‘Running of the Bulls’ in Pamplona, Running of the Bull with Obama’s ‘Green Jobs’ Nonsense
July 7 was the start of the running of the bulls in Pamplona — an exhilarating test of one’s Darwinistic chops (Washington Times caption of the below photo: “Christopher Horner is partially seen in the lower left-hand corner, pushing a slower Spaniard out of the way at the running of the bulls”). It is a fitting time to examine President Obama’s persistent running with the bull about a supposed Spanish economic miracle.
Horner at the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona in 2000.
El toro’s most recent charge came this past weekend in Obama’s weekly radio address. In it, he left no doubt that he is either an extremely slow, stubborn learner, or he cares not a whit about how the drama he is scripting will play out.
Recall that, on eight occasions in the past, Obama hailed Spain as his model for the centrally planned “green” (energy-constrained) economy of windmills and solar panels he vowed to impose on us along with health care “reform” and spreading the wealth around. Yet as of his recent Oval Office pitch for the same agenda, Obama no longer points to any such examples when insisting on what he calls “the right thing to do” even if you doubt the global warming claims that used to propel this tenet of the modern statist.
The new argument is laid out in the Sunday Washington Post headline: “Obama: Solar power will create jobs.” We see that despite public outrage over Washington, D.C., boondoggles, cost is not a consideration when ramming through “investments” in what Obama wrongly and risibly calls “new technologies;” i.e., wind and solar power:
President Obama announced the award of $1.85 billion in loan guarantees Saturday to two solar power companies that he said will create thousands of new jobs.
In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said the money from the Energy Department will help the U.S. transition to a “clean energy economy” that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in the future.
Abengoa Solar, a unit of the Seville, Spain-based engineering company, will receive a $1.45 billion loan guarantee to build a solar power plant in Arizona that will create 1,600 construction jobs and 85 permanent jobs, according to White House documents released in conjunction with Obama’s address.
So the Spaniards’ enterprise carries a per-job cost of $860,534, even though 95% of those jobs are temporary (we learned they likely all are in the same way that census jobs are: the job disappears when the federal support ends). Wow. And proponents even embarrassingly boast that solar power requires more workers than any other energy source. This could get expensive.
Also using White House figures, if you assume the actual cost to the taxpayer for the loan guarantee is 10% of the loan, there is a per-job subsidy of $86,000.
This project brings to life the reason that both the president of Spain’s renewable energy association and the communist trade union called Professor Gabriel Calzada “unpatriotic” for revealing that these schemes are uneconomic drains: Spain needed the United States, Uncle Sucker, to buy into the scheme just to keep them afloat, as I detail in Power Grab.
The administration’s latest line in pushing this waste — it has merit because it would produce jobs — is vacuous. Everything you rob from Peter to pay Paul to do “creates jobs.” That’s not an argument. You can dig ditches and fill them back up for less. And that, believe it or not, is less economically harmful by far, as also detailed in Power Grab.
But the entire purpose of the renewables mandate and subsidy schemes Obama wants is to force you to buy electricity for a higher price than you would otherwise. These schemes, unlike ditch-digging, exist only because of crony capitalism. But-for heavy-hitting wind and solar rent seekers like GE — and before them the unfortunate Enron tag-team with BP to pioneer the field — there would be no “market” for these energy sources abandoned as soon as we liberated the hydrocarbon. All of these projects also bring increased debt to underwrite the make-work, which through opportunity cost kills a multiple of the jobs “created” because the private sector creates jobs much more efficiently than the state.
Maybe all this is one of those repentance moments. After his $1Bn loan guarantee to Petrobras (or should I say Memorium to George Soros) he felt the need to ‘offset’ his carbon angst with a green donation. Some kind of Freudian thing?
Naw, he’s just thick as a brick. More so that he doesn’t think anyone is watching or willing to remind him of the folly of his ways.
It is the “Centrally Planned” part of the Spanish model that Obama is particularly fond of.
Here’s another problem with the mythical “green economy”.
…Spain-based engineering company, will receive a $1.45 billion loan guarantee to build a solar power plant in Arizona…
‘Splain it to me, Lucy, why it is that our tax money isn’t going to an American company employing American workers during this worst recession in our history.
Does anyone else notice the crazy things we’re doing since we’ve abandoned the idea of manufacturing our own products?
Another job that Americans won’t do????
Abengoa Solar is a site developer. Lockheed Martin (USA)is the company that will provide the equipment and manpower for the Arizona solar farm. My client company (USA) will provide the structural and frame components to LM. Its a similar foodchain to wind power installations. Utility->Developer->Financing->Equipment Manufacturer->Subcontractors. I hope I ‘splained it ok.
I saw a study a week or so ago, that found that the deaths per megawatt of generated power was something like three times as high for the wind industry, as it was for the coal industry.
That’s a hoax. The solar and wind mines aren’t nearly so dangerous as the coal and uranium mines — fewer cave-ins.
Have you studied up on how dangerous building very tall towers is? People fall to their deaths, get struck by lightning, have pliars dropped from 500 feet up land on their heads.
Additionally, given how little energy wind power generates compared to coal power, 1 death in the wind industry is the equivalent to 1000 deaths in the coal industry. Remember, the comparison is on a megawatt generated basis. Not total deaths.
No hoax, just a failure to think it through.
Source, Ed? Modern mining is not very labor intensive; there aren’t that many people doing it, so per capita might be high, when per kiloWatt-hour would be very low.
No doubt Dwight will soon show up to tell us that anyone who objects to these plans is just being paranoid.
So, the “bomb-in-the-mail” hoax isn’t the only hoax Horner buys from Calzada? Horner also believes there can’t be good jobs from alternative power — though here in Texas we’ve been running machines with wind power for 150 years . . .
It’s embarrassing to admit that, following Horner’s policies, the U.S. has ceded engineering leadership to India and China (whose payroll is Horner really on?). But the fact is that green jobs produce significant local impacts. No, solar does not involve sending thousands of men down into coal mines. Learn to live with it.
Backwards Boy? Why don’t you ask Horner why he doesn’t like U.S. companies getting these jobs? His opposition is what keeps American companies from competing. Horner insists we shouldn’t be in that arena at all. Ask him why.
Speaking of buying into hoaxes. Nobody said that there aren’t good jobs in the wind/solar industry. The claim was that the money spent on wind/solar would result in an explosion of jobs.
That has quite clearly been disproven. A small handfull of jobs, but much less than the number of jobs destroyed by the taxes needed to subsidize the green jobs.
The fact that you believe that any info that runs counter to your religion is a hoax says plenty about you. And none of it good.
The article you liked to was interesting. No evidence of how the “US ceded engineering leadership” and lots of references to tax credits and subsidies, with the federal govt kicking in 30%! Even so, the company wants a county tax credit for their headquarters, which will have a whopping 20 employees! Like every other green jobs boondoggle, this one depends on massive govt incentives. That is why people like Horner don’t want these jobs. Ultimately, they are job killers, not job creators.
True, windmills have been in Texas for 150 years, and in other places for centuries longer. So have horse drawn vehicles. The modern day windmill is no better than those of yesteryear, only larger. Britain, Denmark and Texas are having real headaches with the vagaries of wind power. Britain is paying windmill operators not to run them, Denmark is selling surplus power to Norway and Germany at a loss, and I recently heard that Texas is or is proposing to pay consumers to use their surplus wind power.
The bottom line is that green energy is a white elephant.
I’m still trying to figure out why not having an engineering leadership position (assuming these histrionics are anywhere close to reality) in a technology that isn’t going anywhere, is such a bad thing.
Does the US have technological leadership in buggy whips? Does anyone care?
Windmills do produce significant local impacts. Migraine headaches from the noise and the elimination of the local bird population.
You bring up some thing I was wondering about. What is the environmental impact of the windmills? From what I have read so far in -underline start-Power Grab-underline end-, you need to clear a lot of terrain for windmills. This concerns me about wildlife habitat. Not only this, but how does the noise affect wildlife if it was generated? More so, do to the noise, does this cause any subsonic vibrations, loosening soils or causing sediments to stir in water? This sediment problem is one of the reason northern logging was done during the winter for wet areas. It was hard on fish habitat. Is this also going to be a problem with windmills? How does the presense of these machines affect watershed?
Don’t know if the vibrations will affect soil compaction, my personal guess is that the frequency is too low to have any impact.
As far as clearing millions of acres to implement, nothing tops solar power.
No surprise here; the Marxist Obama sending American dollars to support his fellow Marxist Zapetero in Spain. So the Obama is interested in supporting the communist economies of the world; what else is new, just look at Marxist Chicago, Marxist NYC, Marxist Philadelpia etc; no jobs come from communism only repression and theft.
Would it not be an impeacable offense if a President of the United States violated his oath of office by refusing to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States, so help him God?
When does the call by “Republicans” come? When will the trial be scheduled?
If I remember right, Ed Darell runs a company who’s very existence depends on a continuing stream of govt subsidies.
2 things come to mind with this article. one is what choices do we have . no one what nuclear waste in there state. is a danger to human life and animals too oil isn’t going to be around forever. 2 using wind and solar is our only alternative unless we find a way to harness fusion and use that to create electrical power. and it will create jobs for the people of Arz and may grow to make for job in other states too
Arnold, wrong on all counts.
Nuclear waste is not an issue if you reprocess it.
Oil won’t be around forever, then again, neither will the earth. Oil and coal will be around for 400 to 500 years, which is close enough to forever that our great great grandkids won’t need to worry about it.
As has been demonstrated many times, wind and solar are not an option for generating electricity. Period. They are unreliable. That is, you never know when the wind is going to blow, and the sun shines only half of the day.
He did mention geothermal. That sparked my interest more than any thing.