In the 1950s this newspaper regularly railed against citizens who installed oil burners in their homes and businesses. They were ridiculed as ingrates. Not even priests were immune from the paper’s wrath. Pity the poor padre who dared put an oil burner in the rectory. One was pilloried on the front page as a man, not of God, but of the devil for contributing to the demise of the local anthracite industry. How could he conspire to throw out of work the very men who built his parish?

Of course, at the time, this newspaper was owned by John Kehoe, who was making tons of money as a coal baron and had the power to dictate the paper’s content.

But a lot of people thought like Kehoe. Some local politicians tried to slow the spread of oil burners. Several local borough councils considered passing ordinances requiring super-expensive permit fees for oil burner installation. Research shows that no such ordinance ever passed. It’s likely the boroughs’ solicitors advised against them.

It’s understandable why local residents in the 1950s feared oil burners. After all, coal mining had been the dominant industry here since the 19th century. It was hard for them to imagine a Greater Pittston economy without coal mining as the centerpiece.

While it is said the Knox Mine Disaster put an end to deep mining here, and it did, the industry was doomed anyway. Alternative heat sources like oil and electricity and alternative transportation fuels like gasoline and diesel were taking over.

By buying oil burners and installing electric heat, homeowners were saying -- why shovel coal into a furnace, baby a fire and haul ashes to the curb, when we can simply turn a dial for the same cost.

The railroad and shipping industries traded coal-fired steam engines for diesel-powered combustion engines that started with the turn of the key and ran steadily.

Similarly, the horse and buggy industry railed against the horseless carriage. After all, that infernal contraption, the automobile, was going to ruin teamsters, buggy-makers, draft horse breeders and feed growers. And those gigantic iron horses of the railroad were going to put canal builders and barge-makers and pilots out of work.

Progress prevailed. Coal furnaces, horse-drawn carriages and canals were supplanted by oil, electricity and natural gas, automobiles and railroads.

And these things happened without government mandates and subsidies. Progress prevailed because the public demanded new technologies and the private sector responded. That’s the way it should work in a capitalist, free-market economy. And that’s why the subsidies for technologies like wind and solar energy in the stimulus bill won’t work and will wind up costing us money. Government subsidies for wind energy won’t make wind energy viable.

This week the Wilkes-Barre zoning board approved a request by a homeowner to install a wind turbine on his roof. The homeowner, Ralph Russo, said the turbine will provide all the electricity he needs and then some. By law electric utility has to buy the excess. But will Russo do for electricity when the wind doesn’t blow? The electricity can’t be stored, it has to be used as it’s made. So Russo will have to stay hooked up to the utility. Even so, a single unit makes a lot more sense than trying to light cities with wind turbines, but here’s the rub – the government is subsidizing Russo’s turbine with your tax dollars. If he wants to put a wind turbine on his home, fine. But why should you and I have to help him pay for it?

GM is coming out with a new automobile, the Volt, a tiny plug-in putt-putt that will go only 40 miles on a charge and will cost $40,000. GM is not making this car because it thinks this is what consumers want. GM is making the car because they are being pressured by environmentalists and the government to make the useless things. And the only people who are going to buy them are rich environmentalist extremists, who want them for prestige so they can tool around feeling superior to the rest of us -- oh look at me I’m saving the planet.

Real consumers want vehicles to haul their kids’ hockey and soccer teams. They want vehicles that will pull their boats and campers, take a bunch of buddies to a tailgate or the family to Disney.

The government will subsidize the cost of the Volt, but it will still be unaffordable for a lot of people and a senseless buy for most.

And the Volt has to be plugged in thereby driving up consumers’ electric bills and driving up the demand for electricity, 70 percent of which is produced by coal-fired plants.

It’s worth noting that while railroads originally grew through free enterprise, now passenger trains are massively subsidized. The stimulus bill includes $1.3 billion for Amtrak, our failed passenger train system. But that’s nothing new. According to the Heritage Foundation, “Since Amtrak’s inception in 1970, the annual business-as-usual bailout has allowed it to squander $30 billion in taxpayers’ money for the benefit of a tiny fraction of the traveling public.”

Amtrak riders tend to have higher incomes that the average taxpayers. What it amounts to is this: ordinary people are subsidizing Amtrak so wealthy people can take scenic rides through the Rocky Mountains for a cost far below the actual cost. Running passenger trains is enormously expensive and ticket sales come no where near covering the cost of running the trains.

About the Author

Jack Smiles covers for the Times Leader. Reach him at or jsmiles@psdispatch.com.

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