🚀 go-pugleaf

 "And guess what this liberal would be all about. This liberal will be 
about socializing ... uh, um. ...Would be about..., basically..., taking 
over..., and the government running all of your companies." - Maxine Waters


http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45630

Maxine Waters: Green Jobs Are a Lot of Talk
The Congressional Black Caucus chokes on Obama�s expensive balloon juice.
by  John Hayward
08/19/2011

Rep. Maxine Waters? (D-CA), who recently professed to a crowd in Detroit 
that she, and the rest of the Congressional Black Caucus, are �supportive 
of the President but getting tired,� has returned to work out on the Obama 
heavy bag some more.

This time, in an appearance on �news� network MSNBC (where on-air 
personalities can invent fraudulent quotes with doctored video to slander 
presidential candidates, and yet keep their jobs), Waters declared herself 
low on patience for Obama�s fabulously expensive �green jobs� initiatives.

�Of course, we want to be part of the new innovation and green jobs,� said 
Waters, who should consider drinking tea in public and occasionally wearing 
a tricorner hat if she really wants to get Obama�s attention.  �But you 
know, the green jobs have been about a lot of talk, and not a lot has been 
happening on that.�

Oh, plenty has been �happening on that,� Rep. Waters.  Just this week, we 
had the story of a Seattle initiative that blew a cool $20 million in 
taxpayer money to create fourteen jobs.  An even worse dollars-to-jobs 
ration was achieved at Johnson Controls in Michigan, where $300 million was 
spent to create 150 jobs to manufacture batteries for electric cars.  Obama 
toured this plant as a �green jobs� success story earlier in August.

Practically every week brings a new story of a �green jobs� company 
declaring bankruptcy, increasing America�s carbon footprint by sending huge 
piles of taxpayer money up in smoke.  Investor�s Business Daily surveys the 
wreckage:

Stimulus funds intended to boost the green economy haven't been well spent. 
The latest example of this is Monday's bankruptcy filing by Evergreen Solar 
Inc.

The Massachusetts company that the White House once said "is hoping to hire 
90 to 100 people" thanks to stimulus money has $485.6 million in debt. 
Evergreen closed a factory in March, reports the Boston Herald, and cut 800 
jobs. A Michigan plant is to be shut down, as well, causing the loss of 
even more jobs.

Evergreen isn't the only supposed conservation company that can't make it 
even when fronted with piles of taxpayer money. Green Vehicles of Salinas, 
Calif., which has burned through more than $500,000 in money "invested" by 
the city, folded last month without having produced anything of 
significance. The company promised it would employ about 70 and pay back 
Salinas taxpayers with $700,000 a year in city taxes.

IBD goes on to note this is par for the course with �green jobs� programs, 
which have been expensive job-destroying failures around the globe. 

History is a guide. Spain's green economy program destroyed 2.2 jobs for 
every green job it created.

Meanwhile, the Italians put into a single green job the same amount of 
capital needed to create almost five jobs in the general economy.

None of this gloomy news is difficult to understand.  Forcing consumers to 
buy something they don�t want is extremely expensive.  There are a number 
of side effects to gigantic compulsory taxpayer subsidies for products the 
political class has sanctified, but �job creation� is most certainly not 
one of them.  A decent high-school economics education would have made that 
abundantly clear to anyone who didn�t fall asleep in class.  Very few 
people in this Administration could pass a high-school economics class, and 
their entire agenda is based on the not unreasonable gamble that few people 
in the electorate could, either.

So, instead of congratulating Maxine Waters for very belatedly growing 
uncomfortable with this massive theft of taxpayer dollars, she should be 
explaining why it took her so long to wake up and smell the fair-trade 
coffee.

Why is Waters hitting the President so hard lately, and does it make any 
difference?  After all, she and her constituents will vote for Obama by 
lopsided margins, no matter what he does.  On the other hand, she�s 
furnishing plenty of tasty sound bites for Republican campaign commercials. 

My guess is that her constituents have noticed all that �stimulus� money 
vanishing into thin air, with no jobs to show for it.  The massaged U-3 
unemployment figure for black Americans is currently 15.9%, far higher than 
the 9.1% rate for the general population.  As always, black America has 
very little to show for its monolithic support of Democrats, but it�s 
particularly uneasy to be getting this raw deal from the First Black 
President, who jets off to multi-million-dollar fund raisers and luxury 
Martha�s Vineyard vacations while the solar panel plants are packing up and 
moving to China.

The �green jobs� boondoggle is one of the most sacred myths of the Obama 
Administration.  When Maxine Waters throws cold water on it, she�s sending 
a pretty strong message, and it�s probably one she didn�t really want to 
send.  The Democrats are really stress-testing their automatic 90% support 
from the black community� and even if the percentages hold up, it won�t do 
them much good, if disillusioned black voters stay home.