The Obama Administration has spent $1.6 billion on Chinese and other foreign wind power, notes Wintery Knight. The practical effect of these subsidies is to outsource more American jobs. ABC News reports on the subsidies for Chinese wind turbines contained in the stimulus package:
Nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been spent on wind power, funding the creation of enough new wind farms to power 2.4 million homes over the past year. But the study found that nearly 80 percent of that money has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines.
“Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He analyzed which foreign firms had accepted the most stimulus money. “According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S.” Even with the infusion of so much stimulus money, a recent report by American Wind Energy Association showed a drop in U.S. wind manufacturing jobs last year.
The stimulus package also funnelled money to left-wing community organizers and liberal lobbying groups.
NewsMax reports on a $2 billion subsidized loan by the U.S. government to a Brazilian oil company:
The CEO of General Electric, which has received government “green jobs” money, is a close Obama advisor. GE has been busy outsourcing American jobs, eliminating a fifth of its U.S. workforce since 2002. GE made $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but paid no taxes at all, even though America’s corporate tax rates are among the highest in the world, and shareholders in American companies are burdened by heavy, double taxation. (American companies pay hefty corporate income tax on their earnings. Then, taxes are imposed yet again on that same income when it is distributed to shareholders as dividends. The shareholders have to pay income tax on that same income, hence double taxation.)
But rather than paying anything in taxes, GE actually received a tax benefit of $3.2 billion from the government in 2010, and received a preferential bailout at taxpayer expense.
Oddly, while subsidizing some foreign “green” jobs, the stimulus package also contained other terrible provisions that ignited trade wars with Mexico and Canada, wiping out more jobs in America’s export sector and aggravating the U.S. trade deficit.
