“America can be the 21st century clean energy leader by harnessing the power of alternative and renewable energy, ending our addiction to foreign oil, addressing the global climate crisis, and creating millions of new Green jobs that can’t be shipped overseas.”
President Barack Obama
You might have heard something about a guy in the Obama administration (Van Jones) who had to make his exit stage right, oh pardon me, stage left over his questionable past. You also might have heard the term, “green jobs” thrown around too.
But, have you ever wondered what the heck is a green job in the first place? It all sounds so murky to me. Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary to Bill Clinton and an economic advisor to President Obama, describes green job as follows:
But there's no reason to think about "green jobs" as simply high-tech. Many low-income and low-skilled workers -- women as well as men -- could be put directly to work providing homes and businesses with more efficient and renewable heating, lighting, cooling, and refrigeration systems; installing solar panels and efficient photovoltaic systems; rehabilitating and renovating old properties, and improving recycling systems. "
It sounds to me, to hear Secy Reich tell it, that these 5 million green jobs that President Obama promised sound like a 21st century euphemism for day laborers hauling solar panels around. Another way of looking at the so-called Green Jobs industry is that it’s President Obama’s version of the WPA which President Franklin D. Roosevelt created to put millions of Americans to work on the public dime.
This is not really a growth industry but rather another attempt to increase the size of government. President Obama is putting a shinny new frame around an old faded photo. He does this because he believes that government is the catalyst for everything. What he doesn’t understand is that government doesn’t create jobs, it makes them them, and there’s a difference.
Private industry, another area where the president knows nothing about and by every action he takes, is hostile toward, creates value and sells it as a product or service. All government does is redistributes value it takes in through fees and taxes paid by the hard work of citizens.
The folly of the so-called green jobs industry is that it is not economically viable. To hear President Obama describe it, oil and coal are derogatory terms. In fact, he never says the word “oil” without adding the word “dirty” in front of it.
Why?
Because he wants to convey an inference that producers of oil and coal are greedy profiteers that pollute the environment with harmful carbon emissions. What he leaves out is that the oil and coal industry employs millions of Americans. Oil runs the turbines that generate electricity that runs our industries. Without the use oil the United States would never have become the greatest economic power in world history.
But, America is the villain in Obama’s world which is why he feels compelled to apologize for her whenever he travels abroad. He has to demonize the oil industry because Liberals like Obama have to make a demon out of somebody or something to convince others that he knows what’s best.
The experiences of the European Union nations, who are 20 years ahead of us in the green industry, demonstrate that “for every green job created, a real job is destroyed in the economy.
Green jobs are going to cost real jobs, if congress passes Cap and Trade.
And the dirty little secret that President Obama and Van Jones wouldn’t fess up to, is that the so-called green jobs is nothing more than a minority jobs plan earmarked for low-income and low-skilled workers.
Who do you think they were talking about?
When testifying in front of congress, Robert Reich said, “"I am concerned, as I'm sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers"
Need I say more?
So, when you hear the talk about green jobs, think of it as the 21st century version of digging ditches back in the 30s under Roosevelt. I’m not saying that good public works weren’t accomplished. But, after the work is done or more likely the money runs out like the recent Cash for Clunkers, another government debacle, where will we be?
It’s back to raising more taxes or borrowing more money from China and putting the country further in the hole that leaves future generations of Americans in debt before they're even born.
The Bible says, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
I can’t argue with that.
Samuel Gonzalez, The Last Tradition, 9/10/09
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