Green Scam, I Am!

By William L. Garvin

“I do not like Green Scam I Am,

Your business plans are such a sham.

Billions of dollars you have blown,

The money you spent was not your own!

Cronies and bundling paved the way,

And politicos do whatever you say.

I’d love to hear the cell door slam,

I do not like Green Scam I Am!”

(Apologies to Dr. Seuss)



It was somewhat remarkable to watch the Administration react to the Gulf oil disaster. In an overreaching exercise of caution, they shut down oil rigs far and wide. Deep sea of shallow water, it didn’t really matter. They fiercely fought (and lost!) every court action to reopen the rigs and to resume drilling. One judge even found them in contempt of court for refusing to let American workers resume their gainful employment.



Now contrast that with the Solyndra bankruptcy fiasco. It is so bad that a judge has ruled that there is probable cause that a crime has been committed and has issued a warrant to begin a criminal investigation. Since this is the third solar firm that has recently crashed and burned, you would think that a similar abundance of caution would be exercised. In fact, quite the opposite has occurred. The Administration has broken all land and bureaucratic speed records pushing new green energy grants through the process. Since September 30 was the end of the federal fiscal year, they threw caution to the winds to get taxpayer dollars out the door by that date.



The world’s best Jamaican sprinters would have been hard pressed to keep up with the amazing speed with which government bureaucrats dispatched the $737 million to the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. After all, they are predicted to create 45 new green energy jobs. It’s unclear what the new math says but the old math says that’s $16.38 MILLION PER JOB! I guess we should praise the progress. After all, “Son of Stimulus,” with its $447 billion price tag, is supposed to reduce the unemployment rate by 0.2 percent. Some estimates say that is the equivalent of creating or “saving” 275, 000 jobs…at a cost of $1.6 MILLION PER JOB. Doesn’t anyone do math anymore? It’s the same old government new math. Remember when the President said ObamaCare would lower the average family’s health care premiums by $2,400? Well, the Kaiser Foundation said the average family’s premiums went UP by $1,400! Maybe the government’s new math is also a scam.



Returning to the Green Energy Scam, here is another interesting wrinkle in the Crescent Dunes project. An investment partner in the deal is Pacific Corporate Group. Their Executive Director is Ron Pelosi. It is undoubtedly pure coincidence that he is Nancy Pelosi’s brother in law. Hmmmm…that’s no more suspect than Maxine Waters’ husband’s bank receiving TARP funds. By the way, whatever did happen with that ethics investigation?



Some time ago when Mother Earth became a deity and “saving the environment” became her religion, mathematics and common sense went out of style. That’s why the President can proclaim that the price of electricity will of necessity “skyrocket” and no one questioned him. If you pump billions of taxpayer dollars into alternative energy sources that are not efficient or economically viable at this stage, if you incessantly use executive orders and bureaucratic fiat to strangle the fossil fuel industries, of course the prices will skyrocket. When you continually demonize those industries that not fuel our economy but the world’s economy, you are setting yourself on the losing side of the equation.



The amount of government money that General Electric and Warren Buffett are receiving is nothing more than the corporate cronyism that the left is protesting on Wall Street and the Democrats railed against during the Bush Administration. If the same amount of money had been put into controlling emissions and upgrading the coal, natural gas, and oil extraction and refinement facilities as went into the alternative energy fiascos, we would already be energy independent AND have a cleaner environment. That’s why “I do not like Green Scam, I Am!”