Strange though it might sound, this is a form of freedom that pretty much requires government to get involved in the economy in order to "secure to every nation," as Roosevelt put it, "a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants." The idea is still enshrined today in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights" . . .

. . . Conservatives of the 1930s, led by an upper-crust outfit called the American Liberty League, certainly felt that way. "That Roosevelt was a dictator there was no doubt; but Liberty Leaguers were not quite sure what kind," wrote the historian George Wolfskill in "The Revolt of the Conservatives," a 1962 study of that organization. "Some thought he was a fascist, others believed him a socialist or Communist, while others, to be absolutely sure, said he was both."

Today, of course, we know that the right's tyranny-fears were nonsense. Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now, and yet we are still a free society free enough, that is, to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN.

Even such pits of statism as Britain and Canada remain free societies, generally speaking, despite having gone skipping blithely down the universal-health-care road to serfdom decades ago. For the sort of people who gathered on the Mall last weekend, however, I doubt that such observations would matter in the least. Their conception of freedom soars on by a force all its own, carried aloft on the wings of pure abstract reasoning: Government intervention equals tyranny. Liberalism is forever a form of despotism-in-waiting."

Most American "ancestors" who predate the 1930s did in fact define freedom, in part, as the "absence of the state," which is why American government was designed to be strictly limited in power. And I could fill this post with quotes, citations and evidence to back that up. But for leftists, like Frank, American history begins not at the founding, but in the Roosevelt era. That's as far back in American history as they dare delve, in search of rationales for the superstate.

I happen to believe Americans have become less free since the New Deal, if one defines freedom not just as having the right to march on Washington to protest ObamaCare (Frank's emasculated definition of "freedom"), but the freedom from dependency on government programs and largess, which tends over time to make one an indentured servant (if not a slave) of the state. It's our independence -- meaning independence from state interference and state coercion and co-option -- that's been eroded as the size, power, appetite and mission of the mega-state grows. There's no denying it's grown significantly since the 1930.

Construction of the mega-state has gone on under both Democrat and Republican regimes. What Obama is doing is the logical extension of the trajectory the country had been traveling for decades. But the changes until now were too incremental to stir more than minor rebellion. The accelerated pace of Barack Obama's Great Leap Forward -- his fevered rush to finish the edifice Roosevelt laid the foundations for -- has jarred many American awake to the trap into which they've sleepily wandered. And that, not racism or embittered partisanship, is at the root of the ObamaCare backlash and tea party movement.

A Chilling Report from The Great White North

I strongly believe not-in-my-backyard obstructionism has gotten out of hand -- in Nevada, they've even gone after ice cream trucks -- yet I also fear the coercive, totalitarian tendencies lurking just below the surface of the modern environmental movement. Which leaves me conflicted about this story out of Canada, where the Premier of Ontario recently announced that NIMBYism will no longer be permitted to stand in the way of "green energy" projects.

"The "not in my backyard" syndrome that has created roadblocks for new energy projects will no longer be tolerated by the Ontario government, Premier Dalton McGuinty warned Tuesday as he pitched his proposed Green Energy Act. McGuinty told the London Chamber of Commerce the legislation will include provisions to stop special interest groups or municipal governments from trying to block green energy projects for anything other than safety or environmental concerns.

"We're going to find a way through this new legislation to make it perfectly clear that NIMBYism will no longer prevail when it comes to putting up wind turbines, solar panels and bio-fuel plants," he told the business audience. "We need those jobs. We need clean electricity, and we need to assume our full responsibility in the face of climate change."

NIMBYism, when taken to extremes -- which it almost always is -- is making it increasingly difficult to build just about everything, from new power plants to new roads, to new schools and even new churches. You name it and NIMBYs will fight it. And I'm betting NIMBYism will become a major impediment to moving forward on all the "shovel-ready" construction projects funded by the federal "stimulus" bill.

But I'm even more wary of the "McGuinty mindset": That there's no room for dissent or democracy when it gets in the way of the green agenda. And I fully expect that this "our way or the highway" attitude will start to be heard in the United States as well -- including, perhaps, from President Obama -- if NIMBYism becomes an even greater impediment to the "green New Deal," or to "saving the planet," which is the banner under which eco-Stalinists march.

"Our new law will uphold rigorous safety and environmental standards, but once those standards have been met, we intend to assert the greater public interest in clean, green electricity and the jobs that come with it," McGuinty said. "Municipalities will no longer be able to reject wind turbines, solar panels or bio-fuel plants because they don't like them. We can't allow interests to oppose these simply because they don't like them . . .As a society, as an economy, either we're committed to clean, green jobs or we're not. I say we are, and we'll take the necessary steps to ensure we move in that direction."

What those "necessary steps" might be, the premier wouldn't say. But his statements seem more like those of a despot -- like something one might hear from leaders in Venezuela or Russia -- than someone in a Western democracy.

"That's Canada," you might say. "Can't happen here."

But just look what happened with hockey.

Green Smoke and Mirrors

Part of what President Barack Obama will be touting today, when he signs the stimulus bill in Denver, are all the “green energy jobs” that will be created, and the “new energy economy” that will materialize, when this blizzard of federal greenbacks hits the fan. Gov. Bill Ritter will be there, too, to make his own overblown claims about how the “new energy economy” is working in Colorado.

But take it all with a grain of salt.

We’re likely to hear, again, how Ritter’s support for higher renewable energy mandates and more “investment” in alternative energy helped create more than 91,000 jobs in Colorado – a claim Ritter made last fall, citing a then-unpublished report by the American Solar Energy Society in Boulder. That this statistic was generated by an advocacy group, in a study underwritten by the state, might have raised red flags, though all except a few in the media reported it as fact. But now the complete report is available and the truth can be told.

The claim is a fabrication, which falls apart under closer scrutiny.

The 91,000 jobs Ritter takes credit for can only be concocted by defining the “new energy economy” so broadly that the term loses meaning, and by lumping renewable energy jobs in with “energy efficiency” jobs. The first group is more easily identified and quantified than the second, which ASES determines by casting its net widely, like a fisherman desperate for a big catch. Caught up in the net are any jobs even remotely linked to energy efficiency. It could be the gal who cuts the hair of the guy who drives the truck that delivers the energy-efficient refrigerator to the department store. Or maybe you work as a security guard at a recycling center – voila! You’re part of Ritter’s “new energy economy.” Or perhaps you’re an accountant at a utility company that offers an energy efficiency program (as almost every utility does): That means you’re a part of the new energy economy too.

Maybe I should be counted as part of Ritter’s economic miracle, since I’m typing this on a PC with an energy-efficient screen saver.

The study exaggerates the importance of the NEE by inflating the numbers, counting not only the assembler of the energy efficient furnace, but the person who services it; not just the builder of the hybrid vehicle, but the hybrid vehicle salesman. Also lumped in are accountants, cashiers, “management analysts,” roofers, truck drivers, welders, janitors, security guards, and stock clerks.

Roughly 80,000 of the 91,000 jobs counted as part of the NEE in 2007 were of this kind -- though these jobs could just as easily be credited to market forces or consumer choice, since government action isn’t the only thing that encourages efficiency.

That left about 10,000 jobs directly related to renewable energy in 2007. But more than half those jobs – 5,100 – were at a federal government facility, the National Renewable Energy Lab, and predated Ritter’s tenure. That means less than 5,000 private sector jobs could be directly linked to renewable energy in 2007 -- a paltry number, considering that 600,000 new jobs are created in the state each year.

Brad Collins, the executive director of the ASES, concedes that Ritter and his administration have no legitimate claim to having created these jobs when, in a Rocky Mountain News opinion piece published last week, he notes, almost in passing, that “these are not newly created jobs in 2007, but the total number of jobs at the end of 2007, including many jobs created in 2006 and earlier.”

Yet no such footnote came attached to Ritter’s boast of last fall, which was reported as fact by many media outlets and has yet to be corrected. Where standard political spin crosses over the line into dishonesty is hard to pinpoint with precision. But Gov. Ritter was certainly pushing the boundary when he made these claims.

As of two years ago -- the most recent year for which actual data exists -- Ritter’s “new energy economy” was insignificant, in terms of its economic importance and contribution to the state's overall energy portfolio. And while it’s undoubtedly more significant today – given the massive benefits the industry enjoys as a result of government mandates, taxpayer subsidies and political allies – it’s still far less consequential than the governor claims.

Here, in passages pulled directly from the report, is the reality behind the rhetoric.
From Pg. 110:

“... the (renewable energy) industry in the state is small and, except for the federal sector – primarily NREL -- does not currently play a major role in the state economy or job market. For example, in 2007:
* (Renewable energy) RE accounted for less than 0.6 percent of Colorado gross state product
* Excluding NREL, RE accounted for less than 0.4 percent of Colorado GSP.
* The total jobs created by RE accounted for only about 0.4 percent of total Colorado employment
* Excluding NREL, direct employment in the RE industry represents only about 0.2 percent of total state employment”

The report also throws cold water on the idea that the NEE is an equal opportunity jobs creator:

“. . . Despite various proposals that have been made in recent years to use RE as a job creation program for the disadvantaged, the chronically unemployed, or for other target populations, this is simply not feasible at present in Colorado.

Total employment in Colorado is over 2.6 million and unemployment totals over 100,000. The total number of jobs generated by RE (excluding NREL) is only about 4,600, and direct RE employment (excluding NREL) is only about 2,000. Excluding jobs that are not realistic targets for retraining the unemployed or those lacking adequate skills or training – such as jobs in R&D, hydropower, biomass power, DOE laboratories, financial institutions, etc. – leaves direct RE employment in the state at about 1,500 jobs. Even if RE jobs grew 10 percent annually, this would create only about 150 new jobs each year. And, if most of these were somehow allocated to the unemployed – which is not a realistic assumption, the impact on state unemployment would still be negligible.”

The report predicts the future job-creating prowess of the NEE under scenarios of increasingly-remote plausibility. The sunniest scenarios, not surprisingly, all depend on more mandates, more “investment” (read: subsidies) and more government interventions on behalf of the industry. And here’s where the report actually does enhance our understanding of the situation. Clearly, without leaning on a government crutch, and taxpayer support, the New Energy Economy would fold up like a Bedouin camp and vanish into the night.

My definition of a true economy is something that operates largely independent of government meddling and management, responding to private initiative, voluntary exchange, market forces, entrepreneurial creativity and consumer choice. The new energy economy flunks most if not all these tests, and more strongly resembles the "economies” socialists attempt to fashion through command and control methods. It’s a creature of government, which will continue to rely on government intervention, support and subsidies for decades to come, and may never stand on its own.

A few statehouse skeptics chided Ritter for using such a flimsy piece of research in such a self-serving way. State Sen. Scott Renfroe, a Greeley Republican, said he hasn’t seen many of these 91,000 jobs in Weld County, and wondered where they all are. "It doesn't pass the laugh test," said Assistant Republican Leader Greg Brophy, who supports the green energy industry but says he thinks “we ought to tell the truth about the size of it." Noting that the report was done with state support, Brophy joked: “I guess if you can't use tax dollars to effectively promote green energy, you always can use them to promote the promotion of it."

I don’t expect that Ritter will correct the record, or temper the hyperbole today, when he and President Obama sing the praises of the NEE at the stimulus bill signing ceremony. But a little more truth in advertising as we move forward would be a breath of fresh air.

Green Giant

Talk about high expectations.

Barack Obama graces the cover of this week's Time Magazine, not as the publication's Person of the Year (though that honor will be bestowed soon enough) but as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, complete with jaunty grin, jutting jaw and cigarette (which he'll have to disavow, of course). The cover carries the headline, "The New New Deal," and it isn't in jest. It's the most explicit reflection yet of the high hopes the Left has for the next president, who must save the economy and planet simultaneously. They see Obama as a Democrat icon in the making, who has the charisma and vision to realign policy and politics for decades to come.

It's largely based on revisionism, of course, and strained comparisons between the past and present. But this is the United States of Amnesia, so it just might fly.

It comes down to us as a cornerstone of left-wing mythology, and an article of faith, that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal saved the United States during the depths of the Great Depression, which was caused by the failures (and, yes, evils) of capitalism. Such beliefs are debatable, of course; many scholars and economists argue that Roosevelt’s policies and programs, far from saving America, deepened and prolonged the nation’s agonies and left behind, as a dark legacy, the gargantuan government we’re saddled with today.

A lot of what's backward in the United States today – our 1930s-era farm programs, for instance – is rooted in the New Deal. But no amount of arguing or reason or evidence will prevent some Americans from swooning when they hear of FDR and his New Deal. Socialists and their fellow travelers look on it as a golden age, which made American what it is today. But for those of us who value economic and political liberty, and look back on the old New Deal as a curse rather than a blessing, the prospect of a New New Deal evokes fear rather than hope.

Now a new golden age is promised by true believers; something they're calling the "Green New Deal" or "Global Green New Deal." (Why they aren't marketing it as the "Green Great Society" is curious, but perhaps that effort's failures are too fresh in peoples' minds to be similarly romanticized.) The idea originated with the United Nations Environment Programme, but has quickly been seized-on by politicians, environmental groups and the alternative energy industry. The concept will get a lot of play at the G20 summit this weekend.

And it will almost certainly be co-opted (even if by some other name) by the next president, who seems to believe the concept's core tenet -- that make-work programs for windmill builders, solar panel installers and ethanol plant operators, and massive federal manipulations of energy markets, will do for America now what the New Deal did for America back then.

This so-called “new energy economy” can’t be born on its own, of course, since the left is also pushing the myth that our current economic woes stem from “market failure” and the corrupting excesses of capitalism. Markets can't get us there, or get us there fast enough. This will require massive government intervention in the economy, on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. If Roosevelt’s New Deal moved us half way to socialism, the Green New Deal, combined with federal "greenhouse gas" controls, will get us the rest of the way there. Economic central planning is the inevitable endpoint of the path we're walking. And we'll get there with a clean conscience, and clean hands, since we’ll be saving the planet even as we correct capitalism’s ills.

This idea, since we're coining new phrases for new times, might be called eco-socialism.

A Green New Deal is a two-fer for eco-socialists; it marries their messianic mission of "saving the planet" with their belief that capitalism, markets and profits are destroying the environment. Al Gore, writing in the New York Times Nov. 9, pointed out that "the bold steps that are needed to solve the climate crisis are exactly the same steps that ought to be taken in order to solve the economic crisis and the energy security crisis."

Keynesians love it because it requires massive government "investment" in "green" industries and green infrastructure as an economic stimulus. And liberals of all stripes, after a long period on the defensive, see it as something that can put them on the top again, much as as the old New Deal secured their political dominance for decades afterward.

A glimpse at below-the-slogans agenda can be seen in the statements and proposals put forth by Gary Gardner and Michael Renner of the Worldwatch Institute, in anticipation of the G20 meeting. Here's what they said:

"The challenge for global political leadership, including U.S. President-elect [Barack] Obama, is not merely to kickstart the global economy, but to do so in a way that creates jobs and stabilizes climate, increases food output using less water and pesticides, and generates prosperity with greater equality of incomes. This broad approach will require a conceptual blueprint evocative of America's 1930s New Deal, but more audacious in scope and vision."

But here's where the eco-socialism becomes overt:

"This historic moment calls for not merely repairs to our hyper-productive, yet ailing, economy, but for a new approach suited to the realities of a heavily populated and environmentally stressed world - a Global Green Deal that shifts the focus from growth to development, and that is geared less to providing consumerist superfluities than to ensuring that nobody's true needs go unmet."

We need to impose a new economic model, in short, that conforms to the "realities" of an environmentally stressed planet -- something famously advocated by Al Gore in his book, Earth in the Balance. The "hyper-productivity"and "consumerist superfluities" that have characterized market economies must take a backseat to "ensuring that nobody's true needs go unmet."

This isn't just a plan to boost renewable energy use and kick-start the economy, obviously; the theme, if not overtly socialist, is unmistakably anti-capitalist. It's an overhaul of industrial and post-industrial society that's being advocated, not through incremental steps and voluntary action but through economic upheaval and government coercion. And it's an alarming invitation to totalitarian government control of the economy, and of our lives, in the eyes of people like myself.

Like the old New Deal (but on steroids), it will greatly expand government power and control over every facet of our lives. Like the old New Deal, it will create new generations of government dependents; wind and solar farmers, this time, instead of dirt farmers. And it will, like the old New Deal and the Great Society, have unfortunate unforeseen consequences and create more problems than it solves.

It will be a great "deal" for some people, no doubt -- the green industries that will rely on government mandates, subsidies and giveaways to exist -- but a raw deal for most Americans, who will be paying more for virtually everything, and living in a world of diminished expectations, in order to bankroll this massive expansion of government and make the sacrifices that will be demanded in the name of "saving the planet"


The eco-socialists are hoping to tap into this misplaced nostalgia when they try to sell Americans on the necessity of a “Green New Deal.” But what they really are after is a complete economic and social overhaul -- a remaking of the American economy and society along environmentally-correct lines. The costs and consequences of such a revolution -- the toll it may take on our quality of life and personal freedoms -- are of tertiary concern to plan proponents.

They are Utopians, on a mission to "save the planet." Any means necessary can and will be justified.