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Townhall...
Obama’s
Big Green Boondoggles
By Michelle Malkin
9/14/2011
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.
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.
Read
the rest of the column at
Townhall
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