There are quite a few lessons to learn from all the “green” failures with all of the Obama stimulus’. Don’t dump massive amounts of money via federal loans that don’t get repaid, especially when they leave huge environmental messes, and fail to produce what they say they will. Don’t dump money into things like weatherization which are rife with fraud, don’t work, and end up helping people who can afford it themselves. They don’t actually stimulate the economy (they do stimulate the pockets of rich people, especially those who donate to Dems). I’m sure you can think of plenty more. It was three years of failure. Even the hard left and climate cult UK Guardian was unimpressed. But, hey, let’s double down, right?
Biden’s Lesson From Past Green Stimulus Failures: Go Even Bigger
In September 2009, then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to a defunct General Motors plant near his hometown, Wilmington, Delaware, to announce a $528.7 million government loan for Fisker Automotive to make hybrid and electric vehicles.
The funding for Fisker, a small luxury automaker, came out of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a $787 billion economic stimulus plan secured by President Barack Obama to lift the nation out of the Great Recession, in part by creating “green jobs†with $90 billion for wind and solar energy, a “smart†power grid, weatherized homes and the electric vehicle industry.
What happened to Fisker, a car maker for the uber-rich?
Fisker went bankrupt in 2013 before the Wilmington factory produced a single car. Biden also personally announced a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, a California solar panel company that then went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers on the hook. An advanced battery maker called A123 Systems, which Obama extolled as part of a vanguard of a new American electric car industry, received a $249 million stimulus grant, then filed for bankruptcy in 2012, the vanguard that wasn’t.
Oops?
Now, 12 years later, President Biden is preparing the details of a new, vastly larger, economic stimulus plan that again would use government spending to unite the goals of fighting climate change and restoring the economy. While clean energy spending was just a fraction of the Obama stimulus, Biden wants to make it the centerpiece of his proposal for trillions of dollars, not billions, on government grants, loans, and tax incentives to spark renewable power, energy efficiency and electric car production.
Yeah, let’s spend more money on stuff that doesn’t work, doesn’t stimulate the economy, but, is good at hooking up the rich and Biden donors, eh?
Biden’s advisers, many of whom worked on the Obama stimulus, say the situation is very different. The market demand for electric vehicles is much higher, and the cost of the cars much lower than in 2009, the year after Tesla Motors produced its first roadster. Solar power is more economically competitive. Wind is entrenched and expanding rapidly.
The market demand for rich people. Not so much for the middle class and poor.
Anyhow, it’s a long piece. Dems want to spend a lot of money which will do little, just like with the whole 1st 2009 Stimulus.
Read: China Joe Takes Wrong Lesson From Previous Green Stimulus Failures »
A joint World Health Organization-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is “extremely unlikely,†according to a draft copy obtained by The Associated Press.
Climate change poses significant dangers to global food supplies as rising temperatures make storage more difficult, The Associated Press reports.
In a new study from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, experts report that ignoring the signs of climate change will lead to “ultra-extreme†heatwaves in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that are extremely damaging to human health and society.
Dr. Bindi J. Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric trauma surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital who grew tired of seeing toddlers die of gunshot wounds, has a $684,000 federal grant to track every gun-related death and injury in Houston. The goal: identify and address “hot spots†the way public health researchers track and contain the coronavirus.
Both these changes and many others will be necessary over the next 25 years if Scotland is to meet its targets for reducing emissions.
The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials — often referred to as “vaccine passports†— that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen.
