Stimulus: Obama Spends $1.85 Billion To Create 85 “Green” Jobs
A week ago I posted about the Obama administration spending $2 billion to create 3,500 jobs, with only 1,500 of those jobs being permanent. Clearly, even if we were to stipulate that government deficit spending on loans for industry that only exists because of additional government subsidies is sound economic policy (it isn’t), this is a rather inefficient level of job creation.
But John McCormack has drilled down a little deeper on this spending, and found that the majority of it is going to a Spanish company called Abenoga Solar to create just 85 jobs:
…President Obama announced in his July 3 weekly address that the federal government will back nearly $2 billion in loans to two solar power companies as part of its “green jobs” and stimulus programs. The $2 billion is supposed to produce 5,100 jobs–but most of them are only temporary construction jobs. A company called Abound Solar claims its $400 million loan will produce 1,500 permanent jobs in Colorado and Indiana, and–this is a fact Obama conveniently left out of his remarks–the $1.45 billion loan to the Spanish company Abengoa Solar will only produce 85 permanent jobs. That’s right: 85. I’m not cutting off any zeros.
But it gets worse. According to the Weekly Standard, it turns out that the VP for marketing at Abound Solar just happens to be the son of Representative Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania who sits on a House Subcommittee on Government Sponsored Enterprises. Which would be ironic if it weren’t so skeezey.
And this isn’t the first time Rep. Kanjorski’s son fleeced the taxpayers for big money:
Russell Kanjorski, the vice president for marketing at Abound Solar, was one of the principals in another energy company in northeast Pennsylvania, called Cornerstone Technologies LLC, which attracted $9 million in federal grants before it halted operations in 2003 and later filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. As reported by the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, “Cornerstone reported $14,100 in assets compared with $1.34 million in debt” in its bankruptcy filing. The $9 million in federal grants to Cornerstone were earmarked by Kanjorski’s uncle, Representative Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises.
By the way, if Abound Solar defaults on its government loans guess who gets to pay back 80% of them?
The taxpayers. Of course “pay back” is a misnomer in this instance. It was our money to begin with. So it’ll just be gone.
Hope for change.
Tags: abenoga solar, abound solar, Barack Obama, big green, Economy, jobs, paul kanjorski, Stimulus