Green Pigs Don’t Fly
Reportedly, Obama’s jobs speech will focus on
infrastructure spending, and much of that spending will undoubtedly be tied to
the creation of “green jobs.” The problem is, what he has already spent has not
created jobs. According to the Heritage Foundation, it may well have
cost
jobs. It has, however, enriched some of his wealthiest political
contributors. And that seems to be the real motive behind the president’s
infrastructure spending. Not green jobs, but green pork.
That appears to be the case with Obama’s $535-million
loan guarantees to Solyndra Inc. During a 2010 visit to Solyndra’s plant in
Fremont, California, Obama insisted that the solar panel company would create
“one thousand long-term jobs.” Solyndra has since declared bankruptcy, and it
seems unlikely that the taxpayer will recover any of the $535 million in
loans.
The half-billion that Obama threw away on Solyndra is
only a small part of $60 billion earmarked for alternative energy in Obama’s
2009 stimulus bill, and that $60 billion is only a fraction of the $100 billion
that Energy Secretary Stephen Chu envisions “investing” in alternative energy.
Solyndra is not the only green jobs company to receive stimulus funding —
hundreds of them did. And dozens of them have gone bankrupt already, including
Evergreen Solar, taking billions of taxpayer money with them.
The GAO’s Franklin Rusco has raised questions
about the transparency and rigor of the approval process for the Solyndra loan
guarantees. It has been suggested that the White House took a special interest
in Solyndra during the loan guarantee application process, monitoring the
process, and perhaps communicating with officials in charge.
That should be a question for congressional
investigations, and thankfully the investigations have begun. The House
Committee on Energy and Commerce is seeking White House documents regarding
Obama’s role in obtaining the loan guarantees for Solyndra. So far, the White
House has stonewalled, refusing to supply the requested
documents.
Reportedly, Solyndra CEO Christian M. Gronet, who
received ten
million stock options on the same day the $535-million loan
guarantee was approved, donated to “Friends of Barbara Boxer” in 2009/2010.
According to other reports, Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser, a
prominent Obama campaign contributor and bundler, was a major Solyndra investor
as well. It is an open question as to whether political contributions from
Solyndra executives and investors influenced the administration’s decision to
back the loans.
The latest green power company to receive federal loan
guarantees is SoloPower Inc., which just this month revived a $197-million loan
guarantee to build a solar film factory in Oregon. The initial phase of the
project, funded with the help of the federal loans, along with $40 million in
loans and tax credits from the state of Oregon, is expected to create
170
new jobs,
according to company projections. By my calculation, that is $1.4 million per
job — not exactly a bargain for taxpayers who will then also have to pay higher
fuel bills as a result of green energy mandates.
Before coming to SoloPower, CEO Tim Harris was a
successful executive at Seagate Technology, where he is credited with setting up
an operation creating 15,000 jobs. Those jobs were not in America, however;
they were in Malaysia, the same country where First Solar, another major
recipient of Obama loan guarantees, has located most of its new
jobs.
In fact, Obama’s green energy stimulus has done more
for job-creation in Malaysia and China than it will ever do in the U.S. Under
Obama’s massive loan guarantee program, the American taxpayer has footed a
$60-billion bill largely for Asian job creation.
Ironically — or perversely — the president is doing
everything possible to kill off the one industry that is producing jobs that
cannot be exported to Asia. America possesses vast new reserves of oil and gas
that can be developed only with American labor. If only the administration
would rescind unnecessary regulation, those jobs would double virtually
overnight. Not only that, but federal and state royalty collections would
double as well, and the U.S. trade balance would stabilize as less oil and gas
was imported. But so far, the president continues to press for more taxes on
conventional energy companies. And never at any time has it occurred to him
that it might be in the national interest to support energy independence by
making it easier for American energy companies to drill right here in
America.
The White House continues to insist that the $60
billion in alternative energy funding, along with tens of billions approved in
other legislation, was a wise “investment.” Most real investors,
having lost billions on alternative energy, would shy away from solar and wind
projects. But Obama continues to throw money away. In September alone, the
president approved an additional $622 million in loan guarantees for solar
companies. Even Democrats like Senator Jeff Bingaman admit
that Obama’s loan guarantees “have not worked.” Yet Bingaman himself introduced
a bill to fund a “clean-energy bank” to make more loans to the same kind of
companies. Apparently, Bingaman’s logic is, “It doesn’t work, so let’s do it
again.”
That seems to be the rationale for Obama’s latest
green jobs initiative. Bingaman is asking for $10 billion for his clean-energy
bank. I’m sure Obama will top that by a couple hundred billion. That funding,
if approved, will disappear into the pockets of Democratic Party supporters,
just as surely as it has in the past, though much of it will be passed along to
Democratic candidates in the 2012 elections. If that sounds like “pay to play,”
you can draw your own conclusions.
After all, the guiding principle behind Obama’s green
jobs initiative all along has been how much it will contribute to his own
reelection. The fantasy of green jobs presented him with a unique opportunity
to please environmentalist supporters while at the same time rewarding wealthy
contributors who also happen to be investors and executives in alternative
energy companies.
It is unlikely that Obama will ever desert this
winning combination, even as his scandalous relationship with one bankrupt
company after another comes to light. No matter how many billions end up being
wasted, the president will continue to insist, as did an official at the
Department of Energy just last week, that the green jobs program “is on pace to
create thousands of jobs.” Already Obama has spent as much as $10 million each
for the thousands of green jobs, he claims to have created. Is there no limit,
and no shame?
Actually, there is not. Because more important than
actual green jobs is green pork. Obama is relying on green pork, along with
union pork and trial lawyer pork, to get him reelected. Green jobs are at the
heart of his domestic agenda because green pork results in donations to the
Democratic Party. Whether it results in any jobs, to say nothing of “long-term”
jobs, is irrelevant. It’s his own job that Obama is focused on
saving.
Jeffrey Folks is author of many
books and articles on American culture, most recently
Heartland of the
Imagination
(2011).
Thoughts Of A Conservative Christian 
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