A Sunday Politico piece titled “Democrats’ climate law set off a wave of energy projects in GOP districts. A backlash followed,” checks in with folks in a number of places seeing new jolts to their local economies – and the “backlash” – a year after the Inflation Reduction Act was passed.
One of them, Inola, Oklahoma diner owner and self-described Trump fan Bill McAnally, 68, was “ecstatic” when he found out that an Italian company, Enel, plans to spend $1 billion on a solar cell and panel factory in the town, which obviously would be big for him. “It’s a great deal. All it does is help my business,” said McAnally… just before a reporter informed him the company will take advantage of tax credits in the IRA to bring probably thousands of jobs to his town.
“I don’t support it now. The federal government doesn’t need to get involved. We all support bringing in green, but we don’t want to give them all this free money,” said McAnally, who evidently doesn’t want to expand his business and make more money because it’s somehow tainted by leftist Marxist something something. It’s worth asking just how much McAnally knew about the project’s funding before he changed his mind. The Politico article says he “was ecstatic when an Italian company, Enel, announced plans in May to spend more than $1 billion – the largest private investment in [Oklahoma’s] history – to build” the plant. Like was he totally in the dark that it was a government investment, or did he have some sort of vague, abstract awareness that the project had been spurred by something that he didn’t immediately make a connection to the Biden Administration’s signature economic initiative. The writing seems to maybe indicate the latter, but either way it’s a really excellent example of just how suicidally stupid and petty these people are. Who the fuck says this when the plant’s already being built and the money’s been spent no matter what? Would it be that hard to simply say “Hey, I wouldn’t have voted for it but I’ll take the extra traffic for my diner”?