Pickens Plan scam
T. Boone Pickens is putting together a movement… buying TV ads… building a web site… without ever actually saying what he wants. So what does T. Boone want? A little help from the taxpayer, suggests a Wall Street Journal article. Pickens has gone into the wind power business. There are lots of places to put up windmills from Texas up through North Dakota. The problem is that to sell the electricity, you need transmission lines. Big, ugly, high-voltage power lines going through somebody’s back yard.
Washington has to act, Mr. Pickens said, by tackling prickly questions like eminent domain and right-of-way across big swathes of federal land.
Or perhaps more plainly in this editorial:
The government must mandate the formation of wind and solar transmission corridors, and renew the subsidies for economic and alternative energy development in areas where the wind and sun are abundant.
“Subsidy” means moving money from the taxpayers’ pockets to Mr. Pickens’ pockets.
While we’re on the subject of T. Boone Pickens, you might be interested in Wikipedia’s article on Pickens’ involvement with the Swift Boat smear campaign in the 2004 election.