The EIA, charged with tracking and reporting official energy statistics for the U.S. government, compared electricity subsidies from 1999 to 2008 and offered keen insight into why solar and wind power can never realistically replace the safe, reliable and cost-effective energy offered through HydroQuebec and Entergy.

According to the report, federal subsidies for electricity generation have doubled (from $8.2 to $16.6 billion) in the past ten years. During that time total energy expenditures have risen proportionally by 88% while total national consumption has increased by an alarmingly disproportionate 4.6%. Even worse news, for anyone believing that governmental tinkering can accomplish anything efficiently, is that our total production during the same period has gone up less than one-tenth of one percent.

While the above figures substantiate the time-tested truism that more does not equal better (when Uncle Sam is involved), close scrutiny of the subsidy figures reveals something else.

By an approximate four-to-one differential, nuclear energy accounted for more or our country's electricity than a comparative collection of hydro, solar and wind powers. Since 1999, nuclear power garnered subsidies averaging $1.59 per megawatt hour from Washington. Hydroelectric power came in second for performance but first as a stand-alone provider - taking 67 cents per megawatt hour from the government.

When it came to wind and solar power, sadly, neither generated (literally or figuratively) enough power to sustain itself.

Wind energy only blew by the grace of a $23.37 per megawatt hour subsidy from taxpayers while solar proved the most burning fleece at $24.34 per megawatt hour.

According to the EIA, capital-intensive, base load generating technologies (like nuclear power and coal-fired steam generators) together produce about 68 percent of the total net electrical generation in the U.S. Solar power and wind power together generate less than 1 percent of U.S. electrical production.

During the same period that EIA collected data, liberals in Montpelier did their best to destroy the Vermont economy. Vermont Yankee and HydroQuebec, meanwhile provided reliable, affordable energy and an associated small vestige of hope for struggling Vermont businesses.

Now those same big-government forces would like to extinguish this small competitive advantage in exchange for heavily subsidized, impotent technologies.

At the subsidy rate requisite to sustain wind and solar power, it wouldn't really matter if our post-nuclear/hydro power supply is insufficient, un-reliable and inneficient. Anyone needing affordable power would have long blown away.