Of bank heists & and dirty envirocratic secrets

FNB Corp. of Pittsburgh says its profits rose 37 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 to $96.5 million. That’s up from $70.2 million in the same 2020 quarter.

For all of 2021, FNB reports earnings of $396.6 million, up 43 percent. That on the highest revenues — $1.24 billion — it ever has recorded.

Why, again, are taxpayers being tapped for $10 million to help this very profitable banking giant build a new skyscraper on the old Pittsburgh Civic Arena site, a development that, by the way, will only add to the glut of office space in the city?

We guess there are bank heists and then there are bank heists.

There’s a dirty little (and intellectually dishonest) secret that the envirocrats have been flippantly tossing around as of late. It goes something like this:

The “move away” from fossil fuels has diminished the industry’s long-term viability and, thus, fossil fuels are a poor investment, not only environmentally but economically. Banks and investment houses are disserving their shareholders by lending to and investing in fossil fuel companies, goes the spiel.

But, first, never mind that it is government that has made such investments dubious with massive (and unsustainable) subsidies to “green” energy that, on its own, cannot begin to compete with traditional energy sources, environmentally and economically.

Never mind that, second, government has been regulating fossil fuels out of the energy mix, what with bogus “carbon-cap/trading” programs and rising unrealistic internal combustion engine mileage standards, among other attacks.

And never mind that, third, such supposed “green renewables” require mined elements on a scale that, ramped up, stands to dwarf the environmental damage of mining/recovering fossil fuels.

And as usually is the case with this envirocratic crowd, it believes that just because it keeps repeating something that the public will think it’s true.

Sadly, the public and the economy will get what it’s snookered for – higher energy costs and unreliable electric service and vehicles, to name just three — unless there’s a concerted effort to use the facts to tell these fiction-peddlers to bugger off.

Many states have had the lucidity to call out the sham by threatening to hit these banks and investment houses in the pocketbook – by not doing state business with the banking/investment cabal.

Simply put, those states, sucker punched by Big Government, Big Green and Big Investment, should pull no punches.

Speaking of dirty little envirocratic secrets and intellectual dishonesty, a local, frequent and scholarly correspondent to this scrivener has a big problem with the push for home solar power installations whose ads – on the Internet, television and through direct mail — have become ubiquitous.

The problems? Well, once all the smoke from the promotional and sales sizzle clears, there’s very little steak to be found in the skillet.

“I just did some quick math,” the correspondent e-mailed me last week:

“To begin with, I spent $1,002 on electricity last year. According to [a Fox Business https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/solar-panels-cost] article, the average cost of a solar panel installation is $24,733 with the ‘average homeowner reduc(ing) their electricity costs by $650 to $1,500 annually.’

“Even if these panels made my electric bill zero, which would never happen, it would take 25 years to cover the initial investment with an implicit interest rate of 0 percent. The math just doesn’t justify the expenditure.

“I would love to see some actual results from real homeowners who have been financially illiterate enough to buy these things here in Southwestern Pennsylvania.”

And here’s another dirty little secret:

Given that the current lifespan of solar panels is about 25 to 30 years, at nearly the same point in which the panels would “pay for themselves,” you have to replace them and at considerable cost.

It’s just another in a long line of government- (i.e., taxpayer-) backed green deceptions.

Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).