Bloomberg Guzzles the Pickens Kool-Aid

Michael Bloomberg might be a good businessman, but when it comes to common sense ideas, he may be one of the more tone-deaf politicians in history. Along with many others, he's now jumping on board with the T. Boone Pickens windmill idea and has taken the ball and run with it to an absurd extreme.

Forget Chicago. New York would claim title as the genuine "Windy City" under a dramatic proposal by Mayor Bloomberg yesterday to develop wind turbines atop the Big Apple's bridges and skyscrapers.

But that's not all. The mayor also tossed out the possibility of building wind farms way out in the Atlantic Ocean, miles from shore, that he said could generate roughly twice the energy of similar land-based facilities and supply 10 percent of the city's electricity needs within a decade.

"I think it would be a thing of beauty if, when Lady Liberty looks out on the horizon, she not only welcomes new immigrants but lights their way with a torch powered by an ocean wind farm," the mayor said in the closing speech of the National Clean Energy Summit.

Bloomberg has been warning for months that Washington has its head in the sand when it comes to energy and that the nation needs a multipronged approach - everything from nuclear to geothermal initiatives - to reduce its dependence on foreign oil.

"Perhaps companies will want to put wind farms atop our bridges and skyscrapers," he said.

How ridiculous. Can you just imagine seeing the Brooklyn Bridge with wind turbines on top of it? Showing how naive he is, does he really think a wind farm by the Statue of Liberty is going to fly? For crying out loud, the Capewinds project in Massachusetts can't even build turbines 30 miles out in Nantucket Sound and he thinks people are going to jump on the idea of a wind farm off Manhattan?

Good grief.

Bloomberg's proposal was in line with the philosophy of the summit's first speaker of the day, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens.

"We are getting very close to a disaster," declared Pickens, who is spending millions to convince the nation's leaders to harness wind power.

Pickens, who had lunch with the mayor, said the United States shells out $700 billion a year on imported oil, a massive transfer of wealth to countries that are often hostile to America.

OK, I'm getting tired of this canard that we're transferring $700 billion a year to exporting countries. It's not as if we're handing over $700 billion and getting nothing in return (like, say, doling out billions in welfare payments). We're getting a commodity in return for that money. It's called oil. Now, if you folks are all of a sudden unhappy with that, well, we have a solution: Drill here, drill now.

Naturally, with these grandiose cockamamie plans, Bloomberg attracts such intellectual titans as the Dim Bulb From Searchlight.

At a later news conference, the mayor conceded windmills on skyscrapers is "relatively unlikely," although "I think we've got to be careful in not automatically saying things can't work."

Senate Major Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who sponsored the summit, said he's taken with Bloomberg's novel idea.

"I . . . may steal it from you," he said.

It wouldn't be the first idea you stole, Dingy.