#ncga: Oh, how those things you sign your name to come back to bite you …
Politicians are eager to win votes and please everybody — ALL AT ONCE. It’s not all that uncommon to see some of those folks coming down on both sides 
of an issue at the same time. Some are slippery enough not to leave fingerprints on any particular position. Others? Not so much.
Case in point: state Senator Jerry Tillman (R). He’s the majority whip for his chamber, and represents Randolph and Moore counties. Inexplicably, Tillman — who typically votes conservative — has been very impressed with the heavily-subsidized alternative energy industry (solar, wind, etc.) industry. Judging from his comments in the drive-by media, he apparently views those kinds of projects as great employment programs that really stick it to those money-grubbing oil sheiks in The Middle East.
Tillman even joined Richard Burr and a gaggle of other politicians recently in a public praise-fest for a Montgomery County solar farm financed to the hilt with tax money and backed by the same folks exposed by Civitas.
Well, the mischief-makers at AFP-NC have dug up a little gem from just last year:
Hmmm. <*AW-KWARD!*>
The real “market distortion” is the belief, on anyone’s part, that non-renewable energy sources are not propped up by subsidies also.
Nonsense.
Show me one place in the NC budget where they get corporate welfare.
The far left always wants to count ordinary tax deductions that any business gets as ”subsidy” for traditional energy providers and that is just nonsense.
Where in my statement was I restricting subsidies to the NC budget? But, since you insist, I do believe this went through:
http://www.greensboro.com/taxpayers-subsidize-fracking/article_3ac9b9d6-bb34-5db6-80aa-ffb875dbf180.html
The half a million in your article, the only part that has been approved, is peanuts compared to the hundreds of millions for the green energy parasites, but ethically just as wrong. Even if the other million also got approved, it would still be less than one percent of what is going to the renewable energy bandits.
So here is the bigger picture:
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
Funny how the site linked has no specifics that do not apply to, again, all other businesses. Military spending…well who in the USA is not “subsidized” by the military, it is also know as common defense in the Constitution.
JBP, just one more progressive envirowhacko buying into the narrative.
This is not the March of Dimes but the marks of dollars! Forget about the AFP contract Jerry didn’t understand it when he was signing it, nor does he remember it. Renewable energy groups are already telling everyone to think Jerry for his support for solar so obviously he’s sold out. Jerry is seeimg sugarplums, I mean $’s dancing in his head. Ah maybe it was solar groups that convinced him to run again.
Congratulations to Senator Tillman for joining President Obama’s Green Energy Team. Sen. Tillman is helping make one of President Obama’s signature issues a reality in North Carolina. He is helping save the Polar Bears. Our country needs more progressive Republicans like Tillman who are not afraid to take a stand in support of President Obama’s key policies.
Senator Tillman was not afraid to throw that silly old Republican platform under the bus. He knew that saving Polar Bears was more important. Senator Tillman was not afraid to break his solemn promise to the voters. He knew that saving Polar Bears was more important than his personal integrity. Senator Tillman was not afraid to inflict severe economic pain on his constituents by supporting policies that will greatly raise their electric rates. He knew that his constituents are peons who just don’t matter in the scheme of things and that saving the Polar Bears was much more important than them. Sen. Tillman was not afraid to be supporting one of President Obama’s key policies, as he knows that saving the Polar Bears is the most important thing politicians should worry about.
Our hard core environmental movement already has so many top House Republicans in our pocket – Tim Moore, David Lewis, Nelson Dollar, Jason Saine, to name a few – it is good that we now also own a top Senator like Jerry Tillman. It is just like dragging a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park. They get dollar signs in their eyes and all flock to the progressive cause.
Wow. I am still impressed at all the dividends that our hard core environmentalist movement has received as a result of paying a ton of money to those two progressive Republican consultants Stewart and Shumaker. Those guys, and so many of your elected officials are all about principal, as in the money we pay them, instead of principle.
Heck, all of this is so encouraging, I might just run for president again.
Too often politicians enter office full of principle and sound policy, only to stay there too long and get corrupted by inside the beltway thinking, Then they become poster boys or girls for term limits. Orrin Hatch is a classic example in the current US Senate. There are elected officials like Jesse Helms who can go the distance and stay true to principle for the duration, but there are too few like Jesse.
Jesse Helms also always stayed true to his pledges to the voters. Jerry Tillman has been outed as someone with no personal or political integrity who will go back on his word.
This issue makes it clear that Jerry Tillman is one of those who has lost it and it is time for him to come home. Does it really matter whether Tillman was bought by the liberal special interests or whether he has just got jaded to the point that he does not recognize liberal big government policies for what they are any more? Of course, with the next campaign report filing, we can see if Tillman is just getting senile or whether he prostituted himself for money, and if the latter just how cheap a whore he was.
The state Republican platform is clear on this issue, and Tillman has demonstrated that he is no longer even a good Republican, much less a good conservative when he goes against that platform. He is standing with Obama against the Republican Party and its principles. It is time for a change.
My Benjamin is already set aside for a real conservative primary challenger who will stand for limited government and defend electric ratepayers from the self-serving liberal special interests that Jerry Tillman is now in bed with
Brent, you have hit the nail on the head when you point out Tillman’s wacky reasoning for his position. Both the jobs argument and the oil sheiks arguments stink to high heaven.
Wind and solar energy, with the present technology, is considerably more expensive to produce than conventional energy. That cost gets passed on to consumers, both residential and commercial. Even worse, it is intermittent energy that is unreliable. No energy is produced if the sun in not shining or the wind not blowing (or blowing too hard). To compensate, backup capacity of conventional power plants has to be available. Starting up and shutting down a power plant every time the renewable source does not produce is inefficient and expensive, and adds significantly to the costs passed on to consumers.
Higher electric costs are going to drive business and jobs away from our state and to states with lower electric costs. Building lots of renewable capacity is a net destroyer, not creator, of jobs. Additionally, experience has shown that renewable energy operators substantially overpromise the number of jobs within their own operation. It got so bad, the Obama administration had to quit even publishing the number of ”green” jobs being created.
The oil sheiks argument is really a hoot. Very little electricity is produced from oil these days. Most of it is produced from natgas and coal, both of which America is awash in and we do not import. Some is nuclear, and we also have our own uranium.
In fact, renewable energy makes us even more dependent on the Red Chinese than we ever were on oil sheiks. China produces almost all of the world’s rare earth metals that are necessary for renewable energy production such as the magnets in the wind turbines. Instead of being self sufficient in coal, gas, and nuclear electricity production as the US currently is, Tillman would have us almost totally dependent on Red China for renewable production.
Is Tillman stupid or is it that he thinks we are stupid?
What Tillman has done is much worse that just vote for this scam. Tillman was actually the principal sponsor of the bill for the corporate welfare for the scam. That really takes the cake. He pledges to oppose it and then turns around and sponsors the bill to support it. That is NOT integrity in public office. That is pulling the wool over the eyes of your constituents. It would be great to see a conservative primary opponent in this race, and it would be good to see some heavy issue ad spending by AFP to educate Tillman’s constituents about his duplicity. This behavior is just not acceptable.