By now you’re probably familiar with the Obama Administration’s Solyndra scandal. What a mess. The Obama Administration touted Solyndra as the poster child for the “green jobs” portion of the Stimulus package. Solyndra got a $535 million loan guaranteed by the American taxpayers.
Evidence shows that the Administration rushed the federal loan reviewers because they had scheduled a news conference to announce the deal, at which Vice President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu were to speak. (Chu’s the guy President Obama named to head our nation’s energy program despite the fact that Chu had stated his goal was to “boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”)
Solyndra’s biggest investor just happens to be a huge Obama fundraiser, George Kaiser. (Surprise, surprise!) Solyndra recently went bankrupt. 1,100 people lost their jobs, and taxpayers are on the hook for $535 million.
Even though all this is bad enough, the real scandal is that the Solyndra fiasco is only the tip of the iceberg. The fact is that in the failed Obama Stimulus package, there was $38 billion set aside for “green jobs.” And how many jobs did that $38 billion buy? Approximately 3,500. Now let’s do the math – $38 billion divided by 3,500 – that’s over $10 million per job created. $10 million per job!!!
How many jobs have you held during your lifetime that paid you $10 million? What a colossal waste of our tax dollars. The Obama Administration’s “green jobs” program has been one of the biggest boondoggles in history.
Although the Solyndra scandal has gotten some attention in the mainstream press, most of the coverage has been on FOX and in more conservative publications. And the bigger scandal, the overall “green jobs” waste scandal, has been all but ignored. It’s high time that the Fourth Estate (the press) carry out its historic responsibility of investigating and shining the light on waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption in government, wherever it exists. This responsibility is paramount even when it occurs in programs it might philosophically agree with, and in Administrations it might have cheer-leaded for in recent years.