Go Green! Eat Greenbacks! Go Bankrupt!

Let's hear it for the Obamist green initiatives. Barack Obama and his green weenie administration pumped $535 million into creating green jobs at Solyndra. That was designed to create 4,000 jobs at a mere $133,750 per job. In 2010, The One himself appeared at the Fremont, California company to announce: "You're demonstrating that the promise of clean energy isn't just an article of faith. It's happening right now. The future is here."

Well, he got that last part right. Solyndra has declared bankruptcy, a harbinger of the future of America if Obama remains in office after the 2012 elections. In fact, this was only partially a green initiative. The other part was pure crony capitalism. Tulsa, Oklahoma billionaire and Solyndra co-founder George Kaiser personally bundled $100,000 for Obama's 2008 presidential race, and together with other Solyndra executives donated another $87,500 to elect America's first green president.

The 4,000 jobs actually turned out to be 1,100 jobs. Now there are 1,100 new applications for unemployment benefits. But with the infusion of federal funds, each temporary employee has now earned enough to stay on the unemployment line for two years. I guess that's progress of some sort.

Obama and the green weenies simply seem incapable of recognizing that green energy/renewable energy is a great idea and a fine theory which isn't even close to being able to replace more traditional energy sources. It may very well be "the future" of energy, but it ain't here now nor any time in the near future. Obama still firmly believes that with a wave of his imperial hand he can create technology immediately that in reality will take another twenty or thirty years of development. He truly believes that if he and his gang of ivory tower energy thugs set a deadline for creation of green energy four or five years down the road, technology, development, and infrastructure will be ready by politico-legal fiat.

He also believes that massive amounts of taxpayer money thrown at an industry still in its infancy can do what private investment and the market cannot do. But even the Obama-friendly mainstream media are beginning to have their doubts. Still, they will not outright question Obama's business acumen (or lack thereof). At the time of the Solyndra bankruptcy filing, a New York Times headline announced: "Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises." That makes the Times a master of understatement. Solyndra has simply proven that "green jobs" are like Chinese food--an hour later you'll need to create more since the originals have faded into memory, only to be excreted at the appropriate time.

Obama has been very good at rewarding his corporate cronies. GE paid no income taxes for 2010, gave large amounts of money to Obama's campaigns, and got rewarded by having its CEO, Jeffrey Immelt put in charge of job development (in China, mostly). The green weenies are great at deflecting criticism with colorful non sequiturs and flashy but empty commercial messages. As Jennifer Rubin puts it: "Politicians are not particularly well-equipped to identify market trends or spot investment opportunities." But they are good at rewarding their cronies using taxpayer money to hype their message.

"You dress it all up with high-minded phrases ('a twenty-first century economy, green jobs, private-public partnerships') and it sells like hot cakes. I mean who wants a nineteenth century economy? And goodness knows we don't want dingy jobs, we want bright green ones (with that little recycling logo on every product)."

Listen to Solyndra's mission statement, and you'll see how fancy words cover up their cluelessness about both techonology and the market: "Solyndra designs, manufactures and sells solar photovoltaic (PV) systems composed of panels and mounting hardware for large, low-slope commercial rooftops. The panels perform optimally when mounted horizontally and packed close together, thereby covering significantly more of the typically available roof area and producing more electricity per rooftop on an annual basis than a conventional panel installation."

That's largely techno-gibberish designed to cover up the fact that the technology is both largely theoretical and outrageously expensive. Without taxpayer money, this project would never have gotten off the ground. The product itself had possibilities, using a clever curved array of individual tubes making up the panel in place of the tradition flat panel. But the product was a long way from being viable and affordable. Still, who needs tried and true fossil fuels when there is a pie-in-the-sky green alternative available right now? Even if it doesn't work and nobody can afford it?

Solyndra is only the most recent and most obvious example of green weenie failure. At least their product didn't contain large amounts of enviro-hazardous mercury like GE's Chinese compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Some day in the future, green technology may actually replace traditional energy production. But not in the near future, nor at a cost that can be decently borne in a terrible economy such as the one we are living in today (and probably for a decade to come). Pipe dreams are fine for opium addicts, but Obama needs to put that pipe back in the drawer, get rid of his Rube Goldberg buddies, and start dealing with hard reality.