With the scandalous bankruptcy of Solyndra (a shady California solar power company that received $535 million in stimulus funds and is now under investigation by the FBI) hanging overhead, President Obama wisely whitewashed any mention of “green jobs” out of his latest address to Congress.
But buried in the details of his latest government jobs bill released this week — Spawn of the Spendulus, Porky’s II, Night of the Keynesian Dead — are yet more Big Green boondoggles that will reward cronies, waste taxpayer dollars, and make no dent in the jobless rate.
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After pouring half a billion bucks into Solyndra, the company filed for Chapter 11 last month and laid off 1,110 employees. Obama administration officials met with Solyndra execs at least 20 times; the green cheerleader-in-chief personally visited and promoted the company in 2009 before his administration fast-tracked approval for the loans.
Solyndra is now the third solar company to go belly-up this year. Yet the Energy Department is doubling down on failure. As the FBI and House GOP investigators launch a probe into Enron-style accounting problems with Solyndra’s books, DOE is doling out more than $850 million in new loan guarantees for another California solar firm sponsored by NextEra Energy, along with nearly $200 million more for separate solar manufacturing facilities on the West Coast.
Obama claims new “investments” in environmentally friendly school-construction projects will put thousands of Americans back to work immediately. (Never mind that Big Labor–backed rules and executive orders will raise the cost of the projects, slow their implementation, and freeze out the vast majority of non-union contractors.) Among the new green pork initiatives: $25 billion for green roofs, green cleaning, installation of renewable-energy generation and heating systems, and “modernization, renovation, or repair activities related to energy efficiency and renewable energy.”
But how are existing green-construction spending programs working in practice?
A brand-new report from Texas Watchdog, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative group, sheds inconvenient light on Obama’s $5 billion stimulus-funded Weatherization Assistance Program. In Texas alone, the $327 million program has spent more than $226,000 on each of the 1,041 jobs the program is claimed to have created or saved.
Intended to “green” low-income homes, at least three of the original participating organizations have been shut down due to chronic mismanagement, fraud allegations, and shoddy workmanship. Baylor University economist Earl Grinols summed up: “First, it is not an appropriate government function to provide weatherization of private homes. Second, even viewed as a stimulus measure, it is not very effective as a stimulus based on cost-per-job, and third, it appears not to be well-managed.”
Nearly 31 months after Porkulus One was signed, the Texas housing agency still hasn’t spent $91.6 million in allocated weatherization/green construction funds. Millions cannot be accounted for by auditors and inspectors.
Now, multiply that by 49 other states. A review of the weatherization boondoggle last year revealed state-trained workers were flubbing insulation jobs in Indiana, according to the Associated Press. In “Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the program (had) yet to produce a single job or retrofit one home. And in California, a state with nearly 37 million residents, the program at last count had created 84 jobs.”
The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney, a vigilant chronicler of green subsidies, notes that time and again, it’s Obama insiders and Democratic operatives pocketing all the green while the unemployment hovers at double-digits. To wit: “Al Gore acolyte Cathy Zoi was Obama’s assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy while her husband was an executive at a company that received direct subsidies from the Obama administration and profited from the Cash-for-Caulkers bill Zoi’s division implemented.” Treasury Department Chief of Staff Mark Patterson lobbied for Goldman Sachs on ethanol subsidies while holding down his job in the administration. And last year, another Obama pet project — Illinois-based FutureGen, a near-zero-emissions coal power plant — received a $1 billion stimulus earmark despite having been previously defunded over doubts about the feasibility and efficiency of the project.
An Obama green job trainee with seven certificates, Carlos Arandia, spoke for all non-crony Americans when he asked last fall: “What is the point of giving somebody the tools to do something but to have nowhere to use them?” Perhaps the White House can find a way to weatherize all the Grand Canyon–sized taxpayer sinkholes that “green job” spending has created.
Count on it Historicus. Either Holder sent in the FBI to investigate in good faith any possible crimes committed by his pals in the Obama administration, or he sent the FBI in to remove from public scrutiny documents possibly incriminating to his boss . I don't know which option others may choose, but I'd say those documents are indeed headed to the dark room.
If you check on pv-tech.org another firm got 1.2 Billion. From an article-
This past June the US Department of Energy (DOE) offered a conditional loan guarantee of US$1.2 billion to Abengoa Solar for its Mojave Solar Project (MSP). The DOE finalized the loan guarantee today allowing MSP to move forward with development plans. Upon its completion, MSP will be the US’ first utility-scale deployment of Abengoa’s latest solar collector assembly project and bring the country’s CSP capacity to nearly 50%.
The stimulus was a Democrat money laundering re-election scam from the get go. For the most part it was given to government worker unions where much of it will find its way back to Democrats. For the most part, they are all very clever thieves.
For all the con men flourishing out there, the Federal Government is what is known as an easy mark, a pigeon too fat to fly. It's been that way for decades, and getting worse. All Obama did was drop a few trillion more dollars into those pockets waiting to be picked, increasing the size of the average "scandal" from millions to hundreds of millions, or even billions.
The only remotely effective way to attack the problem is to reduce the size - and the budget - of the Federal Government. Won't happen, of course; that would take away that handy talking point about reducing fraud and waste.
Michelle Malkin is correct that we are losing ground in solar technology production to the Chinese and Japanese. But as solar will be one of the long term cornerstones of the world's energy supply this isn't something to be particularly pleased about. In fact earlier this year Google released a detailed study that waiting just 5 years to invest in green technology would cost our economy trillions. This is because as you invest in renewable technology energy costs go down over time (think how few moving parts there are in solar panels) whereas the cost of obtaining fossil fuels increases over time as need to access them in more remote places. Add to this the fact that the world will be buying hundreds of millions of solar panels and the like in the coming years and we want to be the ones selling them. Google seems like a pretty smart company that knows a thing or two about innovation. External Link
Meanwhile, while Malkin attacks a $25 billion multi-year green jobs effort, in a single year oil companies, the singularly most profitable companies on earth, receive $41 billion in direct tax subsidies. External Link
And this ignores indirect subsidies like not paying for the massive carbon and pollution damage or military cost of protecting oil access or how much we spend on roads versus other forms of transport.
Unlike the oil subsidy give-aways we get a lot from the green investments. The energy savings from efficiency retrofits pay for the cost of the retrofit in just a few years and then that savings is ongoing. And real jobs are created in contrast to oil subsidies that go directly to Exxon and co's profits.
Lastly there is the issue of national security. Renewables move us to real, ongoing energy independence. Additionally, in a study funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, a group of retired four-star generals and admirals concluded that climate change, if not addressed, will be the greatest threat to national security. Let's take these national security threats seriously.
I am left breathless at this display of utter ignorance - but then I am an engineer with a PhD and the writer is pusher for non-existent "green" energy.
Bless your heart Kitchen Table, I think you clicked on the wrong link. I don't have the link handy but didn't you intend your nicely written piece of propaganda for the HuffPuffPo?
Run along sweetheart, they will love your dissertation.
I wonder who will get frog-marched on this one? (sound of crickets) I am trying to figure out whether Justice and the FBI went in so that incriminating evidence would not make its way into the public domain, or to simply get some favorable press by appearing to be "shocked...absolutely shocked" that a half billion in Obama stash simply vanished. I am also confused by Michelle's apparent lack of outrage in this article, at least compared to the teeth clenching - spittle stained - eye bulging shriek on her website regarding Rick Perry and VARDASIL!!! Sorry, could not help myself. I just returned from her blog and was momentarily overwhelmed by all the hysterical bold red exclamatory statements. Especially her rather unconvincing apologia regarding St. Sarah's recent demand that all Republican candidates be vetted for CronyCap disease...except her of course. The sooner this woman goes back to reality TV the better. You want to read about a real case of CronyCap? Read all about St. Sarah and Dairygate, and compare it to what has been reported about Perry and Merck: External Link I will wait for Michelle to write a piece on this one (sound of crickets).
I am all for progress in developing new and exciting energy sources of the renewable kind. In fact, I'd be all for Uncle Sam guaranteeing loans to outfits that are working feverishly to develop the same. At this point, however, there must be a deep shaking up of the extant system---it truly is broken, and we all know that a broken machine, if it produces at all, makes only broken products. If we continue on our present, broken course, we will progress, economically, technologically, and (Heaven forfend!!!) socially in entirely the wrong direction---we'll be stuck, even more deeply, in the same sand-box, playing with the same sort of tootsie rolls we have in front of us now. It would be well for us to face this reality, setting aside any misplaced loyalty to nominal factions, for any true and meaningful progress is otherwise impossible.