"Want some child slave labor with that solar panel?"
Wall Street Journal (7/1/20) reports: "House Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio hailed the $1.5 trillion infrastructure spending bill that House Democrats passed on Wednesday as 'the application of the principles of the Green New Deal.' Ok, then, let’s see what’s inside the party pack. The bill includes a feast of pork including renewable energy storage tax credits, grants for public school weatherization and solar panels in low-income housing and electric-car charging stations. It’s a subsidy-fest for any industry that calls itself green. But perhaps more notable is what was kept out—a committee amendment to the bill by GOP Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota that Democrats quietly deleted before it came up for a floor vote. The amendment, which the Transportation Committee approved last week 43-19, would have required the Commerce Secretary to certify that federally funded electric buses and charging stations do not use minerals mined or processed with child labor. All 19 opponents were Democrats."
Do you mean no Red China green energy?
The Hill (7/1/20) reports: "House Republicans were able to alter a $1.5 trillion Democratic-backed infrastructure bill at the eleventh hour Wednesday by including language that would block funds in the legislation from being used on contracts with Chinese state-owned companies and enterprises. Thirty Democrats crossed the aisle to vote with GOP lawmakers in support of the measure offered by Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), which passed in a 224-193 vote. The motion to recommit included language that would prohibit funds from going to entities responsible for building the forced labor camps that have targeted Uighur Muslims and other Muslim minority groups. 'We have a moral obligation to ensure that no government that treats its citizens this way, and none of its state-sponsored companies that help them do it benefit from the majority's spending spree,' Crawford said on the House floor. The infrastructure measure is not expected to advance in the GOP-controlled Senate."
Freedom isn’t free.
Forbes (6/25/20) reports: "Three years ago, John B. Rhodes, the chairman of the New York Public Service Commission, insisted that his state’s renewable-energy permitting process was not stacked against rural communities. Contrast Rhodes’ 2017 statement with what happened earlier this month. On June 3, the New York State Siting Board – with Rhodes serving as the chairman — voted unanimously to allow Chicago-based Invenergy to build the 340-megawatt Alle-Catt wind project in western New York. The Siting Board did so despite objections from the towns of Freedom and Farmersville, both of which have been fighting the project for months...The fight over Alle-Catt shows how extreme New York’s energy politics have become under Cuomo. Over the past few years, the state’s regulators have outlawed hydraulic fracturing (and therefore, essentially all drilling for oil and natural gas) and have repeatedly blocked pipelines aimed at bringing more natural gas to the state. Cuomo’s appointees are now in 'police-state mode' and is stripping small towns of their zoning authority because they stand in the way of adding more wind-energy capacity. Freedom and other low-income towns in rural New York are fighting to be free of Big Wind. Under Cuomo, those towns had better be prepared for a long fight."
