As President Obama crafts next week’s unemployment speech to Congress, he would do well to avoid a “green jobs” pitch — given what just happened to Solyndra, a Silicon Valley-based maker of solar panels that was the White House’s showcase enviro-project.
Solar paneling is so green that it practically carries the Al Gore seal of approval.
And Solyndra was such a White House favorite — it was producing “shovel ready” jobs — that the firm got $535 million in federal loan guarantees as part of the Obama stimulus effort.
(Funny, but no one ever mentioned that Solyndra’s chief investors included billionaire George Kaiser — one of Obama’s key 2008 campaign donors and bundlers.)
But there’s news from Silicon Valley: Solyndra just went belly-up.
Instead of job creation, 1,100 employees have just lost their jobs.
And guess who’s on the hook for that half-billion in loan guarantees?
You are — that is, if you pay US taxes.
Actually, from the outset, both House Republicans and the General Accounting Office questioned the wisdom of Solyndra’s guarantees — especially given the company’s inability to raise outside (that is, nontaxpayer) capital.
Now the House Energy and Commerce Committee is demanding that the White House turn over all communications with Solyndra and its investors — including Kaiser — and correctly so.
None of this really should surprise, though.
Seems a $20 million weatherization grant for the city of Seattle — announced last year by Vice President Joe Biden at the White House — that was supposed to create 2,000 “living wage” jobs and retrofit 2,000 homes has been a similar bust.
More than a year later, only 14 jobs have been created under that grant — and they’re all administrative. And only three homes have been weatherized.
That’s $6.66 million per house — a great boondoggle if you can pull it off.
Then again, the Obama administration’s entire green-jobs initiative has been a massive boondoggle.
As The New York Times reported last month, Obama’s grand plan to create 5 million green jobs over 10 years has turned into an enormous “pipe dream.”
In California, for example, the environmental sector has actually lost jobs, not gained them.
Which raises serious questions about this administration’s ability to come up with any kind of plan that will productively address America’s unemployment crisis.
Obama’s Thursday speech presumably will answer some of those questions. For sure, America will be paying close attention.