This green jobs thing, has got to be the worst waste of our money I have ever seen happen twice. That’s right, twice. This happened before, and once it finishes happening this time it will have happened twice. It is an example of pushing the wrong agenda or at best, the right agenda at the wrong time. And an example of not learning from history. And this history little more than twenty years old.
Pushing for the right change (and I suppose “change we can count on”) is critical when jobs are in need of creation. Instead of being right-minded (and I don’t mean conservative), we have a president who is pushing green jobs. President Obama is pushing for green jobs, not accomplishing what he is pushing for, and worst of all, squandering money that could have gone into creation of real jobs in the process. I doubt this point regarding poor choices thus far will be in the speech at the end of the week.
Let’s talk electric cars. Twenty years ago there was a major governmental push in California to promote electric cars. The cars existed, but as a concept they never made it. Main reason? People didn’t want to buy them, car makers didn’t want to make them, even though politicians wanted both groups to do so. Who got screwed the most? General Motors. It was their EV1 that probably lost the most money for private industry, although the electric “fueling” stations and whatnot were probably a disaster for a lot of smaller investors. And, the rest of us through government guarantees and the like.
The same thing is happening today. How are sales of the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf going? Last month (August 2011) Chevy sold 302 Volts while Nissan sold 1362 Leafs. That’s just under 1,700 vehicles. The goal is to sell half-a-million EV’s a year by 2013. The current pace? 1700 X 12 is about 20,000 cars a year. That means the current rate of sales is 4% of the goal. If it weren’t for federal stimulus money from us, the taxpayers, both of these projects would already be in the toilet.
And don’t forget the battery plant that Obama set up in Michigan to make lithium batteries for these cars. Although the Livonia plant has been in the making for years, it recently got that final starting boost thanks to $249 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE), $125 million in refundable tax credits from Michigan, and another tentative $233 million loan from the DOE. If this idea goes under again, we the people hold the bag for all of this, and Nissan can go back to making standard fueled cars in their Leaf car plant.
Who knows what Chevy will do this time. Actually, it wasn’t really their fault. They had this rammed down their throats by Obama and his henchmen, but, if they need the capacity, they can likely do the same as Nissan.
It looks as though the electric car will die again, and, it will be for the same reason. They cost too much and they don’t do enough. There is no conspiracy here. Only wasted money, our money, poor leadership from the top down, and a “soon to be” repeat of electric car history.
Everybody likes to recall Ronald Reagan, so let me recall the statement “trickle down”. Ron’s package of economic stimuli were designed to create investment and growth in the economy and those of us further down the ecomomic chain were to get the “trickle down”, which we did.
