Ernest J. Istook Jr. is a Distinguished Fellow at
The Heritage Foundation. Istook served 14 years as a U.S. Congressman, then joined Heritage in 2007. He engaged in a wide and robust range of issues in Congress as he served on the House Appropriations Committee and chaired multiple subcommittees. He also served on the Homeland Security Committee.
His congressional experience ranged from overall budget and spending issues to all forms of transportation, trade, defense, health care, education, labor, financial services, homeland security, religious liberty, and many others. He is a founder of the Republican Study Committee, the principal conservative caucus in the U.S. House.
Tapping his broad experience, Istook is a frequent fill-in host for several major national talk radio programs; he writes weekly opinion columns for multiple outlets that include
NewsMax,
Human Events, and The Daily Caller. His daily radio commentaries are heard on over 80 radio stations. He is a regular guest on many network and cable news and commentary programs.
Istook’s professional background has been as a journalist, practicing attorney, public official and now policy expert. Overall, he served 25 years in elected office, ranging from city council to state legislature to U.S. Congress, all after he moved to Oklahoma in 1972 from his native Fort Worth, Texas. He also was the Republican nominee for Governor of Oklahoma in 2006.
Istook holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Baylor University and law degree from Oklahoma City University. He and his wife, Judy, have five adult children and are active in church work. Istook served several years as a Boy Scout Scoutmaster. He is the grandson of Hungarian immigrants and the first college graduate in his entire family tree.
His personal website is
www.istook.com.
Follow him on Twitter
@Ernest_Istook.
But for anyone who believes we can power America solely through windmills (even though it is costlier), dream on. This would require 55,000 square miles densely packed with nothing but windmills. That’s like emptying the entire state of Wisconsin and making it all windmills all the time. But our lights would still go dark when the wind wasn’t blowing.
Solar power is even trickier than wind power, requiring rare elements to build solar cells, plus daylight and large surface area.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, when subsidies are allocated according to how much electricity is generated, it’s $.44 per megawatt for coal, $.25 per megawatt for oil and gas, $1.59 for nuclear, $23.37 for wind and $24.34 for solar. (This leaves out the heftiest subsidy—ethanol—because it’s not used to generate electricity.) Since DoE made that study in 2007, the non-fossil fuel subsidies have been increased; now Obama wants to raise them again.
Like them or not, fossil fuels have provided great quantities of affordable energy. Higher subsidies for alternatives will cost a lot more, but still not meet our needs.
Ernest Istook served 14 years as a U.S. Congressman and is now a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation. First appeared at The Foundry.
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