A barrage of news headlines on the Solyndra scandal continue to remind us that President Obama made green jobs one of his administration’s priorities. Those headlines also reveal this initiative to have been a costly mistake.
The bankruptcy of Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer that has collapsed despite receiving half-a-billion dollars from the federal government, is only the tip of the iceberg. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that several other green companies that received generous federal aid are teetering on the brink.
Ener1, whose subsidiary EnerDel received a $118 million federal grant, lost $165 million in fiscal 2010 and has dim prospects. According to the Journal, Ener1 had “lost its bid to supply batteries to Fisker Automotive, a battery-powered car maker which received a $529 million U.S. taxpayer-backed federal loan guarantee in 2010,” when “Fisker chose to buy its batteries from a company called A123 Systems, itself the recipient of a $249 million U.S. Department of Energy grant.”
Great! First Team Obama extends taxpayer dollars to green companies, then it torpedoes them by giving larger grants to their competitors. Meanwhile, Fisker, itself a recipient of over a half-billion dollar handout from Uncle Sam, is making its cars in Finland.
Team Obama’s record on creating green jobs is no more confidence-inspiring than its record in midwifing a viable electric car industry.
A recent study by the Labor Department’s Inspector General examined what became of $162.8 million of Obama stimulus money funneled to the Employment and Training Administration. Set up to “train and prepare individuals for careers in ‘green jobs,’” the score is this: 53,000 individuals were trained, 8,035 got jobs, and only 1,033 trainees still held those jobs after six months.
There are at least four important reasons why we should stop funding “green” government programs:
First lesson: government-appointed experts are incompetent economic planners—a fact of life that any intelligent adult should know after the spectacular failure of central economic planning in the socialist experiments of the 20th century. No matter how brilliant and how well-intentioned government planners may be, they do not and cannot know what consumers want and how much they are willing to pay for it. Only free markets can solve this challenge. If electric cars are to be a viable industry, private companies will make them so.
Second lesson: The government’s involvement in Solyndra raises troubling questions about possible corruption. While I think the Solyndra deal stinks to high heaven, I wonder whether any laws have been broken. Where is the dividing line between influence peddling, legitimate lobbying, political deal-making, and actual crime? Many farm-state Republicans have supported the uneconomical ethanol boondoggle for decades in exchange for generous support of their electoral campaigns, so the practice is bipartisan.
Third lesson: Government job programs are a blatant failure. They have never been economically beneficial. In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had the department of agriculture hire 100,000 Americans to monitor how much acreage American farmers were cultivating. These federal jobs produced no wealth. Their jobs made no more economic sense than paying people to dig holes and then fill them up.
Today’s green workers are economically nonsensical, too. True, they sometimes produce something, but the economic value is invariably less than the amount of tax dollars needed to subsidize their job. In other words, federal jobs make us poorer.
Fourth lesson: Finally, we simply can’t afford these green boondoggles. Uncle Sam’s official debt is now $15 trillion, and when you include off-budget items and unfunded liabilities, the situation is far worse. Given this fiscal reality, it is the height of irresponsibility to throw taxpayer dollars at any special interests, and it is particularly egregious to subsidize enterprises that are plainly uneconomical.
I am not opposed to green industries. What we need is for the government to get out of the way and let green technologies prove themselves in the competitive marketplace. It’s time for change and an end to economic foolishness. Let’s get the burden of green boondoggles off the taxpayers’ back.
Obama knows exactly what he is doing, his plan of hope and change for America is to bankrupt it, and hand it over to his Muslim Islamic god Allah. While both the News Media and most of our so called Representatives in Washington D.C. are more concerned about maintaining there politically correct image, than exposing the Muslims Trojan horse which presently occupies our White House. He even had the Reverend Wright’s blessing of “g. d. America,” as he was being sworn into Office. Shalom!
Obama said that ” we can change ” , but we don’t want to change to the poorhouse . And that’s what he took us to . What he was doing , was making the government , as the royalty . And being royalty , he word was law . Then the GOP give him problem , he would throw a hissy fit . Then , we would come on the telly , and tell us that what he is going , is meant for us , and why are the GOP on board when I gave the green light ? He would come on and , talk to us like we were little kids . Now , where is he ? He quit using the Congress to pass his laws . Like he is the King . And , he thinks that we can’t hear him over Down Under , where he is telling them that we are ” lazy ” , and ” dumb ” . Let me ask you , did we throw out 5 trillion dollars out the window ? And , if we want to be truthful , it’s more like 6 trillion . And counting . He asked us to work with him , but , come down to the bottom line , he always trying to add something into the contract that he came up while writing up the contract , last night . Well , that might have worked , in school . But , the real world , it won’t , and he’s having a hard time of understanding that . Everything that he touched , backfired on him . He doesn’t have a single clue of what he is doing . And blames on the GOP , for his mistakes . Well , with 3 years of this , when is it going to be his fault ? Something tell me that , by this time of year , next year , he is going to blame us , the people of this country . In fact , he did , by telling the world that we are lazy and dumb . Including the Democrats . And you still want him ?
I feel that I must correct you. Mr. O gave Solyndra 1/2 million dollars & not 1/2 billion dollars. However, seeing that he spends like a druken sailor I could see anyone making that mistake. I am so fed up with all that the tax payers have had to pay for GREEN & as it turns out..much of this is a total farce. I wonder when people are going to wake up. I’d say put a stick of dyamite under them & then run. I see so many people who haven’t the slightest idea what is going on in our government & country & it makes angry & sick.
azjenn, $500,000,000 is half a billion, and that is what Obozo paid Solyndra for bundling half a million $ in campaign contributions
The figure is closer to $530 million. That is 30 million over 1/2 Billion dollars. And the American taxpayer is second in line to suffer that boondoggle. The only way we will survive Mr OBama is to fire him next November.
The whole green push has been a joke from the beginning. From the myth of global warming (one degree up in a hundred-year period? Come on! Think!), to not eating meat (and therefore denying oneself proteins not found in anything else), to energy companies that lose “energy” in a few years’ time, you might as well throw throw those millions/billions into a deep hole and bury them.
And Obama will bury us, unless the Supreme Court can straighten us out. I pray fervently for America’s future. Otherwise we’ll go the way of every other despotic nation.
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