Free Republic

The U.S. Department of Labor has determined that all manufacturing employees laid off from SolarWorld Industries America Inc. as a result of the company's shutdown of its solar module production plant in Camarillo, Calif., in September are eligible for federal trade-adjustment assistance, including grants for education to retrain them for new work.

A group of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives has introduced new legislation that would extend a number of incentives for wind power and other forms of renewable energy while stripping subsidies for fossil fuels. The bill - Investing to Modernize the Production of American Clean Energy and Technology (IMPACT Act) - introduced by Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; John Larson, D-Conn.; Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.; and Bill Pascrell Jr.; D-N.J. - proposes an eight-year extension to the production tax credit (PTC) for wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, landfill gas, hydropower, and marine and hydrokinetic power production. Notably, however,...

After being fired in 2009 as the top executive of Willard & Kelsey Solar Group, a Perrysburg start-up that has received millions in state loans, William Mitchell made a decision that he wasn't going to go away quietly. Before the company's chief executive officer left his job, he copied company records onto his computer's external hard drive -- months of financial transactions, banking records, and detailed expense reports showing the firm spent thousands on travel and entertainment, including trips to Detroit Tigers games and Pittsburgh Steelers events. Emails from Mr. Mitchell also show that he took a keen interest in...

One of President Obama's radical eco-bureaucrats has apologized for confirming an indelible truth: This White House treats politically incorrect private industries as public enemies who deserve regulatory death sentences. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Al Armendariz, an avowed greenie on leave from Southern Methodist University, gave a little-noticed speech in 2010 outlining his sadistic philosophy. "I was in a meeting once, and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I'll go ahead and tell you what I said," he...

Take a drive through your neighborhood, if you dare increase your carbon footprint. Count the number of houses and then the number of houses with that outdoor plumbing atop the roof. You know, the solar panels. After you’ve counted up 1,000 or so houses, how many had solar panels? 10? Not that many? How many “green jobs,” better known as “installers,” do you think those 10 panels created over the year, or five years, or 10 years or whatever it took to put that plumbing on those few roofs? You can bet your last dollar that there were far more...

Barack Obama recently campaigned in Ohio about the importance of his policies, solar energy efforts. Solyndra, endorsed enthusiastically by Department of Energy and the president, declared bankruptcy less than 12 months after receiving Obama’s “investment” of $534 million dollars. Unfortunately, Solyndra was not Obama’s only poorly performing solar energy investment. Obama has, so far, lost over 2 billion dollars in poorly performing solar companies that, soon after huge infusions of taxpayer dollars, filed for bankruptcy protection. Consider Obama’s investment in “green jobs”. After three and a half years and almost one hundred billion dollars of “investments”, Obama’s programs have been...

Newly recently released tax documents reveal how billionaire “philanthropist” George Soros expanded his U.S.-based empire by using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the Obama stimulus. Soros and Obama worked hand-in-glove through the stimulus, which has been called the largest single partisan wealth transfer in American history. In 2010, tax records show that Soros, a convicted inside trader with extensive knowledge of the American financial system and government policies under Obama, deployed grantees from his Open Society Foundations1 to lobby for and acquire federal contracts for job training, green energy, and community redevelopment...

Meteorologist Brian Sussman blows whistle on president's scheme The environmentalist movement isn’t about protecting the environment at all, according to meteorologist-turned-journalist Brian Sussman. It’s about destroying private property, controlling behavior, and expanding government – and the Obama administration has a secret plan to further all of it, he says. Sussman is now blowing the whistle on the real nature of environmentalism in his explosive brand-new book, “Eco-Tyranny.” He reveals secret memos from inside Obama’s Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, outlining a covert plan “to pursue a program of land consolidation” for the federal government to secure tens of millions...

...Three years after Obama launched a push to build a job-creating "green" economy, the White House can say that more than 1 million drafty homes have been retrofitted. But the millions of "green jobs" Obama promised have been slow to sprout, disappointing many who had hoped that the $90 billion earmarked for clean-energy efforts in the recession-fighting federal stimulus package would ease unemployment - still above 8 percent in March. Supporters say the administration over-promised on the jobs front and worry that a backlash could undermine support for clean-energy policies in general. "All of this stuff is extraordinarily worthy for...

Department of Energy invested millions to develop cutting-edge technology to power electric vehicles, but that know-how is now in foreign hands. "This is about the future. And the question is which nation is going to seize the future. Some nation is going to grab it by the throat. One of the nations of the world is going to lead the world in green energy and technology," Vice President Joe Biden said in January 2011 in a speech praising federal support for Ener1 at its facility in Indiana. That nation, it turns out, is Russia. A little more than a year...

A virtually unseen video has surfaced that highlights the high-powered political rhetoric and unrealized promises put forth by President Barack Obama and Michigan’s top Democratic politicians regarding the heavily subsidized and now-troubled A123 Systems battery manufacturer. The video, which had just over 600 views since it was posted in Oct. 2010 on Youtube, has Obama, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow singing the praises of the now-troubled advanced battery manufacturer A123 Systems. A123 Systems, which opened its lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant in Livonia in September 2010, saw...

America is addicted to chocolate. Foreign chocolate. A majority of us consume chocolate each day. Although the U.S. produces only 6% of the world’s cocoa, we consume more than 20%. The threat is obvious. It’s time for government to step in and promote alternatives. Any day now, President Obama will be barnstorming the country to tell us, “If we really want chocolate security and chocolate independence, we've got to start looking at how we use less cocoa and use sources that we can renew and that we can control, so we are not subject to the whims of what's happening...

Apparently even college campuses aren’t providing green jobs anymore. A survey by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (Aashe) “showed that creation of new sustainability positions peaked in 2008, then dropped 31 percent in 2009,” Dave Newport reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education on April 6, 2012. Newport directs the Environmental Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. That actually might be a better record than the Obama Administration has amassed in its much-touted—at least by administration officials—green jobs program. The Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (ETA) found that “ETA and grantees...

For those of you looking for a job or a different career, there’s some good news: Green jobs — that is, those with an eco-friendly focus — are expected to grow in the coming years. What’s more you needn’t worry about having to have a green résumé. If you have technical skills in engineering, architecture, accounting, marketing or project management, you’ll find job openings at solar energy firms, renewable energy outfits and others. Interested? Here are five jobs to consider, depending on your skills and interests. Pay varies based on factors such as experience and where you live. Salary figures...

At least 3.1 million Americans are employed in green jobs, a sector that now accounts for about 2.4 percent of the nation's total employment, the Labor Department said Thursday. The report represents the first time the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics has come up with an official count of environmentally friendly jobs, an emerging part of the economy and a centerpiece of President Barack Obama's stimulus plan. Environmental groups cheered the report. The report makes no assessment of when the jobs were created. But the report is sure to add to the debate over how exactly to define green jobs....

Parents seeking to guide their children into secure and lucrative lines of work should urge them to seek careers as environmental advisers or in online publishing, the startling results of a study suggest. The world's biggest work and careers social network, Linkedin, conducted the study for the 'Economic Report of the President' in the US. Linkedin, which has 150 million users globally and 60 million in the U.S., supplied information to the White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), which compiled the report. It used the vast amount of data on the website, where those signed up job hunt or...

NASHUA, N.H. - (AP) -- President Barack Obama, turning his political sights on snowy New Hampshire, demanded that Congress eliminate oil and gas company subsidies that he called an outrageous government "giveaway." Though politically a long shot, the White House believes the idea resonates at a time of high gasoline prices. "Let's put every single member of Congress on record: you can stand with oil companies or you can stand up for the American people," Obama said. The president also said GOP charges that his policies are driving up gas prices won't pass "a political bull-detector" test and pointed to...

Just when it seemed like things couldn't get worse, Indiana received more bad news on the electric vehicle front Wednesday as another promising hopeful announced it would call it quits. Bright Automotive, which had plans to deliver 300 manufacturing jobs to Indiana by 2012 pending the outcome of a loan from the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, announced Wednesday it has withdrawn its DOE application and will wind down operations in Indiana. In a scathing letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Bright Automotive Chief Executive Reuben Munger and Chief Operating Officer Mike Donoughe described an overly bureaucratic...

A Delaware bankruptcy judge has approved close to $370,000 in bonuses for certain employees of Solyndra LLC, a solar panel manufacturer that received a half-billion dollar loan from the federal government before declaring bankruptcy.

Sixteen months ago, General Electric announced it would place the "largest order in history" for electric cars, to be used by its employees who are issued company cars. Now, those cars are starting to arrive and be placed with employees. A person inside GE recently forwarded a memo to us that covers some of the nuts and bolts of using the 2012 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car. It's from the fleet operations manager for GE Healthcare. Among the interesting points: * All sedans ordered in 2012 will be the Chevrolet Volt * Crossovers and minivans will be replaced by electric-vehicle...