RUSH: Pittsburgh, this is Patty, great to have you on the program. Welcome.
CALLER: Rush, one of my top ten all-time favorite male names. I am so honored to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. That’s cute.
CALLER: You’re my sanity since my dad passed away. I’m just glad my dad is not alive to see this. He was a World War II vet.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: He would be sick to his stomach.
RUSH: My dad, too. I would love my dad being alive now to comment on this. I would crave that. I would love to be able to get my dad on this show as a guest. (laughing) Oh, jeez.
CALLER: I would love to hear that.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I think my dad — I look at a piece of paper every day that George Bush sent honoring him and I just thank God it’s his name on that paper not Yogi Bear because I can’t take listening to this guy anymore. He was in Pittsburgh yesterday, and he just wants to circumvent. If he can’t get things done through the Congress, he’s telling people down there to get his advisors together and they’ll do whatever they gotta do to get some of this stuff through.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: There are days I just feel like giving up. I’m 51 years old, I’ve done all the right things, and I’m unemployed now. It just breaks my heart. I go on job interviews. They say, “Well, you’re overqualified,” but then I get things in the mail for job retraining. I think, oh, my gosh, you know, this is hypocritical. They’re spending taxpayers money on this? I’m more than qualified to do anything. But it just breaks my heart. I just can’t believe it.
RUSH: Would your dad want to apologize to the Japanese like Obama?
CALLER: Oh, my gosh. I’m wondering if my dad’s turning over in his grave right now.
RUSH: I hear you. Thanks for the call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Our last caller from Pittsburgh said she’s getting things in the mail, job training, so forth. I have a story here from the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago that has not gotten any attention. “Green Jobs Brown Out — How to spend $157,000 per job.”
Now, listen to this, folks, listen to this. We’re already dumping taxpayer dollars all over a solar industry that doesn’t work. Solyndra just the tip of the iceberg. George Miller IV, the son of a big-time Democrat member of Congress from California, he got I think a billion dollars from the federal government for a solar energy firm that’s gonna make its products in Mexico. This defies explanation, what’s happening. There’s no business there, there is no industry, and this regime is continuing to funnel taxpayer dollars to a nonexistent business, solar energy and panels and so forth.
“A new report by the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General examined a $500 million grant under the stimulus program to the Employment and Training Administration to ‘train and prepare individuals for careers in “green jobs.”‘ So far about $162.8 million has been spent. The program was supposed to train 125,000 workers, but only 53,000 have been ‘trained’ so far, only 8,035 have found jobs, and only 1,033 were still in the job after six months.” So a half a billion dollars in stimulus money, Porkulus money supposed to go to jobs training for so-called green jobs. Three years later, only a third of that money has been spent, only 40% of the people who were to be trained have been trained, and only 15% of those trainees have gotten jobs, and only 12% of those people have kept the job for six months.
So all told, fewer than 1% of the people who were supposed to be put in green jobs by this green jobs training program now have jobs, and it only has cost $157,000 per job. And there’s no business there! But that’s not all. There is more. The regime has expanded the definition of green jobs now to include bus drivers. EPA regulators, university professors, that now qualifies as a green job, and therefore suitable for federal funding, even the Washington lobbyists who have been scoring these bad green energy loans. Meanwhile, Obama’s latest jobs bill asks for more of exactly the same kind of jobs training for more green jobs.
Now, the inspector general who uncovered this latest fraud says the still unspent money from the green jobs training program should go to reduce the deficit. He doesn’t realize that this leftover stimulus money was always meant to be left over. It was always meant to be unspent. This is the slush fund. This is Obama’s stash, the unspent stimulus money meant to provide the regime with their walking-around money for the 2012 elections. This is Obama’s stash. All under the guise of job training for green jobs. And again the numbers, supposed to train 125,000, and now, after six months, only 1,033 are still on the job. And the number is gonna fall because there is no green industry.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Ryan in Princeton, New Jersey. Glad you waited, sir, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you today?
RUSH: Good. Thanks much.
CALLER: I just had a comment when you were talking about the green business and the jobs. I disagree with you. I’m an attorney up in New Jersey. I specialize in the solar industry, and there’s definitely a green business and a green industry, but where you are right is there’s not specialized jobs. If you’ve ever been to one of these plants that manufacture solar panels, for example, it requires two people to operate. It’s very automated, and most of the people that are working in the green business, the green industry that’s up here, have skill sets that are transferable, they’re electricians that simply now work in the solar field but they’re skilled electricians so there’s a green business but it doesn’t create specialized jobs that require all sorts of specialized training and things like that.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I think that’s important to differentiate.
RUSH: All right, I’ll take that. Tell me, though, ’cause I need to learn, ’cause I’m a skeptic. When it comes to out of the mouth of a Democrat, my first reaction is to think that it’s absolute poop, so tell me what is a green job. I’m not challenging. I’m curious. Of all the jobs, give me a green job. See, I’m under the impression that a green job is something we didn’t have before, a green job is a new kind of job. What is a green job?
CALLER: See, there I agree with you. There isn’t really a green job. It’s just a job that happens to be in the green industry.
RUSH: Okay, what’s the green industry?
CALLER: If you’re involved in the industry that deals with renewable energy such as wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, that’s an industry that deals with renewable energy sources.
RUSH: Is there such a thing scientifically as renewable energy?
CALLER: I guess it’s a nomenclature to describe that the source, for example, for solar is infinite. Assuming the sun rises tomorrow there will be a source to take the power from the sun and convert it into power, electricity. So it’s renewable in the sense that it’s renewable on an annual basis as the earth rotates and the sun rises and sets every day.
RUSH: Sort of like when a cow eats, chews its cud and drops a load, then that fertilizes the hay.
CALLER: That’s exactly right. As long as the cow stays alive and it’s got stuff to chew and then things operate properly so he’s not sick, that should happen on a daily basis, yes.
RUSH: Okay, so we all then do what the cow does. As long as we’re alive we’re all engaging in renewable energy.
CALLER: Yes, that is correct.
RUSH: Okay. Well, that helps. ‘Cause you talk nomenclature or whatever, it’s all just bogus and it’s the attempt by the regime to make people think that there is some magical energy source that is never dirty, that is always plentiful, that does not destroy the planet. It’s all pipe dream. And then of course you got the wild-eyed utopian idealists thinking all this stuff is possible, and they don’t understand really the ingenuity and hard work that’s responsible for the energy that we have now, which is inseparable from our freedom and liberty. I appreciate the call, Ryan, I really do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, that’s a good point. Green jobs are just government jobs. There are no green jobs in the private sector ’cause there’s no business there. There’s not a profitable business there. (interruption) Oh? The CEO of Solyndra, Brian Harrison, resigned last Friday, disclosed in court filings, Washington Post. Resigned from what? Well, I know, but they filed for bankruptcy. Okay, I’ll accept it. Brian Harrison has resigned as CEO of Solyndra. So that frees him up to work full time on Obama’s reelect. See how this works?
Speaking of all this, there’s a great piece by Robert Bryce at National Review Online yesterday. “America’s Worst Wind-Energy Project — Wind-energy proponents admit they need lots of spin to overwhelm the truly informed.” You read this and you’re assaulted with — I guess the shock — can’t even get your whole brain around the massive misuse of federal money that we have going to the guys in green energy. It’s one of the biggest slush funds that has ever been created by a politician for himself.
“The more people know about the wind-energy business, the less they like it,” says Mr. Bryce, “And when it comes to lousy wind deals –” now, this is gonna blow your mind — ” General ElectricÂ’s Shepherds Flat project in northern Oregon is a real stinker. IÂ’ll come back to the GE project momentarily. Before getting to that, please ponder that first sentence. [Wind-energy proponents admit they need lots of spin to overwhelm the truly informed.] It sounds like a claim made by an anti-renewable-energy campaigner. ItÂ’s not. Instead, that rather astounding admission was made by a communications strategist during a March 23 webinar sponsored by the American Council on Renewable Energy called ‘Speaking Out on Renewable Energy: Communications Strategies for the Renewable Energy Industry.'” And they admit they need lots of spin to overwhelm people who really know what’s going on.
“During the webinar, Justin Rolfe-Redding, a doctoral student from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University –” now stop and think of that, the Center for Climate Change Communication, a propaganda department at George Mason University “– discussed ways for wind-energy proponents to get their message out to the public. Rolfe-Redding said that polling data showed that ‘after reading arguments for and against wind, wind lost support.’ He went on to say that concerns about wind energyÂ’s cost and its effect on property values ‘crowded out climate change’ among those surveyed.
“The most astounding thing to come out of Rolfe-ReddingÂ’s mouth — and yes, I heard him say it myself — was this: ‘The things people are educated about are a real deficit for us.'” The wind energy proponent, the PR guy, the strategist, said, “‘The things people are educated about are a real deficit for us.’ After the briefings on the pros and cons of wind, said Rolfe-Redding, ‘enthusiasm decreased for wind. ThatÂ’s a troubling finding.’ The solution to these problems, said Rolfe-Redding, was to ‘weaken counterarguments’ against wind as much as possible. He suggested using ‘inoculation theory’ by telling people that ‘wind is a clean source, it provides jobs’ and adding that ‘itÂ’s an investment in the future.’ He also said that proponents should weaken objections by ‘saying prices are coming down every day.’
“ItÂ’s remarkable to see how similar the arguments being put forward by wind-energy proponents are to those that the Obama administration is using to justify its support of Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar company that got a $529 million loan guarantee from the federal government. But in some ways, the government support for the Shepherds Flat deal is worse than what happened with Solyndra. The majority of the funding for the $1.9 billion, 845-megawatt Shepherds Flat wind project in Oregon is coming courtesy of federal taxpayers.” Two billion, forget solar; now we’re on to wind. Two billion for the Shepherds Flat wind project
“That largesse will provide a windfall for General Electric and its partners on the deal who include Google, Sumitomo, and Caithness Energy. Not only is the Energy Department giving GE and its partners a $1.06 billion loan guarantee, but as soon as GEÂ’s 338 turbines start turning at Shepherds Flat, the Treasury Department will send the project developers a cash grant of $490 million. The deal was so lucrative for the project developers that last October, some of ObamaÂ’s top advisers, including energy-policy czar Carol Browner and economic adviser Larry Summers, wrote a memo saying that the projectÂ’s backers had ‘little skin in the game’ while the government would be providing ‘a significant subsidy (65+ percent).’ The memo goes on to say that, while the project backers would only provide equity equal to about 11 percent of the total cost of the wind project, they would receive an ‘estimated return on equity of 30 percent.'”
Now, wait. It gets better. “The Obama administrationÂ’s loan guarantee for the now-bankrupt Solyndra has garnered lots of attention, but the Shepherds Flat deal is an even better example of corporate welfare. Several questions are immediately obvious: First: Why, as Browner and Summers asked, is the federal government providing loan guarantees and subsidies for an energy project that could easily be financed by GE, which has a market capitalization of about $170 billion?” Why are they being given two billion?
“Second: Why is the Obama administration providing subsidies to GE, which paid little or no federal income taxes last year even though it generated some $5.1 billion in profits from its U.S. operations? Third: How is it that GEÂ’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, can be the head of the PresidentÂ’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness while his company is paying little or no federal income taxes? That question is particularly germane as the president never seems to tire of bashing the oil and gas industry for what he claims are the industryÂ’s excessive tax breaks.
“A few months ago, I ran into Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy. I asked him why Duke — which has about 14,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation capacity — was investing in wind9energy projects. The answer, said Rogers forthrightly, was simple: The subsidies available for wind projects allow Duke to earn returns on equity of 17 to 22 percent.” So my point, green jobs are government jobs, and the government is funding and subsidizing already wealthy corporations and then giving them a large return on their profit. Immelt may as well be in the same bed as Obama is in. “In other words, Shepherds Flat is adding yet more wind turbines to a region that has been overwhelmed this year by excess electrical generation capacity from renewables. And that region will now have to spending huge sums of money building new transmission capacity to export its excess electricity.”
As Robert Bryce said, “The more people know about the wind-energy business, the less they like it.” It isn’t a business. It’s a government-subsidized slush fund. Take Solyndra and multiply it, and then add General Electric to it. Seriously, folks, what is a company that has a market cap of $170 billion doing getting $2 billion basically gratis to invest in wind turbines? Well, the answer is obvious. I remember Robert Mosbacher was a friend of mine. He was the commerce secretary during Bush 41, and that was ’88 to ’92. And ’88 to ’92, the high definition television business was in its infancy. And back in those days, the Japanese were way ahead of us, HDTV.
Domestic American manufacturers went to Mosbacher, the Commerce Department, and sought subsidies for the development of HDTV. And Mosbacher told ’em no, that’s not what we’re in business to do. You say what you want about Bush 41 and all that, but I’ll never forget, I was watching Mosbacher, it was back on Lou Dobbs’ old CNN show on CNN, six o’clock at night, they were talking about this. I remember Mosbacher came under a lot of criticism. “Well, how come the government will not help its own domestic industry in competition with the Japanese?” And Mosbacher’s answer was, “If they don’t have the money on their own they shouldn’t be getting into it.” It’s just that simple. Mosbacher would be run out of town on a rail today,
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