 If you watched the debate last night, in addition to Willard "Mitt" Romney's pathological lying, deception, Etch-a-Sketch'ing, bullying, etc., you probably noticed his dissing of anything "green" (environmental "green," that is; money "green" is all important in Romney's world). For instance,Romney falsely claimed that green energy receives far more taxpayer support than fossil fuels have over the years. In reality, of course, while there's no definitive count on taxpayer-funded corporate welfare to oil, coal, and natural gas, the amount going to those industries over the years has far exceeded that going to clean energy. Not even close.So what was Romney talking about when he told Obama, "in one year, you provided $90 billion in breaks to the green energy world?" Hard to say. According to a study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in fact, all "renewables" received only $14.7 billion in federal support in 2010, up from $5.1 billion in 2007. So, one could argue that the Obama "stimulus" added a bit over $9 billion in one-time support for clean energy in 2010. That's not chump change, but it's not even close to the $90 billion "in one year" figure Romney threw out last night (unless, perhaps, he was counting money spent over several years in a variety of areas, including home weatherization and other energy-related areas, not just what most people think of as "green energy" - wind, solar, geothermal, etc.). Who knows.
Also, as my analysis here showed, "non-'stimulus' (alternately, we can call them 'business as usual') subsidies for wind, solar and geothermal in 2010 were down about $140 million from 2007." Of course, Willard doesn't mention this, but again, who knows what that guy's talking about, as most every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie or distortion. I know that actual facts are painful for pathological liars like Romney and Ryan, but I wanted to put them out there for the rest of us.
Anyway, the gist of Willard's comments last night was to diss "green energy" and "green jobs." At one point, Romney even claimed - completely, wildly wrong!!! - that "about half of {green energy companies}, of the ones have been invested in, they've gone out of business." In fact, there was at most "a 10 percent failure rate representing roughly 2 percent of budgeted funds for the program - a big difference from the 50 percent failure rate that Romney claimed." Whatever, details details (and can't expect the corporate media to do its job and call them on this crap). |
