Solar loans about one thing: construction jobs for unions
It is truly scandalous, reprehensible and even criminal that even by the federal government’s own estimates, the Energy Department loans to clean-energy enterprises will wind up costing taxpayers about $6.4 million for every permanent job saved or created. Obama is pumping $16 billion in loan guarantees out the door for which the DOE expects to produce a grand total of 2,500 permanent jobs. Do the math.
But this outrage is fogging the salient point here. These loans were never about clean energy in the first place. They were all about providing construction jobs for union workers.
Everybody is focusing on the permanent jobs issue, and overlooking how many construction jobs were provided by these fraudulent loans. Sloyndra had a $737 million dollar state-of-the-art plant to build, with whistling robots, exotic spas and cavernous warehouses. Who built it?
Why, it was all built with union labor, of course. Three thousand union workers lived large off taxpayers while it was under construction.
Here’s the bottom line: Obama doesn’t care what happens to these plants after they’re built. He doesn’t care if they produce a single kilowatt of electricity. His job his done. He just threw 3,000 high paying jobs into the laps of his union buddies. Once the factory is built, their work is over. Who cares what happens then? Not Obama. Let’s shovel some more money out the door to the next alternate energy boondoggle and put our union dudes to work until that facility is built.
The DOE is saying their $16 billion will result in 2,500 permanent jobs. As permanent as the ones at Solyndra?
But the unions don’t have to worry - the DOE’s own numbers indicate that it will take 14,200 union guys to build whatever they’re going to build with our bucks. For instance, a Nevada solar facility ($737 million loan guarantee) will provide 600 construction jobs. A California solar facility ($646 million loan guarantee) will fund 350 construction jobs. And the sad, sorry, pathetic list goes on.
That $646 million loan, by the way, will produce a cool 20 permanent jobs, a cool $32 million per job.
So when these crackpot alternative energy plants fold, as they all will, it’s no big thing. Those 14,200 union guys will have already banked their paychecks. They got the gold, and taxpayers got the shaft.
President Obama is playing US taxpayer for chumps and suckers, and it looks like he’ll get away with it for 13 more dismal, dreary months.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
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