THE GREEN ENERGY FRAUD
By
Michael S. Coffman
September 26, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
Just
like Obamacare, President Obama is committed to force us into using
green energy regardless of what the people want – or can afford.
Although U.S. reserves of oil, natural gas and coal are inexpensive
and very abundant, Obama has done all he can to shut
down every plan to develop these sources of economically cheap energy.
Obama
even defied a court order requiring the Department of Interior grant
deep water drilling permits for oil. Meanwhile, Cuba contracted several
companies, including China, to conduct exploratory drilling
within 60 miles of the Florida coast; something Obama would not
let U.S. companies do. By the end of 2011, Cuba
had brought in a Chinese deep water drilling rig and started drilling
some 60-70 miles from Florida.
The
EPA
is also refusing to grant new permits to open new coal mines and
has gone so far as to revoke existing permits. Once again, the federal
court ruled against the efforts of the Obama administration, in this
case the EPA, charging that the EPA
exceeded its authority under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.
One
of Obama’s most recent actions was to deny
the permit to build the XL oil pipeline from Canada down to Texas.
The pipeline would have delivered 1.2 million barrels of oil a day;
the amount of oil the U.S. currently gets from Saudi Arabia, and 46
percent more than all the wind and solar energy currently produced in
the U.S. each day. This has led energy-sector
executives to suspect the administration “is at war with American
energy.”
While
Obama gives lip service to reducing the dependence of the U.S. on foreign
energy and create jobs, he is actually making America more dependent
on foreign energy, reducing the U.S.’s national security, while
killing hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process. It borders on
the bizarre, yet the mainstream media are strangely quiet about this
threat while promoting the president’s jobs program which even
some
Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted down.
After
spending tens of billions of dollars on subsidies to green energy wind
and solar farms Obama’s Clean Energy Program, the nation’s
dependence on green energy has barely budged, from about 1.5 percent
10 years ago to 2 percent today. Worse, in his new book, Throw Them
All Out, Peter Schweizer details how 80
percent of DOE funds for clean energy have gone to Obama backers:
This
is beyond cronyism, its raw corruption that calls into question whether
Obama is pushing green energy because he believes in it, or to pay off
his supporters with taxpayer’s money. Solyndra is a case in point.
Solyndra was Obama’s poster child for his “clean energy
initiative.” The dirty details of the Solyndra scandal trickled
out over months, in spite of the administrations herculean effort to
bury the information.
One
of the details exposed was that a DOE employee monitoring the Solyndra
loan guarantee, Steve Spinner, happened to be one
of Obama's top fundraisers. Another major Obama fundraiser, George
Keiser, had deep ties to Solyndra. His George Keiser Family Foundation’s
investment arm, Argonaut Ventures, owned a huge piece of Solyndra and
received direct political support from the Whitehouse and money from
the federal government. Argonaut’s President, Steve Mitchell,
also served on Solyndra’s board of directors.
As
the scheduled groundbreaking for Solyndra approached, a series of emails
from the Whitehouse showed the administration put intense pressure on
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to make a decision immediately
on the Solyndra loan. The Whitehouse never said what the OMB’s
decision should be, but wanted Vice President Bidden to attend the groundbreaking
ceremony as a photo op and time was running out. However, the OMB said
the Whitehouse
deadline did not give them time to do their due diligence. If they
had, perhaps the OMB would have said “no.”
Worse,
as it became clear Solyndra would fail, the DOE allowed private creditors,
including many big donors to the Democrats, to get paid first when Solyndra’s
assets were sold, in violation of the law. The investors got some of
their money back, the U.S.
taxpayer got none. Then, as layoffs became inevitable, the Energy
Department asked Solyndra to delay the announcement until after the
2010 election.[1]
Besides
the cloud of corruption, the Solyndra scandal shows why the government
shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. Not
only is wind and solar power economically ruinous, it just doesn’t
work. Simply put, wind energy only works when the wind blows, about
25 percent of the time. Likewise, solar power is even less effective
because it doesn’t work when the sun doesn’t shine or it’s
cloudy. There are a host of other technical reasons why wind and solar
won’t economically competitive with carbon-based energy on a large
scale for a long time into the future.[2]
Yet, the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to force
us to use green energy because of a proven failed ideology.
Europe
is already reeling from the realization green energy is bankrupting
them. Great
Britain estimated last summer that 25 percent of their population
already suffers from "energy poverty" as British energy costs
skyrocketed by 71 percent. British
companies are threatening to move to other countries. Some are already
moving.
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An
in-depth study in Spain found that for every job green energy creates,
2.2 are lost in the rest of the economy as the enormous subsidies required
for green energy sucks jobs out of the private sector. Research
in Italy found that they lost an incredible 6.9 jobs in the industrial
sector and 4.8 jobs across the entire economy for every green job created.
As European nation after European nation realizes the enormous costs
of alternative energy, they are shutting off their astronomic subsidies
to prop up green energy. Green energy is in a death spiral in Europe.
The
European evidence means nothing to Obama. His clean energy plan is an
utter failure that has cost the American people tens of billions of
dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of jobs, and opened the door to
what appears to be rampant corruption. Yet, the Obama administration
and the progressives in Congress continue to force-feed us its failed
policy. It’s time to say goodbye to any elected official who blindly
accepts Obama’s failed clean energy policies.
�
2012 Michael Coffman - All Rights Reserved
Footnote:
1.
Carol Leonniug and
Joe Stephens. Solyndra: Energy Dept. Pushed Firm to Keep Layoffs Quiet
Until After Midterms. Washington Post, November 15, 2011.
2.
Ibid
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