Justshows how this administration was not just wasting its time on health care reform. It wasted it's time on Green Jobs too! And the drilling moratorium! That helped. I just can't understand how we got ourselves into this mess.
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Industrial Policy: The fact that President Obama's "green jobs" campaign has been an enormously expensive failure is now glaringly obvious.
The NY Times reports that "federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, and that Obama's goal of 5 million new green jobs in 10 years is a "pipe dream." For example, Obama's much-heralded weatherization program "never caught on."
California still has spent only about half its $186 million in federal weatherization funds, creating a grand total of 538 full-time jobs. He also points to the $59 million spent in California on green job training that resulted in just 719 placements. (As opposed to marginal tax rate cuts, which instituted instead of the "stimulus" would have us out of this mess by now)
Nearly three years into Obama's presidency (Three years!), the White House can't point to much solid evidence that significant numbers of Americans are scoring the green jobs the president has been touting. (No, but he can still blame Bush, the Arab Spring, and tax cuts from 10 years ago).
"Of course, we want to be part of the new innovation and green jobs," Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said recently. "But you know, the green jobs have been about a lot of talk, and not a lot has been happening on that." (because Maxine you idiot Liberal/Socialist, you can't "government innovate".
The landscape is increasingly littered with failed "green" companies unable to survive in the marketplace even with huge government subsidies. But the Obama administration still has its head buried under a pile of solar panels, with the president endlessly touring "clean" factories, pushing electric cars consumers don't want and talking about politically correct "jobs of the future." (Let's hope one opens up in 2012)
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Go with a significant (revenue neutral) carbon tax and you can eliminate ALL green subsidies. They'll be unnecessary and the market will decide which solutions are most efficient. This is an area where Art Laffer, Jeff Flake and I agree.
But he didn't...he did this:
President Obama recently reminded General Motors‘ stockholders, all 311 million of us, that he’s calling the shots at America’s largest automaker, when he told an audience in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, that freedom to market was the price for the bailout: “If we are going to help you [GM], then you have also got to change your ways.” And then he stated the ways: electric cars, and isn’t it great that jillions of taxpayer dollars are being thrown at battery manufacturers?
The Government-Industrial Complex (GIC) is at it again, picking energy technologies. Its track record is atrocious. Highly subsidized solar is in eclipse, as demonstrated by the recent bankruptcy of Evergreen Solar in Massachusetts. Try as it might, it can’t make wind energy a big player, largely because people hate it. And how much money has it lavished on Ethanol? This year we will burn up more corn than we will use as a feedstock, which has (and should have) appalled the world.
Nevermind that no one has figured out how to produce a comfortable electric car at an affordable (non-subsidized) price that has enough range to be practical for the most of us. And so GM’s answer is the Chevrolet Volt, which doesn’t suffer from range limitation because of its internal combustion engine, which works both as a generator and prime mover as the charge in 400 pounds of lithium ion batteries depletes.
Carrying a $41,000 base MSRP and a $7,500 tax break, the Volt is either going to be the biggest bust since the Edsel, or a niche car with very modest sales. It is not, repeat, not the wave of the future. It’s just too impractical for a large number of everyday drivers.
Like I said, we need a stiff carbon tax... no one will build anything that won't sell in the context of reliably higher energy prices. The free market will find solutions far faster than the oil lobby believes. Wind and solar will boom - cars and trucks will be lighter and more efficient. Design an SUV that uses 40% less fuel and you'll sell all you can build...
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