Public Equity

The Obama campaign has declared that Romney's time at Bain Capital will be their focus.  I hope they keep up that idea, because it's a net winner for Romney.  Especially if he works to contrast how his private equity work compares with Obama's "public equity" investments.

Marc Thiessen writes in the Washington Post:

Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama did not anticipate. After all, if Romney’s record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama’s record in public equity — and that record is not pretty.

Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama’s public equity failures:

● Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.

● ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.” 

Much more in the complete article which can be found HERE.

Hat tip to Greg Mankiw for the pointer.

Green jobs

It seems that there is no limit to the chutzpah of the Obama administration.  From the Nevada Journal comes a story of a presidential visit to a solar energy plant funded by the federal government.  Unfortunately, the "stimulus" really didn't provide jobs or economic benefit:

President Obama will tout investments in “renewable” energy Wednesday at the local Copper Mountain Solar 1 plant, although the plant has only five full-time employees.

The plant, owned by San Diego-based energy company Sempra, was built in late 2010 at a cost of $141 million. Funding included $42 million in federal-government tax credits and $12 million in tax-rebate commitments from the state of Nevada.

Construction of the plant involved over 300 part-time jobs, but currently only five full-time employees operate the plant, a Sempra spokeswoman confirmed. That comes out to $10.8 million in tax-dollar subsidies per employee.

 Over TEN million dollars to create one job.  You could skip the investment, just pay someone $100,000 per year for over 100 years and still spend less money.  Where did these folks learn math?

In addition to wanting to create many new jobs, President Obama has claimed green-energy investment will decrease America’s energy costs and reduce the country’s dependency on foreign oil.

In Boulder City, however, renewables have produced no lower energy costs. Instead, in late 2009, the city approved a 35 percent rate hike, while power generated by Copper Mountain is to go to Southern California — rather than serve Nevadans whose taxes helped finance the plant.

So, the folks that helped to pay for the plant don't even get the energy from it.  And the green energy picture keeps looking uglier every day:

Nevada received over $1 billion in federal “stimulus” funds for energy and environmental projects, yet state ratepayers still pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Recently, the Nevada Public Utilities Commission approved yet another rate increase.

Solar plants aren’t the only government-funded energy projects in Nevada that haven't lived up to their proponents’ promises. The Reno Gazette-Journal recently reported that seven local windmills that cost taxpayers $1 million to install have only saved the City of Reno $2,785 in electricity costs over their 18 months of existence.

If we survive the Obama presidency, the green boondoggle will likely go down in history as the greatest heist in our existence.  Too bad most people don't know how bad it all is.  

Hat tip to The Lonely Conservative.

More on the stimulus

The Washington Times reports:

Despite receiving more than $885 million in federal economic stimulus funds since 2009, the D.C. government — whose residents face one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation — cannot say how many jobs it actually created for those who live in the District.

Most of the money has been spent, and data suggest that overall regional job growth did occur as a result of the massive infusion of capital. But a review by The Washington Times of figures provided by D.C. officials shows that the city spent hundreds of millions of dollars without being able to demonstrate any significant improvement in the city’s jobs outlook.

If anything, the employment picture has worsened in the District. At the end of 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the city’s unemployment rate was 10.4 percent, ahead of only three states: Nevada (12.6 percent), California (11.1 percent) and Rhode Island (10.8 percent).

In the District, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate has increased by 8 percent since 2009, as the D.C. government was receiving historic levels of federal stimulus funding via contracts, grants, loans, tax benefits and entitlements.

My bet is that it is not that they can't say, but don't want to.  Better to have no number than some pitiful excuse for a jobs creation plan.

Hey, but it's the thought that counts.  Let's multiply that $885 million by all the other "constituencies" that got cash and you can see that this was cronyism on a grand scale.

Hat tip to Weasel Zippers.

The Stimulus

Remember how the Obama stimulus was supposed to provide jobs for Americans?

From KVAL-TV in Eugene, OR comes this story:

Federal Stimulus money went to hire foreign workers before Americans as KVAL-TV (Eugene, OR) reports.

Reportedly, four companies in Oregon used nearly $7 million in taxpayer-funded stimulus money for a job that hired 250 foreign workers. The companies were able to exploit a loophole that allowed them to hire workers using the H-2B visa system.

Logging jobs in Oregon that went to foreigners.  Loans to cronies in the "green energy" market.  Payoffs to unions for campaign support.  Does the public know how much of a boondoggle it all was?

Video of the story available here.

Your tax dollars

Hard at work in the Motor City:

DETROIT (WWJ/AP) - An audit has found that a portion of an $11 million federal grant intended to provide business attire to 400 low-income job-seekers in Detroit helped only two people.

The audit of the city’s Department of Human Services found the department failed to control the operations and finances of a boutique that was to provide clothes, the Detroit News reported. The city’s auditor general conducted the review for the period from July 2009 to September 2011.

The center, at 1970 Larned, included the Customer Choice Pantry, the New Beginnings Clothing Boutique and a call center that had the capacity to service 60,000 families in need. The boutique was to provide business attire for low-income residents for job interviews.

To receive clothing, residents were required to have a job interview scheduled. According to the audit, the DHS was supposed to help 400 people between October 2010 and September 2011 but instead served only two.

Must have been all those shovel-ready jobs - folks didn't need to go to interviews.  That's it.

When will people learn that government merely takes the citizenry's money and distributes it to their favored subjects?  Government doesn't create anything, it merely takes and redistributes.