It’s symbolically appropriate that one of President Obama’s preferred forms of “green energy” crony capitalism has the effect of killing off the national bird. The federal wind production tax credit (PTC) is mercifully set to expire on New Year’s Eve.  The PTC provides a financial boon, at great taxpayer expense, to well-connected companies that build eyesore wind farms that kill great birds of prey and pretty much anything else that flies within the range of their “green” blades.  The nonpartisan Institute for Energy Research estimates that if this cozy arrangement between big government and big business were to be extended, it would cost American taxpayers $55,000,000,000.  The fate of the PTC — and of that $55 billion— now rests with House Republicans, who would have to approve the PTC’s renewal.

As John Fund writes today at National Review Online: