Like duck targets at a carnival game, the next round of presidential candidates is already lining up. And, maybe because of Donald Trump’s success, they are all playing a risky game of over-the-top, leftist one-upmanship. The show is fun to watch, but the unbearable threat of their taxes, regulations, and rants is intolerable.
First up seems to be Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Warren most recently took to the Senate floor on the last day of “debate” over the nomination of her colleague Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for Attorney General to attack him. Of course, when she was stopped, as Senate rules demand, she was prepared to exploit the attention and feign outrage. Her protest also, I’m sure accidentally, coincided with her publisher announcing her impending new book hours before.
You’ve got to admire both the skill and the dishonesty of this stunt.
And, her Senate floor outrage is just the latest round. Senator Warren, who was still likely recovering from her “filibuster” of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education and is powdering her nose before her soon-to-be filibuster of Judge Neil Gorsuch, is happy making a case out of anything nowadays.
But, it isn’t just the senator who’s trying to position herself for 2020. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to get some attention too. However, in a bad sign for his political future, Cuomo’s exploits are getting widely panned from both the right and the left. And, now even a few cities are pushing back.
Gov. Cuomo appointed a Public Service Commission (PSC) in 2016 to create a Clean Energy Standard (CES). They did, and the Commission set a goal for New York to use 50 percent renewable energy by 2030. That is just 13 years away and New York is currently only getting 11 percent of its energy from renewable sources.
The goal is a good one, of course. Energy is something that we are not likely as a society to ever want less of, so getting that energy from renewable sources is a fine aspiration. However, achieving such an unrealistic goal in such a relatively short amount of time will demand a large investment—which, when the government is involved, means taking money from people against their will, picking winners and losers, and then merely shrugging their shoulders when their plan fails.
Cuomo’s plan hasn’t failed, yet, but the PSC’s proposal does include taking lots of money from New Yorkers. In their Clean Energy Standard is a Zero Emission Credit that will start being collected in August —projected to collect $8 billion over the 13 years. The interesting part of the $8 billion though is that it won’t be going toward building more renewable energy production—it will be going to one energy company that owns three nuclear plants in New York. Nuclear power is good—it’s emissions-free. But it isn’t renewable.
This new tax doesn’t make any sense economically, politically, or strategically, and New Yorkers and the energy policy community are catching on. Several groups on the left have even started a “Stop The Cuomo Tax” website, and several research papers have recently come out proving the ineffectiveness of his plan. Now things are getting even more tense because three New York cities, along with other interested parties, have filed a lawsuit looking to overturn or scale back the new Zero Emission Credit.
The cities and businesses that are a part of the lawsuit are opposed to the governor’s plan for a lot of reasons, but most of them are upset with the plan because they have already made their own investments in renewable energy. Why would they want to give a gift to nuclear plants now? In fact, one of the lawyers for Clearwater, a town in the suit, and an owner of an organic farm said in the Journal News, “I don’t think it’s fair to be supporting an industry that’s dying. I don’t see the government coming in and helping me because I’m struggling.”
In other words, Cuomo definitely lost this round to Warren.
Charles Sauer is president of The Market Institute.
