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Chatham County’s plan to use a $300,000 energy grant for a green jobs training program was abandoned after savings failed to live up to expectations and a materials purchase violated federal requirements. After installing efficient lighting, window inserts for improved insulation and a geothermal system, Chatham reduced annual energy costs by an estimated $60,000, instead of the $340,000 decrease that had initially been expected. The Georgia Energy Finance Authority grant, funded by the federal stimulus, had to be amended after some lighting improvements violated a “Buy American Act” provision and no longer qualified for reimbursement.

President Obama has declined to outline a second term agenda. He doesn't say what he would do about the fiscal cliff that looms in just a couple of months. He hasn't addressed the glaring challenge of an aging population and entitlement spending that is careening toward insolvency. (On the contrary, he has significantly hastened the emergency by piling on new entitlement spending.) He hasn't proposed policies to improve the economy. He promises nothing more on Iran than to maintain ineffective sanctions. We can glean this much: He'd like to hire 100,000 new teachers and he wants to raise taxes on...

....So far, 36 companies that have received federal support from taxpayers have either gone bankrupt or are laying off workers and are heading for bankruptcy. This list includes only those companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy. The amount of money indicated does not reflect how much was actually received or spent but how much was offered. The amount also does not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies, which push the amount of money these companies have received from taxpayers even higher. The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:...

A Danish wind turbine company whose subsidiaries received over $50 million in U.S. stimulus dollars announced on Friday it has cut more than 800 jobs in the United States and Canada this year and may be forced to lay off another 800 employees in North America. This is yet another green energy company that received wasteful stimulus funds and does not even have anything to show for it. According to Reuters, Vestas, the wind turbine maker, saw its order intake go down by 24 percent during the first half of the year.

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Waltham-based electric car battery maker A123 Systems, which has received hundreds of millions in state and federal funding, expects to default today on certain debt payments and could be headed for bankruptcy, according to a document the company has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission."No assurance can be given that the company will be able to avoid restructuring, reorganization or a bankruptcy filing," the troubled firm said in a filing yesterday. A123 Systems said it expects to miss its October interest payment on $143,750,000 worth of 2016 corporate notes. The company said it also expects to miss a payment...

I missed this last week, but hey, who doesn't love being regaled with yet another example of the many ways in which the government's unceasing market interference continually goes awry? The federal government never seems to tire of fancying itself a venture capitalist with our tax dollars, no matter how many instances of hilarious ineptitude are thrown back in their face. (As ever, I only laugh to keep from weeping.)On Friday, Reuters reported that a foreign wind manufacturer with plants in the United States has decided to lay off upwards of 800 workers, due largely to uncertainty over the looming...

Remember this moment from the Romney-Obama debate last week? Mitt Romney hammered Barack Obama on green-energy subsidies and the futility of government intervention designed to distort markets:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO ROMNEY: Â… to oil, to tax breaks, then companies going overseas. So letÂ’s go through them one by one.First of all, the Department of Energy has said the tax break for oil companies is $2.8 billion a year. And itÂ’s actually an accounting treatment, as you know, thatÂ’s been in place for a hundred years. NowÂ…OBAMA: ItÂ’s time to end it.ROMNEY: And in one year, you provided $90...

The Internal Revenue Service urged a bankruptcy judge to reject solar panel maker Solyndra LLC’s bankruptcy plan Wednesday, saying it amounts to little more than an avenue for owners of an empty corporate shell to avoid paying taxes. “The undeniable conclusion is that tax benefits drive this plan,” attorneys for the IRS wrote in a bankruptcy pleading. What’s more, government attorneys said that as far back as 2010, owners had “planned meticulously” to be able to use Solyndra’s net operating losses to offset future tax liabilities. “The only reason for the shell corporation to exist post-confirmation is to enable its...

Because the Obama Department of Energy's loan-guarantee program for renewable energy startups and technologies has been such an unmitigated and resounding success, most particularly their well-trumpeted "investments" in solar-panel manufacturers, the federal government's good common sense and dispassionate judgment have proved it to be a leading force in encouraging the research and development that has made these environmentalist-preferred technologies such viable and competitive substitutes for traditional energies. What's more, these promising new industries have created untold productive, private-sector jobs, and the taxpayer has seen a healthy and enriching return on their initial "investments.""Just kidding ... that didn't happen. Multiple of...

Michigan would have 10,540 fewer jobs in 2025 if Proposal 3 passes in November, according to a new study on the renewable energy mandate proposal. The study, done by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Beacon Hill Institute in Massachusetts, also concluded that Prop 3 would lower disposable income in Michigan by $1.42 billion; reduce net investment in the state by $147 million and impose net costs on the Michigan economy of $2.55 billion. "Our study also indicates that even if voters reject Proposal 3, Michigan residents will still bear some of these costs," David Tuerck, one of...

Wind energy equipment manufacturer Siemens Energy Inc. will lay off 615 workers in Iowa, Kansas, and Florida in part because Congress has not renewed a tax credit for wind energy, the company said Tuesday. Siemens said the biggest job losses will come in Fort Madison, Iowa, where 407 workers at a wind-turbine blade factory will be out of work. About 220 workers will be retained at the plant to support ongoing operations, spokeswoman Melanie Forbrick said in a statement. About 146 workers are affected in Hutchinson, Kan., leaving 152 still working. In Orlando, Fla., about 62 workers will lose their...

Extraordinarily smart people at the California Air Resources Board have taken to using the term "leakage" as they go about devising the experimental cap and trade system for reducing greenhouse gases. Homer Perez, head boiler mechanic at Pacific Coast Producers' tomato cannery off East Main Street in Woodland, might use a word that is more familiar to the rest of us: "layoff." The cannery has been operating under one owner or another since the 1920s. A cooperative of 16 growers in Yolo, Solano and Sutter counties owns it now. Perez has worked there for 28 of the past 29 years....

The Michigan Environmental Council exaggerated in a press release the number of jobs that would be created by the renewable energy ballot proposal when it erroneously cited how a Michigan State University report calculated jobs. The Michigan Environmental Council’s press release said that the Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs renewable energy ballot proposal would create 74,495 jobs. However, the report never said it would create 74,495 jobs, but instead said it would create that many "job years." It's an important distinction in economic analysis that the MSU report acknowledges. For example, a person hired by a green company who worked for...

Several months ago it seemed that not a day could pass without someone, somewhere making fun of GM's biggest post-bankruptcy flaming failure to date: the Chevy Volt (gross and net of channel stuffing). Of course, since it was all in the name of ecological progress and carbon footprint reduction, most media observers let it go as merely one of the peculiar hurdles on the way to an utopian future in which America would no longer rely on crude imports from evil petroleum cartels. The time has come to redirect ridicule to that other $102,00+ MSRP object of electric aspiration, and...

Former Evergreen Solar CEO Richard Feldt’s five-bedroom, two-plus acre Hingham pad is on the market for $9.9 million, nearly $1.4 million more than what the company’s Devens factory sold for earlier this year. The Bare Cove Lane property also boasts four bathrooms, a pool, stone terrace and 200 feet of frontage on Hingham Harbor, according to a real estate listing. “The natural light is incredible. The views are spectacular. The finishes and millwork are masterful,” the listing says. “Rarely does a home of this caliber become available for sale.” Feldt, who left Evergreen Solar in 2010 to become CEO of...

Those who understand that America is now on the wrong track cannot reasonably vote for Obama in November, because he is absolutely unwilling to change, perhaps even ideologically incapable of changing, course. Evidence abounds. First, consider his disastrous economic record and his rejection of any semblance of a course change. He and his economic advisers told us his stimulus would keep unemployment below 8 percent. It didn't. He didn't consider for a second that his policies exacerbated the economic crisis. He blamed Bush and said that if anything, he -- Obama -- hadn't spent enough. He demanded more stimulus packages...

A Chinese auto parts company, Wanxiang, has come to the rescue of cash-strapped A123 Systems, an American high-tech lithium-ion battery maker and centerpiece of the Obama administration’s “green jobs” revolution. Wanxiang can acquire up to an 80% of the company in return for an investment of up to $450 million. The recipient of a $249 million “green technology” grant from our federal government, A123, believing their own (and everyone else’s) hype about the millions of electric vehicles that would soon be filling the nation’s highways (it will happen, but not soon) set about proving an old adage: stupidity and waste...

Full Title:**********************$1.3 billion in ‘clean energy’ subsidies produce 288 permanent jobs, quadruple cost of electricity in Nevada Reid-sponsored National Clean Energy Summit pushes more subsidies as key to Nevada’s futureLAS VEGAS — As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prepares to host his fifth annual National Clean Energy Summit on Aug. 7, a Nevada Journal examination of Nevada’s renewable energy sector shows that over $1.3 billion in federal funds funneled into geothermal, solar and wind projects since 2009 has yielded and is projected to yield just 288 permanent, full-time jobs. That’s an initial cost of over $4.6 million per job.Despite...

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Eric Whitaker, one of President Obama’s closest friends. The Urban Health Initiative, which received the award, was originally based on a smaller program launched during the last decade by Michelle Obama, who was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she departed to become first lady. The UHI is headed up by Obama basketball and golf buddy Whitaker, who has known the president since Obama’s...