Going Green and Bust

President Obama went to Holland, Michigan yesterday to promote another "green economy" project funded by stimulus cash. A South Korean company is receiving $151 million taxpayer dollars to build a factory that will one day hopefully employ 300 in the manufacture of batteries for electric cars. That's $500,000 per job, which for this administration is small potatoes. The Obama administration's bequeath of
$1.45 billion to Abengoa Solar is expected to create only 85 permanent jobs. Michael Graham did the math and came up with $17 million per job for that foray into creating a new economy.

Using taxpayer funds to remake an economy has been tried in Spain with disastrous results:

As for Spain's vaunted "Green Jobs program" a study by Dr. Gabriel Cardoza has found that for every green job created 2.2 jobs have been lost. Of those green jobs 2/3 were only temporary, mainly in installation and construction.

True to form in the greening of our economy, Heritage takes a look at the effects of Sec. Salazar's ban on drilling:

Heritage analyst David Kreutzer has crunched the numbers and found that a full Obama administration ban on all offshore drilling would be absolutely devastating to the U.S. economy. Between now and 2035, an offshore drilling ban would: 1) reduce GDP by $5.5 trillion; 2) reduce job growth by more than 1 million jobs by 2015 and more than 1.5 million jobs by 2030; and 3) increase the total expenditures for imported oil by nearly $737 billion.

Congress isn't about to leave all the fun in regulating our way to a new and improved economy to the Obama administration. While Cap and Trade may be dead, Harry Reid is introducing its ugly stepsister on July 26th. John Kerry's bill is being replaced by Sen. Jeff Bingaman's (D-NM) renewable electricity standard legislation (RES), which is simply CAP without the Trade. Heritage explores what it will mean if passed:

RES would: 1) raise electricity prices by 36 percent for households and 60 percent for industry; 2) cut national income (GDP) by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035; 3) cut national income by $2,400 per year for a family of four; 4) reduce employment by more than 1,000,000 jobs; and 5) add more than $10,000 to a family of four’s share of the national debt by 2035.

The Green/Progressive dream of using economic policy to punish the use of fossil fuels and promote more expensive, less efficient, but "greener" technologies will cripple our economy. In essence, they are adopting the policy of the officer that insisted during the Vietnam War that "we had to destroy the village in order to save it". I hope the Obama administration and Congress come to their senses and follow the sage advice of former President George HW Bush as channeled by Dana Carvey "The first lesson of Vietnam. No more Vietnams" before too much damage is done.

If Vietnam references are too dated and President Obama has his mind set on following a Spanish model; I suggest that instead of emulating the policies of Mr. Zapatero's socialist government that have his country mired at 20% unemployment and facing bankruptcy, that he just follow Penelope Cruz on Twitter.