Greg welcomes guests Eric Metaxas and Jedediah Bila.
Young People Hit Especially Hard by Bad Obama Economy
Despite the White House spin about how many "new" jobs Obama has created, The Atlantic is still warning that this economy is not in good shape, especially for young people. Young people are finding lower-paying jobs of lesser quality, which is preventing them from buying homes and shoring up the still flailing Obama economy.
As most Old Media outlets jumped to the "good" news on jobs growth being pushed by the White House this week, The Atlantic's Derek Thompson points out that young people are not sharing in this economic "improvement."
"The number of young adults making less than $25,000 has increased by six million," Thompson writes. "The number of young adults making more than $25,000 has declined by almost two million."
This is bad for growth, tends to discourage young people from starting families in their youth, and is particularly bad for the housing sector, as young people find themselves unable to afford a home.
Thompson notes that the Obama economy has "slashed median incomes to historic lows for households led by Americans aged 25 to 54."
But it isn't just young people this bad economy is hurting. The recent BLS report finds that full-time jobs have plunged by over half a million jobs, while part-time jobs have surged by 800 thousand since 1993.
This means that despite Obama's claim that he has "created jobs," in truth, the jobs created are the kind that promise little disposable income and offer no career growth.
Worse, for the 49th time in the last 50 months, more people have given up looking for a job than found one.
So, while the Obama administration and its mouthpieces in the media are going to be touting the factoid that "Obama created 288,000 new jobs," the fact is, at the same time, we've lost 523,000 full-time jobs.
Also read: Record Number of Women Not in Labor Force in June
According to the Institute for Energy Research, the Department of Energy has spent nearly $26.32 billion since 2009 on its Section 1703 and 1705 loan programs. However, these two programs only yielded 2,308 permanent jobs - meaning the cost to taxpayers was $11.45 million per job.
As the astronomical cost of the DOE's loan guarantee program indicates, subsidizing renewable energy is not a good deal for taxpayers. But loan guarantees are just one of the ways the federal government bankrolls risky green energy projects. Energy-related tax preferences cost taxpayers about $13.5 billion in FY 2012, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. But solar and wind power, for which the majority of the tax preferences for renewable energy were directed, produced only 3.6 percent of the nation’s generation in 2012. In addition, the Treasury Department's 1603 grant program, which offers cash payments to renewable energy companies, cost taxpayers $5.8 billion in 2012. Many states also subsidize green energy through tax preferences as well as requiring renewable electricity mandates that require a specified amount of electricity to be generated from qualified renewable sources like wind and solar.
Clearly, in terms of "bang for the buck," government programs that coddle renewable energy are losers. In terms of jobs, the losers are the American workers who would otherwise be gainfully employed but for the tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars on the administration's obsession with "green energy." As the economy continues to suffer and dollars for federal programs get harder to come by, it is getting increasingly difficult to defend a program that costs so much and produces so little.
The Daily Caller reports that House Republicans recently questioned the Energy Department's estimates of green jobs that were created from its controversial Section 1705 loan program which gave money to the now bankrupt Solyndra.
"Unfortunately, based on Committee staff's review of the redacted annual loan reviews for each project, it appears that these job estimates have failed to materialize, in part, due to the aforementioned bankruptcies and the precarious financial positions of certain other projects," Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote to the Energy Department.
Solyndra was the first major loan guarantee failure, and filed for bankruptcy in August 2011 after receiving a $528 million loan guarantee. According to the DOE's loan programs website, none of that money has been recovered.
One of Solyndra's primary investors was billionaire George Kaiser, also an Obama supporter. Kaiser along with other Solyndra executives and board members donated $87,050 total to the president’s election campaign.
The loss to tax payers could have been even greater. While Solyndra actually received $528 million it was offered $535 million.
Democrat cronyism also reared it's ugly head in the matter of Abound Solar, which filed for bankruptcy last year after drawing down $68 million on a $400 million DOE loan guarantee. An early investor in Abound was Obama bundler Pat Stryker who has given more than $440,000 to Democratic groups and candidates in the last three elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
A Daily Caller News Foundation investigation later revealed that Abound was selling underperforming solar panels. According to a source at Abound, "Our solar modules worked...as long as you didn’t put them in the sun." The DOE has only recovered between $7.4 million and $25.6 million on the failed loan - meaning at least $42.4 million in taxpayer funds was never recovered.
As of last October, 33 "green energy" companies that were offered federal support from taxpayers were faltering - either having gone bankrupt or laying off workers or heading for bankruptcy. The list includes only those companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy and other agencies. The amount of money indicated does not reflect how much was actually received or spent but how much was offered. The amount also does not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies, which push the amount of money these companies have received from taxpayers even higher.
1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*
5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)
7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)
10. Amonix ($5.9 million)
11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*
13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
16. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
17. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
18. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
19. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
20. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
21. Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
22. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
23. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
24. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
25. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
26. GreenVolts ($500,000)
27. Vestas ($50 million)
28. LG Chem’s subsidiary, Compact Power ($151 million)
29. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
30. Navistar ($39 million)
31. Satcon ($3 million)*
32. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
33. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)
*Denotes companies that had filed for bankruptcy as of October, 2012.
