No Batteries, Just Playtime: Another $150M Strike for Green-Tech Stimulus
In 2011, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy just two years after receiving a $535 million loan from the Department of Energy.
Now another green-jobs grant is under the microscope after the Department of Energy’s inspector general confirmed reports that another recipient of stimulus funding wasted taxpayer dollars by letting employees play games and watch movies while basic project goals fell by the wayside.
In February 2010, LG Chem Michigan Inc., a subsidiary of the Korean corporation, was awarded more than $150 million in Recovery Act funding to help construct a $304 million manufacturing plant in Holland, Mich., for lithium-ion polymer batteries to be used in electric cars. The goal was to manufacture enough electric-car batteries to equip 60,000 vehicles annually by the end of this year.
The inspector general received a complaint from a local news investigation team in October 2012 alleging that stimulus funds were being misused. An investigation found this to be true.
“Through interviews with LG Chem Michigan management and other staff, we confirmed that employees spent time volunteering at local non-profit organizations, playing games and watching movies during regular working hours,” states the report from IG Gregory H. Friedman, released just hours after President Obama called for more green-tech spending in the State of the Union.
“We were unable to calculate the exact loss to the Government because LG Chem Michigan did not track labor activities in detail. However, based on LG Chem Michigan employee revelations regarding work habits, we believe it is likely that the total amount of charges that included at least some non-productive work exceeded $1.6 million, about $842,000 of which was reimbursed by the Department in accordance with its cost-sharing arrangement for the project.”
While employees were goofing off, the plant hadn’t even reached the capability to manufacture batteries beyond test cells that couldn’t be sold to the public. Company officials, though, told investigators that production hadn’t begun “because demand for the Chevrolet Volt, the U.S. manufactured vehicle for which the plant was to produce battery cells, had not developed as anticipated.”
Additionally, a project that was supposed to create more than 440 jobs didn’t even reach half that goal.
LG Chem agreed to pay $842,000 back to the government. But, as the report states, “the audit surfaced issues relating to the management of this grant which transcend the reimbursed amount in importance.”
“It is an outrage that American taxpayer dollars were given to a company that failed to reach basic project goals and paid employees to watch movies and play board games during work hours,” said House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas).
“The president wants more money to fund more pet projects, but it is clear that his Administration has not been responsible with what they’ve already been given,” he added. “The Obama administration must be held accountable for its excessive and irresponsible spending.”
Obama visited the LG Chem plant in July 2010, where he climbed into a Chevy Volt.
“The plant is the ninth of nine new advanced battery factories to start construction as a result of the $2.4 billion in Recovery Act advanced battery and electric vehicle awards the President announced last August,” the White House said of the trip at the time. “The project is expected to create hundreds of construction and manufacturing jobs in Holland. Once fully operational, the Compact factory will produce battery cells to support 53,000 Chevy Volts a year.”
“The workers at this plant, already slated to produce batteries for the new Chevy Volt, learned the other day that they’re also going to be supplying batteries for the new electric Ford Focus as soon as this operation gears up,” said Obama. “That means that by 2012, the batteries will be manufactured here in Holland, Michigan. So when you buy one of these vehicles, the battery could be stamped ‘Made in America’ -– just like the car.”
Just over 700 of the electric Ford Focus have been sold since the car went into production. At the Holland, Mich., event, though, Obama predicted big times for electric cars down the road.
The Energy Department’s investigation began after a local TV station uncovered employees at the plant playing Monopoly and reading magazines — and admitting this behavior had been going on for months.
“You can only do nothing for so long. There were days, sitting around all day doing nothing. … I didn’t play a whole lot of cards,” said one worker, who added, “I bailed out of a sinking ship.”
Let’s face it, Stmulus and all greentech subsidies were to reward the president’s cronies. The people were either too stupid or didn’t care and rewarded him, the most corrupt president, the second term. It’s sickening.
Actually, the McCain supporters who couldn’t vote for Romney elected Obama. If Romney would have received the same number of votes as did McCain in ’08 he would have won.
I suspect some of you on this board were among those who voted present (3rd party), or stayed home, instead of voting for Romney. You only have yourselves, and your religious bigotry, to blame.
Except that was not the case.
Perhaps you should recheck your “facts”.
It was the 135% of the black vote that did the trick.
But thass votuh supreshun!
Exactly.
There’s a superabundance of evidence of election fraud. SHAME on Mitt Romney and the GOP for conceding rather than contesting the election.
Without honest elections, there is no republic and no Constitution. There is nothing left but mob rule – in this case, it’s “mob” in the sense of “crime syndicate.”
If you look at that another way…it would be far easier to ‘lose’ a few million votes than to stuff various ballot boxes with the same amount. That could account for the super-low turnout numbers in an election year when the libertarians and conservatives were pretty eager to vote.
Just sayin’.
Both democrats and republicans use taxpayer money. For argument, let’s say that CO2 is the devil and the goal is to reduce output. Here are the scenarios:
1. What republicans would do with the same money is use it to provide loans to private business to build nuke plants after having reworked laws to remove years of red tape. This is an investment in proven tech, and it replaces coal. At least one of the new nuke plants would be used (can’t recall the process name) to turn coal into vehicle fuel. The eventual goal of this is to kill ethanol; the savings in subsidies alone would pay for the plant and the operations. In the GOP version of things, it really deosn’t matter if CO2 is the devil or not. Cheap energy creates jobs.
As a side benefit we are still using coal, so it’s not going to simply be shipped to the chinese so that THEY can burn it.
If science/engineering comes up with viable electric cars, why, there’s a lot of electrical energy for them. Plentiful power first. Cars later.
2. Democrats toss money at crap that can’t possibly work and refer to this as an investment. To keep the voters subdued they tell them scary stories about weather. Soon the campfire tradition of scary stories will be ubiquitous because campfires will be what’s left for reliable lighting. At least until they outlaw fires, which cause more weather.
One day when the GOP kicks the reactionary so-cons and teabaggers to the curb and positions itself to be electable by the 80% of the country that’s moderate, option #1 will be implemented. CO2 or no CO2.
Your disdainful reference to teabaggers indicates that you have bought into the liberals definition of who we are. I want less government, more individual accountability, a strong military, reduction in spending,border security, etc and for that I am a teabagger and per you an extremist.
Most of the outlay of the state is the elderly and the military. The rest doesn’t add up to much. You’re not going to tell grandma she’s toast because you’ll take away her medicaid funded meds, and you’re not going to gut the military. What are you going to cut? Add up all the programs the teabaggers complain about (planned parenthood, PBS, etc) and the tax hit on everything one can dream up adds up to about $50 a year for the average taxpayer. Big whoop. It’s all symbolism and pretend patriotism, wrapping yourselves in flags.
You have repeatedly appeared here under various names. I still continue to doubt that you’re any kind of technically adept individual, “random engineer” for you clearly also have a random thought-process that adheres to the sticky morass of feel-think.
Your choice of speech pattern is very similar to that moron, Obama, who uses colloquial English and folksy terms to sound appealing while also trying to hide his love for a socialist state.
Why do you embrace socialism so heavily? What’s in it for you?
You have repeatedly appeared here under various names
Wrong.
Why do you embrace socialism so heavily?
Heavy handed accusation from a poo-flinger in the peanut gallery. No surprise. It’s complete nonsense. Show an example of this claimed embrace or go away.
Allow me to point out the flaw in both of your scenarios: The government should not be investing taxpayer money in ANY type of commercial venture. The government should not be using taxpayer money to subsidize and thereby force into existence a market for products that are politically expedient but not commercially viable. If a product is needed/wanted by the general public, the demand will create a supply. That’s how free markets work.
Allow me to point out the flaw in both of your scenarios: The government should not be investing taxpayer money in ANY type of commercial venture.
The government has done this since before you were born. The US air mail service and resultant passenger air travel was due to heavy government investment in the technology. The 60′s. The government spent untold cash developing microelectronics for control of ICBM’s. You typed your message courtesy of governmental bootstrap of critical tech and commercial firms. How about Reagan and the military buildup? Cash developing the tech for Star Wars SDI resulted in GPS and so on. The interstate highway system? Government funding.
There’s a book online you should read: Strategy Of Technology by Possony and Pournelle that discusses the very thing. And no it’s not by socialists, but by conservatives who were Reagan advisors.
Brian K, Flagra, captjim et al
Note that what I said above was LOANS to kickstart construction. We already know that nuclear works. These taxpayer loans I speak of would be a guaranteed payback.
The dems “invest” by handing money out to stuff that doesn’t work; they just hope it will with enough cash in the name of “development.” Development in this case is synonymous with wishful thinking. Solyndra is one example. Others include money handed to battery makers when there is no demand for the electric vehicles that use them. And then there’s solar panels. They don’t work well at night. And so on. Where does the dem money go? Black hole. There’s no longer term payback that can happen. It’s simply wasted.
There’s a lot of difference between a loan for something proven to work and hading out money for wishful thinking. The loan pays back. The wishful thinking stuff is often akin to burning money, especially if there’s no market for it and no reasonable expectation of one. Did anyone here expect the public to start buying $30,000+ electric cars that could get 50 miles on a charge? No. How about wind farms, does anyone here NOT understand that they don’t store energy so it can be distributed when it’s needed? No. And no republicans whether country club variety or otherwise were really enthusiastic about this stuff.
The republicans are historically known for investing money that pays back. Defense buildups use stuff that is already made (and needs tweaking, of course) and there is a need for. An example is Fairchild Semi, who under Noyce and Moore created the first IC. The government via the military invested big $$$ for military uses *after* the initial development. There was no pie in the sky “here’s some money let’s hope a market poofs into being” aspect to it. And the result was the computer revolution happening 50 years ahead of schedule, with tons of money being generated, millions of new jobs. Republicans are clever.
So yes, the government has always played a big part in funding commercial ventures.
Where it concerns nuclear energy, the republicans can kill all the green crap dead in its tracks. No more solyndras. Adios wind farms. Buh-bye PV solar farms. How? Because helping the taxpayers with cheap clean energy takes the left’s green argument away from them. With no green argument, the left is reduced to yammering about social justice and other fluff. They have nothing else.
This is how we republicans can throttle the left.
RE, after this well stated explanation, I owe you a sincere and humble apology. There was a character who sounded remarkably like you in their posts and was a very dimwitted fool. I again apologize for the mistake.
You have me at a disadvantage and I will take full responsibility for it. This last post of yours fully put me in my place and it would indicate that you know what you’re talking about.
My first impression was that you seemed to embrace the government doing all these things and that you encouraged it in the form of, “hey let’s all let the government take care of us”. A prejudiced view on my part, to say the least.
But your further explanation made it more clear and I am so wrong I will go sit in the corner now.
“the audit surfaced issues relating to the management of this grant which transcend the reimbursed amount in importance.”
The writer of this sentence should be charged with cruel and unusual punishment of the English language.
As PJ Media keeps reporting these stories they should start a compendium so that the names and amounts of the multiple malfeasances can be easily referenced for future uses.
At what point are we looking at the possibility of RICO charges?
BTW Good work Ms. Johnson.
If this were a just society, the executives in these companies would be facing serious prison time plus the confiscation of all the money and person assets they acquired from the grants and loans.
However, since these green projects were never meant to actually produce anything but only to allow prominent Democrats to line their pockets with free federal money, that will never happen.
Saw a typically filthy NYPD cruiser stopped at a light the other day. Took a second look at the odd design and realized it was a Volt. Only $39,145 MSRP before you add siren and lights and other police goodies. Unless, of course, you deduct the $7,500 tax rebate. But wait–the rebate comes out of the taxpayers’ pocket.
So confusing, green economics. Better to leave such complex matters to experts like Barack Obama and Mikey Bloomberg.
And the best part is the usual suspects don’t have to light it on fire during their riots. They just spontaiously combust.
Everyone knows that the term “Green” means money and when it is used with the word “Energy” it means money for Demorats. That’s all it means and there will never be a grant of green energy money that does not go to a Demorat and there will never be a green energy vehicle designed and produced by a green energy granted company that makes a profit. The same thing is about to happen with AGW that obama loves to scare everyone about. He knows that no matter what we do as a nation we will have ZERO impact on world wide pollution. BUT he and his green energy “Friends” will make a killing off of the eco-credits they will sell to all of the big polluters. He is MIDAS to the Demorats and contributors to his campaign. Never in my life time have I seen such a corrupt SOB in the WH.
That can’t be possible, you mean to tell me that some of that stimulus money wasn’t used for what it was originally intended for? Good heavens, next you’ll be telling me there were no shovel ready jobs as were promised over four years ago. But isn’t this the most transparent administration that the United States of America has ever had?
Why does anyone still think this administration is capable of anything other than amaturish attempts to act like responsible adults? It’s Bush’s fault. It’s the tea parties fault. It’s Fox news fault. It’s all the racist old white guys fault. It’s anyones fault other than the fault of the guy leading from behind.
That heap of Obama BS is a shovel ready job.
The Real State of the Union – 2013
Published on Feb 14, 2013 Listen to the Peter Schiff Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYaMKd75aKI
Sen. Rand Paul on Fox Business’ Cavuto to discuss the State of the Union – 2/13/12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqaAYBQH7bE
Welcome to Michigan. By the way, the MECD which is responsible for drumming up business here has now discontinued promoting our new Right to Work law in its Pure Michigan ads. Talk to your average citizen — struggling or no, un or underemployed — they seem to think that prosperity and development are just too much trouble. After all they re-elected this president. It’s like everyone is drugged on Obama or something. Our Republican governor now has big plans to raise taxes and put more money in the teachers pension fund. Detroit’s City Council and unions continue to fight reforms and re-development.
THINGS ARE NOT GETTING BETTER IN THE WOLVERINE STATE. If it weren’t for imported leadership such as Alan Mulally and Sergio Marchionne, things would be worse — and that’s a frightening thought. We really are the Stupid State. In that regard we don’t any assistance from our economically illiterate president.
I wish the government would give me 150 million if all I have to pay back is roughly 900 thousand dollars?