T. Boone’s Power Play

Monday, July 21st, 2008
by TXProgress

T. Boone Pickens, the conservative tycoon whose money comes from oil and gas and other investments, has always been part of the anti-government Right. He helped fund the Swift Boaters. He contributes to anti-democratic groups like Texans for Lawsuit Reform. He is the enemy of progressive government. So it is a bit head-turning to see Pickens make Texas government his investment partner in his wind power plans.

Equally disturbing are signs that Democrats in Congress and elsewhere appear willing to forget Pickens’ attacks on them if he blows enough wind up their skirts.

Pickens will build a billion dollars worth of wind-driven generators in West Texas. The Texas Public Utility Commission has approved a plan calling for spending more than $4 billion in taxpayer money for transmission lines that will get the electricity from those windmills to consumers. Without government’s extraordinary help, Pickens can’t sell his electricity. He can’t earn a profit.

Our governments should be investing in clean sources of energy. That is not the issue. And private investors who have awakened to the opportunities in alternative energy sources should also be encouraged.

The issue is hypocrisy. For too long the Right has bashed government as a destructive barrier to private enterprise and individual initiative. That broad-brush message has appealed to individualistic voters — especially in the South where some voters have long resented such laws as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. The wealthy have long used the message to drive their anti-tax agenda.

What the anti-government types ignore is the role government plays in making capitalism possible. Without a Securities and Exchange Commission the stock market would be chaos. Without government-built highways there is no transportation industry. Without courts there is no place to resolve business disputes. Without public schools there are no workers smart enough to fill necessary jobs.

And, now we see that without government and its supportive taxpayers there is no way to get your electricity to market. In a democracy, government has two legitimate functions: protection — law enforcement, military, honest, open, accessible and fair courts — and empowerment. The latter means government is simply the vehicle we operate to facilitate certain collective, necessary endeavors. Our stocks can earn money because government keeps the players honest.

There has never been much logical consistency in the the Right’s attacks on government. What they have always meant is that they want government to do only what they want it to do. The same people who demand the shrinking of government argue that should be able to intervene in our private lives — so long as the intervention advances their personal agenda. Broadly speaking, it’s not small government they want, it’s control of the government they want. They are authoritarian. For them, telling individuals what to do is a legitimate function of government. So long as they are doing the telling.

Let’s see if Pickens — and Gov. Rick Perry and others on the Right who back the plan — have the character to admit the role government will need to play to make his business plan’s like Pickens’ work. Or whether they are simply selfish opportunists willing to bend with the wind to advance their selfish interests.

At Pickens’ request, the Texas Legislature passed a bill that allows him to set up a water district with the right of eminent domain. In other words, he can take privately-held land if his private water business needs it. How do they square that with their “Take Back Texas” property rights rhetoric? Unless they mean what many of us always knew they meant: it’s not our property rights they want to protect. It’s theirs. At the expense of ours.