A Stitch in Haste

…and T. Boone Pickens has taken a flying Jedi leap right over it:

Roberts County, Texas, sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer, a huge underground reservoir that stretches all the way to South Dakota. It’s in Roberts County that T. Boone Pickens set aside eight acres from his ranch for drilling deep into the aquifer.

Then he turned this parcel into a town, basically, with only two eligible voters — both of whom were his employees. (This required a change in Texas law in 2007 — a change facilitated no doubt by his $1.2 million in campaign contributions to Texas legislators in 2006).

Then there was an election in this district, in which both voters voted to make this 8-acre municipality a special fresh-water district.

Pickens’ wholly owned government entity now can issue tax-free bonds (meaning he can borrow at a serious discount) and use the power of eminent domain to pressure landowners to sell — or to take their land if they hold out. The eminent domain power is key to building the pipeline that will run this water down to the Dallas area, where Pickens hopes to sell the water. … If this begins to sound too cutthroat to the public, Pickens just reminds journalists and politicians that following this water pipeline will be the transmission cables for Pickens’ mammoth wind farm.

I actually believe that over the very, very long run — say 200 years — wind (along with nuclear) will indeed be the ultimate solution to the assorted “problems” of petroleum-based civilization (unless we succeed in developing oil-excreting bacteria). I would prefer of course that the transition happen in a natural — i.e., capitalist — way, with oil gradually becoming so expensive (but never running out) that wind-based power becomes an attractive alternative without any governmental subsidies (coupled with a post-biotech willingness to divert land currently devoted to agriculture over to wind farming).

Then again, I’m no Pickens:

Pickens recently announced he will spend some $3 billion on a wind farm on his own property in Texas to take advantage of the generous subsidies for wind power. Pickens said he expects a 25% return on investment in his wind project. He has said he contemplates a total investment of $10 billion in Texas wind.

[Glenn] Schleede, a veteran energy analyst who was a major official in the Reagan administration Office of Management and Budget, and has been an anti-wind gadfly for more than a decade, argues in a May 13 paper that the Pickens announcement is powerful evidence why the wind subsidy is a mistake.

“Wind farms,” argues Schleede, a former coal industry lobbyist, “are being built primarily for their lucrative tax benefits and subsidies — not because of their environmental and energy benefits.” The Pickens wind investments, he says, amount to “a 25% return with little risk.”

The federal production tax credit alone will yield an estimated $2.45 billion in benefits for Pickens. On top of accelerated depreciation rules, state and local tax breaks, energy credits and other less-than-free-market “investment returns.”

As another long-time Pickens critic sums up nicely:

Watching Pickens talk about the United States’ energy industry is like watching a CEO talk about the way a company is run. He would shift natural gas from electricity generation to transportation, replacing a third of our gasoline consumption with natural-gas-powered cars; then he would expand wind power to fill the gap in electricity generation.

But Pickens isn’t the CEO of America. He’s not the boss of me or of my power company. What do his big dreams for our energy economy have to do with anything? Isn’t he a billionaire investor? If he thinks wind is the electricity source of the future, good for him.
…
Watch the video he has on PickensPlan.com. After walking through his vision for the country, he tips his hand: “We have to have the right leadership, and everybody in this country has to cooperate. We have to get on the same team; we have to march in the same direction.”

“Leadership … march in the same direction …” Pickens is talking about government. He’s talking mandates and subsidies. And these government programs would profit him.

I would have preferred an alternative to the noble word “profit” — do we call a burglar’s loot his “profit”?

Actually, Pickens doesn’t remind me at all of a CEO talking about the way a company is run. He reminds me of Robert Moses talking about how some people had to be — his term — “inconvenienced” (i.e., by rampant eminent domain, often of entire neighborhoods) for the good of the entire city (or region or nation or whatever). With him doing the “inconveniencing” of course.

Have we learned nothing from Robert Moses? Have we learned nothing from the ethanol debacle? Are we still unwilling to acknowledge that all politicians (and their puppetmaster sponsors like Pickens) are, by definition, moral defectives? That they rarely hesitate to buy and sell their votes — and your rights — to the higher bidder in the most evil “market” of them all — the market for government power?

Apparently not:

McCain said he has a long record of support for alternative fuels. Asked specifically if he was for renewing tax breaks for wind and solar that expire this year, he said, “of course.”
–Wall Street Journal, 15 August 2008

“He’s a legendary entrepreneur and one of the things that I think we have to unify the country around is having an intelligent energy policy.”
–Barack Obama, discussing T. Boone Pickens, 17 August 2008

Whoever wins in November, so does Rent-Seeker Pickens. “Legendary Entrepreneur” Pickens, if he ever really existed, is long dead.

Previously:
–Merck Buys Rent-Seeking HPV Vaccination Order from Texas Governor
–Another Texas “For the Children” Rent-Seeking Scandal
–“Entrepreneur” Rent-Seeks a Privacy Violation From His Educrat Brother