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The bureaucracy’s analysis of green jobs leaves a lot to be desired. No, really. Like a million monkeys pounding on keyboards, even the Beltway occasionally produces something Shakespearean, and fortunate indeed we are to be alive in the summer of 2013, as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report (PDF) announcing that the “[Department of] Labor’s Green Jobs Efforts Highlight Challenges of Targeted Training Programs for Emerging Industries.”B-O-R-I-N-G, you say? You are oh, so wrong. GAO was happy to translate that bureaucratese right up front: “Of the $595 million identified by Labor as having been appropriated or allocated...

Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia and former owner of an electric car company now under federal investigation, once paid a visit with three other advisers to the same White House “green energy” official who helped secure more than $500 million in guaranteed loans for Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar panel manufacturer backed by a prominent Barack Obama fundraiser. White House visitor records reviewed by Watchdog.org indicate that McAuliffe met with Greg Nelson, the former associate director for energy, environment and technology, at the White House on October 13, 2010. While the substance of the meeting is unknown,...

It’s not rocket science. If energy costs more, that means we have to make do with less of it, or make do with less of something else. Thus if the government forces everyone to pay more for electricity, companies have less spare cash to employ people. Their margins are tighter, they can’t make and sell as many products. So when we are told the clean energy revolution is creating jobs, is it virtually self-evident that’s a mythical fairy claim.I say “virtually”, because it is theoretical possible it could work, but only if this green power provided some productivity or...

Mark it down: the report this month about the shutdown of Vehicle Production Group – beneficiary of a $50-million stimulus loan from theDepartment of Energy – means theAdvanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing initiative within the Loan Program Office has been a thorough failure. All five ATVM recipients, awarded a total of $8.4 billion of taxpayer-backed financing under theRecovery Act, have earned derision to some degree. Most fit into the already much-ridiculed electric vehicles program. VPG was funded to produce wheelchair-accessible passenger vehicles that ran on compressed natural gas. The recipients range from the start-ups (Fisker Automotive,Tesla and VPG) to the established...

“Without much fanfare, the Department of Energy (DOE) recently updated the list of loan guarantee projects on its website,” the Institute for Energy Research noticed on Wednesday. ”Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama pledged to create 5 million jobs over 10 years by directing taxpayer funds toward renewable energy projects, there were no press conferences or stump speeches.” Uh-oh. Why weren’t there any celebrations? President Obama loves a good celebration. Why, we just found out about the super-secret star-studded bash he held after his inauguration. Maybe it’s because the IER divided the $26 billion spent on “green jobs” by the...

While hindsight may always be 20/20, foresight should be pretty clear in many instances as well. The Fisker failure was one of these times. Many saw the folly in spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to support the green debacle. In fact, the Associated Press has reported that even the Obama Administration had warning of the Fisker loan risks back in April of 2010 when the Energy Department began emailing their concerns. Congress will be holding hearings starting today to address the scandalous waste of taxpayer money on Fisker. Reuters states one of the goals of the hearing, "'The...

By itself, Terry McAuliffe’s failure to announce his resignation as chairman of GreenTech Automotive Inc. would not raise many eyebrows. But when the news was reported last week — four months after McAuliffe quietly resigned — it added to questions about the gubernatorial candidate’s ties to the electric car company he founded in 2009, and claims he has made about it on the campaign trail. McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee by default, promotes himself as a job-creating entrepreneur. He has used GreenTech to try to burnish that image. He should have a clear explanation why GreenTech chose Mississippi, not Virginia, for...

Turn over any green-energy rock, and wiggling underneath will be the usual creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts. Add to this the Clintons, Mississippi and a murky visa program, and you've got a particularly ripe political embarrassment for Terry McAuliffe. Everyone remember The Macker? Best Friend of Bill. Chairman of Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign. Famed money-tree shaker. Former Democratic Party chief. Failed 2009 contender for the Virginia governorship but now back as the party's nominee for that position in this fall's election. Oh—and in Mr. McAuliffe's words—"a Virginia businessman" intent on "creating jobs." Or at least that was...

April 3, 2013 Feds look closer at cash source in McAuliffe car scam By Kenric Ward | Watchdog.org GONE AND DOWNSIZED: Though it’s still listed as their corporate address, GreenTech Automotive and Gulf Coast Funds Management moved out of their spacious headquarters office next to the Ritz Carlton in McLean. (Photo: Pamela Mullin) MCLEAN, Va. — A federal program that awards U.S. citizenship to foreigners in exchange for business investments is under increasing scrutiny as the assets of a Chicago company were frozen by the Securities and Exchange Commission.A Watchdog investigation found that Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe and...

President Obama ’s alternative energy “stimulus,” administered through hisDepartment of Energy by previous SecretarySteven Chu, had already become a joke because of the failures and foibles of so many recipients of Recovery Act funds. But now – as though officially commemorating the absurdity of this historically bad U.S. government program – one of its bankrupt beneficiaries has changed its name from one of simplicity to one of mockery. Electric vehicle battery maker A123 Systems has changed its name to B456 Systems. Incorporated. Reporting the development, headline writers across the nation rubbed their eyes, double-checked the wire information, and then...

Bad Data: As yet another Solyndra looms, a new government report shows that by the government's own broad definition of a green job, more can be found in a coal mine than near a solar panel. The second annual Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report on "Employment in Green Goods and Services," released Tuesday, will be the last, allegedly a casualty of the same sequestration that claimed the White House tours and may doom the Easter egg hunt on the White House lawn. That is probably a good thing, for if it were published as a book, it would deserve...

This comes as no surprise to Hot Air readers, who learned about the value of the Obama administration’s $150 million subsidy investment of LG Chem last fall. After furloughing its workers at their Grand Rapids plant without having a single one of their batteries installed in a consumer vehicle, the local NBC affiliate produced this report on the way taxpayer money got spent:

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration's electric car efforts took another hit on Wednesday after a federal inspection found a South Korean advanced battery maker never scaled up U.S. production despite receiving $142 million in federal grants. A Holland, Mich., factory owned by LG Chem Ltd., part of LG Corp., was half-funded by a government grant and estimated to add some 440 jobs building battery cells for General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet Volt and other vehicles. When demand for the plant's batteries didn't meet expectations, the company filled orders with cells made at a factory in South Korea, leaving the Michigan plant largely idle,...

SolarCity US DOE loan approval fails According to news reports, US-based solar installation firm, SolarCity will not be able to complete and comply with documentation deadlines of September 30th to be considered for a US Department of Energy loan, previously announced. Earlier this month, the DOE had made a conditional commitment for a partial loan guarantee to SolarCity for PV system installations on residential and other buildings at US military bases. The US$344 million loan would go towards 371MW of new solar power generation capacity. The project, code named SolarStrong, will be led by SolarCity, with USRG Renewable Finance acting...

“Employees at bicycle shops have green jobs,” economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth points out in a Capital Research Center study. “So do workers at antique dealers, at the Salvation Army used clothing recycling centers, and at used record stores, because used items count as recycled goods.” Furchtgott-Roth testified at a congressional hearing in June that examined the definition of “green jobs.” “As a witness at the hearing, I explained that, because the white paper cup placed before me on the table had a ‘Power to Save Energy’ logo, employees who produced it had green jobs,” she recalls. “The product met the BLS...

Is Obama Always Faithful to our Marines? The current political winds in Washington, DC, have dictated that less will be spent on the various Branches of the Armed Forces of the Unites States. Case in point: the Commander-in-Chief has decided to fire 20,000 of our U.S. Marines. In an article published by San Diego, California's North County Times, ironically on Thanksgiving Day, Military Affairs reporter Gretel C. Kovach cites; "The Corps is shrinking by 20,000 Marines, to 182,100." The North County Times also cited that America's premier fighting force is; "scraping to repair or replace battle-worn equipment." In spite of...

Welcome to a magical world in which the scientific challenges to green energy have been resolved and renewable energy makes economic sense for the United States. Even in such a highly theoretical country, it is unlikely that green energy projects would make much headway due to a ‘green versus green’ regulatory structure where local environmentalist groups battle alternative energy projects, contend two authors in a recent Heritage Foundation presentation of their new book. “Most of the research for this was funded actually by the Department of Energy in a 2010 grant to look at [alternative] energy,” says Ryan M. Yonk,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A $500-million "green jobs" program to train U.S. workers for new jobs and help spark recovery from the great recession has fallen far short of its goals, according to a report from the Labor Department's internal watchdog released on Friday. As of June 30, fewer than 31,000 people who went through training programs got green jobs, only 38 percent of what had been projected, the department's Inspector General said in the report. Of those workers, less than 12,000 kept these jobs for more than six months, a mere 16 percent of what organizations that got grants had...

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...