Bush Admin's biggest conservation program is a scam/sham

[philb]

supported by big contributions from special interests to powerful politicans.

The Great Energy Scam – How Companies Are Making a Killing Off Coal at the Expense of Taxpayers
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Time's prize winning journalists Don Barlett and Jim Steele reveal how the Marriot Hotel, utility companies and a handful of individual investors are making hundreds of millions dollars exploiting an obscure tax loophole designed to reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil in a debate with Washington lobbyist Kenneth Kies.
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More than two decades ago in the wake of the energy crisis of the 1970s, Congress enacted a tax break to spur the creation of a broad-based synthetic-fuels industry to ease U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The idea was to turn plentiful coal into synthetic natural gas or synthetic crude oil.
But instead of creating a strong synthetic fuel industry in the United States, investigative reporters Don Barlett and Jim Steele reveal how the tax credit has become an easy way for corporations to improve bottom lines or to make a quick dollar at the expense of taxpayers.

Here’s how it works: A synthetic coal company buys raw coal. Under IRS rules, the chemical composition of the coal must be changed to qualify it as synthetic fuel. At the synthetic fuel plant that change often consists of spraying diesel fuel or pine tar onto the coal. The company then sells the coal to a user such as a power plant and then claims huge tax credits for manufacturing a synthetic fuel.

The problem is that to qualify for the tax credits, the maker of this so-called “synfuel” don’t have to prove that they are making a better kind of coal, one that burns more efficiently or offers any other benefit. By IRS ruling, they need only to modify the chemical composition of coal.

While corporations in a range of industries have profited millions from the tax credit, it is estimated to have cost taxpayers $4 billion since 1999.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/07/1532235
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2001/09/synfuels.html
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-12-19/pols_hightower.html

[firefox]

1. It was on 60 Minutes

It was on 60 Minutes years ago, possibly 4 or 5 years. They painted it as a big scam on the taxpayer.