Lessons on Corporate Welfare & Green Jobs
My American Tradition Institute colleague Chris Horner calls attention to developments in Massachusetts, where government “investment” of taxpayer dollars in alternative energy didn’t work the way lawmakers and bureaucrats expected:
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON - Evergreen Solar Inc., once a poster-company for Gov. Deval Patrick’s green-jobs agenda, announced plans on Tuesday to shutter its Devens manufacturing plant and move more than 800 jobs elsewhere after accepting $58 million in state subsidies to expand in Massachusetts.
The solar panel manufacturing plant cited the low cost of manufacturing in China as the primary reason for closing the plant little more than two years after accepting significant state inducements for expanding….
Patrick announced the expansion of Evergreen Solar at the former Army base in Devens to great fanfare in 2008 when the company pledged to the double the size of the manufacturing plant it was constructing and triple its workforce to 1,000 employees.
The company accepted $58.6 million in grants, loans, land, and tax incentives over the last few years as incentive to expand in Massachusetts and add at least 350 new jobs to the economy.
There are usually “clawbacks” to these things, but how much time and taxpayer money that are also wasted on pursuit of these frivolous ventures is never accounted for. Besides the fact they cannot survive without government subsidies — take them away and they die.
How much subsidies go to those polluting oil and coal corporations?
First of all, tax incentives for oil and gas development are only “subsidies” if you consider it the government’s money. In fact, allowing someone to keep more of the money they earn is NOT a subsidy. Grants, loans and free land from Massachusetts economic development programs are real suibsidies.
Second, there is one other small difference between this company and the oil and coal corporations - the latter actually create energy we use.
You can’t tell a clown red shoes are out of style, so the same goes for the nuts in the global warming community. Anyone that thinks things through based on actual facts can only conclude one thing: no one has a clue why the global temperature changes. The lack of sun activity has only recently
been discovered, along with it’s role on world temperatures. How many more
undiscovered relationships are there that could be game changers? Anyway, if greenhouse gas reflects heat back down to earth why doesn’t it also reflect it back to space from the sun?
Sick of clowns in government.
“Is global warming real” should be dwarfed by the bigger and more difinitive question “are the solutions to global warming real”?
James C LaBrecque