September 2, 2009

Barack Obama said the Waxman-Markey carbon tax would help create “green energy” jobs in the U.S. He is now using taxpayer dollars to fund jobs in Spain.
by Bill Levinson

Barack Obama sold the Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy and Security Act” to Congress and the American people by saying that investment in so-called “green energy” would create millions of high-wage American manufacturing jobs. We received an E-mail from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (nonpartisan professional organization) that exposed Barack Obama as a blatant prevaricator who is shamelessly using our tax dollars to create jobs not in the United States but in foreign countries. We wonder what rank and file union members–not union bosses who, to paraphrase Henry Ford, have never worked in a shop and whose ambition is to never have to work in a shop, but blue collar workers who actually put in eight hours of honest work every day–will do to the Democratic Party when they discover this. We encourage our readers to circulate this article as widely as possible so they will find out. From the September 2 2009 Wall Street Journal, “U.S. Doles Out Grants for Energy Projects,”

But while the wind farms and solar installations are in the U.S., the profits from these projects are flowing mainly to European companies and developers owned by private-equity investors. Iberdrola SA, the Spanish wind-power giant, was awarded $294 million for five projects. Spokesman Keith Grant said the grants are “crucial to pushing ahead” with U.S. wind projects.

Right, Barry, do you want to tell us again how you are going to create millions of “green energy” jobs for American workers? We don’t see how giving $294 million, or about a dollar stolen from the pocket of every person in the United States, to Iberdrola SA will create even one manufacturing job for American workers. Another beneficiary of Obama’s energy program admitted openly that his company needs corporate welfare to survive:

EverPower Wind Holdings Inc. received a $42.2 million grant for a wind farm in Pennsylvania. “In order to make wind power economical, it requires a tax subsidy,” said Jim Spencer, chief executive of EverPower, in which British private-equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners recently bought a controlling stake.

This is corporate welfare, plain and simple. Barack Obama is using taxpayer money to subsidize a business that cannot justify its existence by providing enough value to pay its employees, suppliers, and of course its well-paid executives and British investors. Bloomberg News adds,

Spain’s Iberdrola Gets U.S. Grants for Wind Projects
By Daniel Whitten

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — Iberdrola SA, a Spanish company, will get most of the more than $500 million in economic recovery funds the Obama administration said today it is distributing to U.S. renewable-energy projects.

…The money is part of President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. The entire plan contains about $3 billion that will be given in lieu of tax credits to support about 5,000 biomass, solar, wind and other types of renewable energy production facilities.

Res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself. Barack Obama knowingly and willfully misled the American people about the nature and agenda of his energy policy, just as he was recently caught red-handed in an outright and proven falsehood about his health care reform agenda. American voters must make it clear to their Members of Congress that, unless they distance themselves from this individual, there will probably not be a single Democrat left in the House of Representatives (except for the handful who voted against Waxman-Markey) after November 2010.