Obama’s green dream hurting U.S. taxpayers

Obama’s green dream hurting U.S. taxpayers


Updated: September 4, 2011 2:23AM



The biggest star in the Obama firmament of green-jobs com­panies has just imploded. Solyndra, a California-based firm that produced solar panels, declared bankruptcy last week, putting more than a thousand additional workers on the unemployment line.

The Solyndra story tells you all you need to know about President Barack Obama’s ability to “create” jobs — green or otherwise.

Solyndra was no ordinary startup. When the company broke ground on its plant, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and California’s then-governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, used a golden shovel to dig the first hole. And it wasn’t just the shovel that was gold-plated. The company received more than half a billion dollars in federal loan guarantees for the project. But U.S. taxpayers will likely never see a dime repaid now that the company has gone into bankruptcy.

The loan guarantees were controversial from the outset. The chief investor in Solyndra was George Kaiser, a major Obama fund-raiser. The guarantees were part of a $90 billion federal program, but Solyndra was first in line to receive the largess. House Republicans have subpoenaed White House documents and are investigating whether Solyndra received favorable treatment because of its political ties. There seems to be more than a whiff of old-fashioned corruption here, but only a thorough investigation will tell.

One thing is certain: The president and secretary of energy made repeated trips to Solyndra’s Silicon Valley plant over the last couple of years, using the facility as a backdrop to deliver clean-energy agitprop. The president’s most recent trip was in May 2010, not long after a government audit questioned whether the company could even survive.

But that didn’t stop Obama from crowing, “The promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith. It’s not just some abstract possibility for science-fiction movies or a distant future or 10 years down the road or 20 years. It’s happening right now. The future is here.”

Indeed — but the future may be very different from the one Obama sees. Solyndra is one of three major solar companies to declare bankruptcy this summer. No matter how many speeches the president gives, he can’t turn an economically unsustainable enterprise into a profitable one, even if he siphons from the U.S. Treasury to do so.

Obama has been obsessed with the idea of creating new clean-energy jobs since the 2008 campaign, when he promised 5 million such jobs over the next decade. The administration claims that it has created or “saved” a quarter of a million green jobs since the president took office, but there is no way to verify that assertion because the Bureau of Labor Statistics has yet to collect data on those jobs.

Despite the dubious track record, a Washington Post report noted that as of June, half of the president’s trips to visit private businesses outside of Washington were related to promoting green technology. In all, Obama visited 22 clean-technology projects in 19 visits in a two-year period. That’s nearly one a month.

What motivates the president’s fanaticism? Is it simply blind faith in green technology, or is he chasing another shade of green — namely, cash for his campaign coffers? In 2008, Obama raised twice as much as his Republican opponent from those in the green-tech businesses. Republicans are routinely accused of being the pawns of big oil, but where is the concern that Obama is beholden to the green machine?

Whatever his motivation, the real issue is that government cannot “create” jobs — other than those on its own payroll. There are plenty of private businesses that fail. But the difference between Solyndra’s failure and that of, say, the restaurant down the block or even a national chain such as Kmart, is that Solyndra was artificially propped up from the get-go by federally guaranteed loans.

If Solyndra’s technology, which rested on a new design for solar panels, was as promising as the Obama administration seemed to think, investors willing to risk their own money should have been plentiful. Where were Warren Buffett and the president’s other billionaire supporters?

Capitalism has worked to create more jobs than any system since the dawn of civilization. But it works because individuals take risks with their own money or with borrowed money that they’re personally liable to repay.

What doesn’t work is commandeering other people’s money in a crapshoot in which there are more losers than winners. But Obama has yet to learn that lesson. And we can expect more government-funded fiascos like Solyndra on the horizon as long as he is president.

 

Columnist Linda Chavez is the author of An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/7430403-417/obamas-green-dr...

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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

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(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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