Senator Grassley
The Daily Reporter | August 8, 2018 | www.spencerdailyreporter.com
Not surprisingly, Senator Charles Grassley was awarded the “U.S. Wind Champion Award.” He, single-handedly, is responsible for ALL wind subsidies since 2015. He got an extension through 2020 by adding it to the Omnibus Spending Bill which is rammed through legislation because congress CAN’T or WON’T pass a budget. Earlier at a town hall meeting in Emmetsburg the senator, surprisingly, claimed credit for ending wind subsidies because his bill was a gradual phaseout over five years. Is that even logical? Without his interference, all wind subsidies would have ended in 2015!
Wind energy will NEVER compete in a free market! Everyone, with the possible exception of Senator Grassley, (“Wind subsidies will end over my dead body”) agrees wind is dead without massive government subsidies!
Another fact wind conveniently refuses to research is a life cycle cost analysis which shows the amount of fossil fuel expended over the lifetime of a wind turbine will NEVER be recovered! I challenge Harold Prior, the Grand Poobah of wind here in Iowa, to prove me wrong.
Senator Grassley’s response to two attendees who opposed the wind farm was “I was well aware of the opposition to wind turbines in the ocean off the shores of Massachusetts, but that’s the first I’ve heard of that opposition.” Huh? This was either a “senior moment,” a prevarication or his staff tells him nothing negative from constituents who oppose wind.
Ask anyone who has tried to contact the senator via email expressing disapproval of wind subsidies. Every one who has tried gets either NOTHING or a canned response espousing the “glories of wind!” But the most frustrating of the whole process is, even if you get a response, you CANNOT respond to that email because it is from an “untended” box! It’s a never-ending circle! Deja Vu or Groundhog Day?
Early in his career he became famous for urging “whistle blowers” to expose government waste of taxpayer dollars. Ironic would be an understatement if he were forced to blow the whistle on himself for the billions of taxpayer dollars literally “blowing in the wind” wasted on wind subsidies!
Is Senator Grassley slated to become the poster child for term limits? As a fellow octogenarian, God, I hope NOT!
Jerry Crew, Webb
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2018/08/08/senator-grassley/