LETTERS: Wind power worthy of tax credit
To the editor:
Thomas Pyle’s commentary on wind energy actively misinforms your readers about the benefits of wind power, using previously debunked information (“Wind Production Tax Credit should be blown away,” Feb. 6 Review-Journal). Solyndra has nothing to do with wind power, and Mr. Pyle only uses that example as a way to confuse readers about wind power’s success.
The Wind Production Tax Credit is a market-based incentive that is helping the wind industry’s 80,000 workers create a new American manufacturing sector. Attracting a record $25 billion in private investment in 2012, U.S. wind energy is creating jobs, stimulating economic development and saving consumers money on their power bills. Nevada’s first wind farm in White Pine County has been deemed a massive success, creating construction as well as permanent jobs, over half a million dollars in tax revenue for the county and a steady stream of private-sector aid to the local Great Basin College.
All over the country, there are similar stories of rural revitalization and opportunities for economic development. All mainstream energy sources have some sort of federal support, and most conventional power sources have an infrastructure built on nearly a century of significant federal incentives. The WPTC allows wind power to compete on even terms with other forms of generation, leveling the playing field and allowing the market to work as it should.
Wind power is an industry that can reshape how Americans get their energy. Extending the WPTC will help the wind industry keep growing, innovating and saving money for American consumers.
JOHN FEEHERY
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The writer is executive director of Red State Renewable Alliance.
Obamacare relief
To the editor:
For two weeks in a row, the Review-Journal has published commentary stating the assumption that the Affordable Care Act is going to have some type of impact on employees’ incentives to work for any employer. Where were the commentaries during the 1980s and 1990s as medium, large and Fortune 500 companies such as Bank of America, Citicorp, Wal-Mart and a multitude of others began converting their workforce from full-time to part-time employees? They did so to reduce health care and retirement benefit costs, so that the executives and boards of directors could demonstrate to their investors that they manage an efficient organization and thereby justify their own increasingly outrageous salaries and benefits.
Keep in mind that none of those employers gave a second thought nor had any moral or ethical thoughts about eliminating the cost of full-time employees from their bottom line.
It is a shame that the columnists the Review-Journal publishes do not have the life experience or the historical perspective to understand what is happening within our economy, nor are they willing or able to advocate for any substantive solutions to the health care crisis facing this country. My sense is their solution is to continue to dump all of the ever-increasing costs of providing health and retirement costs from employers on to the shrinking and struggling middle class, and increasing the number of working poor.
Politicians and so-called business leaders continue to ignore the problems they began creating years ago, which has stunted the growth of a strong, vibrant middle class and put increasing pressure on a burgeoning class of working poor. The smartest people in the room have not been able or willing to devise any meaningful alternative solutions to the Affordable Care Act. But it seems counterproductive to insist that anything that could be done would be bad or unproductive.
WILLIAM H. ASH
HENDERSON
