Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“The Trump administration is seeking a 10 percent stake in Intel, Bloomberg reported this week, which would involve converting some or all of the company’s CHIPS Act grants into equity in the company. The exact terms of the deal remain unclear”
https://reason.com/2025/08/19/trumps-plans-for-intel-take-a-page-from-bernie-sanders-playbook/
Trump’s big beautiful bill takes away money from growing renewable energy that employs more jobs than coal and toward dying coal. It’s not just bad for the environment, it’s bad business. The bill makes it difficult to use components from China, even though China is one of our key suppliers. This will limit U.S. production.
The bill expands fossil fuel subsidies. Subsidies are essentially giving money to companies. This should be done when certain industries are important to emphasize above and beyond the incentive for profit-making, like environmental benefits. Considering fossil fuels cause deadly air pollution as well as contribute to global warming, subsidizing them makes no sense.
Fossil fuel industries are already built out, so subsidies pay such companies for doing stuff that they were doing anyways. Renewable industries are still developing and growing, so subsidies actually create new business. Once you consider the environmental impacts, fossil fuel subsidies net a negative return.
Trump’s bill has led to a lot of fired scientists. Foreign countries are offering bonuses to hire these scientists. These nonsense policies are producing American brain drain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tNp2vsxEzk
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/06/california-solar-funding-trump-00496922
“Basically, the feds impose damaging new taxes and trade restrictions on farmers for reasons mostly related to ideology and rent-seeking, then undo their effects by making farmers more dependent on government largesse. Often lost in the discussion, but one reason that U.S. farmers are so dependent on selling commodity crops to China and elsewhere is that past policies essentially subsidized them to do so.
Like with all things political, various federal farm policies have created a series of odd bedfellows. Many environmental groups have lauded past farm bills because they provide incentives for farmers to set aside land as open space, but overall the federal meddling has harmed the environment. For instance, federal sugar subsidies have greatly diminished the Florida Everglades by encouraging the conversion of wetlands into sugar fields.”
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“All these policies drive up food prices for non-farmers and reduce our choices in meats and produce.”
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“Instead of creating this convoluted, counterproductive policy that mimics a Rube Goldberg farce, the government should do the basics to help farmers. It should scuttle tariffs, halt subsidies, eliminate costly shipping levies, create a guest-worker program so farmers can have a consistent labor source, lower taxes, bolster water infrastructure and let markets do the rest.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/23/farmers-need-free-markets-not-tariffs-and-welfare/
“Under Trump, who promised to implement a policy “where no windmills are being built,” the federal government has bolstered fossil fuel projects and deterred renewable energy development. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management recently halted the construction of an offshore wind project that would power 500,000 homes, whose federal lease was approved in 2017 under the first Trump administration. The Environmental Protection Agency has also rescinded Clean Air Act permits for a New Jersey offshore wind project, which had “devoted extensive time and resources to follow a complex, multi-year permitting process, resulting in final project approvals that conform with the law,” according to the project’s developer.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/06/17-states-sue-trump-administration-for-its-anti-wind-energy-policy/
“E.V. batteries carry a much heavier burden than their traditional counterparts, powering not just the car’s electronics but also the motor. Slate plans to build its truck with batteries made from nickel, manganese, and cobalt (NMC). NMC batteries were common for many years, but automakers are starting to switch to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Each has benefits, but overall, LFP batteries are cheaper, they charge faster and last longer, and their components are more easily sourced.
Still, Slate plans to use more expensive and less efficient NMC batteries because it’s the only way to qualify for the federal rebate.”
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“The Inflation Reduction Act established very particular sourcing requirements for the E.V. tax credits: By the end of the decade, a vehicle can only qualify for the credit if 100 percent of its battery’s components are “manufactured or assembled in North America” and 80 percent of the battery’s critical minerals are “extracted or processed in the United States or a U.S. free-trade agreement partner or recycled in North America.””
https://reason.com/2025/05/06/both-bidens-and-trumps-policies-are-making-e-v-s-more-expensive/
Home insurance in California and Florida is up big thanks to climate change. Polluters get a massive subsidy through their pollution’s negative externality, and they spend the big bucks on lobbyists and propaganda to prevent environmental protection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHTDDJtuWv4
“There are federal tax benefits for racehorses (although there’s a chance they might soon expire) and some states exempt racehorses from their sales taxes. Other states own the racetracks.”
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“”The obvious solution here is also the simplest: Just stop,” Shachtman wrote. “Let the sport stand on its own and dwindle to whatever size its fan base supports. Instead, state legislatures keep funneling money to it.””
https://reason.com/2025/04/29/stop-subsidizing-the-sport-of-kings/
“Coal’s decline was not caused by a federal plot to transition away from coal, like Trump thinks, but rather by markets and innovation. Advancements in renewable energy technologies—which were, and continue to be, supported by subsidies—made the energy source more attractive to investors. Breakthroughs in horizontal drilling in the early 2000s brought a flood of cheap and abundant natural gas to the market. These technologies priced coal out, which lowered energy bills for consumers and significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
The energy source is also not as cost-effective as the executive order claims. Coal plants are expensive to build and operate, and transportation costs can exceed the price of coal at the mine. These economic factors have informed investors and utilities not to build coal-fired power plants—the most recent large plant was built in 2013—which has made the current fleet of these power plants less efficient than other energy sources.
To be sure, some regulatory barriers, including federal air quality standards and state-level bans, have made coal less competitive. However, “it is the market that explains coal’s decline better than regulations,” Philip Rossetti, an energy policy analyst at the R Street Institute, tells Reason.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/10/markets-dont-want-more-coal-trump-is-propping-up-the-industry-anyway/
“House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) said Saturday that he will oppose any spending measure that leaves out the billions in extra aid farm state Republicans were seeking for farmers still reeling from Donald Trump’s 2018 trade war, inflation, a delayed five-year farm bill reauthorization and a raft of other economic pressures. Republicans in agriculture-heavy states and some Democrats have warned about a crippling economic crisis hitting rural America, which overwhelmingly supported Trump in the last election.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/15/johnson-farm-aid-deadline-00194390