Pulped intentions

The Nation has a story "illustrating how Washington and environmental policy work together to create wasteful stupidity":

Thanks to an obscure tax provision, the United States government stands to pay out as much as $8 billion this year to the ten largest paper companies. And get this: even though the money comes from a transportation bill whose manifest intent was to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, paper mills are adding diesel fuel to a process that requires none in order to qualify for the tax credit. In other words, we are paying the industry–handsomely–to use more fossil fuel. “Which is,” as a Goldman Sachs report archly noted, the “opposite of what lawmakers likely had in mind when the tax credit was established.”

Wilkinson comments:

What happened?! Read the whole thing. It’s a terrific example of unintended consequences. Chris says, “I’ve come to expect that even nobly conceived laws will be manipulated and distorted for private ends. But once in a while I hear a story that gives me the queasy feeling that I’m nowhere near cynical enough.”

Love, your government.