Enough Already!

By William L. Garvin

The Green Gravy Scam Train just keeps chugging along. Last year Seattle received a $20 million grant to weatherize homes by insulating crawl spaces. As of now, they have created a grand total of fourteen jobs and renovated a total of three homes! Then there’s Oak Park, Michigan’s hybrid bus company…despite millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, it’s out of business. Another egregious example of Green Gone Wild! is the Department of Labor’s green jobs training program. For a mere few hundred million of stimulus money, they were going to create 79, 854 new jobs. Reality is they trained 8,035 people and only 1,336 actually had jobs six months later. This fiasco cost American taxpayers $170 million! The Inspector General says this program has been such a failure that the unused $327 million should immediately be returned to the Treasury.

Nevertheless, the Green Gravy Train just keeps on rolling and doling primarily because government continues to mandate increased usage. California has dictated that one-third of its electricity must come from renewable sources by 2020. Therefore, BrightSource Energy received a $1.37 billion loan guarantee; First Solar received a $2.1 billion guarantee; Abound Solar received a $400 million loan guarantee. The Antelope Valley Ranch Solar Project received $646 million in loan guarantees. In return, they will provide 350 temporary construction jobs but only 20 permanent jobs! You’d think with all this taxpayer funding, green energy would be a terrific investment…not the case. For the investor, it’s caveat emptor! Over the last year, First Solar’s stock has crashed from $175.45 to $53; Canadian Solar from $17.63 to $3.05; Yingli Green Energy from $14.29 to $3.60; LDK Solar from $15.00 to $3.23; and Trina Solar from $31.89 to $6.66! Before Solyndra went bankrupt, it canceled a public offering because there was no private investor enthusiasm. Government was the only entity unable to see the looming bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida have canceled their plans (and federal funding!) for “high speed rail” after determining that it would be no faster than travel on the highways. However, California spends $10 billion on its “high speed” segment of 160 miles in the central valley that no one will ride. Their project cost has already ballooned from $43 billion to $67 billion and they can’t find any private investors.

Looking at cost overruns, New York City is looking at $3.2 million in overtime costs for police to manage the Occupy Wall Street “movement.” Boston is looking at $2 million if the protest continues all this month. There’s every indication that is probable since New York’s radical “Working Families Party” (sic) is advertising on Craigslist for immediate employment at $350-$650/week to “fight to hold Wall Street accountable.” Of course the WFP says these positions are for “routine canvassing jobs.” Riiiiiigggghhhtttt…and all the protestors are patriotic, hard working, peace loving, freedom loving, every day-average men and women just looking for a job.

That’s why we see the Young Communist League in attendance. That’s why the protestors are supported by the Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA, SEIU, the AFL-CIO, George Soros, MoveOn.org and every victim group imaginable. That’s why their signs say “Destroy Capitalism” and they march around with Marx and Lenin tee-shirts, carry Che Guevara and communist flags, and sport their Mao buttons. That’s why there have been thousands of arrests and the clashes are becoming ever more worrisome. Some speakers have advocated violence and even “beheading.”

For every rational protestor who decries corporate cronyism, bank bailouts, the influence of lobbyists, and wants the Federal Reserve audited, there are a dozen who advocate anarchy, want to destroy the evil capitalist system and demand the government give them free money and bail them out of their student loans and credit card debt! There’s another dozen who are just there for the sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There are a few protestors who are protesting President Obama and his relationship with Wall Street firms (donors), especially Goldman Sachs. But don’t expect the media to cover that or even the protestor who defecated on the police car—they’re still part of the poop-aganda machine and still backing this failed administration.