Solar Business Good For Milwaukee, The Valley, The World

Add solar panel fabrication to wind turbines and modern train assemblage in the Menonomee Valley.

It's a nice revival to a hard hit area, with good jobs and products designed to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

A few ideologues will complain about the public dollars invested in these ventures, but there is hardly pure capitalism at work in traditional energy sectors.

Utilities like WE Energy operate as government-guaranteed monopolies (and rates of return for shareholders), and oil companies receive the lion's share of federal tax breaks.

Wisconsin exempts manufacturing equipment and computer equipment from taxation, and developers holding farm land get a break, too.

Don't look to your Chambers of Commerce to cry over state or local assistance to these Milwaukee startups, because the hypocrisy would be laughable.

Truth is: government can and should insert itself strategically and help employers hire people who make things, instead of opening special-intersts loopholes in financial regulation that enabled a handful of fund managers to sell exotic instruments that produced nothing tangible except drowning the economy.

It's gotten galling all over again when you realize that we have paid BP three times and more:

Once with subsidies - - adding to our share of the federal tax collection.

Again when we buy their product (and the US military is in for about $1 billion a year, too).

Now we're paying again and again with a wrecked Gulf - - loss of jobs, higher unemployment payouts, added Gulf region health costs, etc.

So cheers for the Valley, and the City of Milwaukee for encouraging growth there.

Save your boos for our government-enabled financial meltdown or suicidal subsidies to rich companies now robbing and assaulting us openly.